Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and the universe took that personally.
My body decided to mark the occasion with a hormonal symphony (the kind that only people with uteruses truly understand) and paired it, generously, with a manic peak. Then I forgot to take my melatonin. So 2am, 3am, and even 5am found me flat on my back, blinking at the ceiling, drafting blog entries in my head and mentally crafting things I’ll never actually make.
Every time I drifted off, my brain jolted me back awake like it had something very important to say.
It did not.
Somewhere in those restless hours, I was struck by a profound and generous thought: I should embrace life’s circumstances. Take the bad, alchemize it into good. Lean in.
Nighttime lies to you like that.
There’s something about the dark, whether you’re in pain, sick, sleepless, or just running on scrambled brain chemistry, that warps your perception in both directions. When you’re suffering at 3am, everything feels catastrophic and permanent. But when your mind is buzzing with too much serotonin at midnight, you feel invincible. You feel chosen. You draft manifestos. You solve problems. You decide, with full conviction, that you are finally going to become the person you were always meant to be.
Then the sun comes up.
And the sun is honest in a way the night never is.
In the daylight, the catastrophes of 3am shrink back to their actual size so they feel more manageable, ordinary, and survivable. But the grand plans? The invincibility? That shrinks too. The world, it turns out, does not reorganize itself around your 3am epiphanies. The world just keeps going, indifferent and unimpressed, and now you have to put on pants and participate in it while running on three hours of sleep and whatever is left of your dignity.
Last night, the world was my oyster.
This morning, my neighbor’s dog will not stop barking, and I am fantasizing about consequences.
The gap between the 3am visionary and the 9am wreckage is one of the more humbling places to live. But maybe that’s the actual insight that survived the night: you don’t have to be the person who has it all figured out in the dark. You just have to be the person who shows up when the sun comes up anyway.
Pants and everything.
