Friday, October 21, 2016

Why I'm up at 1 AM watching Wings and Cougar Town

Why I Stay Up at Night

For years, I have written voluminous emails at midnight, beaded bracelets with sleep blurred eyes and wrote my way out of depression while listening to the sounds of late night tv.

Recently, I've been watching my way through Wings and Cougar Town an episode or two at a time each night. I don't believe in turning in early even if I have to get up. Only the flu (or a baby virus, I have never been so sick in my life as I have been from the colds I have caught from my nephews) can drive to my bed. The night is too much of a pleasure to give up a moment of it.

Those hours when everyone else is asleep and I'm sitting up in the light of my computer are haven. They make the strain of the world easier to bear.

The world isn't quite as real at one in the morning and I love that. The real world is defined by sudden moments of dumbfounding chaos. The real world hurts. The real world fails dreams. The night is an eye to the storm of life.

Sense is made and shattered with each word my fatigued fingers punch into these keys. My suffering sanity wanders away and I am free. I am free to wander in and out of the worlds I love. Become more, be nowhere, embrace and hope and fear and love.

In the night, thoughts erupt without the burden of the real world weighing them down. It's not the real world because its more true. It's real because of its consequences, demands, requirements and preeminence over all. Real because it forces other things to matter less even when they are everything.

The word is everything even when it's nothing. When it's nothing, my self shatters. When it's present, I exist. The word unites the scraps of me. The word is analgesia.

I'm uttering hopes from a strained heart. Breathless pain of the day begone. Fears for tomorrow are hidden by shadows. I don't stare down the barrel of the day; I shelter myself behind the wall of night. Me and my weaponized mental state combat the everyday decay with words assembled in new ways.

Hope's cracks are accepted. Tomorrow's promise is not yet broken.

So that's it. That's why I'm up one AM writing and watching sitcoms. It's the best peace I know.

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