4am

“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.”

― Poppy Z. Brite

4am knows all my secrets. It is when the voices that the day’s activities can block out start whispering all of my fears, all of my hopes, all of my joy, all of my frustrations. The voices bombard me with so many feelings, that all my brain can do is ride the wave – try to quiet a few of them with logic and reason – but in the end, the voices reign.

4am knows all of my secrets. Secrets I tell no one – feelings I stomp down inside me as they serve no purpose other than to create worry. But, as I try to drift away, my distraction with the idea of sleep lets them float back to the surface – flooding me with thoughts and feelings and worries I don’t want to hear because, while it is daylight, I don’t believe them. But the voices at night, try to convince me otherwise.

4am is the hardest battle for me. When sleep finally overtakes me, I am left exhausted, not from the lack of sleep, but for the internal conflict that I wage silently as I try to put my head back into order so sleep can come.

An old mentor of mine, after hearing I had two weeks of insomnia, commented I needed to put the mice to bed so they will stop scampering around in my attic, keeping me awake.

But there are some nights, the mice are too tricky – too clever for traps or bedtime. They avoid me – they resist my efforts. And play instead.

I hope that sleep comes at night again soon. I hope that it doesn’t take a day like yesterday where my body was so incredibly exhausted that I could not get out of bed. I hope to settle my mice – settle my brain – or that 4am feels like it’s had enough of my secrets for a while so that it lets me sleep.

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