Sara

Night & Day

Staying up all night and sleeping in the daylight hours is
an interesting groove to fall into. It definitely snuck-up
on me and had me in a seemingly inescapable grip. But I
think I’ve got the better of the situation now... hopefully.

There are probably some things I should jot down and make
sure I do not forget them. It can be fairly easy to fall
back into undesirable situations as many such situations
look pretty attractive until their true nature is exposed to
the bright light of day.

God knows how often I’ve told myself I was never going to
revisit a situation, only to wake-up one day and realize,
I’m right where I really do not wish to be and if I’m lucky,
I’ll be able to exit unscathed. Unfortunately, the unscathed
part is usually only a pipe dream... all things have
consequences; I’ve learned that one hard, good, solid, and deep.

Now that I’m sitting here and writing this down, all kinds
of things are popping into my mind; thoughts, pictures,
memories, old ideas and new.... which is kind of it in a
nutshell —staying up all night can and does definitely
create chaos and confusion with an inability to focus.

Staying up all night throws the body out of sync with the
cycles of nature, hence, all the fat people running around
who are actually more the victims of the electric light bulb
than food consumption... but that’s not a popular concept to
point out. Like the fact that we do not get fat because we
eat fat; but that is not a popular truth either, so we
choose, for whatever reason, to believe the lie.

Staying up all night is hard on the heart —from several
points of view. The heart gets totally plum tuckered out if
it does not get adequate rest —but we somehow believe we can
overcome the laws of nature. We slam down Red Bulls® Coca
Cola® Coffee NoDoze® or worse. And that exacerbates all the
other ills that pile-up... and while we think we’re getting
away with it... just do it long enough and it can smack us
down so fast we act all amazed and confused —while
wondering, ‘Hey, what happened!?”

Staying up all night gets lonely. You realize you want to
sleep when everyone else is getting up at the crack of dawn
(with a full day of exciting activities planned) and you are
just beginning your sleep pattern, so exhausted you won’t
even dream, or remember it if you do dream. You begin to
miss out on all types of activities that you just don’t have
the energy for or the interest in like you once did. And
(.for.get.a.bout.it.) if you’re married ( another topic all
together ) because the relationship won’t get any better
with him in the bed in the night and you in the bed in the
day!?

You also realize that you are sharing the night-conscious-
ness with all sorts of bizarre, deviate, twisted souls.
And if you are online you can become juicy prey and easy
target for all sorts of —at the very least— annoying activ-
ities; or perhaps come under suspicion of being one of those
bizarre, deviate, twisted souls... and if you're on-line
all-night long-enough —you’ll risk becoming one.

Ultimately, the worst part is when you’re satiated with
darkness and all that it brings; and you realize it isn’t so
easy to turn it around and open your eyes to the brightness
of the early dawn and new morning sunlight. What once was
normal, comforting, and renewing feels strangely alien and
uncomfortable (are we in Kansas yet?).

It is a struggle to change grooves or switch the disc when
all you really want is to play a different tune —one that
sings of renewal, joy, and hope. All you really want is to
sleep and dream in the darkness of the night and wake rested
with the green light of dawn beaming across the bed.

~Sara