The Night in Memory

I have always been weird. I wasn't always conscious of it, I had moments of blending in, but then I would go to a sleepover and stare at the ceiling while my friends fell asleep in seconds. I was different. I couldn't spend the night at my friends, once I got a phone I would call my mom to come pick me up in the middle of the night and I never knew why. I still don't fully know why -- I didn't have an actual reason, I think it was just various anxiety. Which sucked, because I never really wanted to be home but I felt like I needed to be there, like there would be an apocalypse and I was the only one who could protect my family when that was the farthest thing from true. 

I would get so scared in the middle of the night, even at home. I needed a night light, as though something horrible would happen to me if I slept in the dark. Even still, I might become randomly unable to sleep with heart racing anxiety caused from thin air. I rarely have nightmares, and when I have they aren't real nightmares. I don't get scared, it's as if someone else has control of my dreams and is using a tactic that scares most people but yet I am left unbothered. There's no reason for my insomnia, no reason for me  to be overcome with fear on a whim or wake up at three a. m. but it still happens to me and it always has. 

When my friends would suggest to watch a scary movie before bed, I loved it. That meant that they would get a little scared and stay up with me for long periods of time, that I wouldn't be alone in my toils of ceiling staring, until they finally passed out after I calmed them down, and I was alone again. At least I had an hour of extra time being joined by a friend, talking about or doing silly things. I thought I was alone in the world with this, even my fellow 'insomniac' friends would pass out in minutes at sleepovers and I would stare in jealously before distracting myself with anything I could until eventually passing out a few hours later.

I was, really, alone, for years and years until finally I was introduced to some people from an old school I went to in a different state by an old school friend. I got to talking with one person in particular and we started talking more and more. One day, I was complaining about how I could never sleep. She told me she could relate, and internally I thought, "no, you can't..." I was wrong. We were two sides of the same coin, different and yet the same. We would always talk, because we both could never sleep. It was nice, in a guilty way. I feel bad for being happy that she faces my same aches and pains, but at least we had company. At least we have each other, and the beautiful ink of a night sky between us. Even if we couldn't go to each others houses and talk all night, we could look at the same moon, the same stars, and laugh on the phone together. 

At least we could be lonely in an abyss together. All of ours differences make us one, a semi normal functioning human. It's torture to stare at the ceiling and know you have four hours before you need to wake up and function like everyone else, agony, but it just gives me extra time to write and be with her.