Thoughts on 4 AM

4 am is the loneliest hour.

3 am is romantic. It’s still the night before. You stayed out late and are on your way home. You see people like you on the streets on their way home. Sometimes you stumble and wave and sometimes they stumble and wave back. You can still get away with a booty call at 3 am.

5 am is the next day. Writers get up to take a crack at their novels. Runners love the quiet and calm in the park before the day’s bustle. 5 am is the start of a new day. You haven’t yet fucked anything up at 5 am.

But 4 am is stuck in between yesterday and today. Everyone is asleep at 4 am. Except for you. You’re awake and all the fears you accumulated from the day before, and all the dread you anticipate for the day ahead, rush straight to the tippy tip of your sleepless brain.

You suck, at 4 am. You’re bad at your job, at 4 am. You hate yourself, at 4 am. You’re empty, brokenhearted, and scared, at 4 am.

But just remember this, my fellow 4 am-ers. None of that is true. Time is irrelevant. You are you, irrespective of the rotation of the planet, or the revolutions of the swirling cosmos. You are exactly the same at 4 as you are, or were, at 3 or 5 or 12 or 6, for fuck’s sake.

So do this: if you wake up at 4 am, rejoice. Acknowledge that most people are asleep and dreaming, whereas you are awake and among the lucky few experiencing a world that is largely absent of voices and din.

At 4 am.