At this point, I’m giving myself insomnia

Nothing quite like the dead of the night to motivate you into doing things you could have done when you still had the light of day.

All the objects that lay untouched around me throughout the day suddenly beckon with urgency. They hold the key to my greatness. It’s okay if you squandered the day, they say, the night is for poets and artists and lovers. Sure, it might be, but it’s also for those who slept till noon and did absolutely nothing productive during the day and now seek vengeance in the form of stolen hours from the night. It is also for those who contemplate texting their ex and think of solid comebacks to banter that happened at a house-party three years ago.

It’s also for the ones who regret intensely, quietly, sarcastically but with full intent to hurt themselves. Night is when all the missed opportunities and things one could have done and places one could have gone suddenly loom before us, the moment past but the potency of their missing heightened, their value intensified by their absence. What’s that lurking in the corner? Oh, just my dream of being a pilot.

There is also nothing unproductive owls enjoy more than worrying about things that absolutely cannot be helped at the AM. Did I fill that form? Did I send that mail? What if the parcel I ordered comes damaged? What if that celebrity I hate-watch on Instagram breaks up with her boyfriend, neither of whom have any idea about me? Maybe I will check all my social media accounts to see and obsess over who unfollowed me now.

As the din of the phone and the rectangle leash that is the office laptop comes down, that all the Van Gogh weirdness my parents told me to hide from relatives and prospective grooms comes running forward, dressed in yellow and mumbling the table of seven under its breath. The idea solidifies and suddenly I want my paints. The door could use be a mural. I can mend my torn jeans. I can write an article (which I am doing now, meta-article-ception for the win). Creating isn’t just for the kids you know, I may be jaded by work and worry and my rolling birthdays which feel six months apart since 2015, but damn it I can make something.

Or if creating is too hard, surely cleaning isn’t. Dishes left four days in the sink are intolerable in a moment, almost like I can see them, languishing in the sink fifteen feet and two closed doors away from me, all the way from there. I could sort my wardrobe, or sweep the floor. I could do anything but lie in bed and fall asleep, what I should be doing right now and am comfortable doing at any point of the day except when I am supposed to do it. There is a message here about my aversion to the status quo, but I am too tired to decipher it.

They say the night holds promise, and maybe they’re onto something. I want to call my friends, or text my mom. I want to apologize for things I didn’t do, just to mend broken bridges. I want to read the textbook of the subject I failed and give the exam again; I want to be better than what I am. Somehow tomorrow I want to be Martin Luther King and Priyanka Chopra all rolled into one, and the work for that apparently starts right now, not a moment later. It also didn’t start several moments ago, when the therapist still takes calls as I tell her I’m about to do something reckless and can she please spot me, like I’m not going to quit my job but instead do something innocuous, like half-squats with little dumbbells.

Speaking of squats, I could exercise. I could start eating fruit. I could slowly stop being me, and be a better one instead that leads the world and falls asleep at a comely hour. I know what it is now. It’s not that I don’t have time or don’t have motivation, my stubbornness won’t do what should be done at the time I should do it. It’s why I brush after breakfast since the lockdown started, try and stop me Mussolinis.

Eventually, I do nothing. I look at kitten videos and tell myself I’ll do better tomorrow. A small voice tells me, there is tomorrow, until there isn’t. I shoo it away, less with sternness and more with concealed fear. At the age I am, there is still tomorrow. However reluctant we both are to see it.

Ted Talks always hit differently at 2 AM, innit?