Why I Stay Up Late

Sleep has always been my Achilles' heel. I might be a food aficionado, and enjoy listening to all sorts of different music, but the real thing that I cannot go without is sleep. ~

The problem has gotten much, much worse this past year. ~ Since university allows greater freedom with schedules, I've started waking up at 12 pm to make it to 1 pm classes (note that I live 45 minutes away from the university), despite vowing to make it to the library at 9 am to study. ~ On weekends, I sleep in to 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm... It gets so bad that when my mom tries to shake me awake in the morning, I firmly yell, "No! No! No!" and turn over disgruntedly, despite not consciously being aware of my own actions. ~ Six hours later, I angrily call her, demanding why she let me sleep in. When she tells me the story, I am aghast. ~

My friends have attempted to help rectify this problem. ~ Several have been on alarm duty, calling me to wake me up. ~ I am ashamed to say that I often take their call, agree to get up, and then promptly fall back into bed, out cold. ~ Someone tried to get me using an app called "Sleep if U Can", whereby you dutifully take a picture in another room the previous night and have to get up in the morning to take the same picture in order to turn off your alarm. ~ Gleefully, I tried it, making all sorts of hopeful promises to myself about getting back on track. ~ The next morning, I sleep through three hours of my alarm going off. ~

I've missed many outings with friends because instead of waking up at 6 am, I find myself blinking away sleep at 3 in the afternoon. ~ One day, I missed the first bit of my 1 pm class because not only my ten alarms, but also my carbon monoxide detector going off, failed to wake me from my dreams. ~

My new house has only aggravated the issue. ~ My family now lives in an extremely quiet neighbourhood, where barely a car drives by all day. ~ My room faces the north, so that no sunlight streams through my shutters in the morning (not that that would help wake sleeping me much). ~ After my parents leave the house in the mornings, I might as well be the last person alive, unknowingly sleeping through the beginnings of a zombie apocalypse. ~

I can fall asleep absolutely anywhere. ~ As many of my summer camp friends can testify, neither heat nor cold nor loud noises can prevent me from catching a few Z's or a billion. ~ Whether it's sprawled across my desk, leaning against a wall, cuddled up in a library chair, or cramped atop a lab bench, sleep settles over me like a gentle blanket, engulfing me in darkness. ~

By this point, you're probably wondering: "If she loves sleep so much, then why not sleep more?" A simple question, posed to a complicated person. ~ You see, the reason sleep has become such an issue for me is that I'm wide awake at the worst times possible. ~ 1 am? Time to start a new TV series! 2 am? Let's launch into a full-length MCAT practice exam (which lasts for 4 hours straight)! ~ 6 am? Time to start banging away on the piano, rousing the entire house. ~ I'm a classic night owl. ~

What set me on this horrible routine? ~ Well, it's progressively gotten worse over the years. ~ It began when I snatched a few extra minutes past 10 to finish a project, then after 11 to read another page of my novel, then over midnight to finish up a report, then 1 to squeeze in another episode of Friends... It just seems that when no one else at home is awake, I'm most productive and alert. ~ Also, late night conversations are often the most meaningful and the most interesting. ~ Staying up just that much later gives me the chance to either spend some quality time catching up with a friend who's in the US, or getting in some last minute studying. ~
There's also an odd sense of excitement to be the last one awake. ~ It feels like the entire world has stopped for you, and everything you do will seem like you've warped time to people who wake up the next morning. ~ The adrenaline probably has something to do with this as well - you're forcing your body to extremes, so it responds duly and gives you that rush, that extra burst of concentration, so that you can achieve so much more. ~

This second life has begun to take its toll on me, however. ~ I'm often sluggish during the day, having to rely on coffee or tea in order to function properly. ~ I'm also a horribly cranky person in the morning, giving my mother sullen looks for having woken me and dozing in the car on the way to work (not behind the wheel, of course). ~ I'm always amazed by people who can wake up at 5 to spruce themselves up for the day, showing up at school or work like they've just been airbrushed into being. ~
So tonight, I'll be heading home, telling myself I'll go to bed "early" and wake up feeling refreshed and happy tomorrow morning, while knowing full well that I'll end up having some sort of epiphany at 11 pm and decide to stay up for the next few hours developing the idea. ~

Sweet dreams, everyone. ~