Monday, May 10, 2010

Good morning, midnight.

You know those weird insomniac moods where you feel like you're on a caffeine high despite being about twelve hours past your only cup of coffee? At one point last night I was focusing very hard on trying to be asleep, and then suddenly I'm sitting on the floor at 3am in one of my favorite dresses reading through my old journals. Life's a funny thing.

Nighttime has always been a favorite time of day. My mom always used to say, "Nothing good happens after midnight." I can safely verify that, as wise as she is, it's a total lie. During summers in the latter parts of my teens, friends would camp out at my house for nights in a row. None of us really drank or did drugs. We'd spend endless summer evenings going to shows, and with adrenaline buzzing and ears ringing afterward, we'd cruise around the city with the windows down playing all the songs that expressed exactly what we were too ill-equipped to say ourselves. I would never have admitted it then, but I felt like we were invincible. We'd all go back to my house and wander the neighborhood talking about everything.

Late-night conversations will always be the best kind because some sort of filter turns off. It probably has a good bit to do with sleep deprivation, but as a teenager, when you have feelings coming out of your fingertips and eyelids, it just feels like magic. We'd wander around predicting our futures--how we'd be friends forever and that in ten years we'd surely be doing something wild and incredible. We were all so different but those late-night ramblings tied us together. We were bound together by words.

Even now that we're woken daily by alarm clocks and dependence on a paycheck, those rare occasions when our brains keep us awake too late wondering and dreaming--those moments that tie us to our youthful aspirations--they're worth it. Even on a Sunday night when a week of obligations lurks beneath the shadows.

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