Letter # 13

Dear 3:30 am,

Why, oh why, are choosing to wake me up each night? Like clockwork, I have been finding myself completely awake, ready to go and thoughts racing for at least the past six days. And really, if there is ever a time to feel completely alone, up & alert at 3:30 in the morning alone in your bed is probably the perfect time to do so.

I don't know, 3:30 a.m. Maybe you're just craving attention, maybe you're a little jealous of your p.m. counterpart. He does get to see children head home from school, that burst of afternoon energy while the most action you probably see is informercials on Lifetime TV and perhaps someone watching terrible cable porn. I think I'd get a little anxiety complex if I were in your shoes too.

There is this obvious of maybe I'm just hearing something go "bump" in the night. But I'm a pretty light sleeper, my house is pretty quiet & trust me when I say I know I would be able to identify the neighbor's barking dog. So no, probably not this.

Or maybe, like someone suggested this afternoon, my mind is trying to tell me something. Maybe it's keeping me from some of awful dream I don't want to repeat. Perhaps it's something much more subconscious. What? I have no idea.

Because the only thing I can think of 3:30 am is that my body is playing an evil trick. I can forget about the lost sleep. I was not the college housemate who went to bed every night to be sure to get her 8 hours of sleep (she was much wiser than I) but instead, I was the one who would do most of her work in the evening hours & then fall asleep watching Bridget Jones' Diary. And though I can't pull that off consistently now, my roots are never too far away.

Instead 3:30, you're making me remember, in the dead of the night, that there is no warm body to snuggle up against. There is no sweet person to find my heating pad; no cute person to shove his arm underneath my back in the middle of the night. No place to rub my feet. And yes, it feels like my mind is trying to send me a message hours before I need to wake up, hours before light peeks through the horizon. It's like my whole body wants me to remember that part of it is still sad, part of it still misses the nooks & crannies that were him. The sleeping us.

So let's cut a deal 3:30 a.m. I tell the world how awesome you are, and you let me sleep through the night. It's a win-win, really. Because the world offers you much more publicity than one, single librarian ever could. And it's really not fair for you to take your own grief out on someone else.

With much love,

Shannon