I am a self-proclaimed insomniac. Why count sheep in my head when I can look out my window and count the fireflies and the stars?

As I sit awake in bed, staring at my clock, I realize I have to be awake in four hours. Only one problem lies in my way: I cannot sleep. For me, and many people my age, shutting my brain and my cellphone off is a struggle. I shut my eyes, and I still see the blue light playing on my eyelids like a movie, keeping me up and awake.

I, like many teenagers, come to school in a coffee-induced haze with only a few hours of sleep under my belt. Why would I sleep when the world is happening in my hand and I can watch it all? So, I torture myself each night, getting less sleep than the latter and each day waking up more exhausted than before. It’s a rather unhealthy habit, but I find the newest Youtube video more interesting than I find sleep.

My brain doesn’t stop running, each thought more fleeting than the last. Every single minute of the day finally catches up to me as soon as my head hits the pillow. Sometimes it frustrates me, and sometimes I get mad. But most times, I find myself staring at my clock, counting the minutes until I have to be awake, watching the numbers morph into something new, just listening to the house settle around me.  I simply listen to the only time of my day I experience outright silence, and it’s glorious.

I couldn’t tell you why, but I’m in love with the smell of midnight air and the stars that are splattered across the sky, creating their own shapes. It’s as if they were made to be connected. Being awake in the early hours of the morning is like my own little secret, and it’s something I keep close to my heart.

The colors of the sky when the crickets stop chirping mid-July or the way the air smells before your mom tells you it’s a snow day in the morning—time after time, it’s proven to me that staying up until the softly-lit hours is totally and completely worth it.

I don’t know why I can’t sleep or why I continue to spend my days sleep-deprived, but it probably has something to do with the fact that everything looks better cast in moonlight.