For as long as I can remember, I have always been awoken by the night. 

The day time always drags on, and I push myself through. My eyelids droop and countless yawns escape my body as the sun pours in through the windows and stretches across the land. 

But as the blankets of deep blue, purple, and lavender drape themselves across the aging sky, I am awoken by the onset of nightfall. 

The stars fall into place; the moon rises far above, taking the place of the ever-blinding sun. With each emergence of a speckled star in the sky, I become progressively more alert. 

In the dead of night, a surge of energy takes over my body. The purple bags under my eyes disappear, and the battle against sleep comes to a sudden halt. 

When the stars align, I am ready to become alive. The thoughts I struggle to pull from my head during daylight hours seem to come cascading down all at once—often quickly overwhelming my awakening mind. 

I reminisce on the day’s activities, I remember my list of to-dos, and I manifest ideas that suddenly turn into goals and dreams. 

Through the silence and stillness around me, it becomes nearly impossible to allow myself to rest along with it. The serene atmosphere captivates me in every way possible; the essence of a blank slate gives me the power to control the thoughts rapidly riding through my mind. 

I am fully unaware of why I have always been this way, but as I age, I have come to find comfort in the night. The hours where I feel so deeply connected to myself and so in control of every action are the hours that I long to find during the day; they are the hours that I reach for through the thick, heavy daylight. 

As I slowly fade away into a deep sleep, my thoughts and alertness do not simply slide away. My dreams are always full of thoughts, goals, and realizations that certainly do not stray far from the arms of reality. 

In my nighttime dreams, I often feel more awake than when my eyes are opened and exposed to the lights surrounding me. Although completely immersed in a different world—one far away from the world I am living in—my dreams carry the biggest realizations into my life. 

In the night, I learn, I understand, and I encounter the thoughts that hide from the light.