As lights extinguish and other eyes close.

I think, maybe, I've figured out at least one of the reasons I light up at night and find it to be such a delightful time to be conscious and busy doing things.

I constantly feel responsible for other people. This does not always translate into me actively taking care of them or doing things for them. Rather, it means that I'm always thinking about them, trying to be aware of any moment when I do need to help them, or talk to them, oftentimes feeling helpless, doing nothing more than wondering what I can do.

There is rarely a moment when it's just me. Even when I may be somewhat physically sequestered, my heart and mind are still with other people. I can't feel released to move and act independently because I'm not independent.

Until the world starts to fall asleep, that is. As lights extinguish and eyes close, I feel like a weight falls off of me. However tired I felt before, this release of burden grants me fresh energy, and I suddenly feel inspired to do things I was too weary to attempt in the day. All of the people I feel responsible for are now sleeping (or at least confined in their beds, attempting to sleep) and the best thing I can do to help them right now is leave them alone. I am free.

I should have come to this conclusion sooner. I've been this way since childhood. In my five-person family, I've been most often the privileged one with her own bedroom (there have even been times when my parents didn't have their own room, yet I did) and ever since the youngest of our number was born, my poor brothers have never had their own room. Yet with this extra blessing of personal space, there has still been a substantial amount of time when not even I have had space to call my own and in those moments are when this characteristic is most apparent.

The first examples that come to mind are all of the times I've had to share a bed with my littlest brother. There have been countless nights when it seemed like all he wanted to do was talk to me, tell me stories. I would listen for a long while, even joining him in conversation and jumping into the tales of his imagination, but after a while, I felt that enough was enough. It was time to go to sleep. As he would get quiet, I would feel this tension in my body that I didn't know was there start to release. As soon as I was sure he was asleep, I felt released to go to sleep. But only when he was asleep. Lying there quietly wasn't enough to coax me to relax. There was one night we were staying at our grandparents', Austyn around the age of four or five, and he rather kindly listened to me when I told him it was time to be quiet. But as we were lying there in silence, I noticed he wasn't going to sleep very quickly. After a time, he decided to inform me, just in case I didn't already know, that "Emily, I can't go to sleep." "Just lay there and be still. You'll go to sleep soon." Minutes turned to over an hour. Still awake. He naturally felt inclined to start talking again. Even after my utterances of "shhh," the silence only lasted a few moments, then he started talking again. Not loudly or intrusively. Just a few words. But I finally felt desperate. Even though he had so sweetly laid there in silence for a very long time and had done nothing to disturb me, I could not go to sleep, couldn't even relax. I needed him to go to sleep, so very much. I turned to him with tears and pleaded, "Austyn, please, please be quiet and go to sleep. It's very, very late, and I can't go to sleep. I need you to please be quiet and go to sleep." "......okay, Emily." And he finally went to sleep and I finally relaxed and soon followed him into the land of dreams.

With this obviously ingrained in me from an early age, am I doomed to be a creature of the night forever, I wonder. Will these moments alone be the only times I find it possible to relax? Will I continue my tradition of midnight blogging and writing down in various forms my thoughts and the things I feel within me, because I never can tell what I feel or think acutely enough in the day to be able to bring it out of me?

Time will tell. Until then, I am slowly unraveling the mysteries of my affinity with the night.