say damn, let the poor sucker sleep

[enthusiastick]

There's just no helping it. I'm nocturnal. Or rather, my body wants to be, and is forever railing against the fact that I force it to be active during the day. People have always assured me that if I lived as a day creature for long enough my internal timekeeping mechanism would reset. Or that I would one day simply outgrow my "night owl" predilection. As if becoming a morning person (or even a day person) was just some natural part of adulthood.

I don't sleep restfully at night. Usually I have to make a conscious choice to go to bed before midnight, and more often than not I wake up feeling as though I got no particular benefit from doing so. I'm prone to lying awake, to sleeping fitfully, to being plagued by nightmares when I do finally manage to get some sleep. And I hate alarm clocks, so much so that I generally spring out of bed 3-5 minutes before my alarm actually goes off, to turn it off preemptively.

My morning routine these days is to wake up around 6:27 AM, with my alarm set for 6:30. I stare at the clock until it reads 6:28 or 6:29, begrudgingly get up to turn it off, and then collapse into bed and stare at it some more. When it gets to 6:45 or 6:50 I get out of bed a second time, this time actually bound for the shower and being properly awake. I'm my own snooze alarm system, and I'm only really happy when my alarm clock never makes a sound. Bad enough that, as I am finally getting some sleep at last (because the sun is rising, and its becoming day, and that's when I can sleep) I'm going to have to wake up. To be actively jarred out of it by discordant noise, or even music, is unbearable.

The only time I feel as though I sleep soundly and restoratively is on the weekend. Whether I stay up late or not, I'm always inclined to sleep in, because its during those hours between 4 AM and 10 AM that I'll actually get some rest. My family knows better than anyone how rare it is for me to be up voluntarily before 10:30 or so, and if I've actually chosen to stay out or just up late that's generally pushed to noon or later. These days I have to force myself to get up before two in the afternoon, because otherwise I'd throw off my already imperiled sleep schedule. But my body knows best, and it would rather be sleeping the day away.

This morning I reluctantly stood up to turn off my alarm, feeling even less rested than usual. It was only when I had reached the clock that my bleary eyes, bereft of the glasses which allow me to resolve fine detail without extreme effort, registered that it read 5:28 and not 6:28. And I swore, and I flopped back into bed, and I slept in 20 minute increments, waking to fearfully squint at the clock, heart stopping at the thought that my alarm might go off at any second, before I could manage to turn it off. I'm twenty three years old, and its time I faced facts. Its time I stopped buying into the lie everyone seems so intent on telling me. I will never get used to this. I will always be a nocturnal animal in a diurnal world.

Comments

creatures of the night

[adampb.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same boat, keeping a 3 AM to 10 AM sleep schedule currently (even on my 'employed' days as my current position rarely calls me in before noon).

Fortunately at least I don't need much sleep to go on; seven hours is optimal for me, I find, and I can hop right out of bed without complaint on four or five for a good stretch of days.

[devringalbrath.livejournal.com]

I suffer from a similar problem. I'm definitly a night person, but by getting up at 6 am every morning I'm exhausted by 9:30 or so. It works, but I'd much rather be up doing something. I'm jealous of my father who only needs 6 hours of sleep a night. He goes to bed between 10 or 11 and is up around 4 am. I'd be so much happier if I could stay up until midnight.