The Weakness of Night

Against my better judgement, I agreed to cover an overnight shift this evening for a fellow employee who needed the time off to tend to a family emergency. I don't work these hours very often as they tend to mess with my mind a little. I once worked a three month stretch of night shifts for a gentleman who had suffered a heart attack and was off work to recover. I nearly lost all sense of sanity by the end of it, feeling disconnected from the rest of the world, sort of outside the realm of normalcy. It was as if I had lost these months into the depths of space.

There is something about the wee small hours of the morning that can play on our fears, our weaknesses, our emotions. It can be liberating driving through the abandoned streets of 3 am or walking down the street with only the crickets and the breeze to accompany you. You can do whatever you want and no one will even notice. No one will care. You can laugh out loud at the late night movie or television show, and no one will hear. If you eat a pound of ice cream, no one will be the wiser. It would seem that the world is yours and yours alone.

But then there is that moment when suddenly you feel that you are alone in that world and that sense of isolation kicks in. Perhaps a little paranoia sets in and you begin to fear for what is out there in the dark like being in the middle of a horror film. Exhaustion sets in the your emotions go a little haywire. A sense of loneliness suddenly seems unbearably more pronounced and we get lost in an emotionally altered sense of reality.

It is in these moments that we can become desperate. Our hormones build out of control. The man alone in the bar wanders at the end of the night, seeking out someone, anyone to go home with so that he doesn't have to be alone again. The buildup of a weeks worth of resentment and miscommunication explodes into a fight between lovers in the corner. A woman cries on the steps at the door after being left standing there by her boyfriend. Half the rest leaving the bar at closing, wandering to their taxis in a half-witted stupors after losing all sense of time and public decency.

We are angry, sad, elated, or sexually aroused, but in a heightened, overly-exaggerated state. Either sleep must come or the emotion must be addressed, and if we are not careful, we will do things that we would never do in the light of day. There is a weakness that comes in the night. Desperate for attention, we cling to a one night stand or start an affair. Elated, in celebration we lose ourselves in the beat of the music and dance ourselves into oblivion. Depressed, we contemplate the implications of suicide. Angry, we destroy everything around us. The mind loses its sense of check and balance. Weakness sets in.

Eventually sleep takes over and our bodies rest. The hope is that the new light of the next day doesn't shine to harshly on the events of the previous evening.