I was never what people called a "night owl." I lived much better in the earlier hours; mornings were easier to survive. Apparently they symbolized renewal and promise and a bunch of other stuff I'd heard people say, but I never really bought into any of that. I never thought I needed a good, philosophical reason to feel the way I did about mornings. They were simply better than the night time. Nothing was renewed or promised, but in the mornings, it was too early for anything to have been ruined yet.
Of all the morning hours, 4:30 am was my favorite.
I started to notice I was waking up at this peculiar time of morning. I took it all in; I reveled in everything that was 4:30 am. I'd open my sleepy eyes and see nothing but black and the faint orange of the street lights shining on from behind my blinds. I would listen intently, for people or cars or jets in the sky, for a voice to give praise or warning, but I never heard anything except my heart beating back at me. That sound grew to be one of my favorites, proving that somehow, I was still alive. I developed a theory that 4:30 am was the place to which my sanity and reason ran away with each other. They liked to do that, leaving me as not much more than an anxious almost-human. On the other hand, 4:30 am was like my own personal lost and found. I'd lose bits and pieces of me throughout the day, and it was as if I was waking myself up to collect them. I never did get it all back, despite the search. Some of those bits, I think, pretended to be lost, hiding behind the calm and pure easiness of 4:30 am. I never blamed them, though. If I'd had the choice, I would have lived there forever too.
