If I was your Vampire

It’s six a.m. I woke up an hour ahead of my alarm clock for the first time in many months. I miss this. This sweet spot of time before the house wakes, before the birds sing, it is the most delicious. The dogs wander the house with me, quietly padding behind each footstep. The moon is still up and I sit with it. There is a part of me that has always belonged to the night.

I would be lying if I said that I love to wake up early. I despise it. If I could do this life over, I would ensure that I found a job that I could do late into the night and sleep for most of the day. Obviously this career path would have been limited. I was always meant to feel that insomnia was a shortcoming or affliction, I believe that it was just my natural clock. My nocturnal instinct telling me, no! it’s not time for sleep! It’s time for the wild thing to fly, to create, to feed and be sated. Normal people go to sleep at night so that they can be productive during the day. The night is seen as dangerous and unsavory, “ the freaks come out at night”.

Tell that to the night birds, the owls, the bats. Nocturnal animals have always had the reputation for being mysterious and I envy them. My mind works differently at night, I see better, think better. The day seems to dull my creativity, to drain my body. Even physically, I always preferred going to the gym at night, I felt stronger, faster. I can read and write all night if left to my own devices. The day, is harsh and loud. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I hate the sun, I very much love it. It is power on full display, everyday. I think I hate the mundane. I despise that productivity is only validated by what you accomplish during the day. No credence given to the magic of night.

I’d like to exist in the space between. To wake at twilight. I love that word. Say it, twilight. There’s a magic to the sun falling out of sight and the first stars popping into view. The way the sky goes pink, then purple and finally midnight blue. The coolness that settles and the intensity of your day mellows. Night songs usher in and as midnight approaches the stillness is deliciously unsettling. I love how the dark turns a sunny back yard into a mysterious forest or a busy highway transmutes to a road into the unknown. The way the shadows cast monsters into our peripheral, only to remember you left your hat on top of the mantle.

The sun is up and I’ve grown tired again.

I’d very much like to be a vampire.