I became a normal person and I have nothing to say anymore

I woke up bright and early this morning (following about nine hours of uninterrupted sleep) to the Netherlands’ best approximation of how the crack of dawn should look, when to my horror, I realized that I’ve become overwhelmingly, disgustingly and entirely normal.

You see, in the past few weeks, I’ve grown accustomed to what is to me an extremely unfamiliar and extravagant routine - I get up and out of bed in the ante meridiem… (yes, that is what AM stands for and yes, I did only include it here because I just learned that is what AM stands for), I eat real, actual breakfast that I have more than two seconds to consume and after that, I’m left with about fourteen hours to deal with my obligations for the day before succumbing to the sweet embrace of slumber at a decent 10-11PM (post meridiem… are you impressed yet…). And it’s seriously threatening my personhood. You know that twinge of annoyance you feel after you share how little you slept the night before, only for someone to immediately one-up you? You know, stuff like: “Three hours? I wish. The only time I spent sleeping last night was mid-blink, and I even had to stop that because I was entering a REM phase every time my eyes closed!”. Well, up until a few weeks ago, I was that interaction personified. And now that I am cured - I am nothing.

I’ve been prone to going to bed and waking up at inhumane times ever since I developed a consciousness (so, since around age five, when I, mid-one-woman-Winx-roleplay, realized that I was going to die someday). Throughout my life, I’ve pushed the boundaries of how little I can sleep and how difficult I can make the following day for myself further and further, despite all odds - if I had to wake up at six, I’d make sure to fall asleep at five, just because I liked being awake when no one else was. What I did not anticipate was that, by moving halfway across the continent and away from all authority, I’d open up new horizons of irresponsibility for myself. What I also did not anticipate is just how delicious it would feel. And so, with my return to the Netherlands in September, one thing led to another and I became nocturnal.

You’d think that, if nothing else, it would take a couple 9AM lectures to make me realize that this was just not sustainable long-term. The morning radio meetings. Anything. Well, you’d be sorely mistaken. I’d found a way to incorporate these tasks into my daily life without ever getting a full night’s sleep - by napping before, after, in between. Never sleeping, always half-asleep. Always on time, never fully present. About two months into this haze, when my days had long become a shapeless amalgamation of moments, it began to feel like enlightenment. I began having thoughts about highly important matters. For starters, how a day was nothing but a social construct. What even was “the morning”? My days both began and ended with the sun down.

Meals were another thing I focused much of my mental power on. Who decided that breakfast was the most important meal of the day? Why did meals have names, and why were there supposed to be only three of them? I would start cooking deep into the night, and enjoy my last meal of the day to the Netherlands’ approximation of the witching hour. I would sleep until lunch was long over, then make myself cereal. I would think long and hard while eating, about what I could’ve done better, about events that had no significance on my life today and their significance on my life today. Turns out these things have a far larger perceived impact after 3AM. I would entertain the possibility of sleeping, then wave it away. While so-called “free thinkers” were out there “producing melatonin”, I was getting The Divine Knowledge served to me on a brain-beam platter, and the only drawback were the constant heart palpitations!

But alas, then my mother (a person with a comparatively normal sleep schedule) came to visit and it was all stripped away from me in an instant - The Divine Knowledge and with it, my personhood, my favorite icebreaker - and I became just like everyone else. A boring sleeper. And worst of all, I was producing so. much. melatoninnnn. As a result, my daytime thoughts felt far less cathartic. Maybe it’s the “breakfast” and the “exposure to sunlight”, but my days have become so normal recently that it makes me scared. Wake up, breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleep. How am I supposed to fill those ten minutes before the lecture with my classmates now? What will be my new opener? Do I need a new opener every time? And most importantly: what if I meet someone with a worse sleep schedule?

So, now that I’m just like you, it is time for me to step away from who I was and ascribe it to a larger social phenomenon, effectively distancing myself from any consequences of my own actions. That wasn’t me, that was nocturnal me! That wasn’t nocturnal me, it was society! You see, I’ve actually been here to ask the big questions all along: why do we feel the need to make our bad habits such integral components of ourselves? And why do we bring them up as small talk, one-up each other, try to win the die-first competition? Unfortunately, I don’t need The Divine Knowledge lasered into my forehead to answer that. I guess it all boils down to that pesky old “need to be heard”. What doesn’t, am I right?

Okay, hear me out: you have a need to be heard, but how do you be heard while remaining palatable to the general public? Basically, somewhere in that unwritten pre-lecture social contract, it says something about how you should be honest so people think you’re open and approachable. It also says something about how you should never be too honest, lest you come off as too much to handle. So, as you dabble in what so-called “free thinkers” have nicknamed bad habits, you let them get out of hand and boom - suddenly, breakfast is not called breakfast anymore. What now? Enter small talk: the best way to address your plights without addressing your plights. The best way to be earnest enough to sort-of get it off your chest while not being so earnest as to discomfort your poor classmate before your 9AM. And so, bad habits dissolve into one-liners. Your vivid night-time recollection of all your fuck-ups from five years ago becomes a digestible, relatable event. And you become the person with a messed up sleep schedule ha-ha, a label placed on you by you, a cry for help and the refusal to do anything about it. No one likes hearing it, we all like doing it (please agree).

I’ve ingrained some of my bad habits so deep into my personality that ridding myself of them, even temporarily, feels like a betrayal. Who’s to say that, in two weeks’ time, I won’t be back to my old ways? Yet it still leaves me empty. In some part, this is due to the simple fact that most of my bad habits have been there with me for such a long time that it’s hard to imagine life without them. In another, it is because they have been there for me, a crutch (at least seemingly) helping me bridge into relatability, but also serving as proof that my struggles are real (also, because struggles should definitely be pitted against each other, that I’m definitely worse off than those lame-os who get their full four hours in every night). Working on my bad habits or not working on them - it feels like a trade-off between losing something and talking without actually addressing anything. And I know which one I would choose every time. In conclusion, it is not my fault that I was Like This, and it is okay that I feel strange now that I am not Like This. Glad we can all agree.

Nonetheless, tonight, I will go to bed at 11 at the latest, and I will fall into a deep and healthy sleep in an instant. In the morning, I will have breakfast, and I’ll chew slowly because I can and because it’s good for me. And when you see me, and ultimately want to make small talk with me, I will simply have nothing to tell you. It will be so overwhelmingly, disgustingly and entirely normal that even you will have to look away.