4am

4am is where the truth lives. The stuff you manage to outrun during the day catches you in the dark.

During the day I’m fine. I’m functional. I’m building a business and raising children and answering emails and cooking dinner and keeping all the plates spinning because that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done. Survive in motion.

But at 4am the motion stops. And the things I’ve been running from sit down on the edge of the bed and wait.

Did I do the right thing.
Am I enough for them.
Will I ever not be tired.
Will the eating disorder ever fully leave.
Does he think about what he did.
Does anyone think about what he did.
Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life.
Is alone better than what I had.
Is this it.

4am doesn’t answer. It just asks. Over and over. The same questions on rotation. Like a playlist I can’t skip.

I’ve tried the things. The breathing. The meditation apps. The writing it down. The getting up and making tea. The lying still and counting backwards from a hundred. None of them work because the problem isn’t technique. The problem is that my brain has thirteen years of unprocessed material and the only slot it can find to process it is 4am when the house is quiet and the defences are down.

My therapist says the insomnia will ease. That the body needs to feel safe before it can let go. That sleep is an act of trust and trust takes time when it’s been broken that many times.

So I lie there. And I let the questions come. And I don’t answer them because I don’t have answers. I have maybes and I hopes and I’m trying and sometimes that’s enough and sometimes at 4am it isn’t.

The alarm goes off at 6:30 and I get up and I make lunches and I drive to nowhere because the kids are home educated and we can go wherever we want and I am fine.

I am fine.

4am knows I’m lying. But 4am keeps it between us.