Both of Us, Night and Day

I can spend an hour at night laboring over the composition an email or a blog post only to wake up the next morning and find it’s weirdly uppity or just plain pointless.  Because of this, I have a hard and fast rule about never sending any emails that might actually matter at night.  What’s strange is that I can’t uncoil myself from the snare of writing the insidious late night drafts, even knowing I’m needlessly embroiled.  It’s like I’m processing, letting my illogical, instinctual side out to poke around in soggy places, and doing that is more important than sensibly going to bed.

In a way, this harkens back to the old ex-boyfriend rules of college days, when I unplugged my dead-weight phone and went to eat snacks with the gals down the hall expressly so that I could not call him when my will power and word choice skills were poor.  It’s both self-preservation and recognizing the weak, crazy side of me.  I liked the keyed-up, impetuous me who was sort of self-destructing even as I was saving myself from my phone.  The boy might not appreciate me, but I certainly did.

This split-life connects to shopping, too.  Stores used to close so we could not go in and buy shoes at two in the morning, no matter how gorgeous they looked through the window on our way home from the late movie.  Now, no one’s stopping us.  Now, the online temptations never cease.  Back away, computer.  I dare not ask how many of us have taken the fatal step of saving our credit card numbers on our computers so they’re convenient whenever we want to buy.  Put it in the cyber basket, fine.  But never hit BUY after midnight.

I admit this split-life thing connects to temptation and the denial of it, but it’s not just that simple.  You can’t just say our defenses are down at night.  It’s more like we’re two co-dependent sensible and wild people occupying the same body.  In the morning, we’re all bring on the bluebirds and let’s sing with the chubby cartoon mice!  Past nightfall, we’re moody, vengeful, ice-cream-downing trolls with hairy legs.

But we’re the same person.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like being a full-emotioned girl.  It comes in handy for writing fiction.  But sometimes?  It’s a little exhausting.  Sometimes, I should just go to bed.