Loving the Light of our 2 am Selves

        I get it.

        I get it, and I want you to know I get it.

        My night mind - or rather, my early-morning mind - is either too pensive, too dark, too sardonic, too silly, too freakin' punny, or any combination of these or any other "too" somethings, for some people.  A friend of mine and I call it the "2 am self" vs the "2 pm self".  It just so happens that it is during these dim, vulnerable hours that humans' demons love to play, and I'm much like most people: my daylight self knows to keep my early-morning self at bay for the sake of other humans.  But in the early-morning hours, I typically don't sleep, so my 2 am self often shows its face, for better or worse.

        And why not?  Everyone is human, and humans all have them, but so many deny them; keep them locked in their tightly-shut, pretty, little boxes and hidden in the blaring, busy brightness of their days or in the shadowed solace of sleep.  But I'll let you in on a little secret.

        It's okay.  We're taught to fear them, but they're still a part of us, and we can't fully love ourselves until we can love them.  And we can't truly love anyone else, either, because all we'll be doing is getting someone else to be a patch to cover the seams of those boxes, like sealing, trimming, or even decoration to cover our fear and/or protect us from the unknown, within us.  And for one, that isn't fair to them; and for another, it doesn't work that way.  Nobody likes being held prisoner, and that includes our secret selves.  Which is why it sometimes seems relationships are disposable and people require chemical means of numbing themselves, including alcohol, drugs, food, adrenaline,  healthy or unhealthy distractions, etc., to function like "normal people".  Anything to avoid facing those parts of ourselves we've been taught are anything but normal.

        That's why the deepest, most intimate and vulnerable interactions most often happen early in the morning.  Because if were're truly happy; truly miserable; truly lost; or truly searching... it will always surface when we're not able to keep those walls up, be it we're too tired, too inebriated, or whatever it may be.  It's easier to release those secrets into the shadows where we think they'll never be found again.   But why can't we just meet them as equals?  As friends, even?  All forbid we have that courage.  All forbid we have that kind of love.

        So yeah, I get it.  I do.  But I also want you to get it, too.

        And just so you also know, this post was mostly composed around 4 am.  Heh... see?

        Better days ahead, my friends!