A letter to my brain that wakes up at 4am every morning; why? Ever since I can remember I would always wake up throughout the night with my brain screaming thoughts of all sorts. Almost like I was having anxiety attacks in my sleep, usually I would just stare at the ceiling till the thoughts quieted down and the exhaustion took over so I could fall back to sleep.
I’ve always been one to think that nothing happens just to happen, there’s always a reason, big or small. So I have started to get up and go outside for some air, and I have to say if you ever have the chance to wake up at 4am in the woods of New Hampshire go outside and breathe. Just breathe, something so simple to do and yet something so angelic. It’s a feeling like no other to me, it’s a sense of home, comfort, strength, and even power.
The sense of being the only thing up at that moment, before anyone else even the animals or little bugs that buzz around; even they have to sleep. It’s the sense that everything is quiet and frozen in time, like nothing bad could happen at that moment. Just before the sun starts to rise while the moon is still in the sky, like the perfect amount of balance. While I close my eyes and just inhale and exhale while I have that calm, warm, summer breeze hitting my body giving me the same feeling of serenity just like when I get a comforting hug. It’s like I can hear everything that usually we all drown out during the day, such as the breeze rippling gently through the huge pine trees that surround me. It’s that feeling of knowing you aren’t completely alone because of all the souls sleeping around you but just enough to feel like the only one really living in the moment. That’s what the feeling is, its the feeling of actually being in the physical moment, just breathing while being completely aware of what’s around you; because in that moment there are only a handful of stimulating things around me, where I can focus on all of them without feeling overwhelmed.
“and in that moment I appreciate everything, makes me realize life really isn’t that bad”
That’s the true meaning of why I wake up, to me it’s my mind’s way of telling me to go enjoy those few moments I am lucky to get everyday. That without those few moments, I would forget how lucky I truly am and in those seconds they remind me that all the struggles I have been through. When I am taking in those deep breaths with the gentle wind going through the leaves and touching my ears so calmly I realize that everything has a gentle side at some point. 4am shows me comfort and that the shortest and smallest moments in life are really the ones that mean the most, and have the most powerful meaning. It shows me simplicity and balance, all the things that most take for granted. Just because something is small doesn’t mean it’s insignificant, just because something feels huge doesn’t mean it’s the end of your world. Try to remember the little things, the simplicity of life is in front of all of us everyday but we ignore it while trying to find the big things. So I finally stopped wondering why my brain would wake up at 4am and started playing into it, and it lead me to the most serenity I have ever experienced and for that I am grateful. If only everyone experienced the feeling of 4am….
Awkward n' Adulting 