Sunrise

It’s an odd sensation…seeing the sun rise after seeing it fall.

Often this is experienced through waking up very early, which people my age aren’t necessarily apt to do. In that case, it’s much more common to witness a sunrise after a sleepless night.

Whatever the reason, that curious moment evokes feelings of understanding and loneliness in me.

In a way, I feel like I can compare it to my current lifestyle.

Being awake is often a metaphor for understanding. In fact it’s a metaphor I probably overuse on a day-to-day basis.

In the case of waking up early, perhaps the feeling is that I have awoken too early. By opening my eyes at such an hour I have witnessed, and therefore understood, something that people my age don’t regularly observe. Maybe it’s something that people my age aren’t ready to observe.

I feel like I understand too much for my age, especially when I compare myself to others.

I'm told this is a virtue.

Another possible connection in the waking metaphor is more like my state. I have not slept, as others have through the night. My eyes and mind did not find rest, just as I do not find rest from my own understandings and realizations of a lack thereof. It’s kind of like how…

…ignorance is bliss.

That cliché, where the unknowing, asleep, are in a blissful world of their own creation, while I struggle through the night witnessing and attempting to understand truth. As the sun rises, they sleep, and as they awake the sun has risen.

We have, in a sense, reached the same conclusion…but why in such different manners?

My irrational self, sleep deprived, may have questioned, “Will the sun even rise?” and panicked, until that glowing light breached the horizon and soothed me. But they did not see the sun rise, and probably do not care to have seen it if given the opportunity...

My fear is that this feeling, that I am witnessing the turning of events while so many others sleep, will ultimately isolate me from those I love. Whether irrational or understanding, awakened or delusional… is there a reason that I am experiencing this world so differently?

Perhaps I am unhinged.

Though I slept an ample amount last night, I can hardly remember a night where I did not wake up periodically throughout.

It’s like the fear within a metaphor has spilled over into my reality.

As my own strength fails in the sight of my fears, alone in this strange understanding of things, which may or may not be real or true, I cling to the words of sleeping gods, “You are never alone”.

At times what you say causes a panic in my heart, a loss for compromise, I want to hold onto you but I also feel like you don’t really understand. Do you need to understand to accurately give advice? Not necessarily…

…but sometimes it feels like as I stayed awake in that suffocating darkness, witnessing the ends of worlds, countless murders and the massacre of my soul…

…fearing that there was no hope… sighing in unimaginable relief as that hope was restored…

…the sleeping you woke to smile at me and laugh, “Of course the sun will always rise, but you shouldn’t care if it does or does not.”

I wrap myself in those words and try to sleep beside you, despite those periodic moments of restlessness throughout the night, and in my heart I hope that you and I will watch the Sunrise together.