I looked up at my frustratingly dull white ceiling in despair. Thoughts in my head spun wildly as I watched and waited for my obnoxiously loud alarm clock to start blaring Me and Bobby McGee to start another exasperating day. I watched the clock go to 2 am and I started to give up on the prospect of sleeping. I have found that 2 am is an awful time to be alive. Most people believe that it’s the time when your best thinking comes alive, when creativity pours out of you, and distractions cease to exist. However, it is when my memories are the most vivid. I see crystal clear images of what once was and what could be again. I agonize over the past and dread the future. My mind races with thousands of ideas, thoroughly and completely overwhelming me until I feel like I I’m drowning.
I glanced to my left and saw the mess I left behind from the week. Clothes were scattered generously all over the floor, late homework taunted me, half full coffee mugs, and overdue library books dominated my bookshelves. My half finished manuscripts seems to laugh at me as I contemplated whether or not my characters are truly vibrant or overdone. Writers were made for 2 am. Sometimes I am unsure whether it is a blessing or a curse that writers, readers, and artists feel things so passionately. We were meant to question everything and never write what is common and likeable. Writing isn’t meant to please the masses, it is meant to tell the truth, and show us our own faults. We are supposed to write about what matters: to write about what hurts. We are given the bravery to write about the most vulnerable parts of our soul. If you write, I honestly believe you have a story you were meant to tell. You most certainly do not have to be the next Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King. You just have to love the craft and exercise it everyday. We see possibility and promise in our world; we are realists. Unlike others, we see every possible perspective and understand that what could be an absolute truth to one person is entirely debatable to the next. It is a writer's obligation to share these perspectives with the world. And that, my dear reader, is why I despise 2 am.