For the last 8 nights I have been waking up at 3 a.m. I wake up as though it’s time to start the day. Some nights I will turn on the television and watch some brain numbing cartoon like Family Guy or American Dad. Other times I will lay there and try to go to sleep, but that’s exactly what I do, try to sleep.
According to Rob Thomas being up at 3 a.m. means that you must be lonely. What exactly does lonely mean? I’ve always considered lonely to mean that you need someone. Today though, I think it means that you feel alone. Is that what 3 a.m. is all about, being alone?
Since I am alone, I have the time to ask the questions that plague me. The first question I ask myself is “why am I up at 3 a.m.? The first few nights I lay in my bed hoping to fall asleep, but as the sleepless nights wore on, I found myself getting up and doing laundry, emptying the dishwasher or sitting at my computer hoping to come up with a meaningful blog.
When I was a little girl I had trouble sleeping, mostly because I was afraid when the house was quiet and dark. Both of which I was deathly afraid of. That was when I began to write. Writing took me away from where I was at the present moment and to the place of dreams and illusions.
I’m older now and I really need my sleep. I sometimes think about Michael Jackson, who claims he hadn’t slept for decades and wonder if that could be happening to me. Insomnia is common in my family and I hoped that I wasn’t falling into an unhealthy pattern.
On about the fourth night of waking up I heard a loud boom. It sounded like someone had hit the wall of my house. The first thing I did was to check on the old folks to make sure they hadn’t fallen. They were sound asleep so then I checked all the doors to make sure they were locked. As I began to pass a window, I saw a man standing at the top of our 9 foot stone wall. I could see him from the waist up and he didn’t have a shirt on. I hid behind the curtain as I phoned 911. I was seriously shaking by this time. As I talked to the dispatcher I noticed some bright flashes coming from below this man. It was like someone was taking pictures of his voyeurism. I waited for the police to arrive walking from window to window, turning on all the flood lights. The dispatcher asked if I had a weapon, I guess since the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to start shooting a suspicious person.
The cops arrived and said that there was nothing out there. I asked them to take a drive around and they said that they would. Of course I didn’t sleep at all after that. Every noise alarmed me. When the ice tray dumped ice into the bucket in the freezer I heard it. When the motor in the water cooler turn off and on, I heard it.
The next morning once daylight arrived I took my coffee outside to investigate just what was going on. I was looking to see what this guy was standing on that set him up so high that I could see his entire torso. Sure enough, right where the security gate opens and closes there was a place on the pointed gate where someone could easily enter the complex and stand over my wall. One of the points was broken off, which is probably where he stood. As I contemplated what this guy was up to, a man was approaching from down the street. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Could this be my perp?
The young man, who resembled the freak on my wall last night, approached me directly. He was a young guy, I’m guessing around 23 years old, and he asked me if I had seen a wallet around the area where I was standing. I realized this was my guy. “No, I didn’t see a wallet. Why, did you happen to be climbing the gate last night?” I asked him.
“No, the cab left me just outside the gate.” He answered.
“Well, did you have a good time?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He said as he walked away from me.
This was my guy, I just know it. He got drunk, couldn’t work his gate code correctly and decided to climb the gate. Why he stood there as long as he did is a mystery, but I feel better knowing that it was just a drunk kid and not some weirdo.
So if you are ever up at 3 a.m., go back to bed. We don’t need to know what goes on at that time.