I have insomnia. For anyone who does not know, this means that, for me, a restful night of sleep is very rare.

I cannot remember the last time that I went to bed before midnight or fell asleep before at least one o'clock in the morning, or even slept all the way through the night - and that is if I am lucky. This, of course, leads to dark circles, tired responses, an unholy amount of caffeine consumed each morning and throughout the day. My junior year of high school, it also led to me sleeping through most of my fourth period AP Statistics class (Sorry, Mrs. Hightower).

I am very fortunate, however. For me, insomnia - while a real pain in the butt - has rarely felt like a truly debilitating thing. In fact, I feel like the hours of sleep that I have missed out on has really given me an interesting perspective on life - more so than simply looking at the clock, seeing it saying that it is nine o'clock at night, and thinking to myself, "Oh, there are still plenty of hours left today!"

To be perfectly honest, I often wonder to myself how on earth people get to bed early and wake up all fresh in the morning. I can't help it; I'm always in bed late. I rarely even start dinner before 8:30-9:00, and my days are often a way to busy to not prepare the night before. Between classes, work, and various clubs, there are simply not enough hours in my days, so I instead take up hours at night. Even if I haven't got anything going on the next day and I'm free all night long, I still can't make myself go to bed early. There is so much to do!!

There is school, with all of its inherent responsibilities such as homework, studying, and the various clubs and groups that communicate, coordinate, and just talk in group messages way into the early hours of the morning. There are the many interests that I love, such as drawing with my old pencils and other forms of art, writing poems or stories or these Odyssey entries! There is always new music being released by the multitude of bands that I love, or old music to reminisce on or undiscovered bands to dive into! Netflix, researching obscure fun facts, Youtube, and making up stories to one day tell to the kids I babysit all summer, or my cousins and even my brother, on the nights neither of us can sleep.

There are questions to be answered and long-winded, useless but perspective-changing conversations to be had that last until morning, even though you can't remember them when you wake up!! There is worrying to be done, about things like friends and grades and college and a future, even though I know these things will probably work out anyway. I spend hours replaying the events of the day and finding a sassy comeback several hours after I could have used it, and imagining insane worlds and scenarios in which you are a hero or a villain or maybe both. Getting up and walking around and listening to the sounds of the sleeping settling buildings and the life outside the open windows. There is so much to do and only so many hours in a day to do them; why would you cut those hours even shorter for a few extra hours of sleep that you can probably recover over the weekend??

An interesting fact about all of this is that while it is irritating to be staring at my bedroom ceiling and the glow-in-the-dark stars I stuck up there in middle school, I cannot bring myself to hate having insomnia. I can't go to bed early, probably because I love being awake. As Sarah Williams so eloquently stated so long ago, "I have loved the stars too truly to ever be fearful of the night."

Here is another interesting fact; I found that quote while reading 19th-century poems at 2:00 am my freshman year of college. And right now, I am sitting in my papasan chair, my window open behind me so I can hear the two owls and the dozens of coyotes and the countless frogs that live in the woods around my house, writing this article at 3:17 am on a Monday morning, and waiting for the sun to rise.