text: March 12 th , 2019 I’m bored; it’s three in the morning and my family lay sound asleep in their beds. I don’t remember when sleeping got to be so hard. I don’t remember when the dark started seeming like a friend. I relish daybreak in a completely new way since it became so hard to fall asleep. I am a restless soul; I need to move. Being confined to my room each night when I could be out in the moonlight is its own kind of torture. I’ve been having trouble sleeping for awhile now, maybe a year? Then again, I’ve never been quick to fall asleep, ever since I was a girl. Now I am seventeen and sick of lying still in the dark, waiting for sleep to steal over me in the early hours of the morning. My school allows me to wear makeup so that hides the blackish bags that are now permanent fixtures on my face. However, I got sent to see the school counselor after I drifted off during class and she made me tell her what was going on. It was either tell her what was going on or she would call my parents and that would have led to yet another fight with them. She recommended that I keep a journal, and I guess that, for lack of things to do at night, I am going to at least try. March 15 th , 2019 Whenever I manage to sleep it is always a light and restless sleep. I am visited by odd dreams that sometimes have an H.P. Lovecraft vibe. I marvel at their strangeness. The only problem is the fact that the dreams only linger for a few wonderous moments once I wake up, after that they fade back into the dark corners of my subconscious from which they were born. Right now, I am staring at the digital clock on my desk and its kind of hard to read the numbers with my contacts out. I suppose I had better look for my glasses, but that would require being able to see to find them. Thanks to the fact that I take out my contacts each night before I get into bed, I will be finding jack shit right now. I look for them tomorrow. I have a splitting headache from straining my eyes to write the words on this page right now and I am getting dizzy. I have decided that the clock says 3:47 AM. Goodnight. March 17 th , 2019 I found my glasses yesterday and I am wearing them now. My headache is ever present, but I have grown used to it. The throbbing in my head is like the beat to song that only I know. I flit about my room; I have memorized each object’s place and I can tell now when something has been moved or when someone has entered. These four walls confine me every night and now they are my most hated jailors. They hold and inside them my deepest secrets and they protect me from the elements, yet they also trap me in the dark when I wish to be free in the starlight. March 24 th , 2019 The nights repeat and repeat, an endless cycle of boredom. Every night is the same and I tire of the routine. I lie awake waiting for my parents to fall asleep, I message my friends until they also tire and drift off into dreamland, I haunt the kitchen and I scavenge for any tasty morsels, I pace the same hallways of this same house night after night, and I wonder; will it ever change? Will I ever fall asleep quickly and sleep tight till the morning? I wonder if once I’m married and when I have children of my own; I will still lay awake by my husband’s side as he slumbers soundly? Years from now will I still fight this losing battle against my oldest companion, insomnia? I can’t help but hope that in the near future this unwanted presence weighing down on me may soon evaporate into the night from which it came. April 1 st , 2019 I have made a discovery, a brilliant one if I do say so myself. I have discovered how to remove the screen on my window noiselessly and quickly. I can also now put it back in place perfectly. My bedroom may be on the second floor, but there is a slightly slanted roof right below it. Once I drop down onto the garage roof, I can simply run along it to where it ends and right below, against that wall there is a concrete box that houses our generator. It is a short hop down and then I am pretty much just a few feet of the ground. This may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I now have unrestricted access to the outside world each night. The best part is that my parents sleep soundly, and lord knows they have never once bothered to check on me once I shut my door each night. I can now come and go as I please, I am free. I can go to the clubs, go out to 24/7 diners, I can go to the beach, I can do anything I want to. My walls shall no longer be my jailors, and the nighttime is forevermore mine. April 5 th , 2019 Tonight is the night. Tonight, I shall test out my new escape plan. Anyone who has strict parents knows about those late-night parties that you never get to go to, well tonight I’m going to meet up with my best friend Millie and we are going to a beach bonfire. Finally, my wasted nights will amount to something. No longer shall I lie awake pondering my desolate future, maybe tomorrow I’ll write about the party but for now, this journal is going back in its hidey-hole. April 6 th , 2019 I have decided that I will not write of my nightly outings. I may write beforehand, but my escapades belong to the night. Speaking of the night; last night at the bonfire I met a girl. She had the most gorgeous black tresses falling to the small of her back and milky white skin. Her eyes shone like obsidian and she was a slender and short at the same time. We danced for hours and I learned so much yet so little about her. I had never seen her before last night, yet she felt so familiar to me, it was strange. In the end we were the last to leave the beach and when I asked her why she was there so late, she told me that it was because she didn’t sleep at night. “The nighttime is the right time to live,” she said. “I sleep during the day, or sometimes not at all. What does it matter? I know I can never fall asleep at night,” she sighed. “I lay awake and I wonder,” she admitted. “I feel no need to dream because I dream with my eyes open as I revel each night.” I remember her laugh, its cool bell tones washing over me as we stood in the light of a million stars. I hope to see her tonight, there is a party in one of the high-end night clubs in the center of town. April 7 th , 2019 I saw her last night, or rather this morning. We met at the nightclub and we danced for hours again. At 2 in the morning we wandered the streets and ended up in a little café. I asked more about herself, where she was from and she told me a sad story with a beautiful ending. She was born in the darkness and was left in the streets. She went from home to home and yet nobody wanted her. She searched for a place she would be welcome and recently, she told me, she had found one. She found a place where she was loved, and she intended to stick around. I’m elated by the fact that I will see her again tonight. Last night she told me she wanted to go to the city park. So tonight, that is here we will meet. She loves nature and I believe that that’s because deep down, she is like me, a wild restless soul. I feel so identified by her, so at home with her. My nights of lying in bed, waiting for the day are no more. Now my insomnia has has given me life’s greatest gift of all; her. April 8 th , 2019 I feel need to write of her each time I see her. I wish to record her every word and capture her magical laugh with each letter. She is something so pure it is almost otherworldly. I hope to portray her essence in these pages so that one day someone else will be able to know her even if they never meet her. For I have learned a secret; only I can see her. It scares and excites me at the same time. It means that she is mine forever, yet I fear I am crazy. I am torn in two, yet she is ever stronger, pulling towards her until we collide. Last night at the park was amazing. She kissed me. I had never kissed a girl before, never thought to, but it was breathtaking. Her lips were cool against mine and the tasted of a northern wind and dewy grass. We lay side by side last night as her mouth and mind told me tales of faraway places and things that could only be said or seen in the dark. She regaled me with tales of her nighttime escapades throughout the years and I was left in awe. Tonight, she is taking me to the woods where she says she has roamed many nights before. I am anxious to see her once more for during the day she is nowhere to be found and no one knows her. April 9 th , 2019 I believe that tonight shall be my last night writing. Last night she sheltered me away to a clearing deep in the woods to the south of town. She showed me something, she told me her secret, she explained everything. In the clearing deep in the woods to the south of town I finally asked her what her name was. She told me she had many names, and that she was from many cultures. She told that her favorite name is Bella Noche. Then I suppose something clicked. She is the night, or rather an embodiment of it. She offered me a place by her side. There are many embodiment's of the night she told me; it means something different to each person. I am going to join her and revel forever more in the moonlight and no longer shall I lay in wait for dawn. I am no longer a victim of insomnia; I am blessed with the ability to stay by her side each night. For I love my beautiful night as I shall never love another; her moonbeam kisses and starlight eyes forever mine.