Diurnal Discrepancies.

Let me recount a story about myself that is rather less than edifying.

One of my earliest recollections from pre-school childhood concerns a toy of some sort that I used to take to bed with me. I think of it as a doll, but I can’t actually picture it and I doubt it would have been what we generally call a doll. Dolls are girls’ toys, and so I can’t imagine that anybody would have given me one. I expect it was a fabric toy of some sort, but definitely not a teddy bear. It was humanoid, and it was my bedfellow.

Every night I would insist on finding this toy before going to bed. I remember feeling that its presence was essential. The prospect of going to bed and going to sleep without my little friend at my side was unthinkable. I loved my little friend; we were inseparable.

I also remember how I felt every morning when I woke up. I hated this thing that was sharing my bed. I used to grab it angrily, take it to the top of the stairs, and throw it down them as hard as I could. I didn’t want to damage it, I just needed to get it as far away from me as possible. This was a new day, and there was no place for sentimental attachment in the cold light of morning.

Something of that conflict of attitudes has stayed with me all my life. Thankfully, I’ve never felt inclined to treat any of the women with whom I’ve lived quite so roughly, but it is a fact that I’m a different person in the morning than I am at night. I’m cold and rational in the morning. I’m also weary and pessimistic. At 3 am, which is about the time I usually go to bed, I’m warm, emotional, lively and optimistic. Maybe I’m just not a morning person.

But this can cause a problem, because there have been mornings when I have been made accountable in some way for things I did or said the night before. It forces me to remember how I felt eight or nine hours earlier, before the palm trees and a tropical moon migrated north to become a frigid landscape and a low, arctic sun. I even have to relive the feelings in order to put my words and actions into a credible context and achieve some level of consistency. It’s a good thing to do, because it helps me journey south again more quickly than I otherwise would. I greatly prefer Mr 3 am.

It is interesting, though, that I once remember reading that 3 am is the time when the human spirit is at its weakest; it’s the time when we are at our most open and vulnerable; it’s the time when honesty rules, when we say and do what we really mean. Apparently, that’s the reason why torturers conduct most of their business at that hour.

And the ramifications of that connection are maybe even less edifying than the treatment I meted out to my poor rag doll every morning, because it also means that 3 am is when we are at our least brave.