Anshina Verma Q2 Blog 6 Week 7- America Hates Sleeping
I quickly pull my hair into a bun, tying it with a rubber band, which the new length of my hair has allowed me to do. I uncriss-cross-apple-sauce my legs from my desk chair, as it's the only position in which I can focus and lunge for my phone on the other side of the room. What time is it?
I tap the scratched screen; 2:35 it reads —okay, not too late.
Not too late?! I’m sure you must be thinking, but judging by the way the majority of my nights are spent, two in the morning is not an incredibly late time to be awake for me. I’ve always worked better at night; there's no sun to bother me (I hate sunny weather, call me a vampire, I’ve accepted it), no yelling or clattering of toys to distract me, it's just calm.
In a family of extroverts, moments of tranquility are few and far between, hence my night owl tendencies. There isn’t a concept of time at night, two am, eleven pm, twelve am, 4 am; they all look and feel the same. During the day, I consistently feel like I’m running out of time. I take a ten-minute break, and suddenly the sky is dark, suddenly the sun has set behind my neighbor's house. I am constantly rushing to keep up with my work, the people in my life, and just the hustle and bustle of your average desi family in California.
But at night, it all goes away, I’m left to my own devices, my own desires, and no area of my house (aside from upstairs, but I avoid it anyway) is off limits during the summer. I used to just lie down near my pool, staring at the moon’s reflection in the trickling water, or I would walk around the house, staring at the constellations and pockets of the onyx sky between the clouds and stars. I frequently find myself wishing I never had to sleep, because I miss my favorite time of day. My nights during the school year, however, are now spent doing schoolwork or studying for the ACT.
I don’t mind it, I think it keeps me busy and motivated, but studying during the day is challenging. But at night, when the noise fades into the background, I finally have room to breathe, and so do my thoughts and emotions. My family’s mantras and values of togetherness, the typical values of a Desi family, do not match my own, as I am my truest self alone. Hence, explaining why the night, or early morning, if I’m getting specific, feels like my form of expression. The language of my soul, if you can call it that. America prefers the hustle and bustle, hence the tremendous pressures of Silicon Valley and T20 colleges, but I prefer the stillness, a culture America has neglected to appreciate, but I certainly haven’t.
Anshina, I hope you get time to nap in the afternoons after school because sleeping so late and waking up early to come to school is detrimental in the long term so I hope you get enough time to take care of yourself. Your blog this week covered a topic that is probably one of the most relatable aspects of life experienced by a teenager in the Bay Area. The allure and motivation to get into a T-20 college not because of internal motivation but because of the pressures placed on us by society and family leads us to making decisions that compromise our sleep and at times, even our mental health. I don’t come from an extroverted family by any means, but I completely understand the value and comfort of silence and peace. The bustle of everyday life can feel so consuming at times and it has increasingly become the trend across America, but I can’t imagine living my life going full speed, loud and proud all day from the moment I wake up to the moment I sleep. This is probably the reason I won’t be able to survive in the Bay LOL and why I say T-50 and not T-20 (I’m done with the self-deprecating humor now sorry). There is an unknown beauty and consolation in silence, and also, YOU HAVE A POOL AT YOUR HOUSE THAT’S SO COOL!!!! I’m just a little jelly, I’m so jelly I could be Belly. (Please laugh at my joke).
ReplyDeletechortling rn
Deleteyeah i guffawed at ur joke it was quite hilarious
DeleteI too am one of those people who prefers the night to the day. However, my parents complain about me sneaking around the house creaking all the floorboards and tipping over cat toys in the hallway, and getting up in the morning after a late night is difficult, so I have chosen a different approach. Instead of staying up past midnight, I now wake up extra early to enjoy the morning solitude. It does have a different feeling to it, though, and I do feel as though I sacrifice the hours I could be spending studying in the evening using my awake brain in exchange for groggy morning thoughts, but I am generally a lot less tired by the time school rolls around. I do allow myself the comfort of staying up past midnight on weekends, though. Yet, I do not have the luxury of going outside like you during these midnight hours as my parents get concerned about my safety (but I’ve done it anyway a couple times to go find the Big Dipper and Orion in the sky). I’d like to commend you for your voice in this blog; the narrative aspects and the whole atmosphere of it, like the scratched screen of your phone and the onyx sky, really enhance the ideas about the tranquility of nighttime you are conveying. Great job!
ReplyDeleteWhile I disagree with you on the importance of sleep—nothing beats the way my quilts feel after a long day lol—I resonate with how you designate the night as your time for peace and quiet. There’s something so serene about being able to stare out into the night sky and be comforted by the moon and (sometimes) stars (screw light pollution!)
ReplyDeleteAlso, relating to what you discussed about America’s love for “hustle and bustle,” I strongly believe that only being able to experience silence after midnight is a direct result of American hustle culture. Ever since the invention of the lightbulb, cities never truly go to sleep anymore, lights blinking incessantly at every hour of the night. Coupled with the toxic workaholic mindset of a 9-5 job, people don’t actually get a moment to breathe until well past sundown. And yeah, students like the ones at American High School have adopted this hustle culture early on. People can condemn us all they like for staying up late (or, in Lemon’s case, waking up early) because of stunted brain development or whatever, but I think we’re all just trying to find our own methods of grounding ourselves in this confusing world.
BTW, did you take that photo of the city? It looks beautiful!