I believe in Three AM.

The entire hour, too: the long hand’s complete revolution around a numbered face, or sixty solid blocks of sixty, or four unrefined chunks of fifteen, or any other mathematician’s provision of this glorious hour. From Three O’ Clock on the dot to Three Fifty-Nine and Fifty-Nine seconds. All of it, every fleeting moment. Three AM is my favorite thing to be.

Most nights, I can’t sleep. I don’t know why, but I can’t. I spent most of freshman and sophomore year agonizing about my innate incapability of sleep, cursing the elusive gods of slumber, working myself into a fit of tears and angst. I lost so much sleep wondering why I was losing so much sleep. And trust me, if you have never glared wide-eyed at the ceiling, every atom in your body awake with celestial energy, fully knowing that you have to be up and functioning in less than 3 hours, trust me, it feels like some unjust, frustratingly cruel joke that you are the averse butt of. In these lonely depths of night, I accomplished feats Odysseus would be envious of: I watched all 238 episodes of Friends, I ate any and all Little Debbie snacks in the cupboard (unapologetically), and I read every WebMD article on sleep to the point where I was wholly convinced I had contracted a disease from southern Malaysia. But I didn’t care about any of these things; I just wanted to sleep. I stumbled drunkenly through my life in a perpetual state of self-pity; some common phrases that I would frequently moan (in a tone that sounded kind of like runny ketchup): “Why can I never sleep?” and “This is so unfair, everyone else can sleep so easily,” and “The universe must hate me!” (It was also undeniably the universe’s fault that I discovered the magical, frightening powers of sleeping pills and coffee sophomore year… still waiting for an apology on that one, Universe.)
So yes, I was a little cranky. Okay… I was a monster. But even the monsters under my bed got their GOD FORSAKEN CATNAPS EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.

When junior year snuck up on me, I was ready to curl into a fist-sized ball and launch myself off of a building. I didn’t realize then the power that I had, the power that Three AM had bestowed upon me. You see, Three AM is the Superman of all superheroes, the chocolate milk of all beverages, the Super Smash Bros of all video games. It is the warm spot in a cold pool. If time is Hollywood, Three AM is Meryl Streep. And I’m pretty sure Three AM is where the ducks go in the winter.

Midnight is for settling, for unwinding and falling and closing your eyes, and maybe at Midnight you’ll dream some intangible dreams, or drift into restful landscapes.

One AM is for fretting and remembering and crying, pacing and scribbling what you forgot to scribble before, except now it’s too scribbly to read.

If you make it to Two AM, you may think you are going to die. You probably will, people tend to, eventually, but it won’t be tonight. At Two AM you might take some pills that won’t make you feel anything except drowsy and sad, the worst kind of sleepy. If you can will yourself to stay awake for all of Two AM, right up smack against Two Fifty-Nine, please do. Because Three AM is worth it.

I believe in Three AM because I believe in impromptu drives through my neighborhood, in which the darkened grocery stores and empty basketball courts seem like lonely, foreign versions of themselves. I believe in Three AM because I believe that an hour is exactly enough time to pick up an old book and revisit a few chapters, and see the characters in a new light, the light that Three AM lends to me. I believe in Three AM because Three AM is no longer a time for lying in bed—no, no, no, Three AM is a time for movement and for change and for reinventing my hair or my Tumblr theme or my ideologies on the Higher Order of the Universe (the same Universe that has been historically and openly cruel to me, but I forgive It, nonetheless). I believe in Three AM because I have written my prettiest songs, my saddest poems, and my meanest letters at Three AM. I believe in Three AM because I believe in spontaneity, in unconventionality, in the oddness that this secret hour breeds. I believe in Three AM because it is the greatest hour for anything and everything, the greatest hour that has ever existed, and it exists every night for me and for you to be the greatest me’s we allow ourselves to be.

There will be other Three AMs in which we sleep peacefully, as if it’s Midnight, or One AM, or Two AM. But if I ever find myself awake at Two Fifty-Nine, I will not let myself crumble, I will not take that sleeping pill, and I will not ask my ceiling why it hates me. I will be unabashedly happy and sad and lonely and content and creative and open, because this is what Three AM is. I will be Three AM, because Three AM is my favorite thing to be.