It's been over a decade since I worked the night shift, but sometimes, I still wake dead up out of a sleep looking to check something. A list of open high severity events - my phone, for something from my coworkers. News of a hospitalized relative. Some small crisis or another in one of innumerable Internet communities I entwined myself in, looking for my own tribe.
Those nights, sometimes I'd be up already. Or already on day shift, but still half-married to the night. It's taken years and years to have regular sleep that's not enforced by melatonin. At that, I've still the Princess and the Pea and hyper vigilance that I know now is not just from being jumpy about the pager. I know now that the way I'm wired is a function of being braced for the next fist in the gut or shots at night.
Long before I was a data center monkey, I'd sit on the concrete stoop of my childhood house, staring out into the darkness. Watching the rare late night person wander down our quiet residential street rather than the major street one block away.
There was no one to tell me to come back inside, and no one asked me in Virginia either. I'd get up, from my desk chair or my bed, fight the inertia in my head, and go.
Sometimes, when you've been tired and sad and scared your entire life, you get so sick of it that you have to do anything other than sit there and watch your life wander by, and so you get up, and you go. It's not that different from your everyday life. There's work, there's household chores, there's the demands of those around you and bills to pay. But here, it's get up: get up and go, before the fear and despair eats you alive.
And so I went. I got up, and I drove, sometimes hundreds of miles in the night with an iPod plugged in to the aftermarket stereo in my old Nissan pickup truck. Generally I went down Skyline Drive, but I got bored with the same route every time, so sometimes it was just down through Luray or into West Virginia for a minute, or to pick up a friend and go to late night diners. Or Korean. Neither of us were particular.
The point was, it was better than sitting with my demons. And while you can't outrun your dreams, there's something to be said for coping with gasoline.