3am is when everyone has entered their deepest slumber, when the air conditioning is cold from being on for a period of time but not too cold, just after night owls go to bed and right before obnoxious morning people wake up. 3am is a time of balance and calm; when everything is just right, when silence reigns and when time seems to cease to exist, when stability conquers all.
But 3am is also a time for extremes, when you can feel like you're either everything or nothing at all; when utter euphoria, utter freedom hits — or it can be the most suffocating hour of the day, when it feels like the world is just biding its time, waiting to attack you in every way possible when the sun comes up once again.
3am is when you can feel the best you've felt in weeks, in days, in years. For someone who would want nothing more than for time to just stop so that you can take a break from the world, so that you can be your uncaring, unmoving, unconcerned self without losing out, 3am is when that feeling is almost achieved, when you truly feel in control of yourself and of time, of what you do or don't do.
But at 3am you can experience the most shit moments of your life, as you let yourself spiral out of control and let yourself break into pieces. Perhaps the feeling, that moment when you know you're letting yourself shatter into pieces for those few hours or so is the most breathtaking, the most meaningful, because you know that having the opportunity to bare your soul, to let all the lies you've been living, all the secrets, all the little pressures affect you in a way that isn't okay. But in that moment — that little margin of time called 3am — it is.
3am is when you are completely alone. You can be free of everyone's standards, because there are simply none. No one will judge you for ordering that jumbo all meat and cheese pizza (not even the pizza guy as he's seen everything), or for dancing (badly) to the most mainstream music. You could discover things on the Internet without the fear of that one person peeking over your shoulder while you look up something explicit that you were "just curious about I swear". Or maybe you really were just curious about it. Then it turned into ~something else~. Either way, especially for those not yet out of the closet, 3am is the time to be free, to be yourself.
But at 3am you are utterly alone. Alone in everything you do, alone as all the negativity comes creeping up on you and engulfs you, and you can't believe it (because haven't you just spent your whole life avoiding people?) but you just need that 1 person that you're okay with, or just, just someone's words or touch to keep you from going too far, too deep. But you don't. You don't have anyone. No one's going to rescue you if you go too far, no one's going to give you comfort when you need it most at 3am. And I guess that is when you understand how important human contact is to you, no matter how much you don't believe, or don't want it to be. And that's also when you realise how dependent you are on some people, such that if your fears were true — if they could just pack up and leave at the drop of a hat (and right now you think they would), you wouldn't survive. And that thought makes you sick. And you hate yourself even more. And that's the price you pay for 3am.
3am is when you can, and you will, do anything and everything you want to, you need to. It's when you find yourself sitting down and powering through worksheets and notes you couldn't even finish one page of in the day, it's when you're suddenly able to understand that tough concept you had no hope getting your head around this whole week. It's when you finally write an essay that is clear enough (your professor always nagged at you about clarity in your essays), and it's when you write elaborate to-do lists and make big plans for the future because at that moment, it's as if you can do anything and you feel unstoppable.
But at 3am you're the most unproductive you've found yourself — you just want to bask in the moment. At this point you aren't even unproductive because of that one YouTube video or Buzzfeed article; you're unproductive because you find yourself just staring at that crack in the ceiling that's not been repaired since you were 10 (you should really get around to fixing that) with earphones in, listening to some obscure band you discovered an hour ago but you'll probably never listen to ever again. You're not doing anything because of the depression that weighs you down and drains you during the day, you're not doing anything because you're focused on just being.
So here's to 3am, the best, worst, happiest, saddest, busiest, laziest time of the day; the hour full of contradictions, the hour that holds a unique magic that cannot be replicated anytime or anywhere else.
