Why I wake up at 4am and think about everything

Syel · 6 October 2026

Four ten. No alarm, nobody shook you awake, and still your eyes are open and it has already started.

It isn't noise, it isn't thirst. You open your eyes and within three seconds the list is there, all of it: the email you didn't send, the odd tone in your sister's voice on the phone, the money, something from 2019 that nobody else remembers. At four in the morning, everything is serious. You tell yourself you'll think for two minutes and sort it out, and you really do try, and that gets to me. But nothing gets sorted at that hour. It just turns.

What comes back up is what you set aside all day so you could keep going. In daylight there's noise, people, things to do, and it holds. At night there's nothing standing in front of it, so it comes through. And you pay in sleep for a worry you never give any room to in broad daylight.