I really do hate 4am. That one hour haunts me. The other 23 I have no issue with, but 4am is an entirely different state of time.
4am is when the booze wears off. Well, all but the faintest amount that lives on in your breath. As you lie there, your body craves sleep, your soul craves another drink, and your mind knows from experience, that neither will be getting what they want.
4am is when you wake with a jolt, realizing that your partner has not come home yet. You lie still, shifting between the emotional possibilities. Fear of not knowing. Grief for they may have come to an unfortunate end. Rage for their possible infidelity. And of course, self disgust, if it was only apathy that kept them away.
4am is the hour when the empty opiate receptors in your brain take control. The rest of the day, they can be ignored. It is not easy, but with constant effort, for 23 hours, you can distract yourself and them, but at 4am, they are your master.
4am is the hour before the doors click open in jail. There is nothing to do, but stare at the bottom of the bunk above you and hate yourself for getting thrown into that place again.
4am is when the happy dreams end and you awaken to the loss and pain that is your real life. 4am only exists in this world where the old friends and loved ones you’d just spoken to in your sleep, are long dead and buried. Where the job, house, or victory you had been in only a few seconds before, was never yours.
4am is when the warm glow of a perfect night with a new found love turns into the sharp slivers of ice in your heart as you remember the outcomes of previous relationships that started as happy and hopeful as this.
4am is when the right hand picks up the wrong thing and pulls it through the left wrist.
4am is when the mind can make the body take one more step past the ledge.
I really, really hate 4am, but I have seen and felt every one of them.