As a child, I would walk into my family’s garage, take our hose and fill a bucket to the brim with water and soap. Each step I took carrying the bucket caused suds to splash over the sides, soaking my t-shirt and shorts. On a hot, sunny, summer day, my mom and I would dip our crumbling sponges into the bucket and scrub her car clean of a season’s worth of pollen, bugs and dirt. I felt like the most important person in the world because I was helping my mom, my hero.

I don’t remember the last time we did that together. I wonder how much unnecessary distance between mother and child time creates.

Now, I stand in front of a car wash at night, in a town I barely know, wishing for the sun. I would gladly suffer concrete too hot on my little bare feet for even a momentary return to childhood. But all I’m left with are the lights, and the darkness, and the knowledge that there is no stopping an uncertain future that approaches far too fast.

“Even if I wasn’t working, I’d still stay up this late,” Aurora Lyda said.

For the past year, the 20-year-old has balanced being a cook and server at the Dive Bar in Columbia, Mo., with her coursework as a University of Missouri student. Despite having only a few customers all evening, Lyda and her coworker Brendalynn Hill staffed the kitchen while Ben Herzog manned the bar on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023.

“I don’t get too much sleep during the weekdays,” Lyda said.

Since her class schedule prevents her from working during the day, Lyda’s shifts start in the afternoon and typically lasts until 11 p.m. or midnight. When she’s working in the kitchen, Lyda prefers calmer nights, but when she’s serving, she wants there to be more customers so she can earn more tips. She works four or five days a week, and at the end of each shift she feels exhausted, dirty and ready to go home.

“I feel like on my days off I sleep all day, which I feel like isn’t really normal,” Lyda said.

Two girls whisper in a theater, looking at a message one of them just received. I got my first phone when I was a freshman in high school. It connected me to my small circle of friends, and I was won’t to leave the house without it. As I got older, and my anxiety got worse, I struggled more and more to fall asleep. I would stay up scrolling through Pintrest until I nearly passed out from exhaustion. I used to send messages to my friends in the early hours of the morning when I was wide awake. I’d tell them that I think they’re amazing and intelligent and kind, all the things I couldn’t feel about myself.

My first year of college, a friend of mine told me I needed to stop doing that. Every time he got a text from me at 2 a.m. saying that I think he’s great, he was terrified I was suicidal. I had to take a step back, outside my lonely post-midnight feelings, to realize how odd—even frightening—what I’d been doing must have seemed. I suppose that with age comes the curse of hindsight and, perhaps, a perpetual embarrassment of the mistakes you make during adolescence. 

Until I was 18 years old, I went to church every weekend with my mom and older brother. I was baptized, went through first communion and was even confirmed. For nearly a year in middle school, I listened to Owl City’s “In Christ Alone (I Stand)” every night before bed. I thought somehow that constituted a relationship with an unknowable higher power.

I stoped attending mass during the COVID-19 pandemic. A global crisis seemed the appropriate time to abandon a faith to which I no longer felt connected.

Still, there are nights when I do miss the solace a belief in God—or at least in an entity larger than any one person—provided. I’ve started searching for connection again, though with what I couldn’t say. I have felt sparks of awe atop Cadillac Mountain in Maine, sitting on the shore of Lake Huron and at night in the parking lot of a church whose denomination I don’t know. I may not need faith to be whole, but a life without wonder is not the type of life I wish to lead. 

When I can’t sleep, I crave sugar. Kit Kats, Sour Patch Kids, Heath Bars, anything I can get my hands on. The most exciting treat for me as a kid, though, was a hot fudge Sunday from Sonic. On early release days from elementary school, my grandma would pick me up. We’d get ice cream and listen to Cher with the windows down, hot wind tossing our hair into our eyes.

I wonder if she remembered that when she passed away? Or was my childhood joy just another memory Alzheimers stole from her?

As her condition worsened, my chance to meet the woman who helped raise me vanished. I became a person as she lost her sense of self. I learned about sundowning, how her confusion would become greater in the late afternoons and at night. We only ever got Sonic together in the daylight. I feel confused now to see its red and yellow sign against a backdrop of darkness. I feel confused now to know a world without her in it.

On average, Lateef Adepo sleeps about 5 hours a night, maybe 8 if he’s sick and extremely tired.

Adepo is a fiber optics technician based out of Jefferson City, Mo. He usually works days, but on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, his job brought him to Sedalia, Mo., where he repaired and retested fibers around midnight to beat Fastwyre Broadband’s installation deadline.

In order to stay awake and focused on the job, Adepo will “indulge himself” by listening to music, playing YouTube videos and talking on the phone with friends so he doesn’t “go insane.” Although he loves what he does, especially that his job allows him to travel to the country, Adepo said a negative component of his work s is that he’s not able to socialize with many people other than his colleagues, bosses and family.

“You need full concentration to be able to do the job. You can’t be distracted. It’s like performing a surgery: there’s no room for error,” Adepo said. “When I’m working, it is work. I know it is work. But, it doesn’t affect me psychologically in any way once I’m back in town. Social life continues.”

I am, by nature, an over-thinker. I can worry about the past, present and future simultaneously. If having anxious thoughts were an Olympic sport, I’d be a gold medalist by now. Sometimes, at night, when the world is quiet, my mind is so loud I feel as though I could suffocate on the noise.

One of my most frequent topics of worry is money. I have always hated the scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when Uncle Billy misplaces the cash he’s meant to deposit and Mr. Potter doesn’t return it to George Bailey.

I didn’t grow up rich, but I most certainly didn’t grow up poor. I have seen much of the world, and played sports and been in clubs. I have been able to attend college and receive a higher education and indulge in the pursuit of knowledge.

As the night stretches on, my thoughts spiral and my heart rate increases. I begin to catastrophize. What will happen if I can’t find a job—even one I detest? How can I afford car payments and health insurance, dental coverage and groceries and a new phone when mine finally gives out? How will I ever afford to retire?

But then I force myself to breathe. I remind myself that I am more capable than I think I am and I know more than I think I do. The world may not always be a kind place, but I believe there are more George Baileys out there than there are Mr. Potters. Life will not always be as overwhelming as it seems at 3 a.m. 

I have unintentionally watched more than my fair share of sunrises. When I can’t turn my brain off, I try to do a “hard reset” as if my body were a computer. I force myself to stay awake for 24 hours, becoming increasingly exhausted so I can fall asleep the next night. This rarely works. Normally, I feel even worse than before. I have to remind myself that I am not a machine. My body and brain need kindness and compassion, not to be beaten and bullied into submission.

On this particular morning, I moved with intentionality. The sun inevitably rose, and I watched its first tentative rays of light greet the earth. As early morning mist lifted into the air, boats began to skim along the Missouri River. The world wakes. Life continues. Nature is resilient, and so, too, am I.