Why I stopped sleeping during the day and switched over to the night

I used to be awake during the night all the time. Work, fun, computer stuff. Life is easier when the sky is dark and everyone is sleeping. Nobody screams, nobody walks. I can focus on my stuff and I can even imagine that I'm alone.

Being a night owl is a pleasurable activity. I can imagine I'm a bat or a vampire, a simple night creature with nightly habits. However, I started having headaches lately, and backaches. I started noticing that even if I wanted to hang out during the day, I couldn't because I had to sleep. I get really sleepy when I don't sleep for a few hours beyond my night time.

I couldn't be a private detective or anything time intensive. I really need my sleep or I stop functioning.

After a while of struggling with everything, I started to contemplate the idea of sleeping during the night and being alive during the day. It's not an easy thought. Giving up tears away our pride. I felt weak and normal. We never want to be just anybody else, but we're always reminded of how ordinary we are. I'm a mortal just like anybody else, and even more so.

I'll probably die young. A fast metabolism is proven to lead to a shorter life. And mine is like a race car. I have to eat every few hours and I'm so skinny my dad likes to call me a toothpick. Skinny marshmallows are like short straws.

And every day I contemplated the idea of not sleeping during the day and waiting for the night, I would imagine myself to be a nun obeying the laws of an imaginary Lord called social norm. Then I would remember, as I always do, that I am a mortal. They are not social norms but the laws of nature.

Sleeping during the day and sleeping during the night are different things even though I like to deny it so much. I like to mentally refute every doctor that says that we have to sleep during the night. I say "well, 9 hours of sleep is enough during any time of the day or night", but it turns out that our bodies have some sort of clock and everything works just right during the night and sleep is better.

And it also turns out that this sleep during the night, when everything is just right for us to sleep, is exactly what I needed in order to stop having my weird headaches and weird everything. I finally gave up. I switched up and got called weak and normal, both by others and myself, and every night I judge myself and laugh about how normal I have let myself become.

Even if I consciously know that being normal is, well, normal, and that I shouldn't feel bad about it, it's hard. I identify as a night owl. I see it as my "natural habitat". Right now I see the darkness (or don't see it, depending on how you define darkness) and I see the dim ambience that was my stage. Now it's nothing but the time when I sleep.

Now that I'm awake during the day and the night seems to come quickly after it, time seems to be shorter. I don't know if I'm sleeping more but I do feel like I can do less than before. But I have to stand it. This tolerance has led to my well-being. I'm finally healthy (well, relatively; a bit more healthy than before). I'm changed and I feel as if I were wearing new shoes.

But they're just the old ones I had left lying around for decades until I found them again, a bit dusty but good as new.

I still don't like sleeping in the night. Being awake in the dark is more pleasurable. It feels more fulfilling. But it's worse for me. I need to stay convinced. I have seen proof.

Every now and then I fall into the temptation of sleeping during the day and I wake up in the late afternoon with a terrible headache and I'm deezy for a few days while I get accustomed to the headaches and then I decide to go back to sleeping during the night. It's lame, but it is the way it is.