Yeah. So here’s the thing.

At night, when everything’s shut down and there’s no audience, you find out pretty quickly what parts of your personality are just daytime manners. The polite version of you clocks out. The voice that says “I’m fine” stops showing up. And what’s left is you in a room with your own head, which is not always a great neighborhood to be walking around alone.

It’s not like I’m having some poetic crisis. I’m just awake. Again. The house is quiet in that way where the quiet feels like pressure. The fridge clicks on, the pipes make some old-building sound, a car goes by outside and for a second you think, “Somebody out there has a destination.” Then it fades and you’re back to nothing.

Sleep, for me, is not this gentle thing. It’s a flaky friend. It’s a ride-share that says it’s arriving, and the little icon just kind of drifts. It’s technically moving, but not toward you. You keep checking, like checking will make it real. You know it won’t. You still check.

And that’s when the mind does what it does when you’ve taken away all the distractions: it starts running the tape.

Not the big dramatic stuff. The small humiliations. The tiny avoidances. The dumb choices you made because you didn’t want to feel uncomfortable for thirty seconds. The thing you didn’t do, the message you didn’t answer, the moment you could’ve been better and chose easier. It’s like your brain is a bored bartender wiping the same spot on the counter, polishing the same ugly glass, going, “Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about everything you don’t want to talk about.”

My dad watched this movie about eternity. And he brings it up casually, like it’s this interesting idea. Like you’d bring up a documentary you half-paid attention to. Who would you spend forever with? What would you do forever?

And that should be a fun question. It should be a harmless question. You should be able to laugh and say something charming.

But if you’re the kind of person whose thoughts keep him up, it’s not a fun question. It’s a knife you turn over in your hand.

Because eternity is not romantic when you actually picture it. Eternity is a long shift with no closing time. No smoke break. No staff meal. No “I’m done, I’m going home.” Just you, endlessly, in whatever you picked.

And here’s what I don’t think people say out loud: I don’t want the clean version.

I don’t want the brochure version. I don’t want the soft-focus forever where nothing hurts and everything is warm and safe and you never feel ashamed of yourself. That sounds nice until you’ve lived long enough to know what “nice” turns into after a while.

It turns into numb.

It turns into beige.

It turns into a padded room with good lighting.

And I know myself. Give me that forever and I’d start clawing at the walls just to feel something push back. I’d start picking fights with my own happiness out of boredom and suspicion. I don’t trust anything that doesn’t have teeth. That’s not wisdom. That’s damage. But it’s real.

What I actually want, the thing that sounds insane until you’ve been up at 3 a.m. enough nights, is this life. The one I complain about. The one I fantasize about escaping. The one that feels like it’s always slightly winning.

I want the whole cut. Not the highlight reel.

I want the mornings that hit like rent, punctual, indifferent, no sympathy. The days where you do everything right and still feel like you’re behind. The anxiety that shows up early and starts rearranging the furniture in your head before you’ve even had water. The regret that sits in your chest like a coin you can’t swallow. The nights where you want to step outside of yourself for sixty seconds just to breathe, and you realize there’s no door.

And I want the good stuff too, but not the big, poster-worthy good stuff. The small mercies. The stuff that happens when you’re not trying to curate your life.

That first sip of coffee that tastes like you might survive. Cold air that makes you feel awake in a brutal, honest way. A streetlight on wet pavement making the city look almost beautiful for no reason. A laugh that slips out of you, unplanned, like your body is reminding you it still knows how. Ten minutes where you’re actually present and the world isn’t a moral test, it’s just the world.

Those moments don’t “make it worth it.” I hate that phrase. The universe isn’t a rewards program. It doesn’t balance the books. It doesn’t hand you a gift card because you endured something.

But those moments are real. And because they’re real, they matter more than all the clean theories about happiness.

Pain is real too. Regret is real. Failure is real. The whole mess is real. That’s the point. That’s what gives the happiness any weight at all. Without the bad parts, the good parts don’t land. They don’t register. They become background noise.

So if someone slides that eternity clipboard across the table, I’m not picking peace. I’m not picking perfection. I’m picking the messy, loud, bruising life I already have. The one with the rough edges and the stupid mistakes and the nights where you can’t sleep and the mornings where you get up anyway because stopping doesn’t produce anything better.

Because reality, this ugly, indifferent, occasionally gorgeous reality, is the only option.

Morning is coming. It always comes. Like gravity. Like rent.

And I’ll get up. I’ll do the day. I’ll take the small mercies when they show up.

Then night will come back.

And I’ll probably be awake again, listening to the hum, watching that little taxi icon circle the block.

Still choosing it.