I’ve been working nights since I was 18 years old. It’s been 8 years of consistently working night shifts, either with the elderly or in a hospital. My current client tells me every time I walk in how grateful she is to have me there and how much she hates being alone at night. In my head, I always think, “I love being alone.” But for some reason, the other night at work, after she was fast asleep, I thought to myself that I’ve spent the last eight years with at least three of my nights never spent alone.
Obviously, that’s because of work, but for some reason I started thinking that maybe I don’t actually like being alone at night.
Nights are the time when I get the most lonely, and maybe working three night shifts a week saves me from feeling lonely every night. I don’t know. This thought isn’t fully worked out yet, but what I can say is that the nights I don’t work, I do tend to feel more lonely.
That’s why I pile my plate so high with running and school that by the time I get home, I only have about two hours before I crawl into bed. I don’t have time to realize that it’s dark and that I’m alone. All I can think about is what I have to do the next day. But when I’m not busy and end up on my phone for hours at a time because I’m so exhausted, and I wish I had a warm body to cuddle up next to… that’s when I feel lonely.
It’s like how a lizard needs a heat lamp. At the moment, I don’t really care for the emotional connection. I just want a warm body to lay next to until I’m satisfied.
Anyways, that’s not really the original point of why I’m writing this. Maybe I don’t like being alone at night either, but I never really realized it because I was consistently working nights.
I really don’t know. It’s just been something I’ve been thinking about