The Impostor

I was a typical teenager. The weekend (or summer) would arrive, and regardless of how early or late i went to sleep, i wouldn't be up until my mother came into my room and threw the dog on me (her favourite mode of waking me up). If i was lucky, this would be sometime around noon. I wasn't usually lucky. But i'm fairly certain that had my mother been a merciful creature, i wouldn't have been up till sometime after two.

When i moved out and was finally allowed to sleep like i wanted to, i developed a vampire's sleeping habits. I'd go to bed when the sun came up, and then i'd get up and go to work around 2. I discovered that an alarm clock was every bit as annoying as having an excited collie jumping all over me, but at least i was free to sleep as much as i wanted to on the weekends. My roommates discovered the health hazards of waking me up before i was ready.

Life continued like this into my twenties. The days were for sleeping, and the nights were for living. I tried as much as i could to volunteer for shifts that would accomodate my sleeping preferences, which wasn't difficult for the most part, because they were undesirable to most people. When i started working at Syncor, it became even easier to do this, and i got my first taste of the midnight shift.

At first i loved it! I was going to bed at 8 am and getting up at 4ish. I only had to deal with 3-5ish hours of daylight, depending on the time of year. The luster quickly died, though, as i realized i'd just suckered myself into working during the part of the day i was accustomed to enjoying with friends and such. So my friends continued doing fun things with out me, and i had to go to work. By the time i was ready to do fun things, they were asleep or at work. Quite the bummer. This was my first inkling that maybe there was something to be said for being conscious during the day.

Unfortunately, once you get yourself onto a midnight shift, it's incredibly difficult to get yourself off of it. I remained on the midnight shift for the next seven years. Eventually i got used to it, but life wasn't the same. It was just as restrictive to my social life as a 9-5 job would have been. It was, in some ways, worse for a plethora of reasons. At this juncture in my life, most of my friends had grown up a bit and now lived the 9-5 lifestyle. My friends and family now had no idea when to contact me without waking me up. A lot of people just stopped trying. Life went on without me.

When the opportunity to rejoin the daytime world came, i pounced on it like a jonesing cat on a catnip mouse. It took a couple months of adjustment, but i now enjoy a life where my family and friends can contact me whenever they want to, and it isn't a disruption to my life.

As i grew more and more accustomed to this new lifestyle, i discovered for the first time in my life the joys of being an early riser. I very seldom woke up after 7 am, even on my days off. I now feel like i'm sleeping my day away when i sleep in past 9 am. I kept this up for the next threeish years and I figured i'd become a morning person for life. . .

Until i went on vacation last week. I started waking up later and later each day, and before the week was half-over, my husband's cousins were calling me a vampire. My average waking up time shot back into the noon-time hours, and the habit started creeping back up on me. Today is Saturday, and i woke up at 10:30 am. I had to MAKE myself get up.

So now i'm sitting here pondering my sleep patterns and i have to wonder: which is my true nature? How can three years of happily being a morning person be undone by a week's vacation? Most people can firmly identify themselves with the Morning Person Camp or the Night Person Camp. I seem to drift between the two. I really want to be a morning person. I'm concerned that once i reestablish myself in the Morning's camp, the pull of the Night's fire will lure me away. It may take years, but it'll happen eventually. So i guess i've answered my own question. I'm a Night person pretending to be a Morning person.