4 min read

After the Night

The sun was setting down as I opened the door wide and stepped out onto the balcony with a glass of water in my left hand. The air was pleasantly warm and everything around had an orange tint from the weak sunlight that was still left above the city horizon.

My heartbeat was slow, but my brain was coming through a storm of thoughts. Will she come at all? If not, why? Why isn’t she here already? She should be. Has something happened to her? Why wouldn’t she return?

Questions like these kept on banging my skull from the inside with an unbelievable strength. Surely you know the feeling when you have no info about what’s going on and your brain just keeps on going and making up different scenarios even when you would be glad it didn’t. The feeling when you have no real reason to get stressed, but the lone fact that don’t know what’s going to happen next eats you from the inside. That night, this feeling was extremely strong. I had nothing to worry about, but I did.

And that’s wrong. I knew that, and that got on my nerves even more.

The sun was already gone when I finished drinking the first glass. I put it away and leaned on the balcony handrail. The city was falling asleep and pitch-black darkness filled the air. Apart from that, nothing changed. I still kept asking myself all those questions. Where is she now? Does she think of me?

I tried to tell myself that it’s useless to keep asking and that in the morning, everything will be clear and I will realize that truly, it was useless.

Alas, it didn’t work, as usual. I’m really stubborn when it comes to this. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep like this. “Maybe some wine would help?” I poured myself a glass of a white one, put a chair on the balcony and tried to calm myself even further.

But like hell, my mind kept on running and asking. I just couldn’t get my mind off her. “Sometimes I’m horrible.” – I told myself. I use to worry when it’s not needed and the only result is a few stressful hours for nothing.

And so I sat and drank the wine, hour after hour, hopelessly trying to think about something else. Yes, I did…

I opened my eyes and realized that it’s still night. The glass to my right was empty and slowly I realized where I am and what’s going on. That was it, the questions started to pour in once again.

I knew that this fight with myself is going to be long. Not only this night, not 5 nights, but all my life. For now, however, this night was long enough…longer than I would like.

While still making up reasons to calm myself down, the sky was slowly but gradually getting a light blue tint. I yawned and stretched my arms forwards. “Sunrise…sunrise…” Indeed, it was the first sign that the sun is rising.

I came for a glass of water, and when two more hours passed and the sky was orange again, I was calm once again. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I told myself, why I just stopped to care. But the feeling…the feeling was awesome. I finally felt like I won over my own insane tendency to worry about stuff I don’t need to worry about.

Just when sunlight began to pour through the leaves of the trees in front of my apartment, I’ve heard a car to arrive. Not to break my feeling of victory, I didn’t care. A few seconds later my phone rang. I knew it was her. A mild smile sparked on my face as I finished the glass of water.

It was her.

Seeing the sun rise was absolutely liberating. It was a long night. A long night of thoughts and worries. But now she came, and I knew the waiting was worth it.

That night, I learned one very important lesson:

The longer the night, the brighter the day.