The Phone I Cannot Put Down

Ten past one, and the house has a sound at this hour that it does not have at any other.

The fridge, which you never hear in the day, going and then stopping and then going. A pipe somewhere in the wall ticking as it cools, five ticks, a pause, three more. A car turning at the end of the road and its lights swinging slowly across the ceiling. The neighbor's door, once, which means he is in. And a long way off, so faint you would not swear to it, a train.

And under all of it, one more sound, so small it is barely a sound at all. The soft brush of a thumb going up a piece of glass.

He is not doing anything. That is the thing. He is not watching a film or talking to anyone or even reading something he would tell you about tomorrow. He is going up. Something, then something else, then a thing he has already seen once tonight, then something else. His eyes hurt. He was tired at nine. He is more tired now than he has ever been in his life and he is fully, wretchedly awake.

He has to be up at six twenty.

He has done the arithmetic three times, which is another thing you do at this hour: if I go to sleep right now, that is five hours and ten. Then, twenty minutes later, five hours dead. Then, later again, he stops doing the arithmetic because the answer has become unkind.

He is not weak. Let me say that early. He is not undisciplined and he does not have a character problem, and he is so tired of the version of this conversation that treats him like a man who cannot be trusted with a piece of glass.

Here is what is actually happening at ten past one, and nobody says it to him.

That is the only part of the day that nobody wants anything from him. From six twenty in the morning until about half past ten at night, every hour of his life has somebody's name on it. Work has hours. The kids have hours. The house has hours. His mother's phone call has an hour, and he is glad about all of it, and he would not give any of it back. And then at half past ten the last door shuts and there is finally a piece of time with nothing written on it, and he is not going to hand it straight over to sleep. Sleep takes it and gives nothing back that he can feel.

He is not addicted to the glass. He is holding on to the only unclaimed hour he gets.

Now let me stop calling him he.

Because you know ten past one. And you have been told to put the phone down by roughly everyone, and every one of them was right, and not one of them was any use, because none of them knew what you were actually holding.

Do not sit up. Do not turn the light on. Keep your eyes shut if they are shut. You do not have to look at anything for the rest of this.

Somebody is up anyway

Let me start by taking one thing off you, and then I will not mention it again all night.

There is no shame in this. Not a word of it here. You are not failing at rest, and lying awake at ten past one is not a spiritual diagnosis. If you have been carrying a low, steady sense that a better person would have sorted this out by now, put it down. It is not from God and it has never once helped anybody sleep.

Now let me tell you what sleep actually is, because you have been sold it as a shutdown and it is not.

There is a short psalm written by a man in a bad stretch. People were talking about him. His situation had not resolved. He was not writing from a settled evening in a safe house, which is exactly why the last line of it can hold your weight at one in the morning.

I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.Psalm 4, verse 8

Look at the word for. It is doing all the work.

He does not say he will sleep because the trouble has finished, or because he has thought it through, or because he has finally got to the end of everything he was scrolling. He says he lies down because somebody else is keeping the watch. The whole sentence turns on a handover.

Because that is what sleep is. Sleep is the one thing a human being does that is pure trust. For seven hours you are not managing anything. You are not guarding the house, you are not braced, you are not available. Every night, every person on earth is required to let go of the whole thing, and we call it ordinary, and it is nothing of the kind. It is the most physical act of trust a body ever performs.

And here is what you already half know at ten past one, which is why the glass stays in your hand. Putting the phone down is not really about sleep. It is about being alone with the dark and having to be still. So you keep one thumb moving, because a thumb moving is not the same as being alone.

You are not alone. You have not been alone in this room for one second tonight.

The one who keeps you does not sleep. He is not resting up while you cover the night shift. There is no hour of this night when the watch is unmanned and needs you awake and scrolling to make up the difference. He is not asking you for the last unclaimed hour of your day, either. He is not on that list of people who want something from you. He is the one who gave you the hour in the first place.

You can hand the night over. It was never yours to hold.