No. 2 THE 2AM THOUGHTS

You were fine all day. You went to work, made dinner, answered the emails, paid the thing that needed paying. Somewhere around nine o'clock, you thought I'm okay, I think I'm actually okay. Then you turned the lights off.

It starts small. A thought you could probably dismiss. But it brings a friend. The friend brings a family. And suddenly you are lying in the dark having a full conversation with every mistake you have ever made, and they are all talking at once.

The thing you said in 2011. The job you didn't take. The one you took that didn't become what you promised yourself it would. The relationship you should have left earlier. The one you shouldn't have left at all.

During the day, the world is loud enough to cover it. You are busy. You are needed. Your brain has things to do other than turn on itself.

But at 2am there is nothing between you and the audit. The distractions are asleep. It is just you and a highlight reel of everything you have ever gotten wrong, playing on a loop, with no off switch.

The thing the thoughts never mention while they are circling: they are reruns. You have watched this programme a hundred nights in a row. It has never once told you anything useful. Never solved a single problem. It just takes a tired person and makes them exhausted.

The 2am version of your life is not the real one. It is the version your fear writes when the editor has gone to bed. All prosecution, no defence. All evidence, no context.

You are not your worst thoughts at your worst hour.

You are the person who will get up in the morning and try again, even though tonight it feels like evidence that trying doesn't work. That is not a weakness. That is the most ordinary, extraordinary act of courage there is.

Morning always comes.