The witching hour: why I come alive at 11pm.

Chapter 01The house goes quiet

At 10:47pm, roughly, something switches on in me. My phone stops buzzing. The dishwasher hums its little goodnight. The last of the neighbours' lights go out. And my brain, which has spent the entire day dragging itself through treacle, suddenly stands up, stretches, and says right then, let's get going.

I have known this pattern my whole life without knowing it had a name. It is sometimes called the ADHD witching hour, sometimes revenge bedtime procrastination. Both names are true. Both make me feel a little bit seen and a little bit told off.

It is the first hour of the day that belongs entirely to me.

Because here is the thing. All day, I have been performing for the world. Answering messages. Being pleasant on calls. Remembering that it is bin day. My nervous system has been in polite mode since 8am. And the moment the demands stop, my brain finally has the fuel it never had for laundry.

Chapter 02The bill comes at 6am

I would love to tell you I have solved this. I have not. I have negotiated with it. A soft lamp instead of the overhead light. A notebook by the bed so the ideas can be parked somewhere other than my skull. A gentle, unenforceable curfew that I break maybe three nights out of seven.

If you also come alive at 11pm, you are not broken and you are not uniquely bad at rest. You are a person whose brain finally got a moment to itself, and it did what all brains do with a bit of freedom. It threw a very small, very quiet disco.