3.30 am 2 am 5 am

Last week (and the first parts of this week) was comprised of

a series of late nights.

The first one was after a Sidney party - which was a turning point in more ways than one - where every dressed like the 1950s and we danced to cheesy tunes from Grease but also to the tunes of Flaurence and the Mad Scene and their mix of songs that go you're a sky full of stars/will you hold me tight and not let go/i want something just like this. (The Laurence half of Flaurence is a big fan of coldplay.)

After the magic of that night I cycled back partially in disbelief that I was awake (everything felt like a dream), a feeling compounded when I couldn't fall asleep for another hour and a half - people already asleep can't fall asleep so perhaps, I thought, it was a dream.

The next day I cycled down into town quickly under bright blue skies - someone was playing 'Wonderwall', and I arrived early enough to sit outside for a while and just bask and reply to people's messages. I felt like the pressure of the final essay and the masters application had lifted, I was just a girl on a bench in the sun, ready for breakfast.

The last essay of this whirlwind of a term was begun at 5 am the following day, the day it was due, which is never a good idea. It concluded that:

The characters of King Lear and The Remains of the Day highlight the relatable tragedy of interpersonal relations – that to love and be loved, one must first become vulnerable, a fearful state which often causes a rejection of relationship for the safe harbor of concealment. Yet, while a ship may be safe in harbor, that is not what ships are for, and the characters continue to exhibit a deep yearning for love. What they fail to understand is that love, although it does uncover and perceive every wrong, also covers a multitude of sins. Love is not love without grace within it, and to be loved, and seen for what is behind the pantomime role, in all its undignified, cruel and unworthy state, is also to be forgiven for all of that [...]

Which is something that being in love has taught me, and also something I've come to see as I learn more about the love of God and how me trying to prove myself better than I am to Him makes no sense when he sees the flawed being I am and loves me anyway.

The last 2am was that same day (or more accurately, that day bleeding into the early hours of the next) with choir christmas dinner and secret santa and games and good fun among people who have definitely become like family.

I'd been up almost 21 hours. A whole day almost, and yet I was still hungry for more hours. More hours and more days of this most joyful, magic term.