Nighttime is alive with sound here at the Hidden Falls Home for Wayward Women.

Nighttime is the sound of a million unseen creatures coming in through my open windows. I imagine crickets, frogs, cicadas – any number of unknown to this city girl tiny things hiding behind leaves, clinging to trees, each with its own particular and unique vibrato adding to the mix.

The house is otherwise quiet, but for the hum of electric things that make the white noise of a modern home. I’m quiet. Which feels like a great feat because my entire day is full of rolling and dragging and turning and breaking and flushing and water bottle filling and so much talking I get sick of hearing my own voice. I’m a one-woman band that is afraid to stop during the day. Stopping means missing things, being late to meetings, being unprepared for what’s next.

There is music during the day to fill in the gaps between video calls and medical care management calls. Quiet during the day fills me with dread – there are too many things screaming for attention in my head. Get your compression socks on before your legs and ankles swell! Pee! Wait. Take your pills first. Don’t pee yet. Try to hold off as long as you can before the first visitor or video call. God forbid you have to deal with bodily functions in the middle of important things. Or worse, when there’s someone in the house. Brush your teeth! Try to slap down that bed head (or is it bed head if you don’t actually sleep in a bed). Put on a shirt that could be pajamas but also could not be.

Try try try.

Days are filled with people. So many someones! Repair guys and contractors and phlebotomists and wheelchair equipment technicians and random service people and delivery people from FedEx and Amazon and UPS and the good old US mail and visitors of all kinds that jar me all day long.

But by the time darkness falls, I can just stop.

I am alone. I am quiet. I am fed and tended to. The pressure to be in the right place on the right call looking the right way (from the shoulders up) is over. The face is clean and cared for, teeth are brushed, the devil’s hosiery (aka compression socks) can finally come off because feet can finally be elevated with nowhere to go but to the bathroom a few more times. Nobody to impress. Nobody to see. Just me. My pajamas. My choice of what to watch or what to read or what to type. No expectations at all.

Nighttime is the closest I get to comfort – that elusive state I took for granted for almost 50 years.

Oh don’t get it twisted. Everything still hurts at night. The arms that have done double duty for legs all day ache so badly that thumb typing feels like rare torture. The neck that I’ve overused all day with the utterly wonky way I am forced to stand up feels stabby – like something must be terribly wrong but I know it won’t feel quite as bad when I wake up the next day so I try to ignore it. At least for a short while. The legs aren’t spasming, thanks to the baclofen pump but the small muscles that defy the pump’s efforts start their twitching and curling and tingling. My toes. My calves.

My heels are tender to the touch as they rest on the recliner where I both relax and eventually sleep. They’d probably prefer a different position in which to rest but my body only moves in so many directions.

All of the positions my body moves in require tools with which to accomplish their readjustment. My bevy of objects and oddities that pre-disabled me couldn’t have conceived. The toe spreaders. The leg lifters. The reacher. The reclining chair itself! Thank sweet baby Jesus for the one chair that helps me do so many basic things. But at night, these oddities don’t feel so odd. They just feel helpful.

At night it’s just me. Just me and my myriad tools and my disobedient body that will eventually fall fast asleep while listening to a bedtime story some nice English woman reads to me from some app or other. I’m partial to The Velveteen Rabbit. And The Snow Queen.

Nighttime is devoid of expectation. It is forgiving. And deliciously cool this time of year. It’s almost certain that nobody will pop by to catch me braless flappy boobs all akimbo in the pajamas I’ve had on for at least two days. Nighttime feels right for someone like me who is just all kinds of wrong during the day. Nighttime feels free of expectation and as close to easy as I ever hope to be again (at least until I have to foist myself back up and into the wheelchair to pee…again).

Sometimes I wish it could be nighttime all of the time. No that’s not depression talking just honesty.

Nighttime knows me. It lets me wheel soundlessly through the house trying to find which window allows me to see the moon. There’s no pressure to GO OUTSIDE THE SUN IS SHINING AND IT’S A GLORIOUS DAY. Nighttime gives me its blessing to stay inside and do exactly what I want to do.

Nighttime is forgiving. When those feelings I’m just learning how to feel come flying out of my eyes in torrents of tears nighttime wraps me up in its strong arms and says, “Girl, let it out. Let it all out.”

Nighttime is soft and accepting. Discreet and private. A keeper of secrets. A place for my true self to live without the expectations of the world pounding on my skull. All. Day. Long.

Nighttime is the best lover and the most accepting best friend. I know full well that nighttime might betray me some day. She might not always be such a lush soundscape of earthly delights. But until that day, I’m going to enjoy the shit out of my favorite time.

Nighttime.