Reading in the Dark

I just finished reading Find Me.
The sequel to Call Me By Your Name.
Both of them—my favorites.
Not just books. Not just novels.
Favorites, period.

I don’t read much these days.
When I do, it’s usually nonfiction.
Though what does that even mean anymore,
when the truth is always under interrogation?
But Monday night, awake at 2 a.m.,
instead of scrolling,
instead of worrying what tomorrow might demand,
or fearing the thread of my life had come loose,
I picked up the book.

The dark was quiet.
Expectationless.
And I trusted sleep would find me when it was time.

I think I will miss it tomorrow.
The novel has been my pause between rest.
A pause that mattered.
Because the book itself is about that pause.
The time between losing and finding ourselves again.
The years between love and love-again.
The heartbreaks that arrive
even in the spaces where we’re supposed to feel whole.

I believe it’s our job to wear ourselves out at night.
To parent ourselves as much as any child.
And this is not easy for me.
I like being taken care of.
Maybe too much.
A parent wound, maybe.
Trauma, probably.
Still, my work.

Even after a year at home,
family around me,
I have learned
they can only carry so much of what belongs to me.
Coming home is a bridge, not a surrender.
Precious, but never permanent.

I have said before: I am scared of the dark.
Seattle, sleepless on a sofa,
watching the door,
afraid of tomorrow,
afraid of rest.
New York, sleepless in decadence,
dancing away the grind,
a different kind of fear.
Now, my window cracked,
the night hums differently.
Not menace.
Invitation.

The gurus say
sleep this many hours or ruin yourself.
Maybe.
But the deeper truth is the system.
A world where no nap is allowed.
No pause is forgiven.
Not everywhere is like this.
Not every place forbids us to listen to the body.
In the quiet, I’ve found another kind of health.

To read this story—
a young man, an older man,
love that others might call off-putting—
was to remember my own body.
My own story.
Queerness lives in pauses.
In unconventional timelines.
In longing and return.
In the want for more,
and the want for what was.
Romance is timeless.

I lost sleep reading.
But I gained something steadier.
A comfort: I am not alone.
And a reminder: be true to yourself.
Even in the pause.
Especially there.