Finding myself in the Absence of sleep

I can't sleep. There is something about the lack of sleep that makes me face the fact that I am a mortal being. As I watch the hands of time slowly make their way around the tired face of the clock, and into the a.m. hours, I begin to evaluate who I am, and where I am headed. It's in the absence of sleep, that I truly find myself. Seeing how I haven't slept in a while now...I've had lots of time to think. I can't say I've found anything great...which makes me sad. This year I turned 20. Such a strange feeling, it's as if I'm reaching for my future excitedly with one hand, and in the other I am clinging to my forgotten youth so tightly that my knuckles are turning white. I wish I could say that the excitement of growing up shadows the fear of getting old, but it doesn't. I am rarely this transparent...but I can't sleep, and It's in the absence of sleep that I'm truly myself.