By 3:00 AM, studying slowed to a sluggish pace. I was beat; I was exhausted. I was burnt out by so much more than the pages of Greek paradigms in front of me. Anthropos, Anthropou, Anthro- who even gives a fuck? I wanted nothing more than to be done and out, but a tacit obligation to the building held me in. The speed of the clock failed to draw morning any closer, obscuring my freedom. And yet the only thing awaiting me outside the dewy glass doors was a Greek exam I was destined to fail, squarely on the grounds that I had not cared. My all-nighters in Clemons Library were ritual (I’m hesitant to lump it in with the mundaneity of the average all-nighter; it possessed a remarkable singularity). The experience was unattainable in any other setting. Entering the library right as the masses begins to exit, settling down at a study carrel, smacking my laptop on the desk, and the awareness of the entire night in front of me: it spoke to me. Was the sleep deprivation desirable? Almost certainly not. Would it have been preferable to have been an even remotely competent student throughout the semester? Absolutely. But it didn’t really matter; I’m a creature of habit. Focusing, planning, getting shit done; none of which being my specialties. Hard to do when my mind is racing faster than my professor is talking and my anxiety is feeding me thoughts that are sure as hell more pressing than the optative form in ancient Greek. But these nights were different; something in the air gave me a chance. So sure, I may have been disadvantaged from the start, but the glow of the lights, the field trips to the vending machines, and the slowly shifting gradient of light flooding through the windows coalesced to motivate. These nights carried me through the end of my first year, floating me out with something to salvage.

Returning to school this past fall, I couldn’t wait to academically reset and wallow in the freedom of college life again. The summer had put the worst of my torment behind me, and I knew that my time had come. My hopes for escape, though, were illusory, and the nightshift found me again. The anxiety, the constant pulling of attention, the impulsive drive drawing me to instant gratification: I was too broken to break out. Entering the library in the late evening, as I usually did, I staked my spot and hunkered down. Good work was done, great work was not, but the thrill got to me as strong as ever. I felt a reclamation of my flow, a restoration of my path to success. Only an unwelcome announcement from the overhead pulled me out. 1:30 AM? Clem closing soon? Nope, silly, that can’t be right. A quick Google search was all it took. No longer was my collegiate temple a 24 hour establishment. My fortress of solitude could no longer protect me. I was left alone and cold in the night. The Clem all-nighter was terminally flawed, but it was core to my who I was at the university. It not only allowed me to rule my own time, but provided me with a space to gain control over the accelerating runaway train that was my life. It was a time all for me, and for me alone. The freedom to be on my own schedule, to do my work in the manner of my choosing, to take respite from the constant internal turmoil: it all slipped out of my hands with no warning. The 3:00 AM stacks were far from crowded, but the cult of Clem was much bigger than me. I knew for a fact that I was far from being the sole victim. How could this experience, which was so integral to my identity as a student, and a person, disappear with no trace? While denial took its time with me, acceptance ultimately prevailed. No longer could I rely on what had become my unwavering rock. A shift so minor would alter my condition so drastically.

In the aftermath of this loss, responsibility has been shoved down my throat. I simply could not afford to delay my academic efforts any more. I began to visit the library during the day, I was diagnosed and treated with ADHD, I let other (perhaps more frivolous) aspects of my life fall behind as my imminent priorities were forced to shift. Things began to fall into place, even as I felt my mind begin to change and my life begin to morph. From an outsider looking in, it’s hard to say that my life didn’t improve; that a more sustainable solution to my uncontrollable procrastination hadn’t been found. Yet the spontaneity and liberty of 24-hour Clem functioned as much more than a band-aid slapped onto my executive functioning issues. It was a rite which reconnected me with the why; why I cared about school, why I cared about my future, and of course, why I cared about sleep. It reminded me to remain in love with living inside the world around me, watching day become night and day once again before my eyes; a changing of the guards. Exiting the library, entering into the burgeoning sunlight as the rest of the University awakes from their slumber, bird song flowing into my ears, and seeing the paths and sidewalks begin to fill, it all served as a sort of process of renewal for me, a temporal baptism that kept me in check and primed me for the stress of the morning.

The closest I can come to describing my relationship to these lost moments is grief. I’m well aware that the full force of those moments is locked away from me forever. The library will never be open for 24 hours so long as I am a student at this institution. And even if it did, I’m not the same person who was in the library, because I’ve been forced to live in the wake of it. And as much as I loved it, I can’t say that I would love it now. To lose it is to lose a part of myself, but if that part of myself is truly gone, then who is really missing the library? As I work and as I improve, as I change and as I grow, whether it’s of my own volition or because of budget cuts at the University, I can’t be what I was, as much as I relished in it. I’m not all too sure if I’m grieving the library, I’m grieving the way it made me feel, or if I’m grieving the person I was in the library. That person died in the library. He died as I became genuinely happier with the circumstances of my life. He died when I went on Adderall. I miss him, but I don’t regret that he was killed. I miss the fluttering of my tired eyes as they flit across a poorly scanned PDF file at 3:00 AM in the library, but I don’t regret that I’m fast asleep now instead. I miss him, but to be completely honest I don’t.