The insomnia hotline: two sleepless people, ten years of company

My friendship with Lao Xu started with a social media post at three in the morning.

Ten years ago, on some night around three, I was so sleepless I was coming apart, and I posted: "Another night with my eyes open till dawn." Three minutes later a college classmate I barely knew commented: "I'm not asleep either. Want to talk?" That was Lao Xu.

We talked until six. About how awful insomnia is, about our jobs, until the sky outside went pale and the birds started, and we told each other "let's try to sleep tonight," then went off to wash and go to work. The strange thing was that after talking I wasn't tired. I felt light. The terror of insomnia is not the not sleeping. It is the loneliness of the whole world asleep and only you awake. That night someone was awake with me.

From then on we had an unwritten insomnia hotline. Whoever couldn't sleep sent a message in the middle of the night; if the other was online, they talked.

In ten years the frequency varied. In my anxious years we talked three or four times a week. In his good years, not once a month. But across ten years, several hundred nights, we talked through each other's lives: his marriage crisis was my three a.m., my career upheaval was his two a.m. We also worked out the insomniac's timetable. One a.m. is grievance. Three a.m. is despair. Five a.m. is surrender. The people still awake at five are saying things like "maybe this is just how my life is," and that is when company matters most. You have to pull them out of that thought.

Lao Xu pulled me out once, and I still remember what he said. The year my father was critically ill I sent him "can't sleep" at some hour. He answered at once, listened to me ramble about my father for two hours, and then said: "Your father raised you. You are at his bedside doing your duty. That is the biggest thing there is. What is insomnia next to that? Insomnia means you care. Only people who care earn the right to be awake." After that I slept, in a hospital corridor, the deepest sleep I had in that whole period.

The hotline never cured anyone's insomnia. It cured a different illness: the illusion, at three in the morning, that you are carrying it alone. With someone else awake, the dark is half as long.

Did we meet, in ten years? Yes. Seven or eight times, always in daylight, always like old friends. But we both admit the real scene of the friendship is at three in the morning. In daylight you talk about how things are going. At three you talk about your life. He has seen me at my most wretched; I have seen all of his weakness. And we have an understanding: never mention it in daylight. What is said at three expires at sunrise. "We cover for each other at night. In the day we keep our dignity."

The hotline has had a relay. Two years ago Lao Xu was diagnosed with depression and started treatment, and his nights got lower. For six months the line became me checking in one way only: every other night, one line, "asleep?" And whether he was or not, he answered with three characters: "Replied to you." That was our code for "I'm here." He has recovered now, and the line runs both ways again.

Last year my daughter was born. I put her to sleep at night, and sometimes at three I sit staring at nothing. Lao Xu heard about it and sent one message: "The hotline is always open. But you have a more important three a.m. assignment than us now — take care of the small one first." I laughed. My three a.m. belongs to bottles and the crib now. But I know that at the other end of that line there is always a phone that never turns off.