The only real advantage of jet lag is passing out at inconvenient times. I make a habit of it to remedy my self-imposed insomnia. Most nights, I’m too good at pushing off the inevitable and delaying my bedtime to three, four, five. The consequence of this treatment is inevitable as well: you find yourself lying awake at midnight after a 5-hour nap with no likelihood of drifting back. I am in that position now.

That’s why I decided to daydrink at 4 a.m.

But I swear I’m not an alcoholic, definitely not enough of one to compete with my friends. Something about it just feels right at this hour, with an ASMR video playing in the background. It’s like being in the air. As champagne bubbles mix with the engine's low murmur, a drink suitably named nostalgia is passed down the aisle. No signal, no messages, only the company of strangers and songs of space. The mind loosens at that height, drifts toward a fragile and painful clarity. Skims over the past and dips into questions about the meaning of this journey. At cruising altitude, those “I Miss You, I’m Sorry” pour out, as notes or tears or whatnot.

Newark to Los Angeles, Hong Kong to San Francisco, Helsinki to Doha — after a while, my thoughts start to blur. But I remember my quiet prayers in that sky-high sanctuary, that church for us atheists, where we come closest to the stars and those who’ve left us. I pray we stay steady, godspeed; that the moon rises all the same; that the whispering voice I haven’t lost, not yet, still echoes in me.

I repent for not being a good kid, for breaking my own accords, for keeping too many secrets. Funny I haven’t yet exploded, given all these quiet betrayals of myself. I say who am I without tears, but the truth is, I’m not really sad about anything. I love trauma but can’t recall any. I go insane when no one’s looking, but I’m quick to judge those who do it out loud. I crave gossip but hate to be a prying bitch. I always self-deprecate yet bristle at a slight.

Dissolute yet righteous. Humble, but self-absorbed. Ambitious, yet somehow indifferent. Innocent and perverted. Hedonistic and measured. Thoughtful and still willfully blind. Gregarious and inarticulate. I’m a utilitarian at heart but still delusional. It’s no small feat, this vanity without the look of vanity. That hard work smoothed over by illusions of ease. How long before the ticking turns into boom?

See, but the trick is, you weren't supposed to know. Forget about the bomb, ignore the ticking. Trust everything I say, and trust nothing. To quote and unquote Taylor Swift, “the greatest of luxuries is your secrets.” I’d agree — in this fourth drink’s haze, I have to confess that despite warnings, I am fond of duplicity. I parcel myself out, layer by layer, to whomever I choose, because it’s safe that way. If so many things can be said about me, then what am I? Only I clutch the keys to this paradox. Stretching across extremes creates plausible deniability. Leading double lives, well, according to Oscar Wilde, is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

After all, we define ourselves in opposition, not in concordance. What is life without a bit of death, what is success without a bit of challenge, what is harmony without a bit of chaos? What is certainty if it’s never been shaken by doubt? I think of when Dean Lawrence addresses the college of cardinals in Robert Harris’s Conclave, he speaks of a faith that walks hand in hand with doubt. “If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”

To believe is a choice under uncertainty. To be duplicitous is to be uncertain. That’s the line I walk. A paradox that gives the world an opportunity to leap. To scream. Believe. A paradox that gives me space to change course. To rebel against society as well as myself. A second way, or third way. A chance to be undone, to adapt, to become. The gift of exponentiality. To be reborn.

My AP Spanish teacher used to have vertigo in class. I didn’t understand how it felt back then. I do now. It’s a stinging sensation that my eyeballs are about to pop out of my head. Fittingly describing that strange desire and peculiar blur in the aftermath of carousing.

If I were wise, I would stop right now because, as my friend tells me, no one besides us romanticizes the suffering. “To them, we’re just suffering.” But vertigo has a sweetness too — the process of piecing together fragments and retrieving bits of memory is kind of fun. Whatever the hell happened last night? Why were people crying outside the bathroom, and why was I washing my head in the sink. I wake up to a cryptic snap on my public story, accidentally posted: my face drowning in gibberish set in Gothic Old English. A secret that keeps even myself guessing.

That’s the mystery, one which commands power, commands interest, and commands faith. You need opposites to exist in you so that your next move makes the mirror strange again. In each moment defying logic you thought you knew, life unfolds more sharply. I don’t know. But I think of that man, the one in the oversized faux-fur coat and purple baseball cap jumping off at Harlem-125th Street. The conductor screams “stand clear, doors are closing.”

Then my phone vibrates, and I see it: 100%.