There are "ultra-introverts" who live solitary lives during the night and sleep in the day so they don't have to deal with other people. They shop in 24-hour supermarkets at 3 am and experience an "exquisite, profound solitude; of relief; of escape," says Faith Hill in The Atlantic.
Some find the inconveniences and health risks to be acceptable trade-offs for a lifestyle that they say has made them immeasurably happier. "There's a sense of timelessness," I heard from one woman who asked not to be named, not wanting to insult people she'd spent time with before going nocturnal. "It feels like you're in a free-floating abyss." The night gives you freedom—from expectations, from obligations, and from distractions. It allows you to just be. "The daytime forces all these identity possibilities on you," Rufus told me. "The nighttime, with its silence and its darkness and its solitude, helps you settle more into who you really are."
