As soon as I heard those blasted birds enjoying the newly risen sun, I knew that I had just pulled an all-nighter.

It’s a sorrowing feeling.

Exhaustion. Exhaustion that you know you cannot get rid of quite yet, because you are going to have to keep on pushing forward, to hand in those pieces of work that has caused you this stress and pain.

Still in yesterday’s clothes, you know that you will be traveling to university, envious of all the fresh faced commuters who had a good night sleep. You know that you will have to ignore the staring at your bags and circles under your eyes. The disgusted sneering from an unwashed body of over 24 hours.

You know you will be looking around, trying to catch someone’s eye. Someone who may be thinking ‘oh I know what you are going through, well done my friend’, and will offer a sympathetic smile. But it never comes.

You will sluggishly walk to uni, clutching your nemesis in your hand.

One by one, other students drag themselves in, like a line of zombies. You turn to each other, you give questioning looks. You will analyse them. You will look at the state of their face, their hair with the life of its own and you will turn your face away from the god-awful smell… and the sympathetic smile will come.

You will find that you are not alone.

You will hand in your work. The tutors will make sarcastic comments about how much sleep you had. They will make you stay in until the end of the day. All the while, you will try to keep your eye lids open and your body will go through the same reactions to a hard night drinking.

Class will end and you will drag yourself home.

Your hands will shake as you try to put the key into your front door.

You find your bedroom, and you thank God that you have made it this far.

Opening your bedroom door, you look inside and gasp with such pain and sorrow.

Using all the strength you have, you will slowly push everything to one side and curl up into a little ball on the bit of bed space you have.

And you will finally sleep.