I am surrounded by barking dogs.
It’s not the most pleasant sound to wake up to – rather aggressive, actually – but that’s why I chose it. It’s the only alarm tone that’s loud enough to pull me out of the seductive embrace of sleep. I resent the chorus of howls each time I open my eyes in the morning, but the tone remains because I’m a sleepy brand rep of masochism and unfortunately, responsibilities await, as prompt and annoying as my barking alarm.
I reach over to the nightstand where my cell phone whines. The screen lights up, greeting me with a wake-up message that I found funny once upon a time; now it’s just tasteless and somewhat offensive, but I’ve never changed it. I don’t know why.
“Wake up, bitch.”
What the hell is that? I assume that my 18-year-old self tried to evoke humor in the early hour, but it’s not funny and I’m annoyed. It’s the equivalent of a friendly slap to the face, a reminder that I’m an angsty, edgy teen and should act as such. Waking up in the morning isn’t exactly my forte and could, if personified, very easily be my mortal enemy. My shitty four-year-old jokes certainly don’t help.
I dismiss the message with a sigh, feeling like a jaded old woman. Not even memes about The Cask of Amontillado can comfort me right now, largely because I’m too tired to do the mental legwork required to understand them.
Why is this so difficult? When did “college student” become synonymous with “tired and lethargic”? I mean really, there’s nothing like senior thesis, media theory, and the general burden of Existence to grant you some pharmaceutical-grade lethargy. It’s a fate I want to unsubscribe from.
The education is supposed to be worth it, and it is; living as an academic for four-ish years and interacting with my pre-college peers (with whom I now have nothing in common) makes the distinction obvious. I’ve learned far more than I can even recognize, probably, because my life has been so drastically altered within the last 47 months that I am nigh on unrecognizable compared to my 18-year-old self.
With the exception of my morning alarm, apparently.
But while these changes are welcome and I’ve become the sort of person that I’m happy to be, in the process, I lost part of myself. I don’t remember what it’s like to do things without planning, like embarking on impromptu trips with friends, or how it felt to jump out of an airplane.
God, I don’t even know why I decided to jump out of an airplane in the first place. It feels too dangerous, too spontaneous. Am I getting old?
I’ve grown to worry about simple things. The stressors of everyday are too much, graduation is too far, and my exhaustion prohibits me from enjoying the pachyderm dignity of a college degree. I’m not alone in this, I’m sure.
The bottom line is this: I’m tired of being tired. Here I am, stuck in my bed like lint on a sweater, browsing my life away on Twitter as if I don’t have better things to do. The exhaustion that pervades my very being will one day take over and I’ll end up missing out on the joyous mundanity of the everyday. I’ll be like Adam Sandler in Click, except instead of a universal remote, I’m just addicted to social media. And sleeping.
I’ve replaced my more adventurous interests with material, insubstantial things, traded nights out for nights in. I really, really need to get up, lest I end up stuck in a spiral and wake up 50 years from now as a crone with arthritis from too much swiping on my smartphone.
Of this, I am afraid.
And why? It’s sort of pretty and poetic, as a concept. I’m tired, distracted, and so I am afraid. I’m afraid of missing out because I am so tired; in my free time, rather than doing “physical” or creative things, I instead absorb information via memes on Twitter. What does this mean for the future of my interests, my hobbies? I’m a sort of one trick pony that can identify Pepe the frog in less than a nanosecond, but I don’t know how to do anything else.
I want to try new things again. I should.
Remaining in a sort of stasis is my own doing. I allowed myself to be sucked into a routine, to forget what spontaneity feels like. This sort of acceptance only feeds the decline of the person I once was.
I need to get out of bed.
