Good morning

Morning sidles itself next to my coffee cup. I'd say it's early (5:48 AM) but for a morning person, it's an average time. I've always been a morning person. Even as a teenager, that time when one's adolescent nature is traditionally fighting the alarm clock, I found myself rising before the sunlight. Often it seems as if I am the only morning person in the world. I step out for a cigarette and all the lights around me are hushed, save the occasional graveyard shift worker pulling home into the parking lot. My significant other, working graveyard, is either away or else asleep.

It is quiet in these hours. Peaceful. The only time I've ever found reliable enough to order my day. To write. To carve out some empty space from the dreams that circle my sleep.

As someone who struggles with anxiety, my mind is structured differently. There are disconnected, fraying wires, patched together through a battalion of medication that keep the internal dialogue calm enough to dissect. I require a lot of quiet time. Moreso than perhaps the average person. It drives my loved ones mad. Who wants to simply sit in silence while you write endlessly without speaking, without looking up? It is still imperative.

So I try to be kind to them and set the lion's share of quiet time in the mornings, when they are already not present. As I am already naturally awake at these hours, needing no alarm clock other than my own need for nicotine and hushed moments, that time becomes the morning. And so it is morning now.

Good morning.