2.6.23 // Used to Love the Morning

I used to love the morning.
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The simplicity of it.
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Waking up with stardust in my eyes, the sunshine streaming through the window, the sky glowing in the distance.
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Basking in the linen sheets that held me in her warm embrace. Scout pressed against my legs, snoring softly until I stirred. She would roll over baring her golden belly to the delicate rays of warmth and beg for slow belly rubs.
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We'd lounge, loll, and wake luxuriously, always leaving time for sweet sails in the ocean of sheets. Like floating on waves, we'd daydream about the promise of a new day and what that day would bring.
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Then it shifted. Mornings changed.
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The safe ocean started to feel tumultuous. No longer were the sheets a welcome respite from the reality of the world and a commitment of security, but the sheets became a storm of unfamiliarity and subconscious discomfort.
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The mornings became dreaded, a place to wake from nightmares, to fear the day, to feel seasick at the instability that replaced calm basking and filled me instead with questions, fears, and unknowns.
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I felt as though I was being spun by each wave that crashed over my head and pulled me further out to sea like a rip current, ripping the life I knew away from me. I'd wake with less energy than the night before. Neither moving forward into my day nor going back to sleep held appeal.
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I was trapped. Somewhere between calm seas with deep breaths and the kind of storm that kills men without remorse and steals your oxygen like greed for gold.
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I was left envying the naivety my former self had for the morning. Realizing how I took for granted those simple greetings of the day. It wasn't the sheets or the glowing views, but the promise of opening my eyes again and an invitation to exist for another moment on Earth.
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That invitation never disappeared. Instead, I just saw it as cruel. But an invitation extended from the universe is the greatest kindness even amidst a storm.
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My mornings still haven't hit calm waters, and my sheets still feel suffocating at moments, but the invitation to open my eyes is like the slow respite after desperate attempts to paddle out of the storm.