You went to sleep early last night, but you’re still tired this morning. Unusually tired. You reset your alarm so you can sleep for an extra 30 minutes. As if that’s ever helped. When you rise to start your day you’re disorientated. You can’t find your glasses. Oh well, you’ll deal with that later. You jump in the shower and start your routine. Programmed to maneuver and operate with eyes closed, you feel for the shampoo. It slides through your finger tips and lands on your toe. But there is no registration of the pain that you should be feeling. Not to mention, you lack the energy to react to the pain, had you felt it. At that moment you realize the day is going to be abnormal.

You’re not hungry but you manage to eat breakfast. You drink a Red Bull, your first smile of the day. You drive to the metro, blinking quickly to keep your eyes attentive and to stay awake. You sing along to the song blasting through the speakers, your first words of the day, muffled, broken, and raspy. You clear your throat and give your first words a second chance. You arrive at the metro and abandon your car for a crowded electric train. You pray they have the air conditioning in your train car maxed. You take a seat and turn up the volume on your mp3 player; loud enough to keep you awake but not so much as to annoy those beside you. You zone out. The train pulls into a transfer station; you switch trains; you zone back out.

At your final destination you trip going up the escalator. As you approach the office you run through, in your head, how you just tripped going up an escalator. You’re awesome. "Today is awesome," you proclaim, sarcastically. You flash your metro card instead of your I.D. badge to the security guard, who gives you a confused look, as you walk in the building. You are embarrassed. Awesome. You wonder how many more “awesome” things you’ll do today. You sit at your desk and work officially begins; you keep your eyes on the clock. The Red Bull, which never really felt like it took effect, begins to leave you feeling painfully tired. Time slows down, you drink a 32oz diet Pepsi in hopes that the magical caffeine will speed time back up. It makes you go to the bathroom more often. The only noticeable thing you can feel is the soreness in your legs, from time spent in the gym, as you make your way to the bathroom and back. You would kill to have caffeine do something for you. KILL.

You take an early lunch in hopes that the food brings you out of your slump. You order a club sandwich. The ham, turkey, roast beef, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise slice their way through your misery with their gloriousness. You’re full. Too full. Your heart sinks. Not just drowning in the mayonnaise, it’s hurt because you want to take a nap, and you can’t. Because you always want to take a nap. Because, you’re always tired.

Fading in and out, you go back to using the mp3 player. Two songs later it turns off. Is the battery dead? It can’t be. You attempt to turn it back on. It’s dead. You must have forgotten to charge it. Awesome. Two hundred and forty minutes to go and you get to watch each and every one of them happen in slow-motion. You wish you could close your eyes and make the time disappear (and no doubt you could, you’d be asleep in seconds) but there would be consequences for passing out on the keyboard. Not just the drooling or the key imprints on your face, but possible job-losing-consequences. If only you had charged your mp3 player. If only caffeine would affect you.

If only.