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.