Step 1: You wake up. Before even rubbing the sleep from your eyes, the absolute first thing you do is to play Solitaire on your phone.
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You do this for a number of reasons. First, you are actually physically addicted. Second, it postpones that moment of having to drag yourself out of bed and somehow accept that yet again, you feel unrefreshed, groggy, achy, tired, annoyed, devoid of energy, angry at the world and pretty much every other general form of discontent. Third, winning a game predicated on being alone reminds you that even if everything else in your life blows, at least you are a Solitaire triple black belt master of the universe.
Step 2:
Sit up, peering through your blinds at the sun like a Hollywood vampire, curious but ultimately afraid of the diamondlike sparkling effects it will have on your private parts. Outside, on the street below, you spot a group of the normal happy people, basking in its glow like today is the BEST DAY OF THEIR LIVES, even though it more than likely isn't even close. "These fuckers don't wake up feeling like they are dead every morning," you think to yourself with just a slight touch of bitterness. Try very hard to control your saliva—your spitting reflex—as a perfect-looking man and his perfect-looking wife in their perfect-looking silver convertible speed by in a wave of carefree glitter. It is with this momentary hostility that you make yourself open the blinds.
Step 3:
With the sudden influx of light, you are now made aware of your surroundings. Did someone burgle you in the middle of the night? Did you accidentally go home with an alcoholic starving-artist junkie sex fiend? Or is this merely the reality of a life devoid of energy, that indeed it is way past time you asked for help, and you really do need someone to take care of you?
Drawers fall open like gaping mouths, wishing to be shut but spilling all manner of items out, disgorging the current contents of your life into the whirlwind mess of baggage that was already there. Glasses with assorted colored liquids at various stages of being consumed litter the room—floors, shelves, desk and windowpanes—growing out of surfaces like rare jungle plants, as filthy dishes dot the landscape, their old detritus now serving merely to keep the stacks of plates and bowls glued together like bricks and mortar. Leaning precariously on the edge of the desk is the half eaten box of digestive cookies, which you really don't like very much, but they say "VIP Club" on them in a fancy scroll, subconsciously making you feel special and worthwhile despite all evidence to the contrary. Piles of books and papers, laid out in intricately organized stacks like the foundations for some leaning tower of useless knowledge, intermingle with masses of clothes—mostly dirty, some clean, but generally hard to distinguish from one another. A straggly plant on the windowsill looks as if it's trying to grow legs and walk away from you.
Step 4:
It is now noon. Somehow you woke up an hour and a half ago, but are really only becoming informed that you are awake at this very moment, enticed as you are to go back to inhabiting your far-better-than-reality dreams.
Step 5:
Psych yourself up for the momentous penultimate step. The key ingredient is coffee. You are not supposed to be drinking coffee: bad for your recovery, skin, liver, adrenals. But it gives you that extra boost of momentary energy, reminds you how you once felt and how you might someday feel again (although nothing is certain). Coffee releases endocrine-mimicking molecules that bind to your happiness receptors, temporarily dressed up like dopamine and filling that dark dark void you carry around in your spirit. While this rush is amazing, it usually only lasts 1.453 minutes, and there is no guarantee it will even occur today. Sometimes the fatigue is immune to the caffeine and you just feel a jittery tired instead of a numb tired. You suppose that despite these gloomy odds, it's still worth a try.
Step 6:
It is now the afternoon. You haven't moved. A sinking feeling arises, utter revulsion with yourself. It is like being trapped in a room with some disgusting distant relative, one you really could have gone your whole life without knowing existed. But in some tragic twist of fate, you are now forced to watch this person belch and dribble while their fat spills over their pants in lumpy rolls, quivering slightly when they let rip some type of top-secret poison gas, passing the wind specifically in your direction. You are imprisoned by some genetic altruism to sit there and listen and nod politely. In that scenario you might excuse yourself, go make a cup of tea, and take as long as possible before entering the room again. But when you loathe yourself, there is no such escape option. This person is por vida, and fuck if there is anything you can do about it but grin and bear it. In fact, it is the terrifying prospect of spending any more time stuck prone with this creature called "me, myself and I" that has finally gotten you out of bed.
