I have never been a morning person.
Ever.
Perhaps it is because I am habitually a night owl - often only starting projects late in the day when my brain settles, or because I am easily distracted far into the night by a good book that pulls me in and holds me away from sleep, but I have never been a morning person.
This is odd, because I do enjoy breakfast. I like pancakes. Waffles. Bacon. Or maybe I just like brunch, and sharing those things with friends. I also enjoy the silence that mornings can offer, and the first few rays of sunshine creeping between the trees, and burning off the low fog that still lingers on the ground like a blanket. A private time when you are alone with the sun and the birds, and together watch the world waking up. It is a feeling like a secret shared. I treasure these things, but perhaps I hold on to those moments because they are so rare that I do not take their joys for granted.
Mornings have only gotten tougher with age. It isn't just rousing oneself to get up from the enveloping comfort of sheets that have moulded themselves to your person in the night. It isn't about having to leave all that to go somewhere undesirable, such as school, or church, or work. These are all things that can be endured, and must be accepted. Some of them can even be anticipated, and looked forward to.
Waking up hurts.
My body has had eight hours unsupervised to fall apart. Eight hours for allergies to inflame respiratory tissues, and for them to become clogged with mucous. Eight hours for wrecked sinuses to release too much moisture and become desiccated, drying and cracking to weep blood that will run down the back of my throat. Eight hours for the barometric pressure to change suddenly, and for those same sinuses and the fissures in my skull to fail to adapt, straining my cranium like a balloon to burst.
Any one of these things can make entering the waking world an effort of pushing through surgical gauze; the memory of anesthesia that does not quite hide the pain - and does nothing to prevent foreknowledge of pain to come. You bury your head in the pillows, and pray for the absence of clarity, because full awareness will bring a sharp appreciation of the stabbing lances between your eyes, or the dull grinding that rolls around beneath those orbs, or the throbbing inflammation that makes your teeth feel loose in their sockets.
Any one of those things - and they never come alone in the night. They always bring a friend.
But you get up. You fight through it. You have to. Your glassy eyes stare at the world, and you cling desperately to bottles of decongestant and Advil, hoping that the medicine kicks in soon enough to relieve some of your symptoms. Your glasses may be on, but you are still looking at the world through a bleary haze. Your throat and eyeballs are a desert, and you cannot focus. The swelling has thrown off your sense of equilibrium and balance, and you stagger. Every beam of sunlight that once seemed your friend holds a dagger that pierces beyond the eyeball to your brain.
And you have to drive to work.
Now.
You do not hate those for whom waking up is easy, but you do wish that they understood. You wish that every morning you woke up was as peaceful or easy as those few you shared with the rooster, and you envy those for which every morning's awareness is not a fight. Those for whom the peaceful magic of dawn is so commonplace that they can hardly appreciate it for the wonder.
In the meantime, there is coffee. It does nothing for the pain, but it does alleviate some of the symptoms, and its method of action is faster in the system than the ibuprofen or pseudoephedrine. It is enough, and it must be enough, because it is all you have left to try before you must rush out the door pretend to be a human being until the other medications kick in.
Today, I offer entertainment. They asked me if I wanted to keep my 
