I'm not a morning person. That much has been true since I was about twelve. To be perfectly honest I have yet to find an activity that begins with me being awakened by a roaring alarm clock to be any better than the ability to preform said action when better rested. and still every single job I have ever held has required me to awake well before a time life was ever meant to exist. the following are just a few examples of moments I have found myself in attempting to function in the impossibility of the early morning.

At one point in my life , working as an RA, I was awakened at two in the morning to the "flight of the bumble-bee" ring tone that had been selected for the emergency number of my hall. having been asleep for barely an hour and a half, I was not in the best of moods. upon answering the phone I was informed that a cadre of individuals had been caught smoking weed in the building where we lived, and now I was required to leave the sublime comfort of my own bed for the active lifestyle of speaking to the police, about criminal activities. for the next three and a half hours of work, I would be standing in a three foot wide hall way listening to a young individual to high to function trying to talk his way out of being arrested. The true difficulty in this situation was not in the fact that I had to be awake, but that I had to listen to this insolent fop stretch the boundaries of his clearly limited imagination in a vain attempt to keep himself out of hand cuffs. perhaps most ironic in this situation, if he had simply come clean and admitted to what was painfully obvious to the rest of us, we would have been able to skip the whole process, and only would have been on scene for about half an hour. As it was, three hours after I was so rudely thrust into the rather aptly named "morning" (as I was morning my massive loss of sleep) I was still standing at the front desk of the hall filling out paperwork. I hate mornings for a reason.

Another moment that always happens in the mornings is a much darker realization. Though a morning may be the beginning to a new day, it will always bear evidence of the previous night. For the past three years I have driven to work the morning after high school graduation. standing as a mute testament to the activities of the past night are several car wrecks, holding proof that some students would not be enjoying the fullness of life. these are mornings where I not only regret the fact that I will be among the first to rise, but also among the first to realize that in the course of the day many people might die, and yet there is still very little that can be done to prevent that.

And for one more lasting fact that I am not at all a morning person, I leave you with the fact that no matter what condition you find your self in when entering into slumber at the end of the night, you will find yourself in a far worse one the following morning. If you go to bed drunk, you will wake up with a hangover. If you go to bed looking good, you will wake up looking bad. If you fall asleep at a frat party, you will wake up the following morning covered in sharpie marks. there is no good way to greet the true horror which is morning, but every morning I wake up and find myself once again facing that particular demon.

Sentenced to Life

I was born. Quite simply at the beginning of my life I had nothing, no dreams, no expectations, I was too young to know hate, love, passion or pain. In the first few seconds of my life, before I even knew the sound of my own name, there was a definite naivety to my life; I knew nothing and expected nothing, my unformed mind took more interest in sounds I could not comprehend and shapes that were undefined. My life began and in the fashion of so many great men before me; I cried when I realized how truly terrifying this world is.

At seconds old, without my consent knowledge or opinion, I was named. That name would stay with me until the end of time. It would be printed on my birth certificate, my high school diploma, and every paycheck I would ever earn. So in hindsight, I consider it incredibly unfair that I was not allowed to choose my own name. And so it was that I would carry a name of another’s choosing, in a life that was to be lived in a manner of my choosing.

In my life I would witness things I would never and could never understand. I would watch the fears of a few men dictate the lives of many, the choices of fools outweighing the minds of experienced men, and the power that something as irrational as emotions inspire things in men and women of true beauty and substance. My life would be long enough for me to live, and even at seconds old I would be in the fullest of my sense on my own to achieve what I would in life.

Though too young to grasp any concept of a legal system, I was suddenly bound by one of the greatest punishments that has ever existed. Being sentenced to life means that for the remainder of an individual’s life, they will remain incarcerated in a prison of some form until the moment that their heart stops beating. As my heart was now beating, I was forced to accept that I was imprisoned on this world, and would be until the moment that it came to an end. I would be sentenced to life in the fact that I would be forced to create my own life, build my own future, and be my own man. And so I start my life, come what may, I have started it, and I will finish it; I am sentenced to life.