Monotony

Every day, no matter how I perfected my sleep, I always wake up feeling heavy. Others are the opposite: they try hard to sleep, but then they wake up happy. I’ve heard that to wake up happy is to sleep happy—apparently, that’s not the case for me.

People would google about how to wake up earlier or happier. It’s such a simple thing yet hard to do. Even they search about how to breathe these days, the very familiar term “meditation” pops up in search results, and it’s often related to gratitude.

It’s interesting how we can’t seem to do simple things anymore, properly at least.

Or should I rephrase: It’s getting harder to do simple things.

Waking up is hard. Sleeping is hard. Breathing is hard.

People with anorexia find eating hard. People with insomnia find sleeping hard. People with depression find living hard. But why is it that I find them all hard even though I’m perfectly healthy, mentally and physically?

I don’t get it.

It’s not like I’m depressed, or anorexic, or insomniac—I’m just incapable of doing simple things properly and beautifully. I’m not suicidal either; in fact, I feel happy every day. Maybe not totally happy since I worry about things a lot—but that’s normal.

I sighed and smiled. “Wake up already, me!” I told myself as I slapped my cheeks. I stood up immediately and felt lightheaded for a moment, seeing these black clouds in my eyes, and after shaking my head, the darkness dissipated.

Dammit, I don’t feel hungry at all. Maybe I need to start drinking pills that’ll bolster my appetite. I went to the bathroom to pee.

You know, I think what makes morning the worst is when your bladder is full. Like you want to wake up so that you can pee the fuck out, but you can’t since you’re too lazy to wake up, and your bladder starts to hurt.

I let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. I flushed the toilet and looked into the mirror.

Whenever I look into the mirror, my gratitude weakens. All sorts of negativity start bubbling up—the longer I look at myself, the more ungrateful I am. Those peculiar eyes that can sting you worse than a bee, that nose that triggers your beauty criticism, those lips that make you wrinkle in disgust, and those ears that you don’t wanna lend.

When I looked away, negativity petered out in an instant. I went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water. Other people would spritz lemon into their water, or other people would drink coffee first thing in the morning. I never googled good morning habits. People are into self-improvement these days. It’d be no surprise if they start searching about how to drink water the proper way.

Come on. It’s just a glass of water. We’ve reached the level where we want to “breathe properly”—I’ve been breathing just fine without ever googling it.

How to walk properly. How to sit properly. How to talk to people properly. How to work out properly. How to take a shit properly. The obsession with doing things properly just creeps me the hell out. What’s happening to the world of self-improvement these days? No, I shouldn’t call it self-improvement. I should term it something else, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Anyway, I just want to foist a point on you that we’re getting weirder and weirder.

We’ve become so weird that we start searching about how to do simple things.

Are we finally evolving into different species? Are we not humans anymore?

Would the principles of life change if we were to stop becoming human?

If I say it like that, I suddenly sound stupid for some reason. There’s no use arguing about eating, sleeping, and waking. Those shouldn’t be overthought. Aliens are probably the same, too, they eat, they sleep, and they wake. All living beings.

I cooked myself a tamagoyaki. To make it, just beat a few eggs, add a touch of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sugar, then roll it up. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I forced myself to eat.

That’s right.

Ever since then, I’d forced myself to eat, sleep, and wake. Would that also mean I’m forcing myself to live? No, no. That sounds like a depressed person would say. I’m not particularly sad or anything, it has just become harder for me to do those things.

It’s like reading a story over and over and over again, and you get sick of it. You’ve seen this story a hundred times, and the beauty you saw in this story seems to pall. No, let me give you a more relatable experience: listening to a piece of music over and over and over again.

Then you switch to another music. Get sick of it, switch again.

If I were to humor you, I’d say that you got sick of your husband or wife or something, then you start cheating. But I think that’s going too far. I guess without giving any more examples, you already get my point.

But it’s funny, this realization of mine.

We’d go back to the music we’d gotten sick of, and the beauty of it livens again. Then we’d go back to our first ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend—no, of course not. Unlike music, they’re forever incompatible.

So, as an aside, should I ask you: is there such thing as living too much?

Suffice it to say that you’ve lived long enough that you’ve gotten sick of life?

Some say that old people have become much more grateful.

They start to appreciate life again.

Someday, I’ll find eating, sleeping, and waking much easier. The things I always take for granted.

Maybe if I stopped taking them for granted, I’d even enjoy them to the fullest.

After eating, I went to my room.

I looked at myself in the mirror and scrutinized every part of my face. Some say that the longer you stare at your face, the more terrifying it becomes.

But—for me.

It becomes more beautiful.