Why Teenagers Don't Want To Wake Up In The Morning

I would be fine alone.
And I was.
Until the morning. When, only half awake, I tried to think why I was alone in the bed. There was a leaden feeling. It was the same leaden feeling with which I woke on mornings after John and I had fought. Had we had a fight? What about, how had it started, how could we fix it if I could not remember how it started?
Then I remembered.
For several weeks that would be the way I woke to the day.
-The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I love sleeping more than practically anything else in the world. Maybe it's because I'm going through a staying-up-late-sleep-deprived phase that puts me in a constant state of tiredness, making sleep a precious commodity that I crave more of, always. Forget parties or concerts or running around the city at all hours of the night, acting twice my age- I’d much rather go home and take a nap, any day. This makes me sound incredibly lazy, but that’s really not what it’s about. Sleep lets me run away in my thoughts or from my thoughts. When I'm up at 4AM for the 5th time that week, completing a project that should have been done months ago, or waiting to see a TV show late at night, what keeps me going is the wonderful thought of how I will, eventually, be able to lay down my head, slip under the blankets, curl up into a ball, and fall fast asleep. The covers are always soft and safe and every line in my brain or heart is blurred and smudged. I’m in my own little unconscious world, unaware of anything happening around me or inside of me. It's this peaceful, carefree sensation that beats every feeling in the universe.
I can't be touched.

Until I wake up.
And the covers get pulled back.
And my mind slowly sharpens.
And everything comes crashing down.

Like Joan Didion-- when her husband dies and every morning she wakes up and that hard truth dawns on her once again. Every morning the covers are pulled back and her mind sharpens and she digs through her brain to remember everything that breaks routine, everything unnatural, everything that her unconscious, carefree self would never fathom- like John dying.

And the feeling that comes every time that that happens is unbearable-- the forgetting and remembering of the things that hurt the most. Because it's said that everything heals with time, all pain lessens as the hours and days and weeks pass. But how will anything heal if every morning is a fresh realization? How will the pain ever fade if you are hit each day with the initial shock of the very first time that it happened?

That's what I found most heartbreaking about this book- the way Joan would momentarily forget whether it was from falling asleep or just time starting to wear away the truth. Then she would wake up or see something that jolted her memory and it would all come rushing back in a second and she would have to face it all over again. It was as if each time this happened to her, every ounce of progress she had made was erased or forgotten and it was "back to the drawing board". Throughout the book, I was terrified for a character that I'd come to love so dearly because it seemed like she would never be OK, she would never feel OK when it was always "one step forward and two steps back".

Recent events of my life and just the fact that I'm fourteen has left a distance between my mother and I. It's hit like a meteor, practically over night, splitting the earth in half, leaving me on one side, and her on the other. What I laughed at and couldn't seem to understand as a little girl, what I swore would never happen, has happened. My mom and I have lost our relationship. I can’t handle her and she can’t handle me and neither of us know how to say that. Maybe it’s a phase, or maybe it’s forever. But, whatever it is, it’s here. The other day, when I could hear her steady breath and low snores from the next room over- when I was sure that she was sound asleep, I crept into her room to say goodnight. I used to do that every night. I used to kiss her cheek and she would pull me down for a hug and say something along the lines of "goodnight" and "I love you, beautiful girl" and "I'll see you in the morning". But I haven't kissed her cheek in weeks and I can't even remember the last time we've hugged.

I tiptoed to her side of the bed and leaned down and whispered goodnight and when she stirred, I expected tears or emotional ranting or a confused stare- all that seems to define our strange relationship lately- something I'd bite my lip at and awkwardly stalk off, not knowing quite what to say or do. But she looked up at me with the ocean blue eyes that stood out when she wore grey, the eyes that I’ve always envied, and they were tight and squinted like someone who had been staring at the sun for too long- slightly confused, but at the same time like she’d been expecting me. A slight smile played across her face- only one corner of her mouth turned up, sending ripples across that cheek. Then she closed her eyes again but kept the smile, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen back asleep.

Then I heard a whisper come of “goodnight” and “I love you” and “my beautiful girl”, in the same, ordinary way that it always used to. And for that moment, it felt like we were one of those pairs of mother and daughter who had a relationship again. Like what were before, like things had never changed. Like the days from years ago of sleeping curled beside her and cuddling and my imaginary rule of being safe from anything as long as she was there had never ended. Like we'd fixed it all or maybe just rewound.

Then I snapped out of my thoughts and looked down at her and remembered that she was half asleep- that she was having a barely-conscious moment. The kind where you wake up and for a minute, you forget what has happened- what life-changing thing has happened, or you forget that you’re supposed to be upset about something or angry at someone. And so, for a moment, you act like it’s not there, because for that second, it isn’t, not for you. And suddenly, I knew that she’d wake up the next morning and never remember this at all. And that things would go back to how they were- emotional and teary and frustrating- free of half smiles and squinting eyes. It would be like it had never happened.

I realized that just like Joan Didion, she would wake up the next morning and forget everything that has come between us over the past few months. She'd forget because the non-existant bond that we now have is completely irrational- it's something that no one could fabricate or imagine in a perfect state of sleeping. So, she'd forget, even if only for a split second and maybe start to call me in for an opinion or just to ask the time, before she remembered the unspoken rule telling her that she couldn't do that. It would come crashing down- the truth- and standing over my mom, looking at her ignorant-seeming blissful face was like staring into the sweet eyes of a small child that I knew would be hurt and I couldn't do anything about it, I couldn't even warn them-- I could only stand and watch it happen. And that was almost more painful than being the "Joan Didion", being the one to have the realization all over again time and time again, the one who has to pull back the covers and sharpen their mind, the one whose pain seems like it will drag on forever. Because watching pain can be harder than feeling it and on the outside looking in is an impossible position.