Hitting the Snooze

My entire life, I have struggled to wake up in the morning. I am a chronic snooze user. My little battery-operated digital alarm, that I have used since college, chirps its incessant beep at the designated time and I invariably hit the snooze. Four minutes later it trills again. Hit the snooze. Four minutes later…hit the snooze. Four minutes later…you get it. I have been known to hit the snooze for two hours. Two hours where I am in this weird state between sleep and wakefulness.  

I thought I was doing myself a favor hitting the snooze. More sleep is always good, right? After years of snoozing, I finally realized that on days I continually hit the snooze, I felt more tired and sluggish than when I just got up with the alarm. I’ve read that hitting the snooze can make you feel groggier, make you less productive, can negatively impact your mood, cause you to miss out on deep sleep and can throw your whole schedule out of whack.  

Do you see the analogy coming?

I was living in snooze-land for years by keeping my sexuality a secret.

Not living a fully awake life but walking through it in a daze, oblivious to the needs of others and lost in a state of inertia. When I stopped hitting snooze and started letting people see all of me, I came alive and began moving into a place of exploration and creativity, out of the darkness of shame and self-loathing. I was finally emerging out of a fitful half-awake, half-sleep state that kept me tired and sluggish and only fixated on myself. I became present to my own life. I started to look beyond myself and engage with others. I was, at last, awake.

I refuse to hit the snooze. No more. There is a whole big and wondrous world out there and I want to be awake for it and alive to it.