Me, My Life & Why

Part 1

Today, I failed at waking up.

Not in a poetic, gentle way, not a yawn-and-stretch, “oops I overslept” sort of way.

No.

I mean 13 alarms snoozed, teeth unbrushed, phone dead, meeting missed, toast burnt, coffee machine dead to me failed.

And yes, I counted the snoozes. Because if you’re going to fail at something, you might as well document it like a crime scene.

The first alarm went off at 7:00am, and I was full of delusion. “I’ll just close my eyes for a second,” I whispered to nobody, the way people in horror movies whisper “I’ll be right back.”

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

Snooze.

I was supposed to be in a Zoom meeting at 9:00am. At 9:16, I woke up to a dead phone and the kind of sinking dread usually reserved for war crimes and parental disappointment.

The coffee machine gave one mechanical gasp and stopped working, possibly in protest. I feel like it’s always known I was the problem. Like it’s finally decided to unionise and the first demand is: “No more 9am panic lattes for this feral woman.”

So I stood in my kitchen, in an oversized hoodie and no pants, staring at a cold mug of oat milk and a toaster that now permanently smells like betrayal. I missed the meeting. I didn’t email. I didn’t apologise. I didn’t… care.

That part’s new.

Usually, I’d launch into a frantic self-flagellation loop. Start mentally composing my apology email, something professional but lightly self-deprecating, with an attached Google Calendar screenshot to prove I meant well.

But today?

I just stared at the mess of my morning and thought:

“This can’t be what life is.”

Not just this morning. All of it. The hustle. The struggle to be normal enough.

It’s always something.

The forgotten laundry. The unopened post. The half-eaten dinner that I microwaved twice and still forgot to eat.

The friends I haven’t texted back in six months because I don’t know how to say, “Hey, sorry I vanished, my brain stopped functioning and I got overwhelmed by a birthday notification.”

It’s not depression. Not quite.

It’s like being trapped in a slow browser tab. Every time I try to load a task, the wheel just spins.

And everyone around me seems to be loading just fine. Smooth, efficient, remembered-to-wash-their-bra type people.

Meanwhile, I’m resetting the router at 9:16am, wondering if maybe I just wasn’t built for this internet. This life.

And here’s the real kicker: I try.

I try so hard.

I make the lists. I buy the planners. I read the productivity books and highlight the parts that make me feel briefly seen, right before I abandon them for TikTok and toast.

But no matter how hard I try, I’m always the one showing up late, forgetting the milk, spacing out during meetings, re-reading the same email five times before replying “Sounds good!” and hoping it wasn’t a question.

This morning wasn’t worse than any other, really.

It was just… loud.

Like the accumulation of small failures finally reached the volume of a fire alarm.

And as I stood there, pantsless and oatmilk-adjacent, I realised something broke today.

Not me.

The illusion.

The idea that if I just tried harder, just organised better, woke up earlier, ate cleaner, planned sharper, I’d finally become the functioning adult I pretend to be on the outside.

I don’t want to try harder anymore.

I want to stop trying to be something I’m not.

Maybe I’m not broken.

Maybe the system is.

Maybe the reason I can’t wake up like other people is because I’m not like other people.

And maybe that’s not a problem.

Maybe if I let go of trying to fit, I’d finally start to live.

I didn’t write the apology email.

I put on pants. Eventually.

I fed the cat. She judged me.

And then I opened a fresh Google Doc.