Maybe you have had days like this.  Days when you open your eyes after a long and involuntarily restless night and are immediately confused because you cannot seem to recall how or when you finally fell asleep.  When the earsplitting sound of your alarm rips you from whatever sleep you had managed to find.  You instinctively reach your arm out to make the startling noise of the persistent alarm stop only to realize that you cannot because your arm feels heavy and numb.  During your unpeaceful slumber you must have unwittingly slept on it, therefore, grabbing the phone to stop the unsettling noise proves to be a challenge unto itself.  When you finally shake off the pins and needles and are able to get a grip on your phone to register the time, the numbers are blurry and out of focus.  You bring the phone close to your face and squint your eyes because the time it is displaying must be a mistake.  In a state of denial and disbelief and as you lay your head back down onto the pillow, you begin to rationalize that, yes, it must be a mistake or a trick that is being played on you because how could it already be time to wake up when you are not entirely convinced that you slept?   And yet whether it is an unamusing trick, a sobering mistake or otherwise, like it or not it would seem that it is time to get up and seize the day.  At least your version of seizing a day after an emotionally-charged night that was consumed with anxiety and sleep deprivation.  Optimists would probably call every new day an opportunity. Those bewildering and unrelatable people who allegedly have a healthy relationship with the normal nightly ritual of sleeping.  The same people who claim to wake up with a power that is of their own free will and sans the relentless urging of a bossy alarm clock.  But you have never considered yourself to be an optimist.   On this particular day, that resembles many others, you are torn between a groggy acknowledgement of the time, in which case you must get up, or if you are up for a quick game of Chance.  The risky game that you often find yourself playing after you have been abruptly awakened, impulsively deactivate the phone’s pre-set ‘snooze’ feature, and with little-to-no concern for the self-imposed consequences that are sure to follow, you turn off the alarm clock entirely.  Then, to raise the stakes of this fate-tempting game even higher, you shut your eyes for just a few extra minutes to ‘rest’ only to frantically re-open them to the predictable outcome of this game which is that you have been ‘resting’ for at least another hour.  Game over.  However, while you are still horizontal and drifting somewhere between foggy slumber and lucidity, you realize that it is at this exact moment when the day starts to unravel.  It is never a good sign that before your feet have even been given the opportunity to touch the floor, you have already started these onerous and time-thieving negotiations that are designed explicitly for the purpose of delaying the inevitable.   You are bothered that you do not know exactly how or when you finally found sleep, assuming you slept at all.  While that might seem exceptionally trivial to the restful sleepers among us, for those who struggle with nighttime sleeplessness that can often be accompanied by a debilitating panic attack, it is a critically important detail.  You are consciously irritable because although you don’t like it and find it crushingly unfair, you know that you must begin the task of getting yourself up.  An all-too-familiar and tedious morning routine that can only be accomplished by taking one little baby step at a time.  Step 1:  Rollover onto your back.  Step 2:  Sit up. Your head, at this pivotal point, should be forced to separate from the pillow. Step 3:  Carefully remove the gift of sand that the Sandman customarily leaves in the corners of your eyes while you are sleeping.  On occasion you note that there is no sand – it is a known fact that Mr. Sandman only visits those who are sleeping which can mean only one of two things:  either your initial assessment was right and you didn’t sleep at all last night or Mr. Sandman has forsaken you.  Step 4:  Remove blanket from legs and feet – everyone knows that warmth and comfort travel from the bottom to the top, not the other way around.  Step 5:   Slowly swing now-cold legs off of the bed and let them hang there for an undetermined period of time.  Step 6:  Stand up.  Step 7:  Take a small step forward not allowing the backs of your knees to have any further contact whatsoever with your bed.  It turns out that your bed is both a problem and a solution which depends on the time of day and your state of mind.  In the morning, it is a problem and will silently beckon you to get back in, therefore, the further you get away from it, the better.  You must make a choice and standing in that spot close to your bed all day is not one of them.  Therefore, you immediately start walking away from your bed and begin the short journey to the bathroom.  Your first stop is the mirror.  You cannot help but stare at the reflection of the stranger who is exhaustedly looking back at you.  Under your eyes is the accessory that you received during the overnight hours.  The undisguised dark circles that you must now wear as an inglorious badge throughout the day. A visibly cruel reminder, as if you weren’t already aware, that you are tired. cause and effect.  To be clear, you fully understand the nightly assignment which is fairly straightforward and unambiguous at this point in your life.  It is the time that is carved out of the …