Letter to a Morning

Dear Morning,

I never used to notice you. For most of my life, I saw you as the time I had to get through before the day started. I set an alarm, hit snooze, and got out of bed with the world already needing something from me. You were just the corridor.

That has changed.

I wake up earlier now. Not because I have to. Because I want the hour before anyone asks me for anything. No phone. No email. No conversation. Just quiet.

I have started to think about what I do with you carefully. I do not check my phone when I wake up. I do not read the news. I do not spend ten minutes deciding what to wear, because I already know what I am wearing. I chose it the night before, from a small number of things I actually trust.

These are small habits. But small habits are what a life adds up to.

I am 24. The older I get, the more I understand that time is one of the only things you cannot get back. You can make more money. You can buy more of most things. You cannot buy more time. And the older people I know all say the years pass faster the longer you live.

So I have started to protect the parts of the day that are mine. You are the first.

I think about clothes the same way now. Every garment I put on takes some of you. If it is the right one, I forget I am wearing it and get on with the day. If it is the wrong one, I spend the day adjusting it, thinking about it, wondering how it reads. That is time taken from you, and used badly.

I do not know how many more of you I will get. Nobody does. What I do know is that today I have this one. I would rather spend it well than not.