A normal day, as normal as any other, I awake to the golden rays bursting through the midst of shadows, staining my face with warmth, a feeling I truly admire. Even so beautiful, the consistency left a sour taste in my mouth. Arms spread, only finding the mounds of sheets contouring around my body. I would sink into the center from the weight of just one, almost raising a tear to my eye, but I’d always hold it back with dignity and a false sense of pride.

Crawling out was always the first physical task, but mentally I went through hundreds before I even made it to the bathroom mirror. Once I looked myself in the reflection hundreds more arose like a swarm of bees stinging every inch of flesh. I had to proceed to splash a handful of cold water into my face just to forget if only for just a second. I pushed the bristles across my teeth in the same exact motion as every other morning, just like every other routine. Here my mind sat dormant, forever trapped in this contingency with no escape, so I learned to cope.

Cope, what an ignorant thing of me to do. I despised the choice to cope, but it was what I knew best, and I didn’t know how to just step off the path I walked perpetually. I slowly buttoned my shirt while I skimmed over myself up and down, thinking myself to be a handsome man, wasn’t I? I seemed like a normal person, just like any other, so why didn’t I have somebody getting dressed with me? Someone to get the day started together with? What aspects made me so different? I believed it not to lie in physicality, so was it what was under? Maybe I was just unlucky or maybe I was meant to spend the rest of my life alone for some importance I was missing.

At this point I was praying for some kind of relief, the relief I could find nowhere, no matter how hard I looked. I was in a thick haze, a certain foul taste always lurking about my taste buds, and I put an arm out to try and find my way, but by each step I would just grow deeper into the cloud. At this point I always turned back, almost afraid to find what was on the other side. I wanted to continue, but I just couldn’t put my mind to it, and there my feet would freeze from moving another inch. I prayed for the courage just to take those last few steps, so that maybe I would find what I was looking for, that hole in my heart, and the way to the revealing light.

I adjusted my tie, making sure it was firmly griping my neck, doing one more once over. I had one routine left until I was to be tossed out into the midst of society, where I would be eaten alive with a weak self and an absent-minded soul. Fitting my feet into my shoes and twining the laces together, I tried to think that this day could somehow turn out better than the last. Maybe someway, somehow, the day before might have had such poor potential that this one would be easier to excel in, except I quickly ran into a dilemma. For some odd reason, I couldn’t even remember the day before, so I went into a deep thought with one shoe tied and the other still lying desolate on the floor. No matter how deep I went, I just got deeper and deeper into a haze just like the other place I would always lose myself in. It started to bother me so dearly I had to dismiss it before I went insane thinking about it. Continuing with my almost complete routine, I took to scavenging about the house for my keys, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I looked for almost a half an hour, sweat sprucing from my pores and creating a thin coat on my skin I was looking so diligently, but still no luck. This presence of insanity was circling around my head, waiting for the moment to sneak in and take over. Flipping everything on the floor I still couldn’t locate them, and then the thought occurred to me that maybe I’d left them in the car. A bit of relief that this was the correct answer, I took off to the garage door. Once I came to it I instantly discerned something very wrong going on. Crawling like thousands of snakes, a thin layer of smoke insidiously crept from under the door. I hesitantly put my hand to the doorknob, but it didn’t exert heat so I assumed not to see a burning blaze on the other side. That was out, but there still lingered a terrible stench. With a leap of faith, I pulled the door open, and a rush of a hazy fog rushed at me. Throwing my hand to clear it from my face, I had to take quick action to find the source and disperse of it.

I rushed in blindly, putting hands outs out in front of me. As I went in deeper it just got thicker, and the putrid taste and smell were starting to clog my airways. Through a coughing fit and almost endless searching, I thought I was never going to find the source, until finally I put my hands on something long and firm. Pulling on the object it brought me to a large shadow hiding behind the wall of smog. I knew what this figure was, and when I pulled myself the remaining length down the object, I found exactly where it led. My heart dropped instantly, for behind a thin glass plane holding the snaking black hose inside, there was my limp body lying against the steering wheel.