Yes, it’s real. No one needs that confirmation. The form of it all might change, but that reality remains.

I had another morning that makes it impossible to ignore that mornings like these are my new normal. Wake up too early, hours before the alarm, have hot flash spread throughout my body, feel incredibly tired but also strangely alert, lay there pulling out all my tricks to just get back to sleep, refuse to check the clock again because seeing that an hour has passed in this limbo would be too disappointing. The next moment (it seems) the alarm is waking me out of a deep, dream-filled sleep. I think, I should have moved the alarm to later just in case this happened, that way I could get more solid sleep! I re-set the alarm, get nestled in the covers again. That’s where the actual struggle begins.