Two months ago today I awakened to the hustle and bustle of preparations being made for a wedding. It was the first time in two years--731 days--that I didn't wake up to the obnoxiously loud and terrifying shrill of my $5 alarm clock from Walmart. While I did enjoy being able to sleep past a highly regimented hour, a part of me felt hollow and distant. That alarm clock had been one of the only consistent things in my life over the last two years.As cheap as it was and as much as I hated it, that alarm clock symbolized to me the most important and most powerful time in my life. And now, waking up without it for the first time, it hit me that this period of my life had come to a close. Tears came to my eyes as I thought back to what I would be doing at that same time on a Monday morning one week before. "Right now," I thought, "I would have finished my two hours of studying and I would be in the midst of an hour-long Skype call with Johnathan."
But not this Monday. No, this day, I would awaken alone, shower, prepare for the day alone and wonder what I would do with my time, a pattern that would fill each day of my new life. So many more choices; so much more freedom; so much less accountability. It was liberating. It was exciting. It was terrifying.
