In the Morning...

"In the morning you'll be alright,
in the morning, the sun is gonna shine
in the morning, no clouds in the sky
When there is dark in your life,
Just wait for daylight." - In the Morning by Mary Mary

I used to listen to this song day-in and day-out, never really contemplating its meaning... i mean the words were as straight-forward as they could be. I would always see the morning sky while listening and thinking about how fresh l always felt in the morning. That was back then, i was like fifteen, sixteen... you know when all there was to life was listening to songs on your discman and talking about that one boy or one girl you were bent on dissing. Fast forward a few years later, and mornings weren't so great. I don't know when or how it started, but just somehow my mornings were not waking up with a fresh face or happiness inside. It was more of waking up in the wee hours to run across campus to get to my "quarter-time" job. It wasn't even the waking up that hurt, sometimes, it was waking up in this little room that is supposedly worth $7000 a year on a bed more uncomfortable than the one your grandmother sleeps on, across from another Oyibo girl that is annoying as hell. It was all good, keeping it in all the time. Keeping in the fact that i despised that all it took was four steps to be in someone else's bed space, keeping in the fact that i was scared that i was seventeen and working a job, doing an internship, being a student government leader and doing my best at school. I thought it was good, that i was fine... not until i locked myself in my room one day when my roommate had gone out and i had sneaked away from my friends. It just all came rushing out. I cried and cried. I held my heart and felt the innumerous clutches as they came one after the other like a water fall. I was surprised that i was keeping so much in, i was surprised that i had been keeping in the way i felt on the down low. That one night turned into regular nights. I would wait till i heard my roommate fall asleep before i slowly let the tears trickle down. I would hold my pillow tight until i couldn't hold on no more. And in the morning, it didn't get better. I would feel horrible. I would lay in bed waiting for my alarm to go off... going over in my head all the stuff i had to do. I would wear a long face making it more like a permanent look and tell people that i was okay. I wouldn't get back to my room till midnight and resume my crying and the next morning drag myself out again.

The tears stopped after a while. I had to cry my final one one day and tell myself that i couldn't go on wasting my tear ducts when all the people i loved were just far away, and not dead. Then something harder happened. It wasn't tears anymore. It was more of pangs of discouragement. Instead of tears, i would lay awake in the morning and plot the lying e-mails i would send to my professors and boss on why i couldn't come to class. I would then plot how i would raise up the money to buy my air ticket and transport all my stuff home... i had my savings, and if i sold some of my god forsaken text books, it would surely raise a fortune. I would convince my dad that i was much better having arguments with him in his house than being 5000 miles away from him where we couldn't argue profitably. I plotted. And then i cried. I would cry some more. And then finally get out of bed and put on a smile to face my day.

It took me a while to realize that i wasn't the only one having bad mornings. It took me a while to realize that life is just crappy like that. There are days when you wake up feeling crabby and they are days you wake up feeling like a freshly minted dollar bill. I wanted to always feel like that newly printed bill. I wanted to always wake up feeling like the bomb. Who was i kidding? I remember my sophomore year, trying to play super woman - i was working, taking 17 credits of science classes, working 6 hours in a professors lab and being a senator in my school SGA. It wasn't a matter of wanting to just do everything. It was that i wanted to do everything perfectly. I did bad in one of my computer science class projects. I was shaking when i saw the grade. I kept thinking: "I am doing it all... its supposed to all work right... why is this happening?" I went to my advisor and when i walked in, as soon as she called my name, i broke into tears. I kept thinking to myself: "Ooo shit... ooo shit why are you crying infront of her? Why are you crying infront of her? You gat this... you are superwoman... you gat this..." I had been texting my dad that i was having a bad day. He then called me and said the opposite of what i was thinking: "You are not superwoman... its okay to slow down and breathe..." It made sense... it still does. Needless to say, i dropped that class and moved on. I still over do it though, but in strides remembering that wanting to be great means having to fight this crappy thing called life.

This past summer, i was stuck with only my phone and the little data i savaged from my laptop because the 3-year old thing thought it was cool to die on its owner when she is in the middle of a new city with no one she knows. I had a couple of Mary Mary's old albums on there. That was when "In the Morning" came on again. OOO happy day! You know its like when you are crossing the street and you suddenly have an epiphany and you break into a run... well i didn't do that, but it was like the scales had just fallen off my eyes. I had spent so much time being down forgetting that no condition is permanent. Yes, it is hard. That is life - its a bitch! But the beautiful thing about it is that the greatest ones play her to the core and finish triumphantly. I couldn't believe that i had forgotten that it was the Maker of the Universe that was holding me in his hands and i didn't have to face it all alone. I felt bad for my tear glands... so much work on tears for nothing.... lol.

Not that i wake up feeling like a billion dollar baby every morning now! There are mornings that i still wake up and plot on selling my mac to buy my plane ticket home... lol. Yet those are the days i cherish the most because i know that as soon as i push through all this bullshit and make it through... its gonna be raining men... i am going to make it... am going to succeed and weather the storms that life brings my way by HIS grace. So if you are out there and you are going through some ish... just remember that you are not alone! Hold in there, fight through because we are going to be popping the champagne bottle in celebration at the end of the finish line...

Au revoir!