My reasons are myriad.

In the literal sense, it's usually because little hands begin pulling at me in the predawn hours, beckoning me out of bed long before I'd wish to depart. Sleeping in is a mythical creature, a remnant of a world extinct an era ago. I fight waking these days. I want just a few minutes more. I'm desperate for a good night's sleep. My mind won't go to bed until well past midnight, driven to the brink by the billion ideas swirling in a make-believe toilet bowl. But the Children are up at five.

So, I drag myself out of bed, part from blankets with a bitter glare, and find my second reason waiting downstairs. Sometimes I've had the forethought to set the coffee pot the night before, and on those mornings my mood is greatly improved. I am in love with the me of yesterday, who knew how badly I'd need the boost. I sip in reason number two and relish in the artificial energy. When I am fully awake, I can revisit reason number one again. I can smile and cuddle and bark orders in the mom voice that no one in my family really believes.

Reason number one comes in a package of four: Boy, Girl, Girl, Girl.

The boy is tender. The boy has dusty brown hair and light green eyes. He is quick to laugh and obedient to a fault. The boy carries a deep sadness within him- a sadness we share. The boy spends long hours in his bedroom falling into tunnels of imagination, devouring literature, writing stories well beyond the reasonable limitations of his age. The boy is desperate to please, hopelessly in love with the world around him, hoping that someday he'll find someone other than his mother to share his fervor. The boy is reason enough all on his own.

The Girls. The girls have golden locks and eyes the shade of oceans.

The girls are quick-witted and clever. The girls are cunning. The girls are masters of manipulation already. The girls are made of the stone that is the other half of me, with outrageously high IQs, gifted from their father. But their cracks show, too. The oldest is so intelligent it hurts. She is a master of the mind, reading emotions accurately, analyzing them, deciding on the most logical conclusion before any action. She limits herself with her reasoning. She is hungry to know. She's starved for the truth. She has been taking textbooks and encyclopedias to bed since she turned 3. She cannot sleep either. So she reads. She learns. She knows. The girl is reason enough all on her own.

Girl number two has uncanny charisma. When she walks into a room it is brighter for her presence. She laughs and others echo. She's sad and eyes weep. She turns her gaze in interest on some small thing, and the world grovels to put it into her grasp. She is the one who is sickly, too. She is a thin waif where her siblings are robust. She nearly died two years ago and it clings. It has made her live with unmatched intensity. She loves with reckless abandon, her rage is swift and explosive, her joy brighter than the flash of lightning on a dark night. She is so stubbornly alive- it makes everyone she meets want to be that way along with her. The girl is reason enough all on her own.

Girl number 3 is the comedian. She is naturally funny in a way the rest of the family fails to be. She is barely out of toddlerhood, but her mastery of comedic timing and necessary inflection is a wonderment to behold. She is pure delight. Animals gravitate to her presence-- they sense that special thing in her--the good humor. She regularly outwits her gifted siblings. She is a beacon of limitless potential. She is the one that keeps our family approachable. The rest of us are weirdos, and she has already fallen into an unintentional role of making us accessible to the world. She is our glue. The girl is reason enough all on her own.

With children like these, how could one possibly stay abed? Watching their progress is reason enough unto itself. But I have more reasons.

Reason number three is a great hulking beast of a man. He is tall and muscled and ridiculously smart. It is infuriating beyond belief to argue with him. When we met, he had a reputation as a know-it-all. I quickly learned why. He would spout facts in the midst of regular conversation as if he were reading it off of google right then and there. I hated it-- at first. And then I realized that he hardly even knows he's doing it. The truth is important to him, and in that big, brilliant brain of his, he is able to store so much information... it occasionally comes leaking out. He wears a mask of indifference, to protect his heart, but when you pull it back, there is a sweet boy hiding beneath: a boy who's a lot like our son. The man is dynamic and brutish and handsome. He is a lock with an ever-changing set of keys. He is a puzzle that I never grow tired of finding new pieces for. He is a lover beyond my wildest dreams. He feeds my body and my mind. Loving him is a quest of intrigue and I never grow tired of it. The man is enough reason all on his own.

But then there is me. How did I get up before these people were a part of my life?

The answer is simple and perhaps boring in comparison to the reason that is my people.

I am starved.

I could devour the world if given the opportunity. That desire in my daughter: to KNOW. I have it, too. I want to know. I want to learn. I want to soak up every last little ray of sunshine. I want to walk through forests and deserts and caves and endless amber fields. I want to live so recklessly, so passionately, so fully.

I want the world to know I was here.

I want to string symphonies in black ink upon the pages of time.

I want to love.

The reason I get up in the morning is because I know in some place deep inside myself, that anything can happen.

And I want to be the first to see it.

Were it not for the ever-present beat of my circadian rhythm and the reliable commotion of traffic filtering through the flimsy walls of my one-bedroom apartment, I don't think I would have gotten out of bed today. Don't worry, I'm not depressed. I'm just a loser with no direction in life who got himself dumped last night. Still, gotta be a human right? So after a few minutes of staring at the ceiling and praying that the last 24 hours had all been a dream, I got out of bed and put on some pants on a Saturday morning at 10:00 am.

I know, I'm an American hero.

I checked my phone, and sure enough, there was the dreaded text message. "I don't c this going any where, Ted, so it's time we both moved on.. sorry" Frowny face. Brocken heart emoji.

It would have stung less if she hadn't also stood me up on our anniversary. The bad grammar added insult to injury... And the emojis. And the fact that she decided to end a year-long relationship with a text message shorter than most of her tweets. I'm pretty sure that she was drunk when she sent it, but considering she hasn't responded to any of my messages since, I'm also pretty sure she meant it.

Sighing, I tossed the phone onto the bed and trudged into the kitchen only to discover that I had run out of coffee. Blinking stupidly at the empty bag, I was about to go back to bed because there was the point in living in a world without coffee. Then there was a knock at the door. A feeling of dread washed over me wondering who the hell it could be. Any hope that they would just go away disappeared when I heard another more insistent knock a few seconds later. I answered the door.

I was greeted by the face of a friend my girlfr- my ex had always hated. She gave me a sad little smile and said, "Hey, you're up!" Like it was an accomplishment.

I grunted, unenthusiastically rubbing my eyes. She held up two coffee cups and a box of donuts and offered, "Want to talk about it? Or play some Halo?"

At that moment, I felt like I had been trapped underground, and she had just dug me out. I could have kissed her. Instead, I took the coffee and said, "Halo."

A sleepy dream filled with multiple realities,

Is a better landscape to play with,

But as the melatonin wears off,

My maya blue eye's crack open,

As the birds outside are calling,

Daylight splashes onto my face,

With much protest I open them completely,

Huffing, as I hold onto my porcelain duvet,

But as I watch the birds waiting on the greenest tree,

Next to my window,

Crows, Pigeons and Sparrow's,

I'd be heartless to keep them waiting in the cold,

So I'll go,

Leaving my bed;

The resolution to sleep is broken again

But those fluffy irritants keep me going,

I love them, and they help me wake up in the morning,

Because ensuring that they are healthy and fed,

Makes my heart feel a joy,

The kind that only real passion can bless you with,

Fat balls, suet, or seed,

I'll give them what they need,

Because they give me the strength,

To get out of bed.

As you can imagine. I’d rather not relieve myself in a dream. Then there’s all the work needs doing. You‘ll find me walking an I-beam. Just like the Beastie Boys "I like my sugar with coffee and cream" And though being my preferred state. My unconscious ain’t generally the money generating part of the team. Though I have woken up with some great idea‘s for a meme’s. And then made a conscious decision to get high. And then start my day with a full head of steam. Or is that smoke coming out of my ears?

It`s all the same, day after day.

This bed in which I lay,

will it be the tomb where I`ll waste away?

I wake up in the morning,

and I sigh with great mourning.

Is it not cruel that I should be forced

away from the oblivion of my dreams?

Is it not foul that I must watch the thread

lose its seam?

Reality, what an irony.

I wish not to spend my time in it,

yet every morning I wake all the same.

Woe and pain!

But fear not, for I do:

If I escape reality all together,

how will my sanity pull through?

If I give myself entirely to the world of

blissful oblivion,

this bed will most certainly become my tomb.

So, at the break of dawn each unavoidable day,

my heart sighs forlorn but I rise anyway.

I do not desire to know why,

I do not ask what motivates me for nothing does.

I simply do what I always do.

I force my tired, weak body to push through

and here we are; another day.

In this limbo I must stay

until the Reaper takes me away.

A year ago my reasoning would of been as followed; love. That one person who had captured my heart,and deemed me to be someone of their tastes. Someone they had chosen to stick by with day by day. That one person was who I had vowed to be better for. Strive day after day to be there for, no matter what. But things change, people change. wrongfully or not, they do. And all we can do is accept it. It churned inside me that the one reason I had wilfully woken up morning after morning was no longer there. I had no reason to smile and feel exhilaration. Months after months it had drawn to me what my real reason for wakening up was to be my future. I had been drawn too tightly onto how others feel and what they want from me. How im supposed to react to everything and what my emotions should and should not be. I had freedom when I was in the midlife in which I had my previous lover, I felt alive. Not alone. It was all stripped from me. I lost all reasoning to wake up. However it all changes, in which my reasoning for waking up currently in the moment is to live my life how I souly want to, regain the feeling of being alive. Be myself again but in a better fashion. I want to be myself, be happy within myself not anyone else. Im waiting for the moment I can walk out of school with a degree, money aside for me to start checking into my life as an individual with no one to tell me what I can and can not do. Promote myself as an individual who needs no one but themselves to thrive and suceed.