Before The Sunrise

morning

The single benefit of chronic insomnia is that mornings feel like they belong to you. School doesn't start till 8, but almost every morning I'll be out my front door for the second time by 7.

Even though I do most of my sleeping at Rafa's, I'm always home in time to go through some semblance of a morning routine. I like routines; they make me feel like things make sense when in actuality, my life is spiraling out of control.

You have to take what you can get sometimes.

Every morning, I get home from Rafa's close to 4:30 am. I stop at home in time to grab my football backpack and my running shoes, and then I'm out the door before my dad even notices. Then, as a warmup, I run the 1.9 miles to my high school football field. That tends to be executed in about 15 minutes; it's a slow pace of about an eight-minute mile, but I've got the weight of my backpack, and I can't push too hard first thing in the morning. Upon arriving at the field, I change my shoes and make sure to stretch. I have a lot of bad habits, but this habit is a good one, and absolutely necessary to my success. After that, I go through the rest of my morning workout. They don't recommend working out the same muscles everyday, but I found what works for me, and I stick to it. Once my shoulder is loose from throwing ball after ball to every possible location on the field and my abs burn the precisely correct amount from planks, I lay down on the grass. I stare at the gray sky of the dawn and I let the physical release of exercise carry my mind out of my body.

Another thing the experts don't recommend: so much stillness after hard exercise.

I don't necessarily believe in God, but when I feel desperate I'll speak my fears to the sky. I guess I see a kind of faith reflected in my existence, a belief in something unseen. I don't know exactly what I'm searching for. Maybe it's a home up there, in the clouds, like they tell you heaven is. I don't really think so.

Maybe I just want a life of moments like these.

Predictable. Peaceful.

After the sun peeks out over the horizon, casting shadows from city buildings onto the football field, I stop floating above myself.

I use my phone the least of every teenager I know. Its main use is to snap a picture of the sunrise every morning and add it to my Instagram. Always captionless.

I don't know why I take those photos. It's not quite like the exercise. I love how it feels to work out, but I can rationally explain that as a daily grind dedicated to my sky-high dreams of being an NFL quarterback. The photos essentially do nothing for me. I guess it's good for college coaches who see my page to know that I am consistent, disciplined, and a hard worker, but if I were doing it for optics I could take an action photo of myself or something.

Maybe I should stop extrapolating and say I just like sunrises.

With the photo posted to my Instagram story and my phone telling me it's around 6, I shove my phone back in my bag and run home. Once I'm outside my front door, I have to stop to catch my breath. I always take the same pace, but lately, my normal jog home leaves me feeling more exhausted and burnt out.

I open my mailbox and pull out another useless dump of college recruitment mail.

Yes, I know South Carolina has the #1 ranked public Honors College in the country. I still don't want to go there.

I page through the mail, weeding out the schools that are absolute no's. I'm tempted to throw out the mail from Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Clemson. I don't want to play at any of those programs, but my father likes the flashy names. I keep it, though, just to keep him happy. I throw out 80% of the stack, and leave the other 20% on the foot-tall pile on the kitchen island.