Morning Person

Have you ever walked by a bakery on your way to work and the mouthwatering scent of butter and cinnamon filled your nostrils? And then, as if that alone isn’t enough, a whiff of coffee creeps in as well. Ahh...

I’m convinced that one generous bun accompanied by a frothy cappuccino is the perfect way to begin a day. Things suck just a little less when you have a bit of butter and cinnamon in your system.

So yeah, there was my mountain-sized love of eating pastries. That would’ve totally been enough, but no – I loved making them as well.

The feel of a well-proofed dough under my palms... The rich smell of butter-sugar-cinnamon mixture… Shaping the buns – the doughy-buttery-spicy twists and braids made the corners of my lips curl too. And then finally seeing them rise into lush, fluffy bombs of flavour with golden crust that could fix at least one crappy morning…

It fed my soul.

Another thing about me is that I’ve always been a morning person. The tranquility, the colours, the smells, the crisp, fresh air, and the fact that I could hear my own thoughts with no interruptions made early morning hours my favourite part of the day from a very young age.

It felt only logical to combine the two and become a baker. It truly sounded like a dream come true.

Morning alone with gorgeous pastries and fresh ground coffee and I’d be earning a living at the same time. Sign me up!

The list didn’t end there – the third most attractive selling point was that since my work day began at 4 a.m., my eight hours of work were done by noon. I still had a full day to myself after all that.

Sounds too good to be true? Yeah well, I didn’t know it just yet.

My plan was perfect. I’d figured out a way to win life and enjoy myself while doing it. I’d created a flawless system, foolproof formula which promised to change my life.

And change my life it did.

A month flew by. Two. Three.

Bugs crept in secretly, quietly, creating small fixable inconveniences.

Six months passed with a blink of an eye.

Cracks started appearing when my attention was directed elsewhere.

At first, I noticed tiredness on my workdays. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s normal, right?

So I changed my schedule and plans, rearranged my life.

Glitches started appearing regularly until they became impossible to ignore.

I began postponing things that needed doing, cutting out things that weren’t strictly necessary, and completely abandoning hobbies I once loved.

I saw less of my friends since many of them had schedules literally opposite to mine. I scraped out all plans that would run into late evenings, into my bedtime.

The change worked for a while. I was able to save energy, thinking it was something I could gather and store for later use when there was a shortage. At least that’s what I thought.

Until the system I’d so carefully created and built came crashing down.

The crash showed up as a complete enervation in my body on days I didn’t even work. It made no sense to me. I’d already stopped all of my active, sporty hobbies, but now even a quick walk in the park was out of the question. My legs protested, my feet refused to carry me, and back demanded rest.

Although generous amounts of rest helped temporarily, my mind soon started rioting. Even though, by my own brilliant design, I finished work at noon and had the rest of the day off, the only thing in my life still seemed to be work. Each and every decision I made circled around my job.

Then it hit me. I’d become one of those people who didn’t work to live.

I lived to work.

Although hard, I still fought back. One day I went to a friend’s birthday party, and to an orienteering—which used to be one of my beloved hobbies—event another day.

Oh, how I paid for it.

The following days were unbearable.

The job I once loved had turned into a toxic, abusive partner.

Every decision I made that didn’t revolve around it made me suffer. I always paid for it. And the price was high.

The symptoms had become a part of me so sneakily, I didn’t even remember a time I hadn’t felt like that.

My energy reserves were drained dry. The metaphorical battery sign above my head was blinking in crimson red.

I did sleep at least seven hours every night, but that didn’t matter.

Humans aren’t meant to wake and work in the middle of the night. Darkness is our time of rest. I deprived my body of natural resting time. Restrained from its very basic need for a very long time.

It had whispered its pleas, that I’d disregarded for outside noise, for a while. I’d muted and ignored its cries. I’d silenced my own body for a faulty system I mistakenly thought to be perfect. My body responded accordingly.

It started demanding food. I was constantly hungry. I ate more than ever before because that was the only source of energy my body had. Then came the insanely fast weight gain.

Winning life had turned into barely surviving life.

Every area of my life suffered.

The enjoyment of mornings used to fuel my days. The hour of sunrise used to feed my soul in a way nothing else did. Not anymore.

My friends and family were all seriously worried about me, I was too. But even then I hadn’t yet realised how deep the hole was I had dug. And trying to grasp that all at once was indescribably overwhelming. So I did the next best thing.

I took some time off work.

Guess what I did? Went on vacation? Met all my friends? Enjoyed all the abandoned hobbies?

Wrong.

I slept.

For the first week, nothing else existed except sleep and food. And an occasional shower. Then I functioned for a couple of hours – just enough to roam the house and reassure my partner that I was still alive.

At the end of the second week off, for the first time in months – if not a year – I had energy to go out. I yearned for something fun. Something for me. Something that had nothing to do with work. So I did. And I loved every second of it.

Another seven days passed, and I started getting glimpses of what it felt like to be a properly functioning human. I was still far from it, but I began to remember there used to be a time…

Then I went back to work.

The abusive partner returned.

And I received my punishment. Waking up at 3:15 a.m. was harder than it ever had been.

The whole day of hammering headaches. Nausea. Bloating. Burning joint pains in my knees and hips. An unknown stabbing pain under my ribs. Fatigue so all-consuming there were days I didn’t even remember the commute home. Take your pick.

My throat was prickling and eyes filled with tears.

I felt disgusted thinking about the upcoming workdays.

I resented the smell of yeast and the greasy butter.

I hated every single client that came into the bakery.

The oven timer raised my blood pressure every 30 minutes when it went off.

And the silence of early mornings shifted from serene to eerie.

The love of being alone had turned into frightening loneliness.

And it scared me. It scared the hell out of me.

I was being punished for stepping out of it, for tasting the other version of life, for liking it.

My perfectly created system had crashed and there was no reset button. There was no quick fix for it.

I lived as if rejected by society. We shared the space, but I was only allowed to use it when no one was looking. I walked the streets when others slept. I was locked into my bedroom while everyone else enjoyed life.

And before I’d realised I’d turned into a ghost, a faint shadow of who I once was. I was easily irritable, numb, quick-tempered and miserable. I was a stranger to myself.

The things I once enjoyed – running, hiking, dancing – the system filtered out quickly.

The things I once loved – early mornings, baking, me – had turned into things I despised with fiery rage.

That’s where following the system I’d set up myself had taken me.

I knew exactly what I was – a perfectly made bread dough, left to proof for way too long, resulting in a bitter-tasting, shapeless blob good for nothing.

Turns out I’d been trying to run a marathon at the pace of a sprint, and wondered why I collapsed.