text: Muted honks of car horns, brakes applied at the last moment, mild shouting, and a dead grey light act as my alarm clock these days. As I struggle to get out of bed, I feel blindly for my rose-colored glasses on the nightstand only to remember, once again, that I haven’t taken them off from the day before. These are my rose-colored glasses that I can’t take off. As I unplug my phone and begin my dreary morning routine, I look through my rose-colored glasses, and am reminded of a time when even a good night’s rest was an unfortunate barrier separating one bright day from the next. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. A time when I still believed in Santa Claus, and the boot print in ash on the hearth--a boot print whose similarity to your own went unnoticed year after year--was proof that I could still believe in the incredible. Forgoing a morning shower, I dress quickly and rush out the door making it to the bus stop just in time to be shuttled off to work on yet another Monday. As I stare blankly at the dingy floor of the bus through my rose-colored glasses, I remember when even waiting for the bus was an adventure. Gameboys would be passed around, and parents would turn a blind eye while bus drivers played along as we lined up various lunch items on the road to be smashed by the bus tire as it came to a stop. *I wish I would have called in sick today*, I think to myself as images of us catching falling maple leaves in the middle of a windy October day fill the lenses of my rose-colored glasses. You distracted me from my cold by promising me a Dove Bar for every leaf I could pluck out of the air that day. I caught 7, and we both laughed as you tried to explain why 7 Dove Bars was, “Really, if you think about it, way too many.” During my lunch break, I pull up 1215 Pilchuck Drive on Google Maps, only to be painfully reminded of the clear-cutting they did after we moved that erased so many of my favorite places as a kid. In those woods, we braved 50ft tree-gobbling monsters to build forts and make maps of a jungle that seemed to never end. Why does it all look so small now reflected in my rose-colored glasses? The rest of the workday passes like a slow moving train that seems to take its time when all you want to do is cross the tracks... Staring out the bus window through my rose-colored glasses, I see minivans packed full of moms and kids on their way to an array of different practices. Gymnastics, kung fu, baseball, or soccer, I’d do all 4 at once, just to sit in the passenger seat next to you again. Almost a decade of car rides that seemed so mundane, so why do I wish had paid more attention? With the satisfying *thunk* of my apartment door closing behind me, I begin my evening ritual of peeling off my shell of adulthood. I hang my keys on the hook by the door, sling my bag over the back of a kitchen chair, and loosen the tie that has spent all day assuring me that breathing comfortably is, in the end, completely overrated. Settling into my chair for a few brief hours reprieve before the necessity of mentally accepting the reality of Tuesday, I reach up to make my nightly attempt at taking off my glasses. As I grip the frames and begin to pull, I encounter a resistance made familiar by years of other failed attempts to remove the rose-colored glasses that I can’t take off. There I sit, alone in my chair as I try to pass the evening immersed in a book, doing my best to ignore the images I see through my rose-colored glasses.