If you are someone who has problems waking up in the morning, you know how important alarms are. I am definitely one of these people. Without an alarm, I could sleep well past noon, no matter when I went to sleep the night before. I'm not talking about one singular and lonesome alarm, no. If I am to wake up anytime before 10 in the morning, I require at least five alarms. Sometimes that doesn't even work, so I downloaded the "I Can't Wake Up!" app. This app will not turn off its alarm until you complete a task. These tasks can range from a geography quiz to completing math equations. You, of course, can choose which activity you want, the level of difficulty and the alarm sound you want.

Now, I have always heard that you should choose the alarm that annoys you the most. Seems logical, right? I mean, if you hate it, it will definitely be more likely to drag you from your slumber so that you can get rid of the annoyance. For years, I thought that this was a good idea. It just made so much sense, but for some reason, I had never tried it. I would always choose a relatively normal sound. This all changed when I began my sophomore year of college.

When the year began, I noticed that as the days passed, I was starting to have a harder and harder time waking up. I was missing some of my earlier classes, and I finally decided that enough was enough. So I downloaded my handy dandy alarm app. I put in my alarm times, chose my task and eventually began rifling through all of the available sounds. As I was listening to my options, I kept in mind that I was going to go with the most irritating one. I listened and listened and then, I found it — The Alarm (capital letters and all). It is just a series of tones in a specific rhythm, but for some reason I absolutely hated it. It was perfect.

Or so I thought. Every day for almost a year I have been waking up to this alarm. At first, it was magical. I was getting up in the mornings, and buried beneath my burning hatred was an appreciation for that horrid sound. But as the year went on, I realized that using an alarm you hate is a downright, no good, rotten idea.

I am going insane. This alarm is driving me crazy and pissing me off all at the same time. Whenever I hear it go off my chest tightens up, and I am overcome with a feeling of anxiety. That's not all. Oh, no! Sometimes, I'll be sitting in silence (usually on my phone), and I hear it. In the middle of the day! It's like a disembodied voice that haunts me. My own personal ghost.

I've been haunted by my alarm for months now, and it's making me angrier by the day. For some reason, though, I've never changed it. I can't make myself. Why do you think that is?