What is Every Day I Wake Up?

It is a two or three-panel exploitable image macro built from Adam Driver's reactions during the argument scene in Marriage Story.

Where did Every Day I Wake Up come from?

The underlying clip is from Marriage Story (2019); the Charlie-only caption format was popularized by a Tumblr post from IncorrectBookQuotes on November 8, 2020.

What does Every Day I Wake Up mean?

Posters use it to inflate a small frustration, matching an everyday annoyance to Driver's gesturing, wall-punching, and sobbing beats.

How do you use Every Day I Wake Up?

Caption each panel with an escalating complaint, often starting with a flat statement and ending on the sobbing panel, as @shahirahnizam did when venting about a vaccine appointment.

Is Every Day I Wake Up still popular?

Documented activity peaked across Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter in 2020 and 2021, so it reads today as a semi-active format tied to the Marriage Story clip.

Every Day I Wake Up

2020image macrosemi-active

Published October 24, 2026

During the climactic fight in Marriage Story, Adam Driver's character Charlie gestures, punches a wall, and crumples sobbing while arguing with Scarlett Johansson's Nicole. By November 2020, Tumblr users had cropped Driver's panels into a two or three-panel exploitable captioned 'Every Day I Wake Up' for venting about small frustrations.

exploitable templates reaction memes frustration memes tumblr memes multi panel memes

Overview

Posts in the Every Day I Wake Up format follow Driver's three-beat sequence as a reaction progression. A two-panel version shows only the hand gesture and the sobbing collapse, while the three-panel version includes the wall hit between them for extra escalation3. The caption above each panel ramps up, often a mild complaint, a louder one, then the breakdown.

A longer version using both Johansson's and Driver's lines, called Nicole and Charlie's Argument, exists as a separate format on its own3. The Charlie-only crop sticks to subjects where the escalation feels earned by Driver's acting but absurd given the stakes, from confusion about home maintenance4 to petty online grievances5.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

YouTube (source clip) / Tumblr (viral spread)

Creator

IncorrectBookQuotes

Date

2020

Marriage Story premiered on Netflix on November 6, 2019, as a dramatic account of Charlie and Nicole splitting their marriage3. The confrontation scene that supplied the Charlie panels went up on YouTube on December 6, 2019 via the Netflix Film Club channel and passed 3.6 million views within 18 months1.

On November 8, 2020, Tumblr blog IncorrectBookQuotes posted a caption-change version using Adam Driver's portions, which received over 400 notes and 300 likes in roughly seven months2. That post set the template of using only Charlie's beats, cutting Johansson's lines out entirely.

How It Spread

Reddit and Twitter picked up the Tumblr template through 2021. On May 20, 2021, r/memes user Oldmate81 posted a three-panel version expressing frustration at not understanding what makes houses move, which gained 55 upvotes in one month4. The joke sat in the gap between a totally mundane question and Driver's outsized meltdown.

On July 1, 2021, Twitter user @shahirahnizam used the two-panel version to complain about not getting a first COVID-19 vaccine appointment5. By mid-2021 the Every Day I Wake Up template had settled into a vent-post routine, with the caption carrying whatever grievance the poster wanted to inflate past its real size.

Timeline

2019-11-06

Marriage Story premieres on Netflix, introducing the Charlie and Nicole argument scene.

2019-12-06

Netflix Film Club uploads the full argument clip to YouTube, where it later passes 3.6 million views.

2020-11-08

Tumblr blog IncorrectBookQuotes posts the earliest known caption-change version using only Adam Driver's panels.

2021-05-20

Redditor Oldmate81 posts a three-panel r/memes version about not understanding how houses move.

2021-07-01

Twitter user @shahirahnizam posts a two-panel version venting about a stalled COVID-19 vaccine appointment.

How to Use This Meme

Typically, posters pick a mundane grievance and stack it against Driver's escalation. A common convention is to open with a flat statement of the annoyance on the first panel (the gesture), raise the stakes with a second line on the wall-punch panel, then land the final caption on the sobbing panel. Two-panel versions skip the middle beat and go straight from complaint to meltdown.