On The Will To Get Out Of Bed

You’d be walking by the road and chatting with your friends, when suddenly an unstoppable force would pull you out in a blurred mixture of melting colours, as you hear a weirdly familiar melody becoming louder and louder…

And the next thing you know, you are in bed, with your morning alarm ringing next to your ears. You feel the brightness of your phone’s screen glaring back at you as you struggle to move your arms and fingers to swipe and shut that noise down. The realisation of the beginning of day dawns on you as you think of the first few things you have to do this morning.

Another fifteen minutes, you say. You’ve set up more than one alarm. It’ll be easier to wake you up the second time.

The melody comes back too quick. Getting out of your light sleep, you swiftly swipe and silence steps back into the room. Another fifteen minutes. The next alarm is the last. You’re gonna have to wake up then.

The sound comes back. Sometimes it doesn’t sound like an alarm, because your ears have been so used to it. You turn it off. Alright, you should really get up now. You think about what awaits you in the real world and you turn around and tuck yourself back into your sheets.

Five more minutes.

It’s okay, you are confident that you won’t miss anything if you arrive late.

You close your eyes for a second and the next time you open them, an hour has passed. It’s alright, you tell yourself. The first hour of the class doesn’t really matter. There are so many more hours you can catch up on. The day is gonna be a long day, in any case.

But you have to wake up now. Because you can miss one hour, but not more. And yet… the thought of missing everything scheduled for the day feels like a tempting idea. In fact, why not sleep all day? The thought crosses your mind for a second.

You think about all the situations you could avoid by sleeping in, all the people you would not see that you absolutely don’t want to see anyway, all the work that has to be done that will not be done but at least you will not have to deal with those usual criticisms that don’t help at all. Some people only know how to hate. Very little know how to support.

In the end, you take a deep breath and do a roll-up out of bed, because you realise you have to get up to do something about this. You can’t stand how people treat you but staying in is not going to change anything, except delay the nightmare.

Besides, you have responsibilities to attend to. Responsibilities no one else can and will do. So you decide to get out of bed; you show that you are strong, even though you believe you are not.