Morning slams itself against your window, loudly and with no remorse for your half-slept night.
The blankets weigh a thousand pounds and the thought of trying to take them off is just too much to even consider.
Your to do list is sitting on your chest, pinning the quilt that now feels like a thousand and ninety pounds to your unkempt sheets. Does any of it really matter anyway?
The pounding of the migraine trying to creep its way inside your skull makes those same blankets that kept you warm and safe feel like an iron jail you can’t get out of even with a crowbar.
It’s morning.
And no pot of coffee or conversation or loving embrace will take away the anxiety that has invaded your space since that moment.
You still try…
To act normal.
To talk to the lady with the stroller and the yappy dog on the street you pass everyday…
Like nothing happened.
Like the world didn’t throw you a question you have no choice but to answer.
Like the world didn’t ask you to show up.
That moment when you realized this big world needs you….
Oh, THAT moment.
The one that comes with pressing fingers together in a death grip, in not knowing how or when or what… but being told to follow why.
To turn corners when every streetlight you have ever known has been burned out.
And to keep turning them
Anyway.
Because some day, when you least expect it,
You come before the last turn and you wonder…
“Should I or shouldn’t I?”
It is in that moment that you become you.
And the day you heard the question was the day you decided to really listen.
And the list on your to do list falls away into remarkably simple statements.
Show up.
Speak my truth.
Be me.
And don’t apologize.
“But it’s scary…” you manage to whisper from under your three thousand pound blankets.
“This big world needs you,” screams Morning.
And so we rise.
