Everest

Sometimes, the simplest task can be your Everest.

Slowly, painfully, you open your eyes. Your sockets burn right back into your skull, and as they find their focus, using every single fibre of being to blink, the lifelessness returns. You take a deep breath in, and release it. Today. It has to be today. Cautiously, you flex your fingers, the effort causing your eyelids to droop, as you fight back the waves of nausea and unconsciousness, willing yourself to move your toes. You try to move your arms, but you can't. You are too weak. Your legs feebly kick out in front of you, but your brain does not register this action. It has no consequence after all. You are being smothered by something warm, and takes all you willpower not to sink beneath and never wake up again. But you chide yourself fiercely. Today. It has to be today. Your legs try to stretch, but your brain does not send a signal to your knees, willing them to bend, and does not send a message to your feet, willing them to find some scrap of solid ground. Your arms lie dead at your sides. Slowly, you flex your fingers, and screw your eyes shut, as your hands find the surface you are lying on. Shakily, your muscles contract, as you push yourself up, every single cell in your body working for this moment, as your dead legs wobble, feet finding relatively solid ground. You are halfway there.Straightening your back ,you sit up, but you don't see the point. There is never any point. Your lifeless leg swings over the side, dangling in the air, as your other leg comes over to join it. You can do it, you say to yourself. Just put one thing in front of the other. But however much you think it, the willpower never comes. You just sit there. Dangling, Today. It has to be today. Slowly but surely, you reach down with one foot, jumping at the cold touch of the ground beneath. With agonising slowness, you repeat with the other leg, every muscle cramping with the stress of moving. Come on, you tell yourself. That was the easy bit. As your heart begins to hammer at the walls of your chest, your brain screaming for some rest, you slide forward. Pressure builds on your feet, as you as you place some of your weight on them, still sitting, testing experimentally. Even though your head is shrieking, begging you to stop, your body works with a lifeless efficiency, carrying out the same routine that it has always done, and always will do. Your body is whispering yes whilst your mind is screaming NO, as you manage to put all of your weight onto your feet. Then, with a speed rivalling that of a tortoise, each and every muscle in your body sobbing from the sheer effort, you push up, and with a low groan, you straighten out.

You have done it.

You have gotten out of bed.

Author's Note

Reviews always welcome!

Reviews

[Davidgeo]

This isn't a wholly original concept but it's not overused at all. I mean, it is common to see writing on the relativity of strife and struggle but not the specific "my struggle is my Everest event" thing. I'd chop this up and re work it into a poem. It wouldn't even be difficult, I was doing it in my head as I read it. It has good potential as a poem, only so-so as a story.

[RibhyMay]

Now that you mention it, I can see that now. Thanks for the review!