You wake up
forcing your eyes open
to the brightness of morning.
Every inch of your weary body
screams at you to stay where you are.
But you know that there are things to be done
and you will never have that luxury,
the luxury of staying where you are happy, forever.

You force yourself up,
Lazily swinging your feet onto the freezing floor.
Your toes are shocked,
They instinctively scrunch up
at the feeling of this unsettling surface.
Terrified of stepping out of their comfort zone.
Almost as terrified
as you.

You force yourself up,
And you trudge down the stairs,
Steps as slow as molasses,
Into the kitchen,
Where you fix yourself a insipid breakfast.
As you slowly sip your bitter black coffee,
You stare out the window,
Wishing you could just go back to bed.

In your head,
you list all of the things that you must do,
all the tedious tasks you don’t want to tend to.
Take out the garbage. Fold the laundry. Wash the dishes.
The least favorite of chores are at the top of your list.
But other thoughts creep into your head,
darker ones.
Sad ones.

You are thinking about your fears.
Not only your fear of spiders
and your fear of heights.
But the fears you that conceal,
the ones that keep you up at night.
The fears that hold you back
when they should push you
to take a leap of faith.

The fear that the biggest decision you will ever make
will be what socks to put on the morning.
And the biggest challenge you will ever have to face
will be getting your car out of the snow.
The fear that your greatest accomplishment,
won’t be great at all.
And the fear that everything you’ve ever done to be happy,
won’t make you even make you feel a little warm inside.

The fear that everything will be for nothing.
And that everything you achieve
will be nothing compared to what you hoped to do.
You are so terrified of what will happen if you fail,
that you don’t give yourself a chance to succeed.
And you are stuck doing chores,
until you can find the courage to take on a bigger challenge.