The Usual Alarm

I didn't feel alive anymore. 

Like at sea, limbs spread-eagled, floating in serene inches just above the surface. A lullaby adrift gently whisking my soul to another place, another realm… hopefully heaven.

Then I woke up, and felt the poundings of a giant hangover in my head, the soreness of a million pushups in my arms, the agony of an infinite toe-stubbings against the edge of a desk in my legs.

Suddenly, I've never felt more alive… while also simultaneously wishing I kinda wasn't.

"You idiot."

I heard someone somewhere say the precise moment I managed to flutter my seemingly tape-sealed eyelids open… like they've been waiting this whole time to say it.

In the almost blinding shimmers and rims of my blurred vision, I instantly recognized the musty white of my bedroom ceiling, and I could also quickly recognize this hard softness of my least favorite pillow against my head, which could mean only one thing… 

I was bedridden again.