it's 8:57 pm. tomorrow is thursday, which means that the lab and the three essays are due. i'm cross-legged at my desk, and my laptop is open to a blank document, bossa nova humming in another tab. i have my coffee, my claw clip, and i cannot wait to create something amazing. i'm gonna use the fine tip pens i bought at michaels, and i'm gonna make the most intricate, most intellectual, most casually perfect project i ever have. everyone is gonna be impressed, and slightly envious of me tomorrow, and i'm gonna shrug off my hours of fixed, unwavering concentration as if it was no big deal at all.
i'm almost a hundred percent sure that the cell enters synthesis during interphase, and my assured, secure knowledge of that fact has catapulted me through the first hour of my project. i am intelligent. i am artistic. my mind is magnificent, and it propels me to perfection.
but i'm not certain that i can remember the step preceding cytokinesis in the mitotic phase, and it's starting to fuck me up. i arrange the papers in my folder to find a faulty frenzy of my class notes, which began with small bubble letters and ended with chicken scratch, and only covered the topics i was strong in. i'm not the best student. i should have paid attention in class. i scavenge the internet, including those purple links i've already clicked on twice, for some information, but the answer i need seems remote, almost in depth to the extent of being unattainable.
it's 10:57 pm, and i've wasted so much time. this one missing cog won't derail the machine, therefore i can probably bullshit this section and still get a decent grade. this is a use of my intelligence in a way, however it isn't the product of hard and honest work, therefore it doesn't deserve my care. still, since i didn't attend to this, it doesn't preserve that pristine and pretty aesthetic of the whole project. the smear of the pen bleeds into the pages i wrote previously, as if to remind me that i can never escape my inherent ineptness. i close my eyes as a faint, fluttering indignation bristles at the bottom of my chest. if this one section was, in fact, gonna taint the entire thing, my arduous effort on the rest of it was pointless. i calculate the consequences on my grade, ask myself whether this is really worth the effort, and anger at the answer.
my mind is a mixture of emotions. some of relentlessness, some of laziness, and others of inadequacy from sometime when i was a kid. god, i could have handled this in a heartbeat then. that wide-eyed, pigtailed perfectionist from 2012 is staring at me through a peephole which reveals the future, disappointed and embarrassed. i fucking hate myself. my vision flashes like a film as my palms begin to shake, and i want nothing more than to rip myself open and painfully poison every one of my organs. this is all consuming and overwhelming, and therefore i must escape. the new releases on spotify are appealing at the moment, and i'll drink it's sound to drown out this defeat until it is dead, or better, nonexistent.
it's 1:57 am, and i've traveled on countless trips in my head. in one of them i was an actress, pure and pretty and softly speaking an interview to a man which resembled my mirror. in another i was merely another teenaged girl, only i was taller, slimmer, and much more eloquent and charismatic, attracting attention with a simple smile and smitten curl of my lips. i tell myself that she is in within me right now, that i could probably become that woman if i tried to, but it doesn't matter. i forgot my lab and three essays existed.
it's 2:57 am, and i'm laid out on my stomach across the length of my bed. my eye meets the white wall- my lashes brush against the clustered paint when i blink. i breathe shallow and silent. i need to finish my assignments, pack my bag for tomorrow, and turn off my lights, yet i am stuck. i am an icicle in the wintertime, frozen and insentient. i am a sapling in quicksand, staying still to save myself, yet sinking faster and more violently than ever. i simply cannot move. there is a battle in my mind-it's brutal, it's a bloodbath, yet i am stoic, and i appear so fraudulently serene. i am fabricating anxiety- i am nervous for no reason, therefore i must traverse the tundras in my head until i remember the things i repress most. i am a reprochable, repulsive human being. i am unintentionally transparent- everyone sees straight through me. i hope my worst fears never come true. they won't. they can't. tears sting the back of my eyes as a block obstructs my throat. god, i hate this masochistic destruction, this insurmountable laze, this awful fucking catatonia. i am creating this. i'll get over it.
it's 3:11 am, and i'm relaxed in the dark. i've given up on my project- it seemed far fetched after the night's uneventful events, as if i'd visited distant and obscure stars and planets across a big span of time, and it was an insect, waving at me with it's insignificant arms. i'll just take the missing in the grading system, it'll signal a dull ache in me when i receive the numeric consequences, but it won't destroy me like it used to. i am numb to it now.
