1:20 A restless night

       My legs are twisted within my pale blue sheets, the heat of my laptop humming against my lap as I sit with eyes wide, aching to close though nowhere near able to. Bold crisp letters are listed on the screen before me, the color raging against my mind as my toes and fingers fiddle numbly. Sitting back with a huff, the headboard creates a dull imprint on the skin along my spine, limbs aching of discomfort and procrastination. My eyes scan the bulleted points for the fifth time this November evening, stress fully credited to this last week before thanksgiving break. Inhaling is difficult, sleep is near impossible, a restless night it’s sure to be.

Everyone knows the incredibly grueling feel of hours of sincere restlessness. Eyes aching from a few chunked, dedicated to a English paper. The next few minutes occupied with a few distressed breaths out, groggy blinks and an entirely elsewhere mind. Homework seems to be such an enormous understatement, more so a home deprived of sleep, though plentiful in slow, and mostly unenjoyably seconds being ticked through a skull while the clock seems to take it’s time reaching an hour reasonable to use the excuse of “It’s getting late, time to turn in.” Though with a handful of papers and tasks yet to be checked off, the bed seems dragged miles away.

The neon numbers flicker up in increments at my side, it’s only eleven o’clock. Checking my to do list, my to-stress about list, my unanticipated and worry producing chores, the satisfaction of a strike through across one dainty line seems minimal compared to the text that stretches nearly halfway down across this document. Brief moments are taken to crack my knuckles, one of my short but somewhat fulfilling split second breaks pursued while suffering through a six page paper on a topic in which my mind has never grasped. My eyes square in on the top right hand corner of the current page before me, the blinking cursor intimidating with it’s constant ticks, still, page two is filled a quarter of the way through. My stomach churns, my fingers lifting up from the keys they so fervently have been fingering, slowly pulling my hands back while the debate of whether or not a bite of food between paragraphs could truly hurt.

The last sentence my fingers had keyed idled as the finish of this paper for merely an hour, during which time my mind was not wrapped in anything nearly worthwhile or serving as any bit of an excuse to delay. Page two still lingers upon another opened document strolling along side by side on another, both of which unfinished and mid thought. Yawns are continuously coaxed up from my now sinking body, the heat radiating from beneath my covers beckoning me towards it, to just crawl in. Yet five tasks remain for homework, stress-work, worry-work. Nora Jones is streaming from the television perched on the opposite side of my living room, the music is captivating, alluring, beautifully strung from chord to chord. My topic should rather have been on the comfort and soothing nature of a piece of music. That is, until the channel is indecisively scanned to a cartoon, a lifetime movie, a horror flick. The soundtrack of my thoughts are constantly swarming back and forth from genre to genre, and all that seems to exist is the bed cradling my weight, all my ears desire is a lullaby. Instead, all that speaks up are keys.

Page three exists, though it is blank spare ten words. And now thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, it’s not nearly midnight. My eyelids are tugging themselves shut, only for a few seconds my mind murmurs to itself. Those few carry on through the next, after all five minutes on an hour’s worth of a research paper seems fair enough. Two more tabs are opened within my browser, Bach’s Canon in D is streaming from the speakers on each side of this open pad, while a blog of tire inspired words is filled with text that would rather easily fill the requirements my fingers and mind cannot reach. It’s just past midnight, and now my mind is mustering up desperately to me, searching frantically for some bargains. To give in now and finish as soon as my eyes awake the next morning, though knowingly it will not be until late afternoon. My fingers have officially decided, picking up the laptop burning against my skin and replacing it with the comforter tickling my legs.

12:46 in the morning is a time for sleep, they say nothing good happens past 12 o’clock. My still, though entirely unstill, sleepless body is a prime supportive detail of such a thought. My legs fidget, my arms try and find a proper way to grasp and hug the pillow molded to my side. My body seems to find a content position, and within a few minutes I feel myself being lulled into unconsciousness, though it likes to tease me. Three pages are already complete, tomorrow is another day. Restless thinking and a restless girl occupy this bed, through an entire twenty-four hour period my concentration managed a subtle two assignments out of seven, the last sentence of this will complete three. As anyone would agree, now is a time that is for sleep, now is when my body should give to the sheets while a sigh passes my lips, my mind drifting off to dreams beyond me. Three assignments out of seven, headlights illuminate my bedroom with every passing car, my stomach’s rumbling again. A few minutes’ worth of a snack could do no harm. This is the life of a restless night, a procrastinator’s fight. 

If only you knew

People are so quick to tell others with disorders that they’re “too this” and “too that” - they tell someone with panic disorder that they’re too dramatic and someone with depression that they’re too emotional, like these people don’t know this already. Like they don’t know that they live only in short bursts between attacks and pits, a brief moment where they actually feel like they’re okay and have any kind of control over themselves. You tell the person with panic disorder just relax. You tell the person with chronic depression just be happy. There’s nothing worth all of that stress and fatigue. Panic and depression are just as strong as addictions, you say that we feed off of it, that it seems like we crave it. And we do. Because our minds are so fixated that it gives up all control. You tell the one with panic disorder that they’re being irrational. The one with depression is just being downright ridiculous, pessimistic and stubborn. And you’re right. But don’t be so ignorant as to think we want to be this way. It’s not a quick fix. It’s an illness, much like that of which occupies those of you that speak down on them or give up on them or refuse to see it as a serious issue. We know that we are sick. We recognize it just as clearly as you do. But Until we learn how to dictate our own minds we feel as if we have no control. We do, but we don’t. It takes patience and strength to get through a disorder. All it takes is you thinking twice before opening your mouth to rid of the ignorance you’re consumed by. You aren’t telling us anything we don’t know. We know much more than you think. Now it’s your turn to gain some knowledge. 

chapter one

    you wore a peacoat because you remembered that i liked them, and it didn’t take you long to hold my hand which is nice because he used to always tell me that I was needy, when all i really wanted was a sense of someone else besides myself. you promised me coffee on our first date but it took me long enough to parallel park that we got there just as they were closing, and you reached for the door just to spin us around and you gave me that little smirk and told me not to worry, because you had something better in mind. so i just walked with you, fingers shaking but stuck in yours and legs somehow keeping up and i could smell the chocolate before you even opened the door for me, and when we walked inside there were flowers made out of chocolate and cases and cases of chocolate covered-everythings and you led me right to the chocolate covered strawberries and told me to pick which ones i wanted. i had told you nights before that i hadn’t had them since my birthday. you told me tonight was close enough. 

     you bought me homemade hot chocolate, too. and you carried the box and handed me a neatly little wrapped strawberry and i turned around so you couldn’t watch me take the first bite, and i had chocolate all over my fingers but you held my hand anyway and gave me tissue paper to get rid of what my lips couldn’t. it wasn’t until we started turning down lightly lit side streets that i asked you where we were going, and you told me that i’d just have to see. just wait and see. we walked through the beautiful part of downtown, and eventually i could see the lapping water of a lake, and the road turned into grass which turned into gravel, which led us to a long dock that stretched out over the water. you remembered that i liked those, too. you sat with me on the end of it and asked me about my family while i asked about yours, you told me your mom was one of the best people you knew but that you didn’t see your parents very often. i asked you if it scared you to get close to someone knowing you’ll be leaving for college soon and you said i’m not really leaving. at least you weren’t leaving yet. we’d let the silence sit between us and watch as it planes passed over us and you swore that it was the same one just circling around and around again. there weren’t many stars out, only a few big ones which i focused on many times that night when i couldn’t grasp onto any sort of reality. i asked you what you were thinking about and your hand was so soft on my thigh that i had to focus to hear your words and you told me you were only thinking about the fact that you were on a date with a beautiful girl.

    i kept telling you that i didn’t feel like i was here. and did that make sense? does that make sense? i’m here, i am here of course i’m here but it doesn’t feel like it. i don’t feel like i’m here.

     you pulled me back to lay with you and we just laid there on that dock with your fingers playing through my hair and my own making designs on whatever part of you i could reach, and you kept tightening your arms around me as if i could possibly go anywhere and you just kept asking me what i was thinking, and i just kept asking you what you were thinking. you pulled me up to the edge of the dock and i stood there facing the water and imagined everything beneath it, and you whispered into my neck to just imagine. to imagine with you. to imagine my own little bakery on the most beautiful street of paris, right on the corner, and fresh tulips would be delivered from holland every week and you’d have a regular, pierre, who would come in the mornings and share a croissant. and he would buy lilacs for his wife. he would always buy lilacs for his wife. i just closed my eyes and the only thing i could think to say was that the water was still now.

     you held my hands out with yours as the breeze toyed with my hair and i’d just keep folding you into me every way i could and slipping my hand beneath the band around your wrist. we held our thumbs out to the little sliver that was the moon and decided that it wasn’t in fact always larger than our thumbs like the movie had said, and you told me that there was someone out there holding their thumb up to us just the same, comparing and looking right at one another without looking at anything at all. i turned to you to bury my face in your chest and told you i wanted to go dancing. i’d always wanted to go dancing. you cradled my head to you and i asked you now what you were thinking. i could barely hear myself but you did. so you cupped my jaw and gently, too gently pulled it up to yours and kissed me. and you kissed me again, and another time, and then i was giving you them in return. and after awhile you pulled back and it was quiet again, and you told me that’s what you were thinking about. me too.

all i could say was me too.

daily excerpts from a complicated heart, 2 November 2013

I swore that I would be kind and not harsh, that I would share and not build walls, but promises from these lips are like already broken glass. There is no piece or place in me that is starting from a comprehensible whole. I am in pieces. Be warned - I may cause you to bleed. And I do not know where my heartstrings start and end but they seem to be constantly short-circuiting. I think I’m trying to fix this. Trying to fix the dead-end statements and passive aggressive meanings that seem to have gotten loose from my faulty grip. I may be trying. Or I may be making it worse. But I swear something is happening because I get these daily messages engraved into my palms or sometimes whispered in my dreams telling me that I am changing. The signal is out. Habits are altering and my home is shifting. My passion, love, and attention are all being remodelled. There is something critical happening in my nervous system, something worthwhile is forming from the fragments that I thought had been empty all along. I am becoming more than these shattered pieces. I swear. This is the first time that I did not cry. Maybe it does stop hurting. Maybe leaving does get easier. But I don’t think I want it to be easy. And while you may say this could be growth, I must say that I don’t feel good about it. Not one bit. So for now I will keep hoping that my tear ducts are temporarily broken because leaving without a knot at the base of my throat doesn’t feel quite right.