Anxious

Sometimes you wake up and you realize that you’re not okay. And I’m not even sure how it hits: like a ton of bricks, like a creeping bug, like a shadow lurking in the back of your swollen mind. But you just know that you’re going to be one of those kids on medication. One of those kids classified by a psychiatrist and the DSM IV. One of those kids advocating therapy because it’s “so helpful” or maybe trashing it because it “doesn’t work for shit”.

I knew because I didn’t want to get out of bed. That seems like any typical seventeen year old; it’s 6 a.m. and you have to get ready for school and hell, who the fuck wants to? But it wasn’t like that. It was more like: it’s 6 a.m. and oh fuck, you’re still alive, why the hell are you still alive? Didn’t you die last night? Or maybe that was a dream. A hella good dream it was.

I closed my eyes and it felt rough, painful. My eyelashes were crusted with last night’s nervous breakdown. I felt my teeth with my parched tongue; they were coated in slime. My nostrils crackled with each breath due to dried up mucus. I was a corpse inhabiting a live person's body, and I really was not doing it any justice.

The mirror only confirmed my fears. What could have been a pretty face had given up a few weeks ago. No more foundation was applied. No more liquid eyeliner was fucked with. No more mascara was brushed on. The teeth were lucky to get brushed. There was just no point.

I put on a large sweater and some leggings, an unobtrusive outfit. Maybe if I stopped dressing so flamboyantly, no one would notice me. No one would talk to me. I could melt into the walls and live in the vents, and no one would be the wiser.

The halls of the school felt too tight and too full. The usual faces were no longer on people; they were on leeches. These cretins wanted to take my happiness away, suck it all out. I watched them giggling in groups and talking in the halls. My fingers jammed my headphones into my ear and turned up the music. The lyrics whispered soothing messages in my buzzing ear.

Classes were a blur. I wasn't really there, when you think about it. I was too tired from not sleeping the night before. What were once impeccable notes had become two bullet points and a doodle of a burning building. Tests were handed back to me with failing grades on them. Homeworks weren't turned in. Assignments just weren't completed anymore.

He was in fifth period, oh yes, he was. He talked to his usual friends, talked to me, even. But I was no fun. I laughed at his jokes, but that was it. He left and talked to other people. It was okay. I didn't care anyway.

I still don't understand why I think things will get better when I come home, but that day, I did. I opened the door and my mother started yelling. My grades. My college apps. How do I expect to get into Yale. And why did I not eat breakfast.

I cried, of course. I cried until I was a pool of waste on the floor, shuddering and shivering with every opening and closing of my door. My stomach heaved dangerously and eventually I brought it all up. All my stress, so beautifully painted, splattered inside the toilet and floating on the water. I wiped my mouth as I heard my mother panic about me. I could taste the nothingness that I had been eating.

Pieces of life were cracking and breaking apart from the structure and crashing on top of my head. Nothing was sane anymore; nothing made me happy. Something was wrong, everything was wrong, but maybe nothing was wrong.