Tick-Tick

“People please remember, you have a test soon, a week from now. So please study.” The professor’s yell went unheard as most packed and left long ago while he was wrapping up the lecture. He limped over to his desk and sat staring at his computer, having grown to the neglect, so he sat there and rubbed the white hairs on his chin while the other, maybe 14, people left including myself. I always pitted that man, seeing him alone, seeing him neglected in such a way. It just stabs something in me, urging me to go and hug that man, to let him know that we students truly care for him, for he too is human. But something pushes that urge down. And I walk away leaving him behind as he places his head into his hands and begins to contemplate his thoughts on himself, of worth, and what innate value anyone has. (Later I learned that it was none, we are born nothing, and we shall die as nothing. He blurred the line between moral rationality and the capabilities of his person. He did things... He regretted those things... He sought a price and found it… He paid it -- in his own way…)

I walk and walk ignoring everything around me other than a breeze lightening my mood a little as something has been attempting to drown me this whole week. I simply blamed it on my lack of sleep, bad habits, and other things I won’t change. I grew to live with its dreadness, telling it to shut up at times when it grew too large. And on this day my voice drowned in the sea of its own, so I walked alone, ignoring all, with a black hoodie covering me. I hear the laughter of others but I don’t look up to see them, though, I picture a happy couple talking on a bench and I grow angry. Angry at the thing I won’t ever have. Hate. I hate them, I want to walk to them and beat them both. But I carry on walking. Passing by more students and their random banter about anything their ignorance on full display. A part of me wishes to criticize them on how useless they are to tell them of our trapping and the harm of society and the hate it birthed. But, I know myself, that I too wish to be ignorant. I would rather live in my hole than be trapped and know I can never escape.

I make it to the dorms and ignore everything. Usually, some people greet me. Thankfully that was back when I was rational. I told them something like this might occur and told them to ignore my presence. They did. I love them for it, but I won’t express it. I walk past some of my few friends, Fydor, Rusty, and Mark. I’ve known those 3 for the majority of my life, and most of me was hoping that one of them would break the boundary I set. They didn’t. And I walked past them in the hallway while each talked leaning against different walls. 2 on the right and 1 on the left. Their brown skin shone brightly against the white walls. I envy the stability, the one they all show and keep consistently. I miss it. I miss being consistent. I walk up the stairs at the end of the hall, and some are talking loudly about nothing. As I walk up the stairs to the 3rd floor I realize that I know many people and despite that, I feel more isolated. Lonely. I recognize so many faces yet none of them I can call friends. None I can call trustworthy. The third floor is flooded with people as it is a meeting place for most since it is the middle ground of the complex, yet dread and separation consumed me. Not just their words now, but simply their presence and loudness of them shoot at me. I walk through them and they let me pass, moving out of the way without a word and ignoring me after. With each step I take, the more I feel as if I will break, with each step I feel my eyes water and my mouth form into an expression, “For once! I know I’m human!” Is what I think as I begin to cry and slam my door shut as soon as my body evades the swing area.

The moon shines through my bedroom window, I have no roommates, so I let myself cry into my pillows and sheets. I cuddled up to a pillow I had on my couch, using it for the reason of comfort. It doesn’t work. And I’m reminded of my situation. Of my isolation. Total loneliness and rejection of anything good my mind tries to bring. Tactics I’ve used in the past to treat such breakdowns don’t work. I cry and cry into my red pillow with snot starting to make a spot on it. I hold onto the stolen pillow and huddle closer into it with my knees starting to bend into it, forming a fetal position. I listen to music that should evoke happiness, but each time the cover of happiness ends I am reminded of the shallowness and coldness of my reality. I close my eyes and have a voice repeat “Is this my fault?” in my head. Flashes of chances and regrets remind me that it is and always shall be my fault. I open my eyes and with a whimper, I say, “I’m sorry, I won’t get better.” Then closed my eyes and cried again.

This wave of emotion and the prolonged expression is unnatural for me. I usually don’t spend too much time expressing my sadness even if it is forced. I still manage to control it minutes later even if it still influences other behaviors, such as increased anger, quick irritation, or simply putting me in a bad mood. But, this time, I cried for 30 minutes, staring at my ceiling holding my pillow, and picturing my self-hate in my head. I did it all in those 30 minutes. At one point I began to bite my own hand out of some overflow of emotion. So I sat up and looked at my right hand’s palm as it bled next to the pinky. Finally realizing my reaction I stood and stared at the window, looking at a full moon with little clouds dirting it. I pulled a chair back from my desk, which stood a mere foot or 2 away from the couch I lay in, and felt the cushiness of the seat’s foam. Despite buying that seat because of its large amount of foam, it started to annoy me.

Then everything began to annoy me, the unorganized desk, the running away pencils on the floor, the dirty laundry piling up near the closet, with the closet doors not even being shut, instead an inch apart. “The fuck, is wrong with me, I’m such a disgusting heath, aren’t I? AREN’T I? Just a nasty ass fucker! Fucking hell. Look at you! Look at you.” I rotated the chair while I spoke and spotted the mirror that was behind me across the room, that’s when I cursed myself. “Just look at you.” He smiled, and he laughed while pointing at me. “Just fucking look at you, those fucking eyebags, pathetic. What the fuck is wrong with you, huh? What’s got you so down!? Life is just sO HaRD, right?!” He laughed some more and pointed at me, pointed at the mirror. “You deserve it. You really do. You’re lucky those people put up with you. You just are. It always will be that way. You deserve none of that. And all of this. They’re being too kind.”

“I know....” I put my knees up on the seat and laid my head on them. The moon shined bright and the clouds dirtied it. I hear people moaning in other dorms and I hear others laughing. The world suddenly became much louder.

*Ring-ring* *Ring-ring*

My phone kept crying, doing what it should. But I was already awake and I let it run, watching it as it vibrated on my bed. It kept ringing even after I let it run and they ran it again. I wasn’t annoyed at it, surprisingly. Instead, I lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking thoughts that have, now, run away from me. Maybe I thought of never having to exist, maybe I thought of the possibility of a God. I do know that I saw the eyes of my forefathers simply staring at me, complaining of struggles that were never there while they stood on white clouds, their eyes angered me, “Those damn fucks. Thinking that simply they didn’t complain suddenly makes it okay, that their struggle was any more or any less than mine. I would yell out to those pearly eyes, the eyes of disappointment sprinkled with mist from tears yet to come, I would yell out to them that I have struggled, that mine are mental, that I was being tortured by little devils forever whispering in my ears, stabbing at my heart whenever I saw another person. Forever stabbing at my heart whenever certain thoughts came in, but I never knew the root of this -- evil. What is my struggle? What is the thing that causes this mass dying, this killing of a person? What the fuck is my struggle? The fuck happened in my childhood?! God! I remember what she said still, that one night we went out, it was supposed to be fun that night! Why did they have to start talking? Why do they say that about Mom?! She wasn’t bad! I swear! She was dealt a bad hand! She tried her best! She was trying! I swear she tried. I wasn’t neglected, Jessica! I wasn’t abandoned, Halle! She just tried her best!”

The phone kept ringing, but there was a pause, a 1-2 minute pause. It was a pause that allowed me to scream in my head, to babble on with memories that I can barely remember. The pause made the world stand still, at least for a minute or 2, the whole world was quiet again, just like last night before I blanked. But it rang again. Vibrating on a part of my bed where it has been forgotten. I snap out of my mind and rub my eyes, searching for the phone a moment later. It was a number I didn’t recognise though I didn’t bother to recognise any of them in the first place. I placed the phone to my ear, “What?” The voice that responded was dramatic, sad, and disturbed. It was a pain that I hadn’t heard before. A cry more pure than anything, she was crying into the speaker of the phone and didn’t bother to hide it. The wound was too fresh to hide as a scab, it would just bleed through the clothes instead. She was bleeding, and she was letting me know. “She died! Rico! They killed her! The man in the car! He killed her! Rico! She’s dead, she died! They hit her with a fucking car, Rico! Rico, she died!” She kept repeating the same words and I couldn’t produce my own. I knew automatically who she was talking about. I couldn’t say anything either way. I wanted to say something -- to calm her down even a little. But I couldn’t, my mind was finally beginning to collapse under its weight, thoughts and situations, stress and hatred. It all began to fall and pile on and on. It built a wall that covered my eyes and blocked my ears. She kept wailing about death, whose death? I don’t know. You do know! I don’t wish to know. I want to know! How’d she die? Don’t worry about it! How’d she die?! SHUT UP… please. I’ll forever see you crawl, a fish learning to walk. You’ve sworn to have been in this land before, yet here you are, gasping for a breath. Gasping for the air you can’t breathe. You know no suffering. No true pain. Listen to her, listen to those cries and yells. Pain… That’s what it is. Listen to it. Hate it. Learn to love it. Pain. You know nothing about it! I’ll forever seek to teach you about it. Please -- just be quiet. She grew slightly louder which broke me out of the trance that I was in. She wasn’t crying anymore, she was screaming, saying nothing coherent into the phone. I asked a question I knew the answer to, but I think that a part of me still hoped it would’ve been someone else. That I was somehow wrong about my assumption. But I knew I was right, there were only 2 people left and one of them was calling me… She in between large gasps and whines confirmed who had died. “Mama… Mama died, Rico!” “Oh, okay.” She kept crying. I was numb, I lay in bed hearing the horrid cries of a daughter who just lost their mother. I did too, I lost her too, why wasn’t I acting the same? Where were my cries?