meoka<3
Passionately misguided
- Jun 20, 2024
- 17
disclaimer: This is a short story thing I wrote a while ago. It was a time in my life when I alternated between states of apathy and depression. I found it while organizing old stories and such. I've never shared it before. I've never had a place to. The story doesn't mean as much to me since it's a little old, but if it's like, not garbage, let me know! I love getting feedback on my work.
You wake up an hour before your alarm, exhaustion already set deep in your bones. Twisting and turning to no avail, you decide to waste time online before getting up. Walking out the door and making your way to school requires little thought. It seems almost blissful, as moments before acting always seem. Upon arrival, you feel awake enough to keep your head up and exchange the necessary pleasantries, but not enough to offset the everpresent tiredness within. Not that it matters. The only thing that does is outward appearances and interactions. How well you hold up your carefully curated walls, flawed as they may be. Everything is a blur of the same. Small, avoidable mishaps and awkward moments in an otherwise typical day. Sometimes you dream of an exit during class, but at least there were none of the rare pangs of embarrassment or hurt. Other's emotions and lively events feel almost meaningless, never going deeper than a detached recognition of emotion followed by a forced, logical response. The day comes to an end and you're at home. Free time at last, you think. However, whatever you do doesn't feel like enough. Sitting with your thoughts or watching shows is a complete waste of time. Even completing work isn't enough, because no matter what you've done, you could have done more, done better. At the end of the day, you're just another mediocre student and even blander person, no matter how hard you try or wish for more. Laying in bed in wait for sleep to come, you swim in your own dismal thoughts. Today, like this week and the last, is just not worth caring for. A curious thought sparks, and you decide to do something you haven't done in a while. You put on your headphones and listen to one of her favorite songs and try to relax. Breathing helps, as people say, so why not? One breath in. One out. And in. And out…they fall. Tears start running familiar paths down your cheeks, your nose starts to sting, and all of sudden, you can't stop. Apathy washed away by a suffocating despair and in that moment you remember just how painful it could be. Your breath halting, throat aching, ceaseless hiccups and for the first time in weeks you've lost control and it just hurts. It hurts. An hour or three passes by and it's only gotten worse, threatening to drown you. In a moment of clarity, or perhaps delusion masquerading as such, you grab your notebook and write. You write and write and write, tears rolling down your nose and falling onto the page until it's a pattern of countless gray dots. Maybe, just maybe, writing your thoughts will lessen them, somehow transfer their presence from mind to paper. Your normally immaculate handwriting turns into something more frantic over time as your mind still threatens to consume you, a seemingly dark presence begging to smother you. Tight, neat loops devolving into erratic scratches leaning over the border of legibility. Slowly, though, the presence recedes. Your breath evens and the tears stop. You're stable…stable in the sense that though the despair is still there, you can keep yourself together. How could you have forgotten something so obvious and…real?! How could you go through the day numb and uncaring when there was this, here all along? It's all so tiring. You're tired, tired of a cold heart and even more so of its occasional, profuse bleeding. Tired of the deep weariness beyond sleep's cure. It wraps its heavy arms around you, a broken feeling of comfort arising from its perverse hug. How do you feel anything other than disgust from the same thing that inspires and feeds off your self-loathing everyday? At least it's here with you and possessing a deep understanding, although misguided, and not worlds apart like everyone else. Eventually, it lulls you to sleep, and you await a wakening to repeat the same events in a seemingly endless cycle.
But you have a thought, the barest inkling of a plan, that's become more insistent and present as of late. An escape. A ticket out of this cycle. To satisfy your selfish desire to not do anything and to lift a burden from the shoulders of all those unfortunate enough to have known you. Yet here you are still, existing in all your miserable glory, all while complaining about it. Why? Perhaps it's her, your cowardice, or love itself. You don't know, but you wish it would go away so you could be free and free everyone else. God knows at least they deserve better.
You wake up an hour before your alarm, exhaustion already set deep in your bones. Twisting and turning to no avail, you decide to waste time online before getting up. Walking out the door and making your way to school requires little thought. It seems almost blissful, as moments before acting always seem. Upon arrival, you feel awake enough to keep your head up and exchange the necessary pleasantries, but not enough to offset the everpresent tiredness within. Not that it matters. The only thing that does is outward appearances and interactions. How well you hold up your carefully curated walls, flawed as they may be. Everything is a blur of the same. Small, avoidable mishaps and awkward moments in an otherwise typical day. Sometimes you dream of an exit during class, but at least there were none of the rare pangs of embarrassment or hurt. Other's emotions and lively events feel almost meaningless, never going deeper than a detached recognition of emotion followed by a forced, logical response. The day comes to an end and you're at home. Free time at last, you think. However, whatever you do doesn't feel like enough. Sitting with your thoughts or watching shows is a complete waste of time. Even completing work isn't enough, because no matter what you've done, you could have done more, done better. At the end of the day, you're just another mediocre student and even blander person, no matter how hard you try or wish for more. Laying in bed in wait for sleep to come, you swim in your own dismal thoughts. Today, like this week and the last, is just not worth caring for. A curious thought sparks, and you decide to do something you haven't done in a while. You put on your headphones and listen to one of her favorite songs and try to relax. Breathing helps, as people say, so why not? One breath in. One out. And in. And out…they fall. Tears start running familiar paths down your cheeks, your nose starts to sting, and all of sudden, you can't stop. Apathy washed away by a suffocating despair and in that moment you remember just how painful it could be. Your breath halting, throat aching, ceaseless hiccups and for the first time in weeks you've lost control and it just hurts. It hurts. An hour or three passes by and it's only gotten worse, threatening to drown you. In a moment of clarity, or perhaps delusion masquerading as such, you grab your notebook and write. You write and write and write, tears rolling down your nose and falling onto the page until it's a pattern of countless gray dots. Maybe, just maybe, writing your thoughts will lessen them, somehow transfer their presence from mind to paper. Your normally immaculate handwriting turns into something more frantic over time as your mind still threatens to consume you, a seemingly dark presence begging to smother you. Tight, neat loops devolving into erratic scratches leaning over the border of legibility. Slowly, though, the presence recedes. Your breath evens and the tears stop. You're stable…stable in the sense that though the despair is still there, you can keep yourself together. How could you have forgotten something so obvious and…real?! How could you go through the day numb and uncaring when there was this, here all along? It's all so tiring. You're tired, tired of a cold heart and even more so of its occasional, profuse bleeding. Tired of the deep weariness beyond sleep's cure. It wraps its heavy arms around you, a broken feeling of comfort arising from its perverse hug. How do you feel anything other than disgust from the same thing that inspires and feeds off your self-loathing everyday? At least it's here with you and possessing a deep understanding, although misguided, and not worlds apart like everyone else. Eventually, it lulls you to sleep, and you await a wakening to repeat the same events in a seemingly endless cycle.
But you have a thought, the barest inkling of a plan, that's become more insistent and present as of late. An escape. A ticket out of this cycle. To satisfy your selfish desire to not do anything and to lift a burden from the shoulders of all those unfortunate enough to have known you. Yet here you are still, existing in all your miserable glory, all while complaining about it. Why? Perhaps it's her, your cowardice, or love itself. You don't know, but you wish it would go away so you could be free and free everyone else. God knows at least they deserve better.
