Late Night Write

It was stupid, even childish. One little thing went wrong, I felt flaky, and I felt failed. The mask was slipping away and the camouflaged flaws flashed neon lights. I felt undependable and incapable of self control. I wanted to be held not buoyed. Furthermore, I wanted this to not be shrugged off. My standards may seem high but they’re what I have. Cheapening the strong emotional response to failure, however minute the failure may have seemed to you, was only making it worse.

 Now I was failing everywhere. I couldn’t communicate the situation or the effect to the degree I felt necessary. Maybe I was detailed enough, perhaps I just would never be able to make you understand. I know that if I had allowed the attention to be spared just a few more moments upon myself a great conjunction of catharsis could have resulted. This novelty felt selfish with you. It was a kid complaining about apple pie without ice cream to the kid who hasn’t had a meal all day.

Instead, I decided it would be much more proactive to switch roles. I did for you as I wanted done for myself. I comforted you and assured that everything would be okay. I catered to your needs no matter how minor they may have been. I felt that I was taking control of my own emotion by taking control of your comfort. That was until there was nothing left for me to do. We sat a moment in silence.

It was a silly little moment where I could feel the weight tottering above me. The claustrophobia had returned and the need to flee was a new necessity I was all too obliged to fulfill.

 Failure, an actual entity. I felt like I was swimming in an oversized coat. It was as if I had shrunk, but my clothes had not come with me. I couldn’t breathe and my vision started whirling.

Anxiety attack. I reach for my door and pull myself inside. The handle clicks shut and all I can see are a deprecation of thoughts. I shrink against the door. The weight has become unbearable. I’m shaking through it with shallow breath. Gravity calls me down to the ground as the door behind me guides my back. Insults and insinuations are hurling back and forth within the static room. Flashes of memory and potential narrative flash between black space and my, now, sepia toned vision. Nothing feels real but all feels dire.

I failed this task.

Well, it’s a stupid student run organization. You’re just having trouble adjusting back to school. Probably jolted by the many changes that had occurred basically at the same time.  School start, re-acquainting with roommates, reacclimating to a live-in boyfriend, leaving home after starting to feel comfortable, the shit Christmas that was. I don’t deal well with change.

I failed to communicate

I didn’t want to be selfish. You just have to be strong. This will pass. In comparison to what could be happening in your life, you should feel lucky to have this be your down-trodden state of madness. Really if you break for this there isn’t much hope for the future—figure it out.

I couldn’t control the situation

A physical response isn’t always something that you can mentally control. It could be any number of outlying factors. The important thing is just to breathe. This will actually be funny at some point in time. The melodramatics of a 20-something with nothing-problems rooted in her perfectionistic, overachieving, never feels good enough psyche.  Why isn’t my life a sitcom?

I failed at eating

Put the card back in the deck. Half the time I don’t believe myself that you had any disorder. I’m more than tempted to declare that card a comfort to your current self so your current skewed eating looks better than a lack of self-control.

I failed at an eating disorder

13 year olds with crushes on movie stars are somehow able starve themselves yet you couldn’t continue it. What does that say about your resolve?--- it’s a good thing you eat now. Though sometimes I believe you’ve just exchanged one disorder for another.

My expectations of any relationship are too high. Fail

If they don’t meet your expectations you don’t want to lower them. In addition, you’re dwelling on this. Just focus on the breathing, try not to think, and calm down. You’re fueling your own fire.

All the while these audible noises are coming from the living room and I begin to feel paranoid that I’ve drawn attention to myself. This paranoia is both upsetting and intriguing. On the one hand I desperately want not only to be heard but to be saved by myself and on the other I’m ashamed of this reasonless tantrum that has so physically manifested. This puts the tears, the heaving surface breaths, and blackness on hold. The pins I feel heating my skin cool until I’m frozen.

I look around and all is still. The same as it always is, tantrum or not. The climax feels cheapened. Nothing has changed, this has all happened in my head, and the only souvenir that remains is this shakiness. I’m not even sure if it’s a shakiness that is visible. The buzzing silence of an unchanged world by my dramatic moment courses underneath my muscles. I’m sore and exhausted. I imagine what I look like.

A crumpled ball on the floor, leaning against a door below a Katy Perry poster, nauseated by lack of oxygen, and demonstrating the calm reddened eyes that explain an inability to care anymore. This vision of myself, out of myself, is quite a funny one. I start to worry that someone might actually have heard me and come to “check up”. I reach up to lock the door, only to find that it’s already been locked (either as a result of muscle memory or a black out occurrence). How funny, blackout anxiety. How terrifying.

I shake either as a result of muscle fatigue or temperature and truly dissolve into a text book case of madness. I’m laughing but only insofar as I’m crying. I’m judging and counseling and crumpled helplessly all at the same time.

I realize how sad a notion it is that I can’t even allow myself the luxury of a natural breakdown. One unprecedented by motivation. A happening that refuses to be kept in the closet and instead topples out on its targeted victim.

The laughing turns solely to crying. I delve even further into emotional extremity. Heaving sobs at a frequency where I try to move my body to secure a muffling pillow. I’m a sack of bricks. A sad sack of Stephanie and there is no way my body is moving. I have no choice but to conclude and become over it.

Man was that weird. I have to find tissues, I have to get the tissues to me. Finally raising to my feet, a surreal experience indeed, I witness the aftermath within my body. My skin is offset in color, a palid dewiness with goose bumps and palsy wrists. Tears have been unkind to my eyes and the redness extends out from my veins onto the surrounding area. Lashes are clumped by dew and paired with swollen frames. I fan myself hoping to drive the redness away. It remains, however, stubborn as it is—I swear it even darkens.

I leave my room with an immense feeling of fear and stagnancy. Nothing has happened in the living room while a hurricane devastated a wall away. The sepia tones had diminished and left only traces on the walls, the floors, and the furniture. I beg in my mind for them not to look at me. One look and the trump will be played. I’ll have no choice but to show my hand and take responsibility for my gamble.

Are you okay?

Shit. I muster up the weakest of all smiles as if to call more attention to my predicament.

                Yeah, I’m fine.

I can’t even get through the sentence without sniffling.