Nothing At All

It’s hot.

Far hotter than January has any business being.

My bedclothes - stripped down to only the Star Wars sheets - are twisted around my knees and damp with sweat.  I huff at the ceiling, glance at the clock, and huff again. I hadn’t even been trying to stay awake this time, and somehow, that makes it worse - because if I had known I wouldn’t be able to sleep as a result of my mother’s overcompensation for the frigid weather, I would have finished up my history homework with the extra time like a good little dickens.

Not me, I think. I’m not a good dickens.

The landing groans under the weight of a step, and then two, and then a third final.  My head lolls to one side to stare at the dark, looming form of my bedroom door, now outlined by the light from the bathroom seeping through the cracks.  It fades away after only a second with a click that’s sharp and loud in the stillness of night.

I don’t want to go to school in the morning.

That’s the curse of snow days, I think.  They’re not like planned teacher workdays or national holidays; they’re happy surprises.

Or, at least the first one was.  The second was completely out of nowhere, and I enjoyed it, but not as much as I should have.

Because now, as ready as I had forced myself to be for the oncoming school freight, I felt none of that bracing anticipation now.  It was almost as if my body was trying to rouse itself from yet another Long Break Hibernation, and it wouldn’t be prepared in time forthe morning.  Dragging myself into the shower and onto the bus would be complete and utter agony rather than the ordinary, run-of-the-mill torture.

I enjoy the company of friends, but what little capacity I have for being social steadily drains me until I have nothing left at the end of the day.

I don’t mind observing the masses and their mannerisms, but knowing why people act the way they do and having to explain in intricate detail with the right vocabulary are two very, very different things with very, very different workloads.

I like to write and read what I want to - on my time, and with my own words - but straightening out my usage of rhetorical strategies with a fine tooth comb and scrutinizing them under a microscope sucks the fun right out of it.

I like being able to tell how many Steven Universe specials fit into one long block on the TV guide - two hours’ worth, noice - but math as a school subject was invented by the devil himself in the fiery pits of Hell, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

And I know, alright? I know that it’s all important somehow - someway - whether it be for muscle memory,background knowledge acquisition, or actual usefulness, but that doesn’t make it any less tedious.

Throw in the ennui of public academia with the constant stress of navigating the dangerous waters of social convention and trying every day to not step in something sticky or lean against a wall that someone’s smeared gum all over, and it’s just one great big snowballing ball of mess.  It’s a damn mystery to me why the government isn’t forced to appoint teachers to schools - if the world made any sense, no one in their right mind would want to go back into the fray with a smile and a lesson plan.

(I respect the hell out of those troopers, goddamn. You couldn’t pay me to come back to this hell hole - and they barely do for the actuals.)

It’s got me worked up just thinking about it. 
Eugh.

I go anyway, though - and not out of any sense of duty or responsibility or any of the stuff that actually makes a decent student - but because it’s illegal if I don’t.  Also, my parents would be disappointed in me, and I try to avoid that as much as I can because it hurts. Like, a lot.

If you hate working so much, you’ll never survive in college.

No.  No, I won’t.

But I’m going to have to.  Or die trying.

You have to do what you need to do in order to do what you want to do.  Yes, thank you, Denzel.

Because what I want to do: is absolutely nothing.

I want to be able to take days at a time to do nothingwith no adverse side effects.  That’s it; that’s my entire dream for the future. To be in a place financially and socially where I can do nothing for days and notdrown in work or expectation or anything else that eats at me currently.  That would be bliss - that would be well and truly living, I think.

Nothing weighs on my mind as I drift to sleep with a dopey smile on my face.  Dreams of it await me.