04 - Thursday, September 17

                                    

                                          
Weariness of existence had draped itself around my shoulders like an oppressive, smothering shroud. Despite my best efforts to engage with the lesson, it threatened to pull me into endless tedium, my eyes only feigning attentiveness in a feeble attempt to placate the always watchful eyes of the teacher. 
But when a gentle nudge against my shoulder fractured this illusion, I found Olivia's eyes on me, brandishing a cautionary glint.
Gulping, I turned to meet the piercing gaze that had singled me out. Yet again. "Yeah?"
Miss Martin gestured to the board. "I asked you if you could come solve this."
"Can I not?"
A sarcastic smile pulled up the corners of her lips. "Can you not be witty and bother to pay attention for more than three minutes?"
"Do you want an honest answer?"
"I want you to grasp that it was a rhetorical question and do what I'm asking of you."
Fatigue smothered any sparkle of humor or defiance that longed to burst forth. I merely nodded and shuffled my feet to the front. 
As my hand reached for the marker, my gaze was momentarily ensnared by the ink on her hand. Forming a word, smaller designs peeked from beneath the rings on her knuckles, along with something on the side in a twirly script. Her right hand, however, was blank. Not that I cared. I swallowed the queasiness that inched up my throat and calculated everything, all the while trying to ignore the hot gaze searing itself into the back of my skull. 
Her obvious intention to humiliate me did nothing but accentuate the hollow sense of inadequacy. I longed for some remedy to still my jittering nerves, sedate the twisting knots. Further aggravating my state was that gnawing unease that gnarled in my gut, evidence of my futile attempt to secure more than a mere two hours of sleep for once; the lure of alcohol had always been irresistible to me on sleepless nights, but the relief it offered was transient, and the price for it was an overwhelming sense of malaise that left me feeling even more wretched than before. My excessive negligence of health and well-being had once again demanded its due. I squirmed around restlessly on my feet, suppressing the urge to flee from the oppressive environment that very moment. I could barely focus enough to listen to anything in class, so how was I supposed to stare into her cold, disapproving visage for a full hour when I couldn't even keep my thoughts straight?
"Um, miss?" I managed a feeble smile. "Can I go to the nurse?"
She glanced at her watch. "We only have a couple of minutes left of class." 
Time played a ruthless game, fast-forwarding for the sake of my misery until a gentle flicker of compassion softened the sternness in her eyes, if only for a second, and she offered a subtle nod. I wasted no time to shoulder my bag and beat a hasty retreat from the classroom. But before I could even reach the stairs, my legs redirected me in another direction.
My mind begged my stomach to keep everything inside for a few moments more until I barely outpaced the nausea. Bitter taste of bile invaded my mouth. Saltiness of tears blurred my sight. Everything appeared to be spinning around me as I sat with my knees on the restroom tile, the school bell grating against my eardrums like nails on a chalkboard, blending with my dry heaves and the persistent cramping in my stomach.
All I could do was sit there and struggle to remember the simple rhythm of breath against the choking sensation and the throbbing of my pulse in my ears. I couldn't explain why I was like that, why my body and mind seemed to be in a perpetual mutiny against my will. Swinging from contentment to paralyzing anxiety from one day to the next, the fluctuations in my mood were something I despised deeply. I constantly struggled to find a foothold of mental balance, trapped in a spiral of negativity, which, in turn, drove me to seek comfort in the wrong things with alarming regularity.