Quarantine. Day Something.

<img src="https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/780560963669458966/1078420178750152784/fleur-nIhYL6IpHoI-unsplash.jpg" alt="Photograph of messy bedroom"> You wake up feeling inescapably hollow. It takes you five, six, seven minutes to muster the willpower to get out of bed. You eat a handful of cereal straight from the box. You decide that it will be breakfast. It is 2 in the afternoon. You should [[get dressed.|get dressed]]

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You pull on the same pair of jeans and hoodie that you have been wearing for two weeks. You hope nobody will notice. You decide it doesn’t matter if they do. Your fingers are cold. You turn on the coffee machine and stare blankly at the cracks in the wall until its beeping startles you out of your non-existence. You add too much of the creamer you don’t like, and self medicate. The half bitter half too-sweet taste is comforting in the same way the serene look on a waxy corpse at a wake is comforting. The three measly cups of caffeine don’t do much, but at least the cup warms your fingers. You think about all the coffee mugs you left in your dorm. Somehow the fact that you do not have the mug that says “Mothman believes in you!” makes the hollow feeling worse. You feel silly. It’s just a mug, a gift from a friend that you have not seen in a while. It leaves you craving a hug. Maybe a hug would warm the chill. You look at the clock. It is 2:20. You should [[go t]][[o class]]

You boot up your laptop, the one you got when your grandmother died, And plop it on your desk. You search your email for the zoom link You open the class two minutes late. Immediately, your attention shifts. How can you focus during the end of the world when you’re having a depressive episode? You turn off your camera. Nobody needs to see your lifeless eyes, staring blankly at whatever you’re doing as you only marginally pay attention. Slowly, that hollow edges away. Now it is just a pit of sadness that rests within you. You nurture it like a mother would a firstborn child. You let it eat away at you until suddenly it is an hour later and you are closing your computer. You are sad. You cannot focus on anything but the [[sadness.|something to miss]]

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Choose something to miss: [[Your Pocket Poet copy of Howl and Other Poems]] [[The bag of RPG dice sitting on the base of your university provided desk lamp]] [[Your Pine Grove Furnace State Park hoodie]]

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By the time you corral the energy to drag open your laptop, it’s 3 o’clock. Best to not even bother. It’s not like you really would have missed much anyway. You sit there, staring at the startup screen with exhausted eyes. You hear your parents come back from work, or the store, or wherever it is they go when they are not here. You ask how their day was in the same stupid fake canadian accent that you’ve used for the past year and a half for no discernable reason other than you’re you and you’re weird like that. You get some answer that you only half listen to. He asks you if you had class today. You say yes. You feel a little guilty. You do not crave the type of worry that he can provide. You are tired. This did not happen in your dorm. The bad days were never this [[bad.|something to miss]]

You ordered that book off amazon for three dollars on a whim one night You had read part of it in your first semester poetry class, but you had only rented it. You carried it in your pocket with you like your own personal bible, passages underlined and memorized for a test for nobody but yourself. You crave the warmth of the sunflower sunlight Ginsberg provided you. Of the knowing you are not alone. The words of his Sunflower Sutra ring hollow in your memory. There is nothing stopping you from staring at the mirror, Staring at your skin of grime and letting the dread consume you. You cannot see the sunflower growing in all the [[bleakness.]] <img src="https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/780560963669458966/1078420868616683680/Dead_Sunflower.jpg" alt="sunflower">

You are sitting on your bed in your childhood bedroom with the yellow light that makes your head hurt, missing things that used to be your normal. A bag of shiny plastic dice. Running to the City Co downstairs for snacks. A gathering of friends around a table, eating snacks and doing silly voices. Those are all distant memories, a damp blanket draped over your tired shoulders. [[You are alone]]

You are cold. You had a hoodie you wear on the worst days. It brought you comfort. You left it at home- your dorm. When did you start considering your cramped little dorm home? [[You miss it.]]

<img src="https://c0.wallpaperflare.com/preview/538/154/342/window-blinds-light-indoors.jpg" alt="window"> It is 6 AM. The sunlight is streaming in through the window. You have been trying to sleep for hours. It is not working. You can hear the birds. You can hear the click-click-clicking of your ceiling fan. You can hear the neighbors arguing. You roll over. You think about just staying awake. You have so much to do still. You know you still will not do it if you stay awake. [[You have been trying to get things done forever.]]

You have not been outside for God knows how long. It is chilly. It has just stopped raining, Thunder booming softly in the distance. You open your window. The smell from someone’s dryer vent comes wafting in through the window-- It smells like a hug. You want a hug from one of your friends so bad it nearly brings you to tears. You sit on your bed and breathe in. You should reach out. [[You don’t want to bother them.]]

You stare at the crisis helpline website. Your finger hovers over the message button, unsure. Are you worth the effort? Are you worth the time? You feel so awful and heavy, But surely there are people who need this more than you? You exit the tab. In Boston, when you got like this, you had a notebook. You bought it one night at a CVS when you got really bad And sat behind the law building, scribbling down you thoughts frantically Because you wanted them out of you. This became a habit of yours, when you felt like you were losing your mind. Go out into the cold Boston night, at whatever god awful hour of the morning your thoughts were spiralling out of control, And write until you felt less like you were collapsing in on yourself. Your hands itch for the sharpie-colored notebook But you left it at home. You will have to settle for the notes of your phone instead. But it's not the same. Nothing is the same. [[Fin.]] .

You have a nine page term paper due tomorrow. You open the document to start it. A wave of exhaustion crashes over you like a wave, An overwhelmed feeling creeping through like sand in your mouth. You wish you could go to the lake to let it swallow you up, but the lake shore is closed now. You have been trying to start this paper for a solid week. You still aren’t sure what it’s even about. You make another pot of coffee to chase off the heaviness for a while. If you had the energy to keep up the drowning metaphor you’d call it a life ring with no rope attached, Leaving you with your head above water, but drifting farther away from shore. If this were an ocean, you’d be worried about sharks, but it’s a lake, so the chill seeping into your own body will get to you long before any animals do. You’re so tired of holding on to the bouy. You decide it would be easier to let yourself drown. [[Fin.]] .

You’re staring at the website for a crisis helpline for not the first time this week. In another tab, you have open a conversation with your best friend since childhood, cursor blinking angrily at you at the end of an unsent message: <i>“wow my suicidal ideation is back w a vengeance love that for me”</i> You are afraid of the implications of sending it. Your finger hovers over the[[ backspace button.]] It moves to hover over the [[send button. ]]

You delete the message. You know she's got her own problems and you don't want to bother her. You look at the clock. It’s almost 3 AM anyway. You decide to lay there, waiting for a sleep that will never come. You are sad. You are hollow. You don’t know what you feel. But you know that bad feeling has made its home in your chest, curled up in your ventricles like a particularly well-fed cat lazing in the sunlight. It is your companion now. [[Fin.]]

You send the message. You stare, blearily, at your screen. You realize it is three in the morning, and she is not awake. Why are you awake? You do not want to be awake. You get up and wander to the kitchen. You drink some juice straight from the jug, as the neighbor’s cat watches in judgement from the window. “Don’t judge me.” you say, aloud, to a cat that is separated from you by two window panes and a few yards of space, standing in your underwear drinking juice from the jug in your kitchen at 3 in the morning. You feel self conscious enough to go put pants on. You take comfort in knowing that this cat shares your late night wakefulness. You think that that is a little sad. But it is still comfort. So you’ll take it. [[Fin.]]

Links and acknowledgments <a href=https://unsplash.com/photos/nIhYL6IpHoI>Bedroom image</a> <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dead_Sunflower.jpg">Mschel</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons (sunflower image) <a href=https://unsplash.com/photos/3a9Grg1mdVk>Blinds Image</a> You aren’t alone – support is out there. Text HOME to 741741 to reach a trained Crisis Counselor. <a href=crisistextline.org>crisistextline.org</a>