Lately, I've been walking around in a haze.
I didn't do much this past weekend. My laundry was left to pile up, homework was forgotten, and if I had plans they would have been canceled. Actually, to be completely honest, I haven't done much of anything since I got here. There's an anxious pulsing in my chest that hasn't left me since I got in the car. It's like someone snuck into my room one night, replaced my brain with cotton balls, and swapped my bones for lead pipes.
It's not the first time, so, maybe I should have seen it coming. It happens sometimes. I'll fluctuate between a state where everything moves me and hardly feeling anything. I'm not sure what caused it this time — if it was the sudden change in scenery, a guttural reaction to anticipated stress — but I'm becoming numb again.
Maybe I'm not describing it quite right, but it's as if there is a wall between myself and I. Something needs to escape my chest, but I don't know what, and even after all these years I'm not sure how to help it. The more I grow used to this place and this feeling (by which I mean the world and my changing condition, respectively), the more I realize how little there is I can do but go through the motions and wait for it to pass.
Still, I am trying to figure it out.
All I know is that I should feel lonely, but I don't. I should feel happy — to be here, to be pursuing something — but I don't. I should feel a lot more than cloudy, but I don't.
I've been thinking about everything and nothing. I find myself stuck in an uncomfortable place where my mind is both overcrowded and empty. My body feels heavier than it should. I long for sleep if only to pass the time, but my mind won't turn off for long enough. And, really, that's the worst part of it: I can't stop thinking, but I couldn't tell you what about.
Mid-semester is finally rolling around, so maybe we can blame that added stress for my need to comment on it. Maybe it's homesickness or something deeper because that doesn't seem quite right. It's not home specifically that I miss, but the comfort of it. The safety, maybe.
I'm not sure how to end this, because there's not a resolution I've found. I don't have any advice for anyone feeling this way, either but I wanted to write about it anyway, even if my words might be better suited for my angsty junior high poetry. The only thing I am sure about is that it will pass. I suppose that is my advice, my concluding statement if you will: be patient.
