“Due to inclement weather condition, campus will be closed.”

As a student, there is a magical excitement that comes with receiving an email with these words that were so carefully crafted. It means that students get a day off. They get to spend the day doing whatever they please whether that be catching up on overdue homework, or beige watching yet another Netflix series.

There are a select group of students that get relief from these words. We can breathe for one more day. We do not have to go through the painful process of convincing ourselves that it is okay to leave the house. We get another day to ignore the grueling monster in the closet. We do not have to sit in class digging our nails into our palms because focusing on the pain reminds us to breathe. We go mostly unnoticed. Our friends and professors do not usually catch the fear in our eyes. Those who do begin to truly see how bright we can shine.

Snow days can also be horrible. We are stuck inside our homes, our safe havens. Those same places also house the darkest part of our soul. We do not get to escape the darkness that plagues our every waking moments and disrupt our dreams by throwing ourselves into the business of school. We cannot focus on point A so we cannot fathom point B.

Days pass as the snow falls silently. We hyper focus on cleaning, on reading, or on Netflix. Anything to keep the pain away. We try to reach out and tell people, our friends, but something stops us. The lingering thought that they don’t care. We don’t matter on a normal day, what makes a snow day any different.

Imagine feeling like you are just a face in a crowd, now imagine you have no face, and you are naked. No one knows you, but you are constantly being judged. Your brain is attacking your common sense constantly then it zeros in on an email, "Classes are cancelled". You are alone, and you cannot be judged. Hypothetically, it sounds nice to get a day off, but your brain is still on go. It is in constant attack mode, and now, you are alone. There is no attendence policy forcing you to go to class and to make your brain take a bring from focusing on your flaws. It is an all out war on snow days.

Recovering from these days are worse. How do you convience yourself that you are worth dragging yourself out of bed. After days of a constant war zone in your mind, you get a chance for some relief, but now you have to face the world. So, you lay in bed decicing which is worse, facing the judgements of the world or continue braving the war zone.