It creeped up on me, grabbed me in the dead of the night and seeped into my bone marrow. My biggest qualm was that nobody warned me about it.
Nobody! Not my parents or the TV specials on public access or the annoying commercials in the middle of YouTube videos. No one.
The entire ordeal caught me completely off-guard. I was totally vulnerable and unprepared and that simple fact is what frustrated me beyond belief. Because if I had known about it I would have taken the necessary steps to prevent it. I could have stopped it. I would have beaten it. I could have...
Whatever. That's neither here nor there.
I'm sure you won't believe me if you knew me today but I was actually very smart when I was younger. Scouts honor!
I mean, at least I was told that I was very smart. In retrospect, it might've just been that I excelled at sitting in my seat and doing what I was told. I didn't speak and had an affinity for completing menial tasks every day for weeks and months and eventually years until I finally graduated though I suppose that's a topic for another time.
Back to younger me. I was what you would call a "good student". Top of the class. Graduated with honors. A part of the student council, led the prom committee, even volunteered in soup kitchens and hospitals on holidays for extra credit. The perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect shell of a human.
The problem started later. After I graduated high school and there were no more word problems, no more raising your hand or anything, I just... There wasn't anything else for me to do? Do you know what I mean? I was a smart kid. Relatively anyways. I was only ever good at school. That's it. That's all I've ever been. Good at school and nothing else.
Graduation was the day I lost it all.
It didn't hit me when I walked across the wooden stage to receive my diploma with muted applause surrounding me. It didn't hit me when I packed up my things in boxes and taped them up tighter than necessary. It didn't hit me when I drove into the parking spot of my new college campus. It didn't hit me when they days blend together and the assignments stacked up and I was falling behind. It only hit me when I was crying in the corner room of an empty library an hour before midterms.
College was... hard? It's hard to believe that someone like me would say that. College... was hard.
That sentence alone was incredible. I thought class was hard.
There's nothing about these courses that the old me should've had a problem with. It was only next level, that's all. I took AP History no more than three months ago. Napoleon's exile was still fresh on my mind but when it was in front of me, on this wrinkled paper in this huge lecture hall, I totally blanked. This should be easy yet something was so wrong about it. I could see the words on the pages of the overpriced textbooks but I couldn't read them. They didn't make sense! Even if I saw the letters and that somehow made the word and how they flow together into sentences and paragraphs and pages and eventually books, nothing was going into my head. I was a sponge filled with water. Swollen with knowledge. I peaked.
After that... Well...
Getting out of bed was also hard somehow. Impossible even. Finishing homework was impossible. Meeting new people was impossible. Meeting old friends was worse. Going to class was inconceivable. Leaving my house was not even an option anymore. Existing was...
All of a sudden everything was too hard!
And the worst part was nobody told me it would be like this! Nobody ever stopped me and said, hey, you're gonna have some bad days and that's fine but you should be worried when they turn into bad weeks and months and eventually years. It would have saved me so much trouble.
I dropped out of school suddenly. That took me by surprise the most. I was an honor student, this was a community college, this should be going beyond well but for some reason, I'm not in control anymore. I'm spiraling into darkness.
There is something seriously wrong with me though I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly -- it's just something. I could spend hours trying to describe its iron hold on me. This nameless something that soaks my mind with darkened slime, a thick film that makes it so reading isn't enjoyable but a chore, food taste like anything but food. It convinces you that your reflection is a liar, that even in a room full of people you're all alone, that you aren't even real so why bother? Nothing matters.
Nothing matters. Except for that emptiness that tells you nothing matters.
Whatever I got, or should I say whatever has me, is the only thing that should shake your core with pure, unadulterated fear. I call it Black Static. It dulls out everything around it until it's all you have left.
Other than you of course.
