Deafening Silence

Train Tracks

**Trigger warning. This chapter contains scenes of severe depression, so if you are sensitive to this, please leave. Or if you're stubborn like me, read, but read with caution. Don't hurt yourself. -Your writer.**

I was exhausted. I had stayed up all night to complete some assignments, depleting the pile of unfinished homework at a snail's pace. It was all going well; I felt accomplished for the first time in a while, but I didn't have the energy to feel proud for very long.

With each passing minute, every stroke of my pen, my eyelids drooped lower and lower, getting harder to hold up. At 3:45 a.m., I was awake only by sheer will.

The house was quiet but for my brother and grandmas' snoring and the sporadic hum of the heating unit in the ceiling. I yawned, stretching my body, cringing at the sound of my breath.

Moving the stacks of paper off of my lap and into my backpack, I fought to keep my eyes open as I tried to make as little noise as possible, lest I wake my mother. I made no noise but the sound of my bones cracking as I crept past her door.

Once I made it to the end of the hall, I turned into my room and lowered my bag onto the floor.

I hadn't the energy to take any of my clothes off, so I flopped onto my bed fully clothed, already half asleep. Through the lull of sleep, I resolved to wake up in time to get ready, and catch the bus. An hour and a half was what scientists called a power nap, and that was what I would get. A power nap to propel me through the day.

I woke up three and a half hours later to my mom yelling my name. "You're not out of bed yet? Get up!" I felt a pillow hit my leg. "You missed your bus. Get. Up."

She was emphasizing her words now. Not good. I forced my tired eyes open. "What time is it?"

My question only served to make my mother more angry. "7:30. Get the fuck up and get ready. You might not be going to C.A.R.T., but you're sure as hell going to school." She stormed off, grumbling about me staying up all night.

She woke my brother up, yelling at him. "Why are you still here? What is wrong with you two? Don't y'all know when school is? Get up, get dressed."

He whined at the rude awakening, "Mom I'm tired. Can I just stay home?"

"No! Get your ass up, boy! I'm tired of you. Move it." She was irritated, understandably; we had done this a few times this quarter already.

I didn't want to move, but I also didn't want to risk enflaming my mother's wrath, so I sat up. The light from the broken blinds in my window hurt my eyes, so I squeezed my eyes shut.

How could I have been so stupid? I know that I'm a heavy sleeper, and that nothing short of a nuclear explosion could wake me up, so why did I even bother to sleep? I should have stayed up all night. The irate, tired part of me was disappointed that I hadn't woken, angry that yet again, I had lied to myself. The sleepy, sad part of me simply wished to go back to sleep and never wake up...

I felt nothing, though I knew I was tired, and that my spine ached from sleeping on my stomach. But there were so many thoughts running through my brain that I didn't have time to process them all, and the accompanying emotions numbed me. So I sat, staring through the wall, trying to calculate the pros and cons of the call of the void, motionless.

My mom snapped me out of my stupor. "Are you just going to sit there all day? Move!"

Her words angered me. I didn't have the energy to stay awake, much less move, and yet she wanted me to get up? It was like she had forgotten about the depressive disorder I had been prescribed medicines for. How typical of her. "No."