Once I was called industrious, had the best motivation, and got the Coach’s Choice Award three years in a row and the only reason I didn’t get it in my last year was because I got MVP instead. Now I can barely get out of bed, sleep all day, and have panic attacks when I have two essays due two weeks from now and haven’t started either yet.

            I live in downtown London. No, not London, England, that would be if my parents hadn’t forbidden me from studying abroad. We’re talking London, Ontario, which is certainly a step up from Chatham, Ontario but you’d keep hoping for more too, wouldn’t you?

           I live in a decent downtown apartment: two bedrooms splitting $600 plus internet, hydro and gas. My room is approximately the size of a shoe box, well, at least that is the space left over after you put the bed, desk and dresser in. The desk can barely fit my laptop on it, especially not now with “3”, “E”, “D”, and “C” being AWOL. The window opens up onto a busy street with an old-fashioned street lamp that glows the colour of aged parchment so I’ve always had to close the curtain, shutting myself off from the world. I live with my younger sister who has enough problems of her own and needn’t be burdened with the problems of her “stable” older sister who is the “responsible” one. That shoebox bedroom is off the living room, and so I am constantly shutting the door so she can binge Netflix or binge sleep.        

            It is a Tuesday morning, one of my early mornings because one of my two jobs is on campus. It’s an unseasonably cold for March, with flurries still fighting for attention. I look forward to Tuesdays: sometimes it feels like the only socializing I get outside of my family, coworkers, and boyfriend all week, but I was up late last night. I’m always up late, trying to work on things, but reverting into YouTube “Let’s Play” videos, keeping up with Tumblr, checking if any new videos have appeared on Channel Awesome or Chez Apocalypse, and noting that I have no new text or Facebook messages, or at least not from the people I hope for.

            My cell phone alarm goes off with its obnoxious beeping, you know the sound. It’s 7:00 AM. My cell’s touchscreen is slightly out of line, so it doesn’t immediately register I’m trying to hit snooze. My heart races with anxiety: I just want the noise to go away.

            The noise goes away, and I fall back asleep to begin my morning ritual: hit snooze until it is 7:20 (or if I’m feeling particularly awake that morning, 7:15), get up and put on the outfit I may or may not have planned the night before, and do bathroom stuff as quickly as possible so I get in ten more minutes of sleep before 7:40 and then put on my coat and running shoes that skin my knuckles every time I put them on to meet the 2 Dundas that comes at 7:45 to make it to work almost a half hour before everyone else. It’s be early or be late.

            My eyes are shut and it feels like a release, but my mind just keeps swimming, swimming, swimming through murky waters where you can see neither the bottom nor the fish…

            There’s no time to get groceries. Why is the apartment never clean? Two essays due two days apart. Why am I still afraid I’ll see them again? Why doesn’t he try to communicate when I’m not with him? Why do they not respect my beliefs?

            I bolt upright and scramble for my phone. My alarm didn’t go off. I must have hit “dismiss” rather than “snooze.” Again. But I rarely sleep soundly. A sense of dread rises in my throat as I click the power button on my phone.    

Huh. Did I dream waking up? It’s happened before. I get up. Might as well. I crawl out from under the covers, pull my clothes off my chair and get back under the covers to retain warmth. I gather the books sprawled across my room: my clipboard with peers’ papers, Canadian Realisms, an additional keyboard to make my laptop usable, my iPod, my laptop charger. I think that’s everything.  

To the bathroom. Deodorant, toothpaste, retainer out and away, toothbrush, hair…it always sticks up in the back no matter what I do. I sigh. Nobody’s looking anyways.

 Ready, I go back to my room to check the time, maybe sleep a little more. I go set another alarm.

                 7:00

               Oh God, it’s even more broken now. Stupid phone. 

                “Booboo!” I call to my sister, forgetting she is probably in the process of waking up too. I flinch. I approach her door and enter quietly. Brooke is hunched up into the fetal position with her blankets strewn about as though a mother bird had brought them together to make a nest. Clothes are like mines all over the floor, and there seems no rhyme or reason for the placement of things. A cup in the corner of her bed, a thong placed dead center on the floor.

                I look for the most rational place for the phone, for Brooke anyways, and it is the one thing in its place: gripped in her hand. She is perfectly still. Well, she should be getting up anyways…still, I tentatively try to wedge the phone out of her grip. My hand slips and I can see the time through her fingers.

                 7:00

                I’m not sure what to do now. These are the only clocks in the apartment. I figure I should just go. If I’m early, what’s it matter? Better than being late. I put on my coat with the rip at the bottom but can’t find my hat. I pull on my sneakers, and they scrape my knuckles raw. Again. I check my pockets twice for my keys and bus pass. I tramp down the stairs in the dark, by now knowing the way by feel.

            I open the door onto Dundas, one of the busiest streets in London to no sound. I shrug: it’s early, and snow tends to muffle sound. I turn around from locking the door and see a person standing three feet from the front gate. Not odd, sometimes people stand right in front of it to smoke so I can’t open it, but this person is stopped in mid-step. It is obvious that they are in a hurry too because their beige trench coat and plaid green and blue scarf billow behind in place. I see why he is running, as I can make out the 2 Dundas just passing Waterloo but…that’s not a stop I remember.

            I look at the snow, and it is snowing, but not falling. I jump back as I see a singular snowflake suspended right in front of my nose. I reach out to touch it in an ungloved hand: it doesn’t melt, it simply pirouettes in place like a ballerina.

            Leaving scruples behind I approach the man in mid-step as I notice he has a watch. I am close enough to see an almost steely determination in this man’s eyes as he races for the bus behind him. I pull back the sleeve of his coat.

             7:00

            I feel sick rising in my throat as I run back up the stairs and drop my backpack in the kitchen with the double sink filled with dishes just as much as the drying rack is. Brooke is storing her dirty clothes in the washing machine without washing them. I check on Brooke first.

            Still sleeping.

            The panic I experienced at the bottom of the stairs is gone. Now resignation resides, and then…I feel my eyes grow wide and I feel a smile spread across my lips. I can work on my essays now.

            I unpack my backpack in a flurry and take off my work clothes. I attach the other keyboard and prop up the pillows and make my bed my desk. I open Word. I check my email for my professor’s advice. And come back to the empty document. Just getting down the introductory paragraph is half the battle…I check the time on my laptop.

             7:00

            I write down my name, the course code, Professor Michelle Hartley, the date. Can’t think of a title…doesn’t matter. Time doesn’t pass and still I look at a blank screen. Should I work on my other essay? I wonder. I try, but the same thing happens: I can’t form logical statements to connect two plays which I know are similar, and neither can I connect two books to their film adaptations. The logic seems beyond me.

             7:00

            I get one introductory paragraph done! My lips curl: I basically have the essay written now. I start to see fish filter through the murky water of my consciousness. I can write now…I can write for myself, or read! I can do it my way! Why did it take something out of the science fiction genre for me to realize? I ignore the growl in my stomach, there’s no real food in the apartment anyways. I can sit down and do what I came to university for!

            I have so many ideas to put down in prose and poems alike! Political commentary and satire! Fantastical worlds and technological marvels! Guilty pleasure writing of steamy romances and unapologetic sex scenes! No time constraints, not limits, my world is now—pun intent—an open book!

            I yearn for adrenaline pump I get from the tips of my fingers by writing. My heart would race and excitement is a tightened coil. The palms of my hands rest on the edge of the keyboard, waiting, looking at this new, open, blank document: so many possibilities.

            7:00

            I put my fingers to the keys. It comes out wrong, it doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t matter, I can always rewrite. I know I can do this, I just have to write that first page, get past that first page.

            7:00

            My fingers retract like switchblades after a dirty deed. I lean back slowly from my poised position, reclining back on the pillows when before I leant forward.

            7:00

            I stare at a blank, white screen.

             7:00

              I just need to sleep on it. Yeah, that’s right. Sleep always makes things better, to be wrapped in a warm cocoon, the sheets a layer between you and the outside world. I don’t feel the warmth of sheets, but I don’t feel cold either. I am the only living thing in this time-stop womb. I lie there, but my eyes don’t shut, but they must have because then they open.

               7:00

              Sleep happens and it doesn’t happen; I don’t feel the difference. It merely seems to put off and put off. My over-sized teddy bear named Snuggles McFurrypants by a friend from the past is my only sense of comfort, but he is not my boyfriend, or my sister, or my parents.

               7:00

               There is a bright side to all this. There is no need to write essays. There is no need to write for myself or read for myself. I don’t have to worry about pleasing my parents or Michael or make my sister upset because I’ve reminded her the apartment is always messy. There is no need for friends. I don’t have to worry about money.

    7:00

     My stomach churns and feels like burnt rubber, but I find can’t muster up the energy to walk four doors down to the Mac’s and get more food. I couldn’t pay anyway and I can’t steal.

     7:00

      Nothing moves still. A blank screen sits at the corner of my bed. I stay under the covers, behind a shut door and a closed curtain. I wish the door would open, that light would come through my window.

      7:00

       Something tells me that the man with the frozen scarf and coat walked on, even as my sister continues to sleep. Something tells me the 2 Dundas passed, but the snow doesn’t fall.