Procrastination

Clickityclickityclick.

Pause.

Clickclickclickityclickclick.

I sigh. Well, at least I have a heading, I think.

Silence again.

For once, my mind is empty. It seems the years of meditative practice have finally sunk in. Might’ve been nice if it had worked when I actually needed my overactive brain cells to stop twisting, to grant me some peace when my head was spinning with overlapping thoughts, when I couldn’t even tell what the real me was thinking with so many contradictory voices screaming inside my skull. No, instead my imagination hushes now, with thirteen minutes left to turn in a paper. But doesn’t it always happen this way? My brain is as rebellious as a three-year-old; it shuts down simply for the fact that it is required to do something, something it performs quite well on its own time. So, sighing once more, I give up the mental pressure and listen.

Silence again. But it isn’t really silence. True, I’d turned off the music I constantly have playing, my roommates are all out of the apartment–– rather a reversal of roles; I haven’t been home on a Saturday night since… many weeks ago, and they’re usually the ones who stay in–– and I left my phone in the kitchen, so I can’t hear it vibrate. But true silence is something I can’t recall ever experiencing anywhere on Earth. Even now, this moment is quieter than any I’ve heard for months, but I still hear a car drive down the road, girls chatting in the apartment below me, the hum of my computer screen. Is it my computer? I can’t tell; there’s that perpetual ringing in my ears. I smirk to myself. Too many rock concerts, someone wiser might tell me. Even my friends remember to wear earplugs, but I always refuse. What’s the point of experiencing something halfway? I relish every minute my eardrums are bombarded by the giant speakers, knowing full well I’ll be deaf by age 50–– planning on it, even. But here my thoughts go again, racing off on this tangent when I’m supposed to focus on a moment.

One moment.

The “silence” is interrupted by six beeps in a row, signaling my roommates’ arrival. Out in the hall, Michelle’s voice is the loudest, and I can hear her smiling. It’s weird that my senses can be confused that way–– hear a smile? But I can. Michelle is always smiling, even when she’s angry. Maybe it’s part of her voice box, or even built right into her genetics. The beginnings and ends of her sentences seem to turn up, like the corners of her mouth; perhaps her DNA itself contains a constant smile. I’ve had days where I feel like that, like there’s this smile trapped inside my ribcage, and it’s just grown to the point where it stretches out my arms, pushes against my fingertips, and presses my cheeks into this huge dorky grin, a self-portrait of joy. But that smile has been absent lately; I hear Michelle’s giggle outside my door and the corners of my mouth turn up good-naturedly, but the smile is only on my face, not inside my chest. It falls off as I realize that my ribcage is once again empty, like my mind, like this moment, like a scene I was supposed to write but couldn’t create.

1:

Drop, drop; run, don’t stop

Small darts attack from above

The rain chases you

2:

Tiger lily hair

Burns against the grey, wet clouds

Your smile glows brighter

3:

Tree’s roots grip the ground

Baring teeth, it fights the wind

Shining armor bark

4:

Wind chills the air with

Fury, dances between rain

Calms then clears the storm

5:

Perfect arch up high

Bears the sky in its wide arms

Clouds ride piggyback

He lives on,

but the past no longer exists––

he’s there, but unreachable; he looks at me, then walks away.

The light shimmers down through the clouds and scintillates off the water;

it suddenly erupts like a vile volcano, poison rejected from inside.

Love always hurts, but it can be worth the pain;

it blooms only at night.

Smile artificially, smile genuinely, smile perpetually:

they say practice makes perfect.

I am beautiful because I’m imperfect.

I’ve been blessed with good physical health most of my life. I have never had any life-threatening illnesses; I have never broken a bone, nor even sprained an ankle. So back in high school, when my friend broke her foot and had to walk everywhere on crutches, I sympathized, but I still thought it was pretty cool. The idea of walking everywhere on crutches, I mean: she got to leave class ten minutes early, people helped her carry books, and she got this hot-pink cast that we all signed in colorful sharpies. Okay, I admit that the cast didn’t sound so terrific–– colorful as it was, I’d seen my brother’s leg in a cast and knew that it wasn’t pretty; it was smelly, itchy, hot, and it made bathing a real chore. I ruled out the cast as something that might be fun to try, but when I saw my friend hopping out of class early and booking down the hallways, the crutches seemed like an exhilarating accessory.

The other day, I saw some crutches available to borrow as part of University Accessibility Awareness Week (that’s a mouthful, what about people with speech impediments?!), which challenges students to pretend they have a disability of some sort, in order to better understand what those who actually have said disabilities go through on a daily basis. With the memory of my pink-casted friend scooting through my high school’s hallways, I excitedly signed my name to the list and grabbed the pair of crutches the student leader handed me. I swung my backpack around and tucked the crutches under my arm and cheerfully raced to the door towards my next class, I was flying–– for about three steps. Then I got to a door. I had to turn sideways and awkwardly lean down to push the door open and hop through.

Crutches: easy and fun as my friend made them look? False.

It was absolutely horrible. My cross-campus speed was reduced to at least half my normal walking pace, and I frequently had to stop and readjust my balance. It took surprising dexterity to manage the way my body and the crutches interacted, making sure that one didn’t get ahead of the other. I felt like the little mermaid when she first gets her legs, bumbling and falling because she doesn’t know what to do with them, she has a brand-new kinesthetic connection to figure out. I tripped a couple times and automatically supported myself on my pretended “twisted ankle,” which anyone with a real injury wouldn’t have been able to do, not without serious pain. But I thought that almost would’ve been nice, since a broken ankle might distract me from how badly my armpits were aching. And that’s another thing:

Crutches: more painful than the actual injury? Quite possibly.

Two days later, I’m still incredibly sore. The body–– well, mine at least–– was not meant to function with its entire weight supported by the shoulders. My muscles ache from my elbows up all the way down my ribs, a much larger area than I expected. I didn’t even feel those muscles as I crutched around campus; all I could feel were my armpits and hands burning from the pressure, and the rest of my body burning from the heat of the effort as well as the afternoon sun. By the time I turned my crutches back in, I was so ready to walk on two feet again. Why had I ever thought that, when blessed with my own two legs, losing the use of one and walking around on crutches would ever be preferable to walking on my own?

How many of us think that using half our ability and relying on something or someone else to support us is more exciting and fulfilling than doing it ourselves? I’ve met many. The man still living with his parents at age 29, because it’s easier than finding a job and moving out; he has luxuries he couldn’t afford on his own. He doesn’t see how his parents still control him, or he doesn’t care. The girl who won’t break up with her boyfriend, though he’s emotionally neglectful, because she thinks she can’t be happy without him; she couldn’t bear to be alone. She doesn’t consider the fact that she isn’t happy with him, she is alone. But I’ve also met those that refuse to rely more heavily on crutches than themselves. The woman whose parents could help her pay for college, but chooses to work hard to pay for it herself. The boy who should be on medication for his mood disorder, but wants to find his own way to real healing. The kid who keeps scraping her knees on the sidewalk because she hates training wheels. Are they better off without the help? They already know what I just learned: the soreness left over from leaving those crutches behind is worth the freedom of standing on your own legs. And walking on crutches hurts your armpits anyway.

I have never labeled myself as a “writer.” Any teacher I had in high school could tell you how my good essays were–– when I actually managed to write enough to turn them in. Either of my parents would amiably reveal to you my tendency to procrastinate a paper until approximately 3 a.m. of the morning it’s due. My sister might show you the pages of one-verse songs that I scribbled out, too disgusted by my own failure to attempt coming up with a chorus, let alone finish. Writing is rarely enjoyable for me, so much to the point where I’d rather let my biology grade drop from a B to a D than compose a ten-page research paper. So why would I choose to torture myself by signing up for a class that focuses exclusively on writing?

Besides my intrinsic masochism, there are a few different reasons why I decided to add English 218, most of them minor. One reason is that I’m aware of and believe the cliché that practice makes perfect, or at least permanent. What better way to lessen my aversion to writing than to put myself in a place where I’d be forced to do that to which I object, under pressure of academic failure? While there is a possibility of it back-firing, causing me to despise assigned writing even more, my optimism here is that I’ll get used to it, or even better at it. Also, I’m hoping that by taking a creative writing class, as opposed to one that requires me to write only research and analysis, I can start to enjoy writing, and gain enough practice and confidence to appreciate my own writing, instead of dreading it, knowing that I’ll just hate whatever the end product is. This actually reveals the true reason I’m taking this class–– because secretly, I want to write. I want to do well at it. I want to love it. And the most profound reason, more than any other, that I want to be able to call myself a writer is because I look up to one person whom I do label a writer: Ben.

I met Ben the first day of my freshman year at college. While he was instantly friendly and talkative, I sensed that there was a much deeper part to him. He seemed be hiding some intelligence and experience that I couldn’t discover, let alone comprehend. But time went by, and while we became closer friends, he still didn’t let me (or anyone else I knew) see what dark mysteries he kept. Though almost unbearably intrigued, I eventually accepted that he wouldn’t open up to me, so I let it go–– until we were assigned a personal essay in the English class we had together. Our professor chose one of the finished, graded essays to read aloud to the class. From the very first sentence, the entire class sat in rapture, mesmerized as she quoted a story so astonishingly tragic, so heartbreakingly beautiful that I knew it was Ben’s. This was confirmed by the fact that while every other student’s eyes were fixated on the professor reading, Ben’s remained lowered to his desktop. His writing was so pure, unadorned yet poetic; achingly honest, skinning his soul and cutting right to the core of each who was listening. He had opened up that deepest part of himself, and permanently affected me.

I admire Ben for this more than anything else. He inspired me in ways I can’t explain. This is why I write–– I want to reveal my true self to those who might not understand, and thus better understand myself. While I don’t expect to permanently alter others’ lives, I hope someone will be touched by what I have to offer. I owe that to Ben for what he did for me.