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.