When Everything’s Falling Apart

Image Courtesy: Wallpaper Access

Sometimes when I lay in bed, I wish I could sink into the covers.

Not sink as in tuck myself in. But sink.

Sink into a different world, a different life.

A better world, a better life.

Self-pity has never been my style.

After all, what do I have to complain about, really?

I’m alive. I’m healthy. I’m here.

“I’m here,” I tell myself as I cross off another checkbox on my to-do list.

“I’m here,” I say as I sit down in the classroom, my mind foggy from the three hours of sleep I’m running on.

“I’m here,” I say as I focus on another lecture, another PowerPoint, another string of words I’ll try to make sense of.

It’s a machine-like presence, but it’s a presence all the same.

That’s all that counts. Right?

But now, the wheels have stopped turning.

The foot is off the gas.

I have come to a screeching halt.

I could feel that I pushed myself too hard, that my breaking point was near, that I was in fact not a machine but a human being who needs to breathe and rest and dream and love — but what was I to do?

I couldn’t stop. I can never stop.

The world will crumble, will cease to exist, will burn and combust if I stop.

But now I’ve stopped.

And I’m sinking.

And I’m sinking.

And I try to tell myself to get out of bed, to breathe that fresh air, to remember that I love this, that this is all I can do, all I was ever meant to do, but—

When does our passion not become a passion anymore, but an obligation?

Because why does everything I love have to be commodified to be important when all that should matter is that it’s important to me?

But my brain is numb, my body is numb and everything, everything is just numb.

And tired.

And weak.

Because I’m not a machine, but I need to be.

I have to be.

And so I tune up the gears, though they’re rusty and overworked.

I turn on the motor, though it’s spurting and screaming to be turned off.

I oil the machine, though there can be no saving it after this.

And I rise.

“I’m here,” I whisper.

My threads unravel.

Strike Out,

Nimra Ahmad

Athens