Four of Them

About not sleeping a single goddamn second all night before school. It's terrifying.

On a normal sleep schedule, you're groggy in the morning, you're still half asleep. It goes by a second at a time, and all you're thinking about is coffee and making the bus. You don't have energy to think about anything until homeroom.

But being up all night is a completely different shade of madness. You've been lying about, thinking of all the things you didn't do while trying to get to sleep. And then, shit, it's fucking morning, and those thoughts are still clearly in your mind. Yesterday You has spilled over into Today You, causing a paradox that can only end in your complete...something.

On top of homework, you start thinking about all the notes you're going to have to sit through, all the reading and typing and droning and walking that awaits your joyous return.

If you're like me, with a death-defying fear of social interaction, being within enough state of mind that you're well aware where that bus is taking you, it's bloody fucking terrifying. As, uh, I said.

So you take any caffeine-related substance you can find short of cocaine, which you wouldn't be able to find anyway, and you pace around, and you dread your inevitable dozing off that will lead into that dreamless start you get where you feel like you fall, and then you scream and jump awake, and you know everyone's going to be staring at you, because fuck them, stop fucking looking at me you cunts, and you think about this lovely new zit that's on your fucking face, and you forgot the vocab homework, which you won't be able to do at lunch because you'll be working on your stupid research paper that's due today, but you couldn't start until three days ago because she took your source cards, but refused to change the due date. And your French, no, your History homework, you had to do the notes online, remember? Shit, shit, as the minutes go by, you start to remember all the stuff that was due today, Friday, the day teachers always assign everything for some reason, never once considering just how much this accumulates...

Because it does, you know? Teachers give you something on Monday due Friday, and you dread going to school the rest of the week, because that one thing doesn't seem like much, but then, everyday, you get a little bit more, a little bit more, you don't have time to due the first thing because you've got homework due the next day, and on Wednesday you get more shit for Friday, and on Thursday you get the usual, and suddenly it's Thursday night, you ended up with a poster, five worksheets, a collective ten pages of outlining, and three pages of geometry bullshit, this unit being the only one where you can't just write down the formula and be done with it.

You wish you had stronger coffee, not this instant powder shit. You wish you didn't have to get dressed right now. Your back hurts, and suddenly you start throwing up for no good reason, and you start crying for even less of a good reason, and you scream and cry and throw up like an asshole, and everyone discusses, and you give up trying to reason it out, and fuck it, I'm going to sleep.

Good morning!

PS What do we do when we're losing our minds, kids? To the internet!