I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

Is this the life of a 23 year old? Walking in a dream-scape as though having passed through the mirror into a world where the sidewalks move beneath sleepy eyes and dangling feet? Often, I cannot verify that I'm doing anything intentionally. These movements are predictable, expected. My eyes are open but I can't make out a concise actuality.


Four a.m. and I'm awake counting the pathetic few hours I have left of precious sleep. The mornings are fast and the showers are probably too warm but my body is still asleep and doesn't notice. Cold cereal, sour milk; little registers until the early spring breeze hits my cheeks and I vaguely realize some part of me has left the building. The bus stop is thick with smokers and I ache for a long drag but hold my breath as I walk by and try to forget the gray fingers as they reach out and follow me before disintegrating into the surrounding breeze. Music fills the silence that lingers inside my little green Camry as I drown in the extreme vigilance required to prevent collisions and citations by various people who's existance I can't justify. Lost in exhaustion, I fear I may only meet reality at the moment of impact.


Occasionally I wonder why I even attend my classes after such inadequate rest, except perhaps as an attempt to revive the scattered residue of my once vigorous social life through vague text messages and Internet exchanges, or to affirm the appearance of propriety in the eyes of those who might be taking role. The wise voices get buried between financial woes and broken hearts and petty matters my thoughts refuse to release. It's seldom quiet upstairs and on days like this I can't even keep a medically induced concentration for very long.


I don't need sleep. I need a week-long coma and a fighting addiction to valiums.


I can hear them arguing about a Justice's interpretation of the Constitution just beyond the glaze that covers my eyeballs. Something about civil rights and implied liberties. I add my two cents and pray my voice is coherent and wise, then retreat back into oblivion until I hear the rustle of papers and drift into my next chair in the following classroom. This is where I want to be, albeit unconscious. Here, crushed between these walls and merging with a wealth of knowledge I have yet to hold. I am a wide-eyed child, wanting nothing more than to understand a world that can't understand or concieve a natural desire to learn; that preaches blue-sky adventures while demanding suffocation and structure. Oceania with a view. They can define the terms, but I don't want the rules I've been given. I want something else. I'll get it, too.


Back home I wander blindly amidst political summaries and paragraphs with highlighter and ball-point ink. The books I want to read sleep on the shelves in front of me, collecting dust as my interests expand into areas that will take years to finally reach. I will never understand as much as my whims demand and my desire to know more than there's time to learn is daunting and weights heavy on my motivation. But each dawn I wake up and continue the pursuit.


They say it's not what you know, it's who you know, but I don't like that, and I won't abide by it.


At 7 p.m. I live in an empty city, as though the apocalypse of evening strolled through and swept the people home, but there's little time to admire the tranquil lull. One day I attend work, the next day I attend class, rotating through the week between two obligations that both demand my reverence, time, and energy. Shifts end and I walk home in the dark, passing vagrants and gentlemen; the identities of neither individual distinguishable by appearance. Funny how that works. Then, a belated dinner if I've salvaged my appetite or perhaps I'll peck at some frozen blueberries while cracking open another folder and disposing of the twilight in a sea of words.


The invitations I turn down at this hour all sound the same, usually noting my frequent absence or lack of acceptable communication. But anymore I just don't have the will to forgo another night's sleep paired with another groggy morning of forgetting my keys and walking into lectures already in discussion. It'd be for what? Side-long glances down the bar and prying at the ears of unavailable souls, coyly soliciting their company, but unsure of what I would do with it if they ever obliged. I only participate in this sport when I've no real desire to the win prize. I don't have time for men who live in blissful ignorace. I'd rather my time be spent with one happy to suffer. Still, the vultures circle around me as though I'm out of water, each with look in their eyes makes me wonder if they know something I don't. The drinks they buy don't quench my thirst and each sip brings me closer to the cool, shady mirage, but further from the firm oasis.


And all too often I go willingly into the abyss.