Forward and back

It's getting increasingly hard. To think baby steps. I'm tired. As Tegan and Sara sing, I wake up exhausted. Like someone stuck a straw on my brain and sucked it dry. As the day approaches it's harder to keep thinking this is nothing. Just an ordinary exam.

I've been put into an unfair situation. As if people want us to fail by waiting until the very last minute and then dropping an anvil on us with no warning whatsoever. But I kept moving forward. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

As the day gets closer I feel smaller. Dumber. More and more tired. Like my brain has been bullied. Or been put into a blender. More and more of me wants to sit down in a corner and forget. Let the wave pass over me. And yet I keep going. But it's harder and harder to ignore the voices. I'm four again, and I'm scared, and mommy is not herself. It's that same terror. It's that desperate cry to turn on the tv and forget the world. Live in a state of numbness.

And I can't. Because the truth is I'm not four anymore. I'm four and twenty. And so, as much as it hurts, as much as it drains me sick, I have to find the strength to keep standing. I have to believe. And I have to keep going, even when the strength to believe has run out.

Just for this final stretch. And forget the word final, because it gives me the creeps.