And That's When I Said...: Degree of Separation || "I'll dance if they ask, but it'll hurt"

**Disclaimer: it's almost 2am and I have no idea what I just wrote**

I promise I'm trying to sleep. I promise I brushed my teeth and changed into pajamas and climbed into bed. I also promise that behind my eyelids was a seemingly infinite reel images. Recent ones flash through first, like quick snap shots to recap the week.

My head aches vaguely but my friends are going to the gas station. I compromise and buy a small slushie instead of a large one.

I grab Haylee's hand in the dim light, squeezing her thumb and forefinger together and jump up and down in excitement because my favorite band is within spitting distance and they're playing my favorite song, which simultaneously lasts seven forevers and an instant.

Then older images filter through.

Climbing into bed with my sister during winter break. The room is silent except her breathing and completely dark except the small light leaking through the window.

Flipping over my Strokes record to hear "Barely Legal" again.

Sitting on the floor while Mike plays a rendition of "Striped Sweater" on his guitar.

The night before the GS at Sunapee my junior year, we all sat on the carpet and watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." I crossed my ankles and hugged my knees to my chest. Sitting behind everyone, tottering between isolation and togetherness.

I promise I'm trying to sleep.

Watching and waiting. Counting to three. Making sure the little boy who just went under water comes back up. Just as a I stand to make sure he's okay, a small blonde head pops up, smiling and spitting water at his friend.

Stephanie and I watch movies on the couch in my living room. I fall asleep before my parents come home and wake up in my bed.

The lack of will to do anything which allowed me to sleep until twelve thirty in the middle of July.

A vague indifference clouds my entire existence. Do I care? Not really.

Stopping at Harwood before our class trip to Maine. Becca's excitement to see me and the cupcakes in my hand. The final moments of winning.

A hug from Fred. Small, thin, bony. "God-willing," he said. I nodded, but God always makes me squint.

Raven crying on my swing set. My uncertainty.

I want my mom. I'd like to tell my mom. But my mother is all about simple solutions. She seems somehow color blind to the rainbow of the spectrum of human emotion. Maybe it's willful ignorance. Maybe she's just ignoring it.

Sitting in a black, rolling chair with my feet on my desk. Liezl reads Grapes of Wrath out loud to me while I do German homework and read for another class. There wasn't really time to complete all of it when I got back from softball the night before. I'd say I wonder why I didn't write a very good essay about Grapes of Wrath, but I really don't.

Haylee looking up words on her phone in the middle of class. Receiving early-morning praise from our favorite professor and turning to smile smugly at me.

Nikki finds me crying in basement of the library the week before finals.

The large questions remaining are Who? What? and Why?

They include, but are not limited to:
Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who are my friends? Who do they want me to be? Who do they need me to be?
What the fuck am I doing? What do I actually want to be doing? What do my friends think of me?
Why can't I sleep? Why am I doing this? Why don't I care? Why do I care so much?

Then the future spills out of some unbroken section of the unknowable. I say words I've said before, different time, different place. Hopefully a different sentiment.
"I'm not going to graduation."
My mother returns with a "Sammi, please."
"Mail me my fucking diploma," I declare, unmoved, or simply ignoring my movement.

Existence is a tiny insufficient peephole. No matter how hard you press your eye to the glass, there is no image to behold. Simply the presence of light and dark is observable. Pressing my eye so close to the glass, no light comes through. There is nothing to behold, forget a fucking picture.

My friends do things out of the realm of my immediate existence, becoming background noise to my crying, which occurs for seemingly no good fucking reason.

Shutting down is very simple and easy. Disassociate. Quiet, small smiles. Only provide noise or countenance when asked. "Are you okay, Sammi?" Nod. Small smile, no teeth. Cozy and comfortable, the world responds and recedes at the same rate I do. Untouchable, I feel untouchable.

I do not feel better. I promise I'm trying to sleep. But sleep doesn't want me. And if sleep wants to be a total fucking asshole then fuck it. I don't need you, sleep. Get out of my life.

I have no answers and I don't want today or tomorrow or yesterday or the next week or the week after that. I want nothing. A blissful ignorance. There's just enough information, just a large enough peephole to ruin me.

Who am I? Who are my friends? Who do they want me to be? Who do they need me to be?
What the fuck am I doing? What do I actually want to be doing? What the fuck? What the fuck?
Why can't I sleep? Why don't I care? Why do I care so much?

Send help.
Send help.
Send help.

I want my mom.

I promise I'm trying to sleep.

Lexi and I ride up the lift as Sunapee. She's already finished and I'm just going up for my run now. I hate GS. I hate everything. No. That's not true. I like Lexi. But fuck this sunny day and fuck this slow chair lift and fuck the GS course and fuck ski racing and fuck all the homework I have after this and fuck the embarrassment of doing so poorly the first run. Fuck everything.

Everybody's a "writer," Sammi and you're not good enough.

Everyone's "hard-working" student, Sammi but you're just not that smart.

Everyone's family says they're pretty. But that's all they're doing, saying it. No regard for validity.

Not everyone is cut out to be a good friend, Sammi. Sorry to say you're just a shitty person.

Sorry, kid. Should've quit while you were ahead.

My father pitches to me in the batting cage. Every hit that would have been a fly-out earns me a ball thrown at my head.

I lay on my sister's bed. Rereading poems by E.E. Cummings. Reading out loud to my sister who literally could not care any less.

I try to tell my mom, "I don't know how to be a person." Receive a "Sammi, you're fine," a "Sammi, you're being ridiculous."

"We're all here for you," Haylee writes over texts. I am a void, a blackhole. To be here is to be nowhere. To be here is to be scattered. To be ripped, atom from atom, into nothing.

Send help.
Send help.
Send help.

I want my mom.

I promise I'm trying to sleep.

There is a degree of separation. The door of ignorance. Thin, thin door. A small peephole. No image. Only light. Only dark.

Neither.

Only gray. Indiscernible. Unattainable. Unreachable. Unavailable. No image available. No image available. No image available.

Star-crossed. Not meant to be had. Not by you. Not now. Not ever.

Send help.
Send help.
Send help.

I want my mom.

I promise I'm trying to sleep.

A degree of separation.