Constant Dreadful Feeling
Anna Larsen
 
So you asked me
how my day has been so far..
 
​How am I feeling?
 
I say,
simply,
“I’m tired.”
 
Quite a basic answer isn’t it?
I’m sure you’ve heard that answer
seemingly 100 times
already
in the past 10 minutes.
 
But it’s not because I was up late
watching TikTok like you may think.
 
I have the feeling
of my eyes nearly closing
every other second,
 
because
 
earlier this morning,
you could find me,
rising before the sun,
trying to cram a little more knowledge
about polynomial functions
into my brain
before my pre-calculus test;
and also reading one last chapter
of The Things They Carried
before my socratic seminar.
 
You may ask,
 
“Why did you wait to the very last minute,
to do all this?”
 
The truth is,
I tried to get it done earlier.
 
But, everywhere I went,
yesterday,
and the day before that,
I had this same dreadful feeling:
endless fatigue.
 
It’s a vicious cycle.
 
I could have stayed awake yesterday,
if I forced myself to.
But it was easier to give in,
even though I knew
I shouldn’t have.
 
So my head tilted back,
onto
the cushy seat of my couch,
onto
the gray bus seat
and onto
the chair in the library.
Then,
 in a literal blink of an eye,
I’m out cold.
 
Relief washed over me.
 It felt so good to sleep.
 
Somehow, the wrong decision felt right.