Page 10 of Lessons In Grey
No, I wouldn’t riot, but I would ignore him. I was done giving pieces of myself away for his weird little introduction to this class. Couldn’t we just move on?
The Professor was quiet a moment. “I can’t explain to you what those words meant because, to me, it was obvious. I can, however, deliver it to you in another way that might make it make sense. If you’ve never experienced the suffering that comes with true depression and true anxiety, imagine yourself drowning.”
My thoughts slowed as I focused solely on his words.
“You’ve been stranded in the ocean for several hours, a day or two even, you’re exhausted. Everything in you is screaming at you to stop treading water, to just rest for a moment because what’s the worst that can happen? But there is another part of your brain screaming at you to keep going because it knows what will happen if you stop. These two parts of your mind are at war, fighting, yelling, scraping against the edges of your skull. Meanwhile, your body has slipped beneath the surface and your lungs are crying out for air.
“Seconds tick by while your mind still rages on, spots start dancing behind your eyelids, your mind starts telling you that you’re surrounded by sharks, even though you are completely alone. Your heart starts racing, and you start to think that maybe if you could just inhale, you could pull the air from the water just like fish do. Rationally, it’s not possible, but you no longer have the capability to think rationally.
“Your lungs start to shrink, your nose is burning, you’re surrounded by sharks, the salt is burning your skin, and all you can think is ‘just inhale, it’ll be okay, just inhale’. And that’s where you are. You are stuck in that moment forever. A millisecond before the inhale.”
I swallowed, my heart thudding so loudly, I was sure Katelyn could hear it. Fuck.
“So how do you fix that?”
“You don’t,” he said evenly. “You numb it until you either lose the battle or decide you are strong enough to keep fighting. Usually, that takes people, but I understand that there are some in this class who don’t believe in socialization.”
I rolled my eyes, ripped out of the lull of his words back to reality. Words. They were just words. If you memorized enough of them, you could weaponize them well enough, that’s all he did. It meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
3
Snowflake
September 1st, 2021
Life was toofilled with unpredictable moments to determine whether or not someone was worth your time after a single first glance. However, I have had a handful of moments with the Professor, and I still wasn’t sure whether or not he was worth it.
My instinct reaction was no. Even if I determined that he was worth it, what did that mean for me? It wasn’t like I was going to suddenly open up to him. I wasn’t going to get his number and text him in the middle of the night. All he was good for was a quick and, hopefully, hard fuck, other than that, I felt nothing.
Relationships meant nothing to me anymore. What was the point of them when the inevitable was always relevant? Our graves were all unmarked somewhere in this world, why waste time creating connections that would shatter once the universeheard the final beat of our hearts? Might as well just walk the world as the very thing that haunted me: Ghosts.
The college had eight blocks during the day along with a few night classes.
I only had day classes during the first seven blocks, but I always hung around the campus during the eighth block, which was 4pm to 5pm.
So, when my last class ended at 3:55, I headed for the courtyard, the private one in the back of the school. Technically it was meant for staff only, but nobody came back here. I think it was mainly because of who sat on the other side of the hedges. Headmaster Diamond’s patio from his office led out adjacent to the private, one-table courtyard and who wanted to gossip with the possibility of the boss walking out? Although, I felt like the only ‘gossiping’ the professors truly did was about the drugs they sold and the students they fucked, which Diamond already knew about, so really, what was there to gossip about?
I liked it, this patio. A single stone table, surrounded by waist high stone walls with shrubs growing high above them blooming little white flowers in the spring. It was like a small prison, except that I could see the sky.
There was only one way in or out, and that was through a door which nobody had the code or key for except for me and the professors.
I climbed up, sat on the table, and plugged my headphones in. The cool Fall breeze drifted through the area in a soft whirlwind as I stared blankly at the page for a long time while the tune I had created on my app started to drift through my headphones.
After a few more minutes of nodding softly, singing the words I had already written, more words finally started to appear.
“I’m sorry for the pain that I caused, it’s not me, but the fucking of God.
He says love is the answer, and to love thy neighbor, but honestly hate is the only thing that he’s caused.
Depression is a laughing joke, take the pills to help you cope, but the only coping this world is doing is creating ‘safe places’ in place of healing.
I wonder if the Devil fell from Heaven because he saw the truth of the Hell we’ve created.
Everything’s a trigger, from the ups and downs to the label on the shitter. Someone said the Kingdom of Heaven is Heaven on Earth but all I see is an ocean full of wannabe quitters.”
I let the music play a few beats.