no time in the world - BLUE and DESPAIR

      I am no longer a human being.

As an excerpt from a journal entry reads, ''Why has God made me so fickle? So tempestuous in emotions, in human thoughts, and feelings? So cowardly in movements, so feeble in functions?''

I am no longer a human being. I have taken the sloppy shape of some distant enigmatic entity, some sort of heavenly body that is more reminiscent of a corpse than of a lucid being. Time has become the most relevant thing in my life currently, as if the pupils of my eyes were no longer big black sores but two minuscule black-and-white clocks that click and turn in a tripled speed. I don't have any time anymore, and it's solely at my own fault and expense. I have taken it upon myself to strenuously work this year; I am currently trudging through the slime-like sludge of a soup-like conglomeration of three AP classes, two colleges classes, one online class, three extracurricular clubs (rehearsals three times a week, college two times a week, club meetings every day at lunch), the hassles of trying to balance editing articles for my school's newspaper and trying to put together a magazine to act as a benefactor for our publication, and the unfulfilling vacancies of conversations between my friends, family, and I.

I have not made time for myself in at least two months. I am guilty of neglecting friends at the expense of trying to make other people happy--whether it's myself, by doing my homework and striving to achieve good grades, or my fellow club members, by being the poster child for punctuality--, but I am not doing it on purpose. I am not trying to purposely bombard myself with responsibility, although it is negatively impacting me. I have become more of a worrier, I have received my first C...ever (it was in AP Environmental, a class that is incredibly strenuous and more difficult than it will ever seem to be), I have been journalling less, and I have been poor in my health (I have never have consumed so much junk food in my life. Well, that was hyperbolic, but you get my intention).

But, contrary to me being swamped with academic and personal responsibilities, I have become a more blossomed version of myself in these past few months. I have nicked more off of my bucket list than I have ever done in such a short amount of time. In the past few months, I have:

• Ridden in the back of a pickup truck with a cluster of my closest friends
• Become more defiant and confident in myself
• Gone to my very first high school football game
• Attended my very first showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Been involved in three one-act plays at once and attended rehearsals 4 times a week
• Interviewed Cole Becker from SWMRS
• Been catcalled for the first time in my life...and nearly started crying out in fear

I have learned a lot about myself these past few months. I realized that I am an extremely emotionally-resilient person (to the point of concern; is it normal to be so forgiving and forgetful?), and that I am a surprisingly assiduous student, contrary to my unproductive vices. But I still feel off. I feel vacant.

O, wicked, weary vagrant, what plagues thy volatile, dulling heart? Is it the wickedness of time, or the rippulous unpleasantries of the despair you have been wandering throughout? Is it the cult-like pressures of socialization that has got you trapped in a blue state? I feel emotionless, anything less of a mortal; where once I could become elated with lust or creativity, I am left with blueness and despair, a vast vacancy I cannot describe. I still find excitement in routine, however (I always go out to dinner Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, a tradition I look forward to every week), but I cannot find excitement outside of that. There is confusion where there once was magic.

I want to retreat into the body of a creature that does not feel this way. Perhaps I could be a bird instead of a walking skeleton, or some sort of bottom-dwelling creature in the benthic zone of a lake, not yet discovered or studied by graduate students in a laboratory. That would be nice. To be flightless, to be incapable of processing human feelings and abilities, unbothered by the weight of the mortal world. To be out of these porous, gummy layers of skin, and to take the shape of something less complex and chemically composed.

A constant theme that reverberates throughout this blog is the heated topic of adolescence VS. adulthood. I consistently mention how much I adore being a teenager, and thriving in such a culture that works its way to glorify and preserve this sacred age. I can speak for every exasperated adolescent when I say that becoming an adult is a desire in the back of all of our heads, but we long to hold onto our adolescence for as long as possible. Being sixteen, contrary to what I believe the majority of the time, is so much different than being of the blossoming age of fifteen. I long to stitch together the desires I have to keep a firm grip on my adolescence and the desire I possess to grow up and fast-forward 5 years. I am at a state in my life where school and my minimal social life are conflicting and crossing over each other, and I long to look into a crystal ball that will depict each frame of my life over the next five years.

Will I be this vacant forever, or will it fade in time? I don't know if this newfound vacancy is a direct symptom of being overworked and bombarded by sudden, solemn responsibilities, or if it is the end product of years and years of bottling things up and stifling emotions I should have expressed in the first place? Why am I not feeling elation for things that I have accomplished? I finally have become something I wanted to be for the longest time, the person I strove to be from an early age; I am finally a social person, I have a boyfriend I have been pining for for the longest amount of time, and I have reached the pinnacle of productivity I needed to reach in order to become a successful student. Why can't I feel any sort of spark of deep rooted emotion for these accomplishments?

I no longer want the pupils of my eyes to be black-and-white clocks, I want them to be the size of yellowing, full moons and I want them to gleam in the daylight like they used to. I want to restore the magic and buzzing manic that once reverberated throughout my body, from my boots to my bones, and I want to feel tingles all over my body and butterflies in my stomach and dopamine flowering in my gummy organs.

Together Pangea Fan in Mexico City, photo by Kelsey Reckling

Photo by Marie Vacqua

Matt O'Keefe, photo by Eddie O'Keefe

Photo by nyctaeus.tumblr.com