School Daze Zine | Page 5

What keeps you awake at night?

As I lay down in my soft, yet firmly uncomfortable bed, you find your way into my head again. I just can’t ever stop thinking about you, and yet I can’t decide if I hate you more than anything...or if I’m in love with you. I can’t decide if your swift, little bounces that you do when you walk around or your snarky laugh are annoying as hell, or if they’re the cutest thing ever. I can’t decide if I’m at fault for all this. I can’t stop thinking “what if,” if maybe you weren’t so selfish, or if maybe I was a little more patient. I can’t tell if we were meant to be sworn enemies or together forever. And as I lay in bed past midnight, listening to songs that remind me of you, I can’t decide if I should switch the thoughts keeping me up to forget you and move on to bigger and better things, or call you and beg to give “us” another go. That look I get whenever we make eye contact before and now is all I can see when I close my eyes at night. I just don’t know if it’s you or if it’s the feeling I get of being wanted by you.

As I look up at the glow-in-the-dark stars glued to my ceiling, I get excited for all the greater things that could await me in the new future, you know, the things you discouraged me from. Or maybe it just seemed that way in my head and you didn’t actually mean to. My mind won’t rest no matter how many sleeping pills I take or warm glasses of milk I drink. I just wanna imagine every possible scenario that I’d ever want to happen. Yikes, why don’t I have this type of energy during a day? When I was younger, I’d always be kept up by the distant future, but now it’s the approaching events that knock at the unlocked door to my heart. I’m thinking about what could possibly go well tomorrow, who would make me laugh, who would compliment me, who would do something exciting. But always, it somehow comes back to you, because I want to share the things that make me happy with you, even though you claim you’re too introverted to want what I want. I think I know what you want, even though you can’t admit it.

I have to remind myself that you’re not my everything and that even though we had some great, great moments, that I’m the bigger person. So instead of wallowing in despair in how much I miss and love - well, possibly love you, I’ll try to get through this endless aftermath of rejection that are sleepless nights and make this better for myself. Tomorrow, I know there’s this new face waiting for me. You know, if you knew better, you’d do better. Just like I’m about to.