“Wake up.”

I was going in and out of consciousness. I wanted to pay attention, to engage with the world around me without feeling exhaustion weighing on my head. As my vision focused I dragged my sharp nails across my palm.

“wake up.” I said, eyes heavy and brain fog eating me alive. I kept myself afloat for a few minutes but that was all. A second later I had jolted awake, confused and looking around at the lecture room with my professors voice echoing off the walls. He was on a topic I didn’t recognize. I had failed.

I dashed into the bathroom and turned the knob of the old crusted sink as I started splashing my face with water. Once, twice, then a third time just to make sure the lesson stuck. I was so annoyed. I rushed back to the door of the bathroom and closed and locked it as I began to pace. Ranting to myself about this being so unfair. I was anemic, but I had been eating more iron, eating more in general, and I took the fucking pills, I got the 8 hours of sleep and yet here I was again, repeating old patterns.

I hit myself and I screamed as loud as I could without the noise penetrating past the slick walls. I hit the stalls and let them swing against their counterfeit stone and I kicked the sink and slammed the rough soles of my shoes against the tiled floor until I ran out of energy, and I fell.

With gritted teeth and tears in my eyes, I let my head hang. I tried so hard. I didn’t want this hand but it was what I was dealt and I put my best card forward just to lose it. I flailed around as I resisted the urge to pull at my hair. Stupid, I said, like a mantra under my tongue, like a prayer. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“It’s not that hard to stay awake.”

I lied. It was, and that’s what was so frustrating. I never wanted to live my life sleep walking, but my body seemed to be incapable of anything else.