Her Character Study

She hadn’t wanted to wake up this morning. It was bright, and she knew it was later than when she actually wanted to get up. There’s this dream she has, where she wakes up before anybody else in her house, it’s dark and quiet, and she makes some tea. It’s early enough that she has time to let it cool and drink it. She also has time to write in her journal and maybe do some stretching, which is quite far-fetched even in this fantasy because there are still people who live here, and that’s a little too vulnerable for her. In this dream she watches the sun rise, and the kitchen is as clean as it was when she went to bed. In this dream she doesn’t have anybody who will ask her what she will do today. In this dream it’s quiet until she wants there to be noise.

She woke up this morning and it was late, and the cars were incessant. She woke up and the first thing she thought about was going on her phone, because she didn’t want to think about what it meant that she woke up. She sat there instead, watching the sun through the window and fighting with herself. Tragically, the first thing she usually does when she wakes up is fight with herself. Not bravely, and not honorable. She fights with snide remarks and her fathers voice in her head. There are a lot of ‘you should’s and ‘don’t be lazy’s thrown around, which sometimes hurt more than spilt blood.

So she woke up, and did end up going on her phone. In her defense, to no one who’s asking, she read a book. Okay not a book, but it was reading and she didn’t even think to go on Tik Tok until two hours later. But she did spend those two hours in bed reading, thinking about all of the things she could have been doing instead.

And she's been here before, writing this same page, having these same thoughts. It’s inevitable- written in the very foundation of the earth. She wakes up and a small part of her, easy to let live but ignore, thinks that she wishes she didn’t. Because at the end of the day, and everyday, she’s tired. So she goes on her phone when she wakes up. She goes on her phone because as long as other people have things going on, she can have other things going on. Other things besides the fact that she doesn’t want to be on her phone, and that she wishes she had seen the sunrise this morning, and that she didn’t even want to wake up in the first place. What is all of this if not her avoiding her own shortcomings by listening to other peoples problems in replacement. As it is with all burnt-out, depressed, passively suicidal drop outs.

I wonder if she can remember feeling anything besides residual shame after every single decision she makes. Anything that would light a fire in her, or anything that would make her feel softer than air. When was the last time she had laughed, or wanted, or saw? It’s strange to think that someone who might have felt all of these things at some point in time, might now only go on her phone when she wakes up to forget the fact that she had done so in the first place.

The thoughts are incessant yet common, so she gets out of bed to transfer the couch to continue what she was doing in bed. At least out here she won't be met with anything along the lines of a misplaced "oh so you're alive?'. It does little to comfort her, and her 'book' is getting boring, so now she's left scrolling Tik Tok in the exact same nature she was avoiding in the first place. It's sunny outside, and beautiful. She wonders how different her morning would have turned out had she woken up to see the sun rise. She imagines it wouldn't have cured what's so thoroughly rotten inside of her, but she thinks it might have made a difference all the same. She turns her attention back to her phone and scrolls once more.