We have reached that point in the semester yet again.
You’ve got a midterm today. And another tomorrow, and a paper due the next, maybe even two. Maybe even a presentation or a lab report to go with that. You start to think that maybe your professors came together to discuss the best way to suffocate you with the most oppressive workload their evil genius minds can come up with.
It is more or less the same for me. Each day I have about 200 pages of readings that I only complete maybe 10% of before I am faced with the infallible temptation of the Devil (known to most as SparkNotes). I had three essays due back to back the other week, all of which I know I will be getting mediocre grades on because of how rushed I was writing them. I haven’t seen some of my friends in days, because they, too, are cooked. Group chats have gone silent. Notably, a friend submitted a crash-out poem for our poetry class — that’s when you know it’s bad.
When time moves fast like this, like it is dancing just out of my reach, it starts to feel like I’ve fallen so far behind that I am no longer living within real time. Like I am floating passively, and nothing is perfectly real, not even what is right in front of me. Everything becomes two-dimensional and unattainable.
The other day I sat right next to my professor in class. I watched him as he spoke, so that it came across as if I was engaged with what he was saying. In reality, I heard the words he said but did not understand them; I saw his face before me, but felt like I was watching him through a TV screen. I thought, as my eyes scanned the room and took in the faces of each of my classmates, that if I reached out, my fingertips would touch an invisible barrier that kept me from the real world. I thought maybe if I stood up on the table and screamed, not a single person would flinch or spare me a glance. I wondered then if I would have screamed at all.
(Of course, this is not the socially acceptable thing to do, so instead I am left wondering and trying not to stare too long.)
Even now, as I type this on my laptop, I feel a strange disconnect between the movement of my fingers and the words appearing on the screen. My internal monologue says that these words are mine, but my eyes watch them form themselves on the page. It is Friday, and my friends finally have a moment to breathe, so they are in my living room making pizza from scratch. I hear their laughing voices and I smell the savory warmth of dough in the oven, but I worry that if I open my door, it will all disappear. I worry that if they do continue to exist, that I am the one who will disappear.
But sitting here, I’m realizing that it has been a long time since I wrote for myself like this, letting my own thoughts inspire me to think harder, rather than thinking hard to create thoughts intellectual enough to be included in an academic paper. I reach a hand to my own face and the fog thins. The clock ticks on, and the skin beneath my fingertips doesn’t disintegrate away. It feels real enough.
In all honesty, I am still cooked. There are at least two more essays looming in my near future and I’ve become so disorganized that I have no clue what I’ll be doing in half of my classes next week. Time continues to taunt me, moving faster than I can keep up with.
But. My friends are just on the other side of my door, and it has been ages since I spent real time with them. I know that if I ask how they’re doing, they’ll tell me that they are in a similar position as me, running to keep up with assignments and studying. But they are making time wait for them, if only for a bit, to stop and take a deep, necessary breath.
The irrational fear that I will go unseen if I step out of my room still clings to me, but I squint at my doorknob and decide that I want to confirm that it is real, that it will be cold to the touch and click when I turn it. That opening the door will reveal their smiling faces, the clear words of their conversation, the heat of a room bustling with energy. It is a risk worth taking.
Harmony Liu is a junior from Queens, N.Y. studying English. Her column shares moments in her life that feel significant and profound enough to be written out and cast to sea for any to find.
