Dying Wide Awake.

It's 2:29 a.m., and you've just finished the last of your notes for Chemistry with some help from the two bottles of iced coffee you drank. 

It's 2:29 a.m., and you change, brush your teeth, and go to your queen-sized cushy bed, adorned with six pillows, two body pillows, and a plush comforter. The ceiling fan clicks softly, and you turn over onto your side and curl your arms and legs around a pillow. 

It's 3:42 a.m. The mattress underneath you is burning hot to the touch. You'd been turning yourself every which way in hopes of sleeping. They have not succeeded. The blood pumping throughout your body seems as if it's just warm enough to take a bath in, and you feel the tips of your digits pulsating at the surface of the covers. You close your fist, thinking your body is too jumpy, still you lay flat and perfectly still, unblinking in the lead darkness. 

So there you lay, looking up at the old turning ceiling fan. You try counting the clicks, but you find you can't focus quite right to do so. 

All you want to do is sleep. That's all you want. How much is it to ask for a few hours of no thinking, no stressing out, just laying there, unconscious?

Really. It's 3:56 a.m. The minutes are ticking down to rest, and you have a huge Honors Chemistry exam to ace tomorrow - er, later this morning. You should have went to bed hours ago, but apparently the sentiment isn't having any part in your actions. You place the blame on the iced coffee you love so much. 

You begin counting. After 800, you decide to stop and curl over your pillow again. Then you flip yourself over to the other side. Finally, you decide the usual position will never get itself to work, and you tuck the pillow beneath your legs. 

You decide to think about something sad; something to cry about. It has always been easier to cry yourself to sleep; simpler just to drain yourself of emotion and use up whatever will you have against sleeping. 

Leaving is the first thing that enters your mind. You'll have to leave the country because of your dad's job and leave your friends behind. You won't be able to speak the language well, and you'll be socially isolated. Your grades will plummet to rock bottom. Maybe just standing on tiptoes at rock bottom, if you're lucky. But even worse, it's your native country. And you'll know nothing. 

It takes a good ten minutes for you to finally think all those thoughts, and they induce no tears. If you could think quickly enough, you would think that you find it peculiar that you're thinking this slowly, yet you're still not asleep. The thought never comes, though, but you begin thinking of something else. 

Your best friend. Maybe she's your only real friend. You know that school has been busy for her, that her classes are polar opposite from yours in terms of location, and you might forever be looking down upon her because she's not quite as advanced as you. She's a girl who studies more than you think anyone human should contribute to exams (but then again, you never study for exams) and she works hard. It's a good thing, you suppose. It's just been a week, maybe a week and a half, since you last spent some real time with her, and it doesn't seem like forever. It just seems to be too long. 

She has a chunky block of pride, even though she clearly knows that you may be right infinitely more times than she is. So you shouldn't really be affected when she says that you fail, that you need to exercise more, that maybe, just maybe, you should study so that you aren't such an unfair being. She says that some of your poetry isn't good, and that your drawing style is more cartoony than hers, which offends you, because how does it matter if your drawings are just a notch better than everyone else's?

But she says she loves you, and that you know more about her than she does, and you decide that that's a good thing, even though it makes you a bit panicky. You know that she trusts you and depends on you to be there. But she voices that she can live without you, that she wouldn't care if you left and never spoke a sound. 

Sometimes, you wonder. You wonder what she would do if you said you were equally as desperate for her company. Maybe even more. You wonder what she would do if you really, truly left and utterly abandoned her.

You wonder if she'd do the same to you. 

The last thought does it. The tears begin like it had so many times before. You wonder if it's a good thing that you've been forcing yourself to cry, to let all of the sadness go away. Somewhere, you heard that you have to shed your share of tears, however much you need to, to feel better. 

You wonder if it's actually working, because your heart still aches as much as it did when you thought so much that your heart ached. It's like an ocean of tears; no matter how much you cry or what you cry about, it never seems to drain itself away. 

Maybe you're doing something wrong. 

Or maybe the sadness really is etched into you, and you can never get rid of it. Ever. 

Your head lies on your dampening pillow, and you wait for the feeling of heartbreak that you've had for so long, you had half-forgotten how to live without it. 

When you feel it, it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like you've always felt it. 

You aren't taking deep, shuddering breaths or pulling your body inwards like you do. You're just lying there, limbs splayed out in odd directions, your breathing is even, and the tears stream soundlessly down your cheeks. 

The pain in your heart is hollow, like you've tried shouting inside it to find answers, and every echo that bounces off its walls hurt irregularly, never-ending. 

You've already forgotten everything that ever hurt or helped you, everything that matters to you, and the somehow-turned-hollow heart is pumping acid and logic, washing the conscience away. 

You feel indifferent. It disgusts you. You've felt indifferent before. But that was when you cared for no one. You wish you could just go back to that time and never care for anyone, never love anyone, because maybe then you wouldn't feel so bad all the time. Maybe you'd actually feel happy while you fling insults left and right, and never care whether it hurt their feelings or if they'd jumped off a cliff because of what you said. 

But now that you know what it's like, you know you can never go back. It scares you. 

It's 5:25 a.m. You're still not asleep. All you care about is falling asleep so you can forget that you felt hollow tonight, that you felt no love or anger and never cared. You just want to sleep. That's all you want. You want to sleep. 

You move across the bed in one smooth movement and grab the bottle of a dozen strong sleeping pills, and you decide that, no matter what, you are going to sleep, once and for all. 

It's 5:27 a.m. 

You empty the bottle into your hands, pop them into your mouth, and swallow. 

The sun rises.