Abrasion

My emotions are typically legible. Hours of flute playing have defined my dimples and lips, and hard-earned facial muscles exercise through frowns and smiles whenever I listen to a person speak. Recently, however, my mood has been rank, and uglier, disapproving expressions have begun to unleash themselves in occasions in which my dissent is either indirectly inexcusable or slightly astonishing. I usually have a high tolerance for ideas that I might consider ludicrous or silly, but nowadays, my honest opinions try to carve a path out into the open rather than maintain their subdued expressions. Sadly, my ability to censor unnecessary comments has deteriorated.

 

I would like to mention that I have not intended to come across as harsh or blunt in my communication. My throat produces what little sound it can through the sandpaper dryness stuck where my esophagus starts, and the pitch of my voice does not exhibit the typically controlled excitement that I like to assume as my default mood. Unfortunately, the dissonant tone of my nasally voice tends to, as of late, sharpen the cut of my words, and the expressions on my conversational partner's face clearly indicate that an insult, however accidental or unintentional, slashes at the surface of his heart. What he doesn't realize is how difficult it is to control every explicit detail of my thoughts as they fight to actualize themselves through meager words, squeezing through a tight vocabulary that I acquired slowly through colloquial speech and maybe a few challenging SAT books. What he also does not quite fully comprehend is the fact that I suppress most earnest thoughts that I could have a desire to express by blurting out what I have dubbed "fun sentences," which consist of topics of conversation that can be applied to almost anybody. However odd it may seem, I make an effort to display only my most entertaining behavior with people that I care about. Dark thoughts do not brighten anyone’s day.

 

You must be surprised. Yes, I do in fact privately consider what you say thoroughly. No, I do not mean everything that my mouth happens to shape and blow out in order to maintain a pleasant surface image in that precise moment. Please do not take offense to the slight details that I might have missed that day. I have become thoroughly exhausted throughout the course of this year. My energy began draining the day I began to study with vigor, and my body has been taking the toll of the consequences. My feet drag me to places that I hazily regard as my classrooms as my hands juggle a book and a bagel, meant for nourishment of nutrients and knowledge. My eyes search through the pages of countless textbooks and emails, hoping to retain all the facts thrown at me about Watergate and Clinton, to not forget about that particular forum or to keep in touch with one of my well-wishing teachers. My ears try to absorb as quickly as possible in order to at least half digest the mangled ideas of my fellow peers and generate thoughts to spit out in a quickfire debate. My already bent back ties itself up with more muscles unsure of its proper place. My brain, slowly but surely, erodes from the inability to either intake fully or reject completely all the words crashing at its exterior. The sheer number of words that my mind has been exposed to has clearly flushed out all previously useful connections, replacing all those precious memories with memorized events, places, and people and things.

 

I am tired. Yes, I think I am. I am tired. I am tired of drinking coffee to stay up when I could be sleeping like the rest of the population of North Andover. I am tired of listening to my colleagues repeating my original ideas for participation credit. I am tired of not eating as much as I want to in the morning because a particular reading had evaded my attention. I am tired of staring at my computer screen for more than five hours a day at a time, and I am tired of all the words swimming together in my head as I attempt to finish off the last fifty pages of a play written by a man who deserves a better audience. I am tired of trying to write something about some other thing that I thought something about once upon a something, but cannot remember. I am tired of conjuring up reasons as to why I might not want to go somewhere with someone, and how malleable their perceptions of me may have become. I am tired of studying without recourse, tired of reconsidering everything that I say, and I am tired of considering all of the different ways in which I could have been less offensive. I am tired of seriously contemplating the consequences of five words that I didn't mean to say. I am tired of people, and I am tired of myself. I am tired of being tired, and I don't want to be exhausted anymore.

 

So please forgive me for my behavior today, and about that little snub. But I didn't mean to, and you know that we are friends. So please, let's just go and get some Orange Leaf.