A Constant Cycle
by A
All of the words I hear during class instantly dissolve into a soft buzz.
Back in elementary school this wasn’t so hard, but nowadays I am quite nearly in agony.
Concentration slips away, twisting and tumbling through complex
distractions in which it inevitably becomes lost. I attempt to follow
every instruction I receive but scripted lines have suddenly become improv.
“Focus” is the word of the day, every day, each time the lesson interrupted by impromptu
games that my brain has decided to play. My behavior never changes, I merely reset
hoping for better luck next time even though I know it always ends
in the same undesirable fate. My grades tend to suffer
just for a moment but I exclaim, “I promise it’s not my IQ!”
knowing exactly what it is: it’s an inability to stop
losing my way while I desperately scramble to do
my homework in the middle of the night. This culprit is most commonly named procrastination.
Never have I been able to defeat this evil, no matter how much work I am forced to cram.
Overdue assignments haunt me day in and day out as I try not to fail,
praying that my teachers wait just a little longer to look.
Quickly as deadlines fly by I play fear through my brain to try to finally spark action but the DJ
replaces my track with various other uncalled for mental stimuli.
So the days go on, repetitively, never resulting in the breakthrough
that I would require in order to finally feel secure in this never-ending,
unwavering system we call school. My marking period grades must be all A’s for the sake of
validation, which I crave no less than others do, but find it a bit harder to achieve
when schoolwork is significantly more difficult to begin than it is to end.
X is what I find on paper but in my mind I search for a break, something it seems only magic
yields in my unfortunate situation, in which my brain does its job
zero percent of the time as I live physically and mentally in a permanent state of insomnia.