Pretending To Live

Here I sit at my own desk, in an office of moderate size, with four desks, a small open-faced cabinet that seems as though someone has been using in place of a fifth desk, or at least for the same flat-surfaced purposes a desk would serve. The job I have promised has come. I've fretted and whined and cowered and screamed for a night and a day, but I am here now, and things are looking like they will be well, like I will do adequately at the very least, or perhaps even exceptionally.

Last night I thought I would cry. With the fear of this morning shadowing me, I thought of my mother growing old, as I often did as a child. I thought of her dying as she one day must, and I thought about that distinct, piercing despair that in hours like those I can imagine so precisely, as though the inevitable here were indeed the history elsewhere in some imperceivable world in which my enslaved mind did sometimes tarry. I thought of the old promise of suicide that her death could drive me to keep.

I went to bed, and when I awoke it had passed. I showered in a hurry, ate breakfast, and found that I had nearly an hour to sit and brood. It had not passed after all. I felt tired suddenly, and scared, and as my mother went over the lesson plans I had developed, I felt the familiar disconnection clouding my mind. I found myself staring at my mother's questioning gaze. "What?" I repeated. A moment later, "What?" Eventually I had to finish dressing and packing my supplies, and then, as I should have been merging onto the freeway, I found myself running into the house, frantically searching through couch cushions and papers and loose wires for my earbuds. I won't need them now, I don't think, but I thought perhaps I could use some music, just before teaching, to calm my nerves.

I found them after only a few shouted curses, and arrived just in time, despite scattering papers and folders in the parking lot. The building was empty except for the beautiful secretary that could not show me how to clock in.

My nerves are creeping up slowly now as I write this, so I fear it will degenerate into brief, simply constructed sentences. My class begins in less than an hour, but I am merely showing a well-respected movie and then discussing the types of films they would like to see in the future. I will be fine for sure until next Thursday night, when the familiar fear once again sets in. My only salvation lies in the hope that with time, the fear will lessen until I am as adept at living as I am at pretending to live.