Stargazing from the Bottom

“What did you do all day?”
I could distantly hear the question being asked to me but I couldn’t form a reply. My mind numb, my face blank, I realized she was still waiting for an answer. I plaster a smile on my face and tell her, “the usual”. Then the teacher starts teaching and I rest my head on my folded arms atop the desk.

It’s like a constant buzz in my mind, as if behind my eye, beneath my skin there’s this never-ending blackhole-right down to the deepest part of me. I feel, rather than hear, the tap on my desk which feels a lot like a gunshot inside my skull, echoing through my bones. Lifting my head I watch as the teacher tells me to pay attention. I watch but do
not quite see. The static inside the fragile bones of my skull left me unable to register the world.

I looked towards the glaring whiteboard, the chatter of the students becoming a dim noise in the background, as I tried to understand what the letters on the board meant. It felt like laying at the bottom of the ocean and still trying to map out the constellations, all the while the world moved on outside. I shake my head in an attempt to clear my vision.
I swim towards the surface with ease but stop before going through it. I am well aware that when I break through the surface I’ll only be able to map out a few constellations before I realize that all around me is still the vast ocean with no land on the horizon.

Nevertheless, I push through the surface and look above me – shivering and still somehow numb – at the stars. I navigate through what I see before my eyes and look down when I feel my hand holding the pen and writing the equation I have to solve, which is barely visible among the heavenly bodies in the sky. Before I can begin to solve it my legs stop kicking and I start sinking. In a heartbeat, I am back on the ocean’s bed with the incomplete task I had left on the surface hanging like an albatross around my neck.

I close my eyes as the dim noise in the background rises to an unbearable extent, I frown as the words take shape beneath my eyelids, “time waits for no man.” I could hear my mother’s voice as plain as day yet it did nothing to me, it did not even turn a hair. The bell rings like thunder and I snap my eyes open to find the teacher leaving and another entering. I hear the children groaning and see the look of distaste evident on the teacher’s face. Pressing my lips together I take in a shallow breath.

She starts teaching in front of me, they start talking behind me and I lay there motionless at the bottom of the ocean -stranded in the blue and helpless in the dark.