Waiting Room

She wakes up at the sound of the alarm clock.  I should get up, she thinks, It seems like the right thing to do.  The woman pulls herself out of bed to find the bathroom, where she washes her face and brushes her teeth.  She dares regard herself in the mirror, a daily mistake that veers all good intentions off course.  What she sees is dark, hollow eyes, horribly blemished skin, and hair that defies any reasonable convention.  She sees a failure.

The failure proceeds downstairs, where maybe she will have a cookie and a can of soda for "breakfast", maybe just the soda.  From here, she will watch episodes of The Simpsons, for what seems like a sensible amount of time to wake up.  When the guilty feeling of idleness catches up, the failure goes upstairs to work on odd projects on the computer.  She finds a way to keep herself busy for at least an hour or two, but if you were to ask here what she did during that time, it is doubtful she could recall.

When the morning activities have been exhausted, the failure returns downstairs for the most painful part of the day, the waiting part.  Here she sits in silence, with her phone on her lap, waiting for a call.  During this part of the day, the air is so heavy it is palatable.  Everything inside and out has a dull charge, a mild electric current that keeps her heart beating just fast enough to ward off fatigue, but  just slow enough to let in everything she so desperately wants to keep out.  During these moments, it is unclear even to her what she wants.  Uncertainty of a bleak future or the blissful ignorance just another day can offer.  The anticipation of change or the dread of having to face something new, something uncharted.  Whether the phone rings or not, there will be some level of disappointment.

At around the traditional lunch hour comes the period of anticipation.  This is where she starts looking forward to the time of night where no possible phone call can come and she is powerless to do anything about her current situation until the next alarm clock call.  During these hours she looks forward to crawling back into her bed, into her sanctuary, maybe with some pills, maybe just with the comfort of the escape of another day.  At night, she comes her closest to reuniting with the woman she used to be.

That isn't for some time  though.  For now, all she can do is wait.  Wait for something to inspire, wait for the assurances that this will all be temporary to come, wait for the phone ring, wait to live.  As she sits, the world continues to move, this world so oblivious to pain and pleasure, justice and fairness.  As she fights back the tears, a clock that doesn't exist ticks its sweet song into the silence.