My roommate, freshman year of college, slept a lot. She was a bit nocturnal. I sort of looked down on her sometimes for sleeping the way she did. It seemed like a miserable life; to sleep until 5 p.m., wake up disoriented, smoke, and work or wander New York until 6 in the morning. She didn’t eat a lot either. I would always tell her it was because she didn’t sleep the way a person should and therefore did not live the way a person should. 

I have always believed that our waking moments were precious, even though I did not always enjoy them. I mapped out almost every hour in my bullet journal; different colors for different tasks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Purple for volleyball, green for classes, pink for the gym, and blue for work. I was never as productive as I imagined myself to be, but it was better than waking up at 5 p.m.  

One night my roommate said to me, “I feel like you’re just waiting to go to sleep the whole day”. She said it was as though I spent my day finding ways to kill time until I could go back to sleep. I laughed and agreed. I told her my bedtime routine was probably my favorite part of the day, and it was. 

I have always loved to sleep–not because it alleviates my fatigue but because it is an escape from everything I have to do–the tasks I create for myself and the ones that are created for me. All of this list making and task creating is so tiresome and yet I feel like I need it to breathe properly. 

It is similar to the way I hate drawing despite being quite good at it. I hate making portraits because I only make them to bask in their completion; to look at the finished product with admiration and pride. I am deeply obsessed with beginnings and endings. Making coffee in the morning feels as good as laying out the first rough sketches of a portrait. The start however, binding yet empty and inviting, is never as grand as the ending, always more comforting because the work is over. 

Sometimes I wish I was dead so that I could watch my friends do all the things I fear I am too lazy to do. I could bask in their starts and finishes without being exhausted in between them all. I want to watch them get their degrees, dream jobs and loves of their lives without wondering when I will get mine. I will admit I’ve never wanted to live my own life. The weight of all the things one needs to do and might not get to, in order to make their life their own, has always been too heavy for me. Still I persist, and still this life isn’t quite my own. 

The truth is I am not too tired, I am too afraid to do anything at all. I even smoke cigarettes like I’m scared of them. I never quite inhale because I cannot stand nicotine–or even the high of a proper drug anymore–but I still love to see the smoke drift out of my mouth.  I can’t stand to feel anything properly. It’s only in bits and pieces that I am able to take in the world around me. I am never quite in my body when I walk around Harlem–or anywhere–and I am never quite in my head when I am at home. I am always one step removed from wherever I am, like a child unable to comprehend an adult conversation. I feel constantly unable to be here or there. 

I think the next best thing to being dead is to be old. I wish very often that I were a grandmother sitting on her windowsill or on her porch, watching her grandchildren play. I would have within me the kind of stillness one can only possess when there is nothing left to do. My house would be littered with the accomplishments of my children, their children, and my own. By this time I would have learned everything I had to, published everything I was to ever write, and have postcards from everywhere I would ever go. I would live in peace each day, knowing that I had crossed off everything on my list, that I had made my life my own and could now wait for it to end.

I wish I were an unfeeling living thing so that I could be nothing to life except for a witness and a humble contributor. Life as a human feels too much like a race to be full. It is a race I need to win so that I can sit still at the finish line for a moment before it’s over. I believe there is a right way to live–a rational, sensical way that factors in emotion proportionally. I just haven’t figured it out quite yet. Right now it feels like the only way to live life properly is to fit as much of it inside myself as I can before time runs out. I suppose that was always my problem with my old roommate. She slept through the parts of the day I felt were supposed to be fed to the soul. I wasn’t feeding myself properly either, but at least I was awake at the right time. There’s a right way to go about this whole life. I just haven’t figured it out yet.