Momentarily: A Short Story

I have always heard people say, “I forgot who I was.” But I had no idea how literally they meant it. Now, as I look through pictures of myself taken just 3 months before, a stranger looks back at me. Her smile, the way her eyes held the faintest shimmer, her vibrant aura, even the shape of her nose, seems foreign to me. 

A shiver runs through me and I push away the laptop. I have a class in 15 minutes.

Stepping outside is a shock and I am intimately aware of the hundreds of students milling about on campus. The possibility of eyes studying me is overwhelmingly oppressive and I let loose a curtain of hair over the left side of my face. Why am I like this? This is ridiculous. I feel a wave of annoyance over my own anxiety. The same recurrent image flashes in my mind like a warning and I blink it away. Desperate for a distraction, I divert my gaze from the ground in front of me and glance at students passing me. How many of them are walking numb? One step, two step, three step. Repeat. Does anyone live their life differently? 

I let my eyes sink back to the ground and remind myself, Breathe. Don’t think. Focus on your feet. One step, two step, three. Anything else is dangerous. 

I take my usual seat in the back row and put a significant amount of effort in controlling the sound of my breathing, which was elevated after walking four flights of stairs. The professor begins talking as I focus on pulling supplies out of my bookbag. Something about the importance of setting in literature and how emotions are associated with place. 

I jump when I hear my name and feel my insides momentarily stop working. 

“…prefer? The beach or the mountains?”

My brain suddenly feels foggy and dense. A small panic begins to rise in me, and my mouth opens before the words actually come out.

“Uhhh…Mountains.”

The professor looks at me expectantly, waiting for an elaboration.

“You don’t have to pay for seclusion there. Besides, you can fall off a boat or you can fall off of a mountain. At least on a mountain you know what’s going to meet you at the bottom.”

My answer had been given on impulse, desperate not to leave an uncomfortable silence. Amidst the frantic blankness of my mind, I realized that I made no connection to literature at all. The uncomfortable silence greets me after I finish speaking, and I take it in. So familiar, so unwanted, I wait for the sinking feeling and harden myself against it. 

The professor nods slowly. “Okay,” he says, prolonging the word and attempting to make it seem like I said something mildly productive. “Elizabeth is often searching for seclusion in nature at all the places she resides.” He searches the faces of my classmates, wanting someone else to chime in. He pinpoints another student, calling upon him to give him a satisfactory answer, “Colin….”

I don’t hear the rest of the question. The image flashes in my mind accompanied by a sick feeling of satisfaction. I stare hard at the whiteness of my notebook paper and my pencil moves to transport the image from my mind. 

The rest of the class laughs at Colin’s reply and my bitterness takes away the resolve to draw the image. Instead, I study my number 2 wooden pencil. No one else uses them anymore. If they use pencils at all, they use mechanical pencils. Industrialization and “improvement” can reach even the tiniest and most basic of things. 

“Exactly. Just like shapes we see in nature influence interior design, authors use setting to tap into our preconceived notions of place. This is what Jane Austen was doing; willing us to associate the different places in her novel with different aspects of social stratification prevalent at the time.” 

Biting the inside of my cheek, I glance at the digital clock in the corner of the room, the bright red numbers telling me I still have to sit through 30 more minutes of this class. I force myself to tune back in after adding a line to the tally I had made on the inside cover of the notebook. Nine tally marks. Nine days of not talking to anyone, of not saying a single word. The irrationality of the annoyance I feel toward my professor for breaking my streak almost makes me smile. 

26 more minutes. I write it down in my notebook:

    Life is so utterly pointless. 

    CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON

    There’ll be peace when you are done.

    13 more minutos.

I get tired of writing in different fonts, so I turn to coloring between the lines of the loose leaf paper. I try to look alert when the teacher’s gaze turns towards me, but it’s hard when you can barely keep your eyes open for more than 10 seconds. He lingers on my sleepy eyes a moment too long, and I feel sorry for him. It’s not you, it’s me. My grades say I’m a good student, just focus on that. 

The professor dismisses us and reminds us that we have an essay due. As the students file out of the classroom, Louisa falls into step beside me. We leave the building in silence, and as we step into the crisp cool of autumn, Louisa lets out a huff of relief and turns slightly toward me to make sure I was near. I feel a flash of gratitude for her loyal company. We don’t hang out outside of class, but we have two classes together back to back on Wednesdays, so we usually walk together. 

As Louisa tries to start a conversation, I try to nod and say “Yeah” as many times as possible, at least feigning engagement. My mind struggles to come up with something to say, but it only struggles a moment before it turns bitter and succumbs to silence. I send a silent apology to Louisa amidst the heaviness that’s welling up in my chest and the familiar image flashes before me again. My jaw clenches. 

I must not have been pretending as well as usual, because Louisa asks, “Am I annoying you?”

My heart goes out to her as I quickly say, “Oh no! I guess I’m just tired. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

That’s true. I only got around three hours. But I don’t tell her that three hours has become the new normal for me. 

Louisa nods in sympathy, “College life, am I right?” And I laugh like I’m supposed to. 

I doodle my way through the next class and then make my way back to my dorm. Over the course of my last class, the air turned hotter. I can feel the sweat before I make it halfway across the quad. Perfect. I keep my arms close to my sides, although I know no one could see the sweat stains through my black shirt and keeping them tucked in will just make me hotter. 

I feel icky so I decide to forgo lunch. I have an apple in my room anyway. The journey from class to the dorm always feels unbearably long, and my pace quickens as my haven appears before me. Another set of stairs, a punched-in code, and I’m flinging my bookbag off of my shoulders and scrambling my top layer off in my empty dorm room. Free of my burdens, I place my hands on my hips and take in the meager space in which I find the most comfort I’m capable of. 

The image appears, but instead of pushing it away, I linger on it, dwelling over the details. The closed eyes, the arms and hair flinging upward as the body falls, the seeming weightlessness, the image of letting go. The falling girl could be me, but she could also be totally random, and I momentarily wonder why I find sick comfort in the image when I’m not sure if she’s me. 

And then I momentarily wonder why I never see the girl hit the bottom. But only momentarily. 

I realize I’ve lingered too long and I shake away the image. I cross over to my bed and crawl on top of it, plopping my head onto my pillow and laying my right arm over my forehead. I lay staring at the ceiling and wonder if I have time to self-destruct before I start on my homework.