THE BOULDER

THE BOULDER

Jamie Hawley

THERE IS A BOULDER IN THE MIDDLE OF MY BRAIN.

It’s sedimentary, like a salt deposit, or limestone. Layer upon layer made smooth from constant turning. It showed up with the fourth grad school rejection letter, and it’s becoming inconvenient. I should be savoring this, my last semester, but instead I live from day to day, dreading the days that come later. How do I move forward when I’m desperate to go back?

The boulder doesn’t hurt. Not really. It makes me feel like the world, my world, is more chaotic than it is. I can’t remember what day it is, and I can’t remember what I did the day before. I have a million things to do, even though my to-do list is only three items long. I can’t tell the difference between being busy and being free. I work around it, like you work around loose trash and extension cords. I work in the margins of my brain. I write papers, I go to class, I see my friends. Every once in a while, I’ll bump into the boulder, and I’ll apologize for forgetting it was there.

It’s not like my brain has ever been healthy. But it’s never felt closed off before, just too much, too big, and too fast. I used to wish not for a boulder, but for a lobotomy. But only sometimes. Usually, my brain is malleable gray matter, and we belong to each other, even when it feels like we don’t belong to anything else.

I don’t know what to do about the boulder. I guess erosion is the best path forward, but how do I direct a flood between my ears? How do I send gusts behind my eyes? The only other option is to go back before the boulder formed, but try as I might, I can’t go back in time. The last four years are slipping away like dry sand from a clenched fist. I feel like I’m being tugged away. I feel like I’m screaming wait, wait, don’t make me go, there’s so much I haven’t done. I don’t know if I’m actually making sound.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to go to grad school. I was always supposed to go to grad school. What else am I good for? All I have is my gray matter. I’m not built for anything else. I wasn’t made for anything else. Who am I if I’m not a student? How do I live my life without the promise of an A at the end?

I don’t think the boulder is a boulder. I think it’s a black hole. It’s addition by subtraction, the palpable loss of the one thing I’ve always had: a plan. I don’t have a fucking plan. I don’t know how to make one, or at least, I don’t know how to make one that feels the way I thought grad school would make me feel. Maybe one doesn’t exist. Maybe I’m just feeling the feeling I was trying to put off for another five years.

I think I can get rid of the boulder. It’s going to take time, and probably some therapy, but I think one day I’m going to look at my to-do list and three things is going to feel like three things. I will know what day it is, and I will know what I did the day before, even if I don’t know what I’m doing the day after.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I never will. But I believe in the power of erosion. I will find my strength in the crumbling sand.