The Cycle
Ron Alweiss
The clothes imploded throughout my room indicate a natural disaster; however, I feel anything but natural. The lifeless stare behind my sleepless eyes lingers as they position themselves to attempt to comprehend the next illogical statement written on the mesmerizing screen. I find myself regaining consciousness every 3 or 4 minutes after an unintentional power nap, which provides me with more exhaustion than awareness. I feel my brain melting away as the computer screen interrogates me about my future goals and aspirations. I hear a knock at the door, yet it feels so distant as my sister barges in. “Dinner’s ready,” she murmurs. “Ok,” I respond, “I’ll be down in 5.” I finally produce a sentence, not a particularly intelligent one, but a start. After the first, the sentences begin flowing without a thought, mindlessly pushing out all the information my brain can contribute or finesse to address the essay topic I am trying to write. “50 words over,” I proudly think to myself, “I can finally go have dinner.” I waddle down the stairs, reawakened by each step. As I approach the dining room, I observe my siblings arguing over the show to watch and my mom completing her third puzzle this week. “Does everyone want to eat? I’m starving!” “We all ate an hour ago,” my sister responds with a rude inflection in her voice. I turn to the table to realize only the scraps remain from the once-delicious meal. I groan as I finish whatever food wasn’t deemed worthy enough for my sisters and wobble back up the stairs to complete my work. I trudge to my bed where I lie down for a moment, hoping to gain some sort of mystical energy to revitalize me. My iPad eyes me from my nightstand as 10pm flashes on the screen, and I consider watching one video to wake me up inside. I reach for my headphones and indulge myself in a world of video game let’s-plays. My short attention span and yearning for entertainment overcome my ambition as my eyes glue shut for the night, headphones in my ears, and iPad ranting on at 2am. My dad bangs on my door, waking me from my unfulfilling slumber. His disappointed glare expresses that he knows I went to sleep late again. I reluctantly force myself out of bed and to my chair a few inches away. I look at my dying phone and computer, hoping they’ll last better than me through the day. I look at the progress I made the night before to see merely a single question completed, 50 words over the limit, and extremely poorly written. “Ugh, oh well. I’ll do it tonight.”
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