Apparently, I have a lot to say.

She lay awake, her mind swirling with concern. She had always worried about her family and their “issues” because, after all, she was a part of the equation. It was that stage of her life when one overcomes the overwhelming realization that your parents, although responsible for your making, are really just scared individuals unsure as to their past decisions. Entering that period of her life was something she could have never predicted. And even if she could, she would have never been prepared enough. The time when one must actually make decisions that had real outcomes. The time when words that were spit during a fight could make a break a relationship. When choices decided changes in the outcome of one’s happiness, livelihood, well being.

She lay there listening to her breathing, making sure her roommate couldn’t hear the quiet padding of tears on her pillow. She focused on breathing deep, ensuring she wouldn’t need to eventually catch her breath, a sure sign of her crying and weakness. She didn’t know why she was upset. Nor could she figure out which thought to focus on. This constant unsolvable anxiety made her more upset. Hot tears ran down her heavy head, soaking her pillow and neck of her t-shirt. “Alligator tears” as her mom used to call them. “Alligator tears” she would eventually describe them as in an attempt to alleviate her child’s sadness.

She didn’t know how many nights she had fallen asleep like this. Of the many thoughts running laps through her head she was able to decipher a few. 1) She was extremely overwhelmed with past events and their current repercussions. 2) That she couldn’t find and immediate resolution to the issues at hand. 3) This was only a stage in her life, and like all others, it too in time would pass. But for now, this was the issue at hand. That for right now nothing had been as painful, as thought provoking, or as alienating. She didn’t know what came first, the sleep or the end of the tears. Did the tears continue through her dreaming or did the sleep alleviate her anxieties?

Either way, she was glad to enter that magical part of each persons day when the day is put on pause, only to resume a few short hours later, but in each person’s control of whether they will resume past the previous events or continue where one commenced.