The soft pillow presses into my face until I feel I can’t breathe anymore but still I can’t stop. I can’t stop the awful sounds coming from my chest, or the tears I didn’t know I still had left. I can’t even really explain why I’m so upset, why I can’t seem to control myself. The tears gathering in my eyes splinter my vision and I can’t see straight anymore, all I can do is gasp for breath that I’ve been depriving myself of. Is it the letter that bothers me so much? A letter that I don’t even know for sure that I got but somehow I just know. I don’t know why I care so much, I don’t even like the class.


But it’s not the class, it’s heavy, pressing feeling of failure. It never seems to leave, like a shadow you can’t escape. That realization that I am limited more than anything else is what’s killing me. Somehow even up until now, I’d prevented myself from the resignation and kept trying. And now it’s all coming home, the work wasted, the time spent, and for what? Nothing. Sometimes I feel I’ve worked so hard for something and I don’t even know why I want it anymore, but it’s become so integral that the idea that I’m incapable of achieving it is paralyzing.


I won’t get that dream acceptance letter from Berkeley I’ve always wanted, and to be honest, even though mail from colleges keeps coming in I know I haven’t really looked at them. Take away the vision of going to Berkeley and suddenly I’m lost. I don’t know where else I want to go, what I want to do, I don’t know anything. It’s like I have to completely redefine myself. Some little part of my brain says that I’m overreacting, that I’m a little young to be having an existential crises. That it’s okay, this won’t define the rest of my life and 20 years from now I won’t care.


Maybe that’s why it’s so unconvincing, because it’s not 20 years from now, and right now, I care. Right now I can’t tell that other voice to shut up, to stop repeating my worst fears over and over in my head like a broken record because I can’t delude myself into thinking I don’t believe that voice anymore. That I don’t believe that I’m worthless or just incapable of doing anything correctly. Why do the things I’m so terrible at have to be the most important things? Why does this world have to value so highly talents that I simply do not possess? People tell me my talents are valuable, art, music, history, writing, but they can never tell me what I can do with them.


More than anything else, I feel misplaced.