My school year
is winding down. And with it I find myself anxiously awaiting change. There was
a time in my life where a sequence of coincidences kept occurring to me.
Though, certainly, they may be said to be nothing more than the exaggeration of
memory. They held no meaning to me at the time. I simply found the coincidences
a game. Shortly after realizing that this thing kept happening to me, I kept
trying to make it happen. Not because it felt good, not because I enjoyed it,
but because I could. So I did.
The first time it happened, I was in
Math class. Around 10:30 in the morning, late in the school year. Pre-calculus.
That level of math wasn’t required at
any public high school in the state, but any kid hoping to go to college knew
he’d have to at least make it there by graduation. And so I spent those
mornings seated close to the front, on the far right side of the class. A place
to stay engaged when needed, and close enough to the fringes to disappear when
needed. I sat behind a short, redhead. She was a soccer player; athletic, thin,
but not overtly muscular. She had soft features piercing green eyes and, as is
the case for most redheads, was plastered with soft brown freckles. A perfect
distraction for when derivatives lost conscious hold.
But the year was coming to an end,
and, being advanced students, the teacher had finished the requisite lessons
for the year. The class had become a breeding ground for polite leisure
activities: chess, drawing, quiet gossiping. I chose to occupy my freedom
listening to my iPod and staring vaguely into the hair of the girl before me.
“American Girl” was blaring through my headphones when I felt a desperate
impatience to check the screen of the iPod. Not knowing the exact reason for
the disturbance in my emotion, I flicked off the “hold” switch and the screen
lit. One minute, 46 seconds. Exactly halfway through.
I discovered Tom Petty around my freshman
year, and became obsessed with him ever since. Every album, every live
recording. But this was early on in my discovery. My heart was nowhere near
filled. Yet there I was, listening to one of my favorite tracks, desperately
hoping for the end so I could move to the next. Like a zipper track had suddenly
appeared along my front, someone were unzipping me and had just reached my
middle. Each side of my brain screaming to be torn from the other already.
The agony I felt in that moment was
fleeting. Soon I was sitting comfortably again, staring back into a deep bronze
and feeling my heart settle. But the moment was not lost. In the weeks
following, I found myself, always unsuspecting, torn from the middle of a song,
staring at the progress on the iPod screen, praying the next half of the song
was already over. But the tear I felt through my center opened more and more
easily with every instance, like two pieces of over-used Velcro, the two never
quite sticking back together. But, with their overuse, the scream of separating
them quieted. Each side of my brain numbed from the other. Then it became a
game, tearing myself apart consciously while listening to my favorite artists.
I was indifferent. The tear had already occurred, my nervous system already
frayed. What did it matter if I started tearing it myself?
And now, here I sit, halfway through
this experience…staring down at the face of the iPod screen.
