Eyes on Me

I was already late. And now I was shoveling the miles of snow off my car. It would have been warmer to walk the 10 miles to this stupid performance. Everything was frigid and frosty. Frozen in perpetual amalgamation, the whole world was stuck as one. And thus everything felt tense. I felt tense. The snow fell in lumps beside my car, scattering across my driveway and into my boots and socks. I shuddered. I was starting off my day with a prophetic kind of nauseous. I had woken up that morning with a bad dream still fermenting in the abysses of my imagination, nightmarish manifestations of anxieties brewed in their tepid homeland. Where time was monotonous and dreary, minutes were weeks, and weeks were anxious minutes. Dismantled figures with sickly skin that barely clung to the body, dripping and off the bone and tearing. They snarled at me, I look around and overcast clouds blink across the sky. Hanging above our heads like corpses. 

The light turns green, I come to already minutes from away my house, heavy blinking I gape in a breath, actualizing my existence in this consciousness. As I did, returning from my daydream, the anxiety settled within me once again. I was beyond nervous. My thoughts fled above my head and mingled, catching one another and becoming tangled in feelings I couldn’t comprehend. Why? I begged myself, Why had I agreed to this? My sister had been in a predicament, she had begged me with such sadness, I could feel the guilt already brewing at the idea of refusing such a plea. She NEEDED me. What a terrible thing. I thought to myself. To be needed. 

I turn left. I was going to be nearly 10 minutes late. When I was in high school I dreaded walking into class light with all my being. The feeling of empty halls and rushed inertia, school secretaries watching as if you were a villain. The slow turn of the doorknob into a room of collective heads and respective eyes all boring into your body, as if all your classmates see beyond the facade of clothes and hair and skin, they see your ugliness, they penetrate straight into your deepest self. Eyes all blinking in harmony face contorted in disgust at what they see. The teachers are just as bad, though they’ve already seen the horror. Jaded by each students’ excrescence, when they look at you they see your future in banal busywork until you die, having accomplished nothing but waste. Early on freshman year, I made a pact with myself, that if I were to be even a minute late to class I would just skip it entirely. I was going to be late for this performance, but I couldn’t skip it. 

My breath hitched. I swallowed a lump. I wasn’t in high school anymore. I had outlived that life, those people don’t exist anymore. That version of me doesn’t exist anymore. I wondered what the kids would see as they stare at me today. Something terrible? Maybe, or maybe something wonderful. Ghostly hands wrapped themselves around me, so cold and depraved I shook; what if all they see is emptiness? The knot in my stomach grew, I could feel it at the back of my throat. I think I’m going to be sick. 

Beads of sweat milked from my temples, sticky with salt they slid down the side of my cheek. Not far off from tears. I wiped away the sweat. I couldn’t cry right now either, I would look all puffy and pathetic. I thought about my therapist, Cindy, on my shoulder. Sitting with her legs crossed (specifically, her right leg over her left leg, though she’d change positions when I say something compelling.) She taps her foot as I talk, the high-heeled toes a pendulum. The tight pencil black skirt, patterned blouse. She wore a gold cross around her neck and it looks down on me with shame. Saying to me all the criticisms she is too amiable for. She ties her hair into a skull pulling bun, I wonder what makes her so uptight. I know that at this moment she’d say to me, “this is a really good step” and “its unhealthy to repress your emotions. When you need to cry, then cry” And I’d feel bad about myself, because she’s right. And I do feel bad about myself. 

I brake suddenly. My hands grip the steering wheel and my sweaty palms bat the connection away. I breathe heavily. Trying to catch it. Mere moments away from crashing into the red honda in front of me. My vision blur for a moment, and when it refocuses I notice strikingly the hondas license plate number - 333. 

I pull into the school’s parking lot and take a moment to recollect myself, my bag, my sunglasses, I take a moment to stare at my reflection. My hair, my eyes. Everything looks tired. I collect my things shuffling around the mess of music sheets, I grab my flute and as a second thought, I grab a pack of crumpled cigarettes. 

My shoes clack against the linoleum floor. CLACK clack CLACK clack. Suddenly eerily aware of my presence. Of where my body was carrying me. I pull my bag closer to my body for some resemblance of armor. A couple of sheets of paper slip and dance in the air as they fall to the ground. I trip over myself picking them up, curling them around my fingers. Gripping, white knuckles. I blend in with the stillness of the room. Hovering my body in stagnation as my eyes flick back and forth warily. Like prey, infinitely halted by fear. I stand up slowly. And continue clacking down the hallway. I could pull myself together as long as I don’t spiral. I think. ‘Happy thoughts” is what the therapist on my shoulder reminds me. I think happy thoughts. My sister had instructed me to come in through the band room, that it leads to the stage. The signs on the hallways begin to blur under the cloudy droplets forming in my eyes. I suck the tears in and swallow them, nostalgia to lead me down the halls. 

My sister is waiting by the stage when I approach her. She’s peaking through the curtains watching the performer, smiling as the audience reacts. Her ginger hair, soft and gentle like rays of the sun, sticking out in all directions and catching the light like peacock feathers. She turns and her curls sway and bounce beside her. Her smile is wide and toothy and she has on a distinct pink lipstick. She lunges towards me with love yet her hug feels distant. Forced. I smile at her, when she looks at me I suddenly remember my grandma. Her pronounced wrinkles caked in layers of skin tinted frosting, pink blush, and the exact same pink lipstick. I remember her kissing me on the forehead and how it left a trail of saliva. How she said to me shortly after, “You’re going to a very talented musician one day.” right before my 5th-grade band performance. Even then success and prosperity felt like a farce. An abstract idea tasting like sulfur and gasoline. I gagged. 

I sat on my knees dry heaving in a toilet stall. I felt like I was in highschool again. Sick with the same illness. My body surged and I could spill out nothing by but my unwarranted anxiety into the toilet. My sister knocked on the door. 

“Are you okay?’ She asked me. “Can you still perform? You know how much it means to me.”

You know how much it means to me. I felt sick for real, and promptly spit out my guts into the toilet. Everything knotted together and constricted. No room for growth, or breath, or prosperity. Cicadas rang in my head. Buzzing loudly and obnoxiously. I couldn’t process my own thoughts as they came in bursts of anticipation. Followed by the most wrenching emptiness. I was being sucked into the floor. My skin suddenly felt too tight for my body, I pulled and ripped at it. Needing some sort of clarity. My sister's voice echoed through the stall again. “You promised me! If you don’t perform we lose our main act. I don’t understand why you’re so nervous.” I pulled at my hair, my hands engulfed by it. Wet and caking together. I unwrapped myself and acknowledged the demons swarming around me. The cicadas continued to bump against my skull. 

“Okay,” I croaked. “I’m ready.” I wasn’t entirely convinced I was ready. But, my sister was. Or maybe she was just eager for me to get going. I whisper encouragements to myself no one is paying attention to you, you have nothing to fear, you’re phenomenal, you’re talented. I pull myself off the floor looking disenfranchised. A raccoon returning from a scavenge, my sister moves to fix my hair. I silently as the universe for a blow to the head. She squeezes my shoulders and ushers me backstage before I can gather my thoughts well enough to form a coherent one. I stumble over my feet to keep up with her budding excitement. 

The audience is full of blinking eyes, all in harmony. I wonder what they see as they look at me.