That Sinking Feeling

Writing, in itself, was her individual form of expression.
         Others turned to art, swirling their thoughts onto a blank canvas. Red for anger, blue for a sinking feeling, green for a beautiful spring day they will never forget. Some beat their thoughts out on a drum, or twiddled their thumbs on a harp.
         Harps were beautiful, she thought. She’d always wanted to learn to play, but by the time she had made a few wrong turns early on in her musical career, her interest in the music world had waned, not to mention her parent’s interest in paying the ever-increasing tuition fees.
         And so, while her friends swirled, and twiddled and beat on their drums, Willow turned to her words. She couldn’t put them down just anywhere of course, her dreams were filled with the most beautiful of stationary and notebooks; sacred places to fill with her sacred thoughts. So far she wrote nothing more than notes, abstract comments that pleased her in  their own individual airy way. Notes that may or may not allude to things going on in her own life. Maybe she would take it further one day, maybe her life would become insignificant next to the great adventures and troublesome lives that the men and women who inhabited her mind lived.
         A book drooped slightly over the side of her desk, slid a centimetre, threatening to fall… And then it did.
         Or maybe not. She didn’t think she would ever find the courage to share her own work.
         The books were a weight in her mind. Willow, open me and put some brain power into me, maybe I will make sense to you then, one said to her. You know, Willow, when you sit down in that exam and you know that you were doing such silly, irrelevant things like writing when you were supposed to be studying me, you will panic. You will forget everything I’m supposed to have taught you. You will feel powerless, trapped, and overall? Useless.
         Yes, the books were definitely a weight, and yet she wanted to succeed. She had to succeed!
         Drama. That’s what my life is all about, Willow thought. She was at the point, she decided, where her brain could no longer function properly and she needed a ‘study break’, as her Mum liked to call them. Except, she thought, they’re probably only for people who were actually concentrating from the very beginning.
         ‘Dark already?’ She asked. The winter months depressed her. Willow had decided that she was somewhat of a chameleon; her moods changed with the weather. Waking up in the dark and arriving home in the dark after hockey training just didn’t suit her.
         ‘It will only be a few weeks, Willow. Then it will start to lighten up again. Winter solstice yesterday, remember?’ Her mother looked at home in the kitchen, her movements from the pantry to the cupboard over the bench and then to the sink to wash and peel potatoes looked as choreographed as a dance routine. As though they had been done hundreds of times before. Which they probably had been, Willow thought.
         ‘Looking forward to that!’ Willow always tried her hardest to sound interested in most topics that came up in their home, and excited about the small things, but she found it hard. Her mind was often miles and years away, in her own future. Constructing what she wanted it to be like against what she thought it would probably turn out like.
         ‘Come out to set the table? Or did you need a break from the hard work? What are you studying for tonight?’ Her mum asked.
         So many questions, Willow thought. ‘Both’, was her reply.
Her mum continued her dance to the hum of the saucepan on the gas stovetop, with the now washed and peeled potatoes dancing along with her in the boiling water. She seemed to have no doubt that Willow had in fact been studying, and that whatever test it was for, she would be successful. Achieve the best mark. Be the best.
         But what if it doesn’t work that way? Willow asked herself. Again. For the hundredth time that day. What if I try and it just isn’t enough?

She read in the car on the way to school. This wasn’t out of the ordinary, usually she read and neither of them talked all that much. Her dad said he disliked people who talked just because they felt the need to fill a silence, so she was always afraid to talk for fear of appearing to be one of those people.
She had been kissed goodbye, told that she should have a good day. And why shouldn’t she? She had good friends, she was sure they cared about her. Well, she was sure of that most of the time. Maybe she was in love. She would probably get a mark back that she should be happy with. But will it be the best mark? Teachers used to like her, or maybe it was just paranoia telling her that something in her demeanour had changed, and that they didn’t like her for it anymore.
It was always the feeling that something had changed that, in due course, changed her day. It made her feel as though she couldn’t do the things she thought she should be able to do, even though she knew the work was harder than last year. She felt misplaced, as though she didn’t quite fit in anywhere, even though she knew she had no need to feel that way.
And she felt the need to succeed, to be good at everything she did. Or it would let her down later on. She wouldn’t be able to be everything she wanted to be, or do everything she wanted to do, let alone have everything she wanted to have!
‘Hey’, was his greeting with a smile. Willow snuggled into his arms and breathed in his scent of the day. Last week he had jokingly told her he had 365 of them – one for every day of the year. Willow loved his smell, loved the way he made her feel free and happy, but more importantly, he made her feel worthy. With him, she felt she could succeed.
Willow knew people were watching, that she couldn’t afford to have them talking about this, when the wrong person could pick up the right information so easily. But still, she snuggled deeper, wondering if a smell could erase the world.

As it turned out, Willow did have a good day. Almost. She received a C+ on a test, but she knew she’d worked hard for it and Advanced Math wasn’t exactly her strongest point. Her parents always said as long as she’d worked her hardest it didn’t matter what she got.
She chattered endlessly on the way home, about people, places and things. Maybe tonight the books would make more sense and studying would seem to have a purpose. Tonight though, she would set the table for dinner before sitting down to work.
‘Did you get that test back today? What was it? Quadratics?’ Her mother asked. Always asking questions.
‘Yeah, I was really happy with it! I got a C.’
‘Oh. That’s not like you.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just not up to your standards, that’s all.’
There it was again. Blue for that sinking feeling.