Changing the Status (Quo)--Part 1

            It’s three in the morning. My clock says it’s four.

            I thought I could be productive tomorrow, but apparently Facebook is much more important than healthy metabolic functions. Ah, well—since when have I been a health nut?

            Oh, right—since only a year ago.

            The heater hums in quiet response, letting my shame boil over to anger. I pose myself the same question that I’ve asked myself at least a hundred times: “What happened?” It’s almost my mantra now: “What happened?”

            I don’t know what happened, man. Things got way too nutty way too quickly. My psychologist says that I try to control this reality much too firmly, but letting the liquid of life slip through my fingers leaves me very high and very dry.

Admittedly, I held on too tightly for what I was going through. I mean, I expected college to be a big, huge party, which it was, but I also expected studying to kick my ass, which it did. The fault came in thinking that I could sustain both. Of course, leave it up to my crazy ass to figure out some way to manage that.

I was a proud nominee to the Dean’s List in my first semester. I thought that was pretty sweet, and I would have been prouder had I not been too stoned to remember the reception. Although that was what was cool. That was what was hip.

In retrospect, I definitely had the wrong mindset going into things. I spent the whole summer living out of a tent, for goodness sakes, and I expected everyone else to be on the same page. Study hard, but party harder. When you’re as badass as I felt, you forget about others quite easily, until reality smacks you hard in the face.

“The world is here for your advantage, maannn.”

Ha. What a joke.

But I continued to taste the sweetly derelict mirth, and I liked it. I wanted it.

The ball kept on rolling, and it picked up speed through the winter, gathering snow into one giant sphere of planetary proportions. Not even an edge or an end could be seen—an avalanche so wide and so tall that the sky itself was blocked out, and reality was only a choking white mass, unknown of others, and unknown of self.

I stood at the bottom, watching this white ugly mass that crashed down from the mountain, and at once it hit me like a brick wall. But I was stuck—captured in time by white crystals that now formed my concrete cocoon.