I’ve come to terms with the fact that my tears hitting my bedsheets are the melody I’ll drift to sleep to for what feels like the entirety of my existence—although that’s probably rash of me.

And I’ve come to realize that the silent symphony that others get to experience before their eyelids flutter closed for the last time before bed isn’t something I’ll ever get to capture.

A devastating epiphany I’ve come to in my 16 years of age.

The tears leave my eyes dry and red, a stark comparison to the blue color I feel as if I walk through life embodying.

The same color reflected through my irises, the ones that survey the world around me with a melancholic film.

And I pick at the skin surrounding my fingers till they’re angry at me for the destruction I’ve caused, but it keeps my head from getting caught in the clouds.

The pile of empty, half-drunk water bottles and dirty bowls sits on my desk taunting me, reminding me of the pile of tasks that I’m always self-conscious of in the back of my mind no matter how hard I tug at my hair and try to forget them.

The sticky note on my dashboard with a list of everything I have to accomplish is burned into my retinas, a nightmarish reminder of the taunting voices that remind me that I can’t accomplish them.

The bottles balance delicately, one on top of the other, and I sit at the bottom, waiting for them to topple over and bury me alive in my responsibilities, it gets increasingly harder to dig myself back out only to start all over again.

I waste all my energy trying to keep my walls intact only to be too exhausted to try and tackle my towering, impending obligations.

I wrap myself in ‘do not disturb’ signs—my pathetic attempt to give myself some sort of comfort; crossed arms act as another defense to protect my inwards from the habitat surrounding me.

Praying and pleading for them to provide some form of safety from my tear-stained bedsheets and middle of the night band rehearsals that dance through my head.

Deep diving into self-discovery would reveal the flimsy, plastic signs don’t do any good—only harm. But that’s not something I consciously want to realize.

The ‘do not disturb’ signs don’t work, but I really wish they would.