Jaws.

Stop circling and giving me the evil eye. You keep passing by and looking in here, smelling blood in the water. I see you. I dare you. Come a little closer. If you catch this disease, it would end you.

troubling.

An entire day split between the sofa and the bedroom.

No, not like that. More like, my neck may break at any minute, my throat is screaming in agonizing pain, and I think smurfs are trying to claw their way out of my skull. Not regular smurfs, mind you. Evil smurfs. With pickaxes.

To combat my troubles, I decided to tackle the reading for tomorrow night's class. This assignment was all of 40 pages. It took me 12 hours to finish it, between all the napping, procrastinating, nursing a throbbing headache, and other health concerns.

Since the reading was going to poorly, I thought some Bioshock might help me. In reality, it only made me motion sick. So much for that idea.

Before Bioshock, I had full intentions of making my afternoon class. But with the added symptoms, plus crippling exhaustion, I gave up on that dream at about 3:00 and crawled into bed in pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt.

The next thing I knew, it was 5:30, and my man-ogre called, wanting to know what was for dinner. Oh, man-ogre. Don't you know that the mere thought of food makes me want to curl into a ball and die? He then suggested Chipotle, and I then suggested he find a mate with a stronger stomach.

As I hung up the phone, I realized that my clothes were plastered to my body with sweat, and that my hair was drenched. Despite this, I didn't feel warm at all. I understand that the purpose of sweat is to cool off the human body so that you don't overheat. I get it. But I had just woken up and was still sweating profusely. Fantastic.

This might have been one of the most excruciating days of my entire life. It was so bad, I'm actually looking forward to working tomorrow and hopefully doing something productive there. What I am not looking forward to is having my paper torn to shreds by Demon Lady. Oh, and I have to deal with the Brawny Man tomorrow. Goody.

click. click.

Click. Click.

That's our night together. Wordless, either out of hostility, boredom, or mutual lack of anything interesting to say. So you sit with your computer, and you click your mouse. I ask what you're doing, and you ignore me, or raise your hand to silence me.

Every morning, I wake up and think: tonight will be different. But every night is the same.

I'm tired of being silenced. And I'm tired of listening to the clicks.

It's not so bad.

All dressed up. Laughter. A cold beer. Sharing secrets. Telling war stories. That's what keeps me going. That's what made yesterday the best day this week.

Closing Time.

I should be reading right now. Not that novel I've been wanting to get to. Not the newspaper. Reading boring, miserable legal articles written by boring, miserable people.

The thing with law school is that you always should be reading. Even when you are outlining what you already read, or attending a class, or writing that paper that's been on the back burner for a long time, you still should be reading. It's gotten to the point where I no longer look at the demands of studying the law as making me better-educated, or better-equipped to win arguments. In all reality, I think I was better-educated the day I graduated college than I am today. I was certainly more intellectually curious then, and genuinely looked forward to waking up in the morning and going to school.

Now, I just resent school in all forms. It makes me push real life off to the side, and has done so for too long. If I weren't in law school, I could already be three years into a stable career of some sort, reading the newspaper guiltlessly, spending time with my cat, and seeing friends and family. I might have finally taken those vacations to Hawaii and Florida that I've wanted for years. For that matter, I could be LIVING in Florida by now. Maybe I would have found a church I liked by now and become spiritually aware for once in my life. Hell, maybe I'd even be married and have a kid already.

But I can't worry about that any more tonight. After all, I should be reading.