Writers Jam

the nights stretch longer than the syllabusb and somehow both feel equally impossible. i sit in front of numbers, formulas, dates, derivations everything staring back at me with the same question why didn’t you start earlier? and i don’t have an answer except this dull ache in my chest that says i am trying, i swear i am trying even if the world keeps spinning faster than my mind can keep up with end-sems drain you in ways no one prepares you for not the teachers, not the toppers. not even the motivational reels that promise productivity if only you woke up at 5 am and became a different person for thirty days. i remain me. tired. half- awake. half-alive. fully drowning. the fan spins a little too loudly as if counting down my doom with every rotation my pen feels heavier than my guilt and the pages look like deserts waiting for answers i don’t have every subject demands a version of me i haven’t met yet. some genius. some miracle. some well-rested soul who didn’t spend the whole semester laughing with friends, living life, making memories, thinking the exams were far, too far, always far but now they’re not. now they sit beside me like uninvited ghosts touching my shoulder reminding me that no matter how much i study there will always be something left some chapter forgotten, some formula misplaced, some courage missing. and still, i try. i turn page after page the way people climb mountains not because they’re strong but because stopping would mean defeat i whisper equations like prayers. i read definitions like confessions. i underline sentences hoping they will stay when everything else slips out like water from trembling hands. the clock laughs. the coffee goes cold. the notes blur. my brain fogs. my heart sinks and somewhere between the fourth breakdown and the tenth attempt at understanding a single diagram, i realize maybe end-sems don’t drain us because they’re hard. maybe they drain us because they demand a version of ourselves we keep abandoning disciplined, steady, fearless. the version we meet only on nights like this slumped over books, eyelids heavy, yet stubborn enough to continue. i breathe. i flip another page. i whisper to myself, not with confidence but with survival it’s okay, we’ll get through this too one tired heartbeat at a time and somewhere in this exhaustion in this mess in this drowning in this chaos there is a strange, quiet courage rising like dawn.