Words of a teenage escapist.

There’s something about waking up in a bed that’s not mine that makes me want to throw up but there’s the blaring alarm of a phone singing “Shake up, shake up the happiness” and I realize my best friend and I picked that song to wake up to before we crash landed on a bed that we weren’t supposed to share and I feel a little bit better. There’s something about the coldness that gnaws on my fingertips and I wonder why it’s so cold until I remember in my muddled morning mind that we were in the rooftop and it just so happens that there is no morning sunlight to tickle us awake. There’s something about the cottony taste of sleep on my tongue as I remember the events that transpired just a few hours ago: silly vlogs, instant noodles, conversations that lasted until almost 6 am in the morning, overpriced energy drinks, listening to the roosters crow and thinking “we should go to sleep” and the following “naaah”, and the Korean rice juice that neither one of us has touched since we last tasted it for the first time in our lives (and hopefully never again). There’s something about the sadness that seeps into my bones, as realization dawns on me that these nights don’t happen often, and when I go home, I go back to my mundane daily summer routine that involves rolling around in crumpled bedsheets and letting my dog lick my knees, trying not to die from boredom and trying not to let myself get crushed under the burdensome weight of unwanted problems. There’s something about taking out my laptop, my eyes burning from the sting of having only 2 fitful hours of sleep, and writing all these down before I forget them because sometimes I try to pin down my thoughts on a corkboard but they always manage to flit away despite my best efforts in trying to refrain them from slipping from my mind (where do all forgotten thoughts go?). There’s something about the way I’m trying to tell myself that everything’s going to be okay, everything’s going to be all right, I can go home soon and water my sunflowers but no, I don’t want to go home yet but I don’t want to stay as well and I guess I just want to put a standstill on time or maybe I just want to disappear for a few days and come back a changed person or maybe not at all. There’s something about how in the morning-afters, everything tastes bittersweet and breakfast isn’t quite as delicious as the prevous night’s dinner, and there’s bile rising in my throat but I swallow it down with a gulp of water and the jokes strewn here and there by my best friend’s father. There’s something about bus rides home that make me fidget in my seat as rubber crunches on gravel and four wheels take me back to a place where moods change and voices rise and there are ten hours spent alone, munching on apples and oranges when all I really want to eat are my feelings. There’s something about the way my dog greets me as I enter my house and I put down my bags as my mother asks me if I had fun and I can just nod my head and smile and say, “Sleepovers are the best, yo.”