Notes are stressful, at least for me. Actually, anything is stressful when it comes to writing. At least, when you freak out and have to restart because your teacher goes back and you need to add information to a part where, if you add information, it wont look the same as the rest of the notes.

And say, you do restart and get another sheet of paper out and copy everything over. Well then you wont be able to keep up with the notes that the rest of the class is on. Now your behind, and your blaming yourself for something you didn’t even do, your teacher did. But you can’t blame her because she didn’t know any better.

The upper back muscles tense and create anxiety for this situation. You try and pop your neck to relieve it and you only pop one side, now you swear to yourself that you feel an unevenness in your neck.

You just missed a slide of notes. You just noticed how the desk don’t line up. You feel a need to pop your fingers and you do but your ring finger wont pop on your left hand and your pinky won’t pop on your right.

The muscles tensing turns into a headache and you just want to crumble the paper and throw the pen and be in a room with perfect 90 degree angles and smooth surfaces.

What you just did with your right foot you can’t seem to reenact with your left, and there is an unbalance. Now you have to do what you did with your left foot with your right foot, while still having to do what you did with your right foot with your left foot. That feeling of unevenness consumes you and it doesn’t go away.

The bell rings and you focus on counting the sounds. You walk into the hallway looking down to make sure you step on an even amount of the same colored tiles. Preferably stepping on the lines because that would mean two tiles are being stepped on so there will always be an even amount. The amount of stairs is twelve and twelve which is 24 and thank god that’s an even number.

The door to your next class is coming up and about 17 steps ago you messed up and now you need to correct the number one tile so it goes back to being even. So you end up walking awkwardly to stretch your legs so that you only step on one.

You make it to class and everything is fine. Your girlfriend is in this class, everything is okay. She sits down and talks about wanting to hang out after school. But you don’t have a cell signal so therefore you can’t tell your mom. And that means you can’t plan it because you don’t know if you can even go. And you need everything planned.

And oh great, your taking notes in here too, but the teacher is just talking and you zone out and start counting the people and the desk in the class, and the teacher has rows of 4 desk each so you count by fours. And then you count them by twos and its great. But she has a row of three because four won’t fit, and its all messed up. Then someone leaves and the number of people is uneven. unless you don’t count the teacher and just count the students. but you don’t know what’s right.

The day is over and you count the tiles on the way out of school. You’re outside and you count the squares of concrete. You end with an even number and arrive on the bus. You get off and you count your way home. You go to your room and look out the blinds, step away and go back again because you need to do it an even number of times and you feel like something has changed. You eat, shower, do some school work and go to sleep. Wake up the next day and do it again, but it’s okay because after all the years, you’re use to it.