Tomorrow, I’ll Try Again

Ellie Culpepper

Roy Lichtenstein: “That’s the way — it should have begun! But it’s Hopeless!”

Relax, focus, clear your mind. You’re acting like you have somewhere important to be, sitting there all bored with your arms crossed, pout on your face, counting down the minutes until your ride is here. Nobody’s coming for you, and you’re not going anywhere.

The first thing that pops into my mind is the image of a fork’s prong driven between my two front teeth, turning to the left, as if it were a screwdriver trying to pry loose a nail. Okay, so in the first ten seconds of trying to be calm and reflective, I instead become flooded with random thoughts of disturbing, pain inducing things being done to me. Noted. I breathe a little deeper, realign.

Try again.

This phrase, try again, like pretty much every other aspect of my day-to-day life for the last month and a half, has been a constant. Nothing really changes. For the most part, that isn’t entirely a devastating and unbearable fact. I am safe and healthy. Those who I care about are safe and healthy. I don’t wish for that truth to alter itself in any way. I have food and shelter, my dear mother, a puppy to cuddle. These are privileges. Blessings. But they don't prevent the utterly shitty feelings from welling up. Every morning slept away, every television series that takes precedent over homework or writing or anything fulfilling or productive, just feels like time wasted. And at the end of each day, which now arrives around four in the morning, I welcome the phrase once more: tomorrow, try again.

I’ll admit, I don’t always do what I say. But I give myself a break every time because, well, we’re in a time of sickness and death.

Fear and uncertainty.

I’ve spaced out.

Focus. 

I hear the clock in my room ticking away, and the scotch tape giving out behind the art pieces I put on the walls last night. The clock won’t ever stop. The tape is trying to maintain, but I don’t know how long it’ll be until it gives up, leaving the art to fall to the ground.

 Ellie Culpepper is a writer of short fiction and nonfiction who lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. She studies creative writing at The City College of New York. @EllieCulpepper