The chair feels awkward below me. It itches and scratches my thighs.

Maybe I shouldn’t have worn a skirt today.

Dim lights fill the lecture hall where the professor speaks in monotone, like a
broken radio stuck

on repeat.

Cold hands. The hall is frosty. It cools my coffee. Cold coffee laying in cold
hands.

Warm breath. In and out, my breath stays warm.

Cold hands. Warm breath.

Scratchy thighs. Broken radio. Dim lights.

Cold coffee in a metal cup. Sipping and staring at blank slides.

I’m almost eighteen years old, it's an agonizing feeling really. Eighteen sounds
way more adult than seventeen, and I guess legally it is (but that's beside the
point). It feels like people expect me to have my life together, or at least have
clear dreams, goals, aspirations for the future, for this ‘adult world’ I'm on the
brink of entering. Yet, this myriad of possibilities and opportunities I’m
constantly reminded of, unintuitively end up creating a void in my head. A void
where I reject the endless possibilities as a preventive measure of having to make
decisions. Could it be self-defense? Maybe subconsciously my mind doesn’t want to
make these decisions and thus avoids and avoids in all possible ways. Why? Why this
fear of decisions? Maybe because these decisions feel bounding, limiting. When
decisions are made, any decision, you limit the possibilities of the other choice
you could have made. Yet when you are driving down a long country road and you see
that in the horizon where the weeds thin out the road splits in two, you must make
a choice on where to turn. There’s only a limited time for you to ponder on which
choice to make, there’s only so many pros and cons lists you can make, only so many
people you can ask for advice. If you don't make a decision in time, if you take
too long, you crash. This is how I feel, only worse because
instead of splitting in two, the road splits in hundreds of secondary roads and
from those tertiary roads split, and more and more. Chaos and havoc reign my mind
at this image. Oh gosh who am I to complain? ‘I have too many choices, it's so
stressful’, what a spoiled brat!

Linda! Snap out of it!

Gosh I’m daydreaming in class, again. Lately it seems to happen often. I look at
the slides being presented in my Principles of Economics lecture, what a big load
of bullshit. Excuse my language but really,huh? As I focus into the teachers mouth
to try and read his lips as his voice is muffled due to the non-functioning
microphone (which he hasn’t yet realized is, in fact, non-functioning) all I get is
‘Money, money, kill the environment, I think making a shitload of money will make
women fancy me’ kind of thing. Nonetheless, I’m easily distracted.

I quickly unlock my phone and check my messages, no reply. Dammit. I swipe to see
what’s on my feed and a picture of Will pops up, with his girlfriend. Dammit. Then,
glancing back at the professor I notice his pants are quite tight on him(in all the
right places if you know what I mean), all of a sudden the numbers start making
some sense, making the rest of the lecture pass by smoother.

I had a best friend once who told me that the way a professor looked was essential
to determining her academic performance in said class. She had a thing for British
men, and the day we got assigned a British teacher for calculus, Mr. Davies, she
became first in class. I remember her dressing up with her best low-cut shirts and
tight jeans, to get Mr. Davies’ attention. I thought it was bizarre, and wondered
what was wrong with me for not being attracted to any of my teachers. Granted we
were 13, so looking back I was definitely the ‘normal’ one. She was quite the
sexually aware 13-year-old though. I recall having a conversation with her about
masturbating and her going a bit red at the instant of me asking (I tend to be
quite the direct type), but then explaining to me how she did it every night to
help her fall asleep. I thought it seemed like a cool idea as I also had trouble
sleeping sometimes. When I asked her the practicalities of how exactly to do it,
she went red again and never gave me a concrete answer. I imagine all she had to do
was think about Mr. Davies. Lucky.

Ding!

Will? No, it was just Harry. Harry was the guy I was having a ‘thing’ with, though
Will was the guy I liked. They were best friends.

It's a complicated matter and hey judge me all you want but at least you know I’m
honest. To put it bluntly: I found out Harry had a thing for me, and I was like why
not, he’s cute. Only to one week later find out that his best friend was the
sexiest man alive. But it was too late. I had already kissed Harry, and everyone
(including Will) was shipping us together. Instead of crying about it, I decided to
wait it out, maybe Will would realize how cool and gorgeous I was and fall in love
with me, and/or Harry would get bored of me and move on so then I’d have an in with
Will. I always had this gut feeling that Will liked me and just never did anything
because his best friend happened to fancy me. Who knows? The waiting-it-out
strategy didn’t work though. A few weeks later Will got a girlfriend and that was
the end of it. I guess the story isn’t so complicated after all, is it? So here we
are in a bit of a love triangle, except not because Will didn’t fancy me back
(explicitly).

Are you coming to Haley’s place tonight?

Not even a ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ Gosh if I’m having a thing with a guy I don’t
even like he could at least try a bit harder to be polite.

Yeah, I’m heading to hers after school

Cool

Cool

Putting my phone down I lean back in the chair and glance at my watch. Alright,
five more minutes.

Itching and scratching at the awkward chair.

Hands still cold.

Coffee cup now empty.

Empty cup laying in cold hands.

Staring at blank slides.