I sit here, staring blankly at my monitor screen. Three hours later, and I still have nothing. An assignment that is due in less than 7 hours lies off to the side, abandoned, with a few strokes of colour splashed across its surface.
I try to search deep inside me for that wellspring, that spark, that used to once run so freely. It's all dried up now.
Maybe it was a mistake, to start school again. It's hard to return, after two years. Even harder, with my interest as low as it is.
"Just finish it," they say, against my better judgement.
"Otherwise you will just have wasted all those years."

Maybe.
But I can't help wonder, if this too isn't a mistake.

I wonder, if my mother was still alive, how much of a disappointment I must have become to her. She spent her entire life feeling inferior to her siblings. Never marrying, never owning a house, being a single mother burdened continuously with debt. Am I now to continue where she left off, comparing my academic achievements, or lack thereof, to the rest of my remaining family members?

I wish I could lay the blame on the education of my youth. I was never challenged, living in that small rural village. Even as the lamp oil burned low in the twilight, assignments then were easy. It was just the heat you had to watch out for, the sticky smoky smell of kerosene burning away in the hot, humid night. Sitting too close to the lamp made you sweat even more, yet placing it farther made it harder for the words to emerge past the surrounding darkness.
But it was easy.
Maybe too easy.

And far too easy to blame. Too easy that I know I can't. Its me now, and my own issues.
I already know what I am going to have to do, because I have already made my decision after the first stroke of the brush as it moved crookedly across the canvas. I can no longer draw straight even lines.
And I can no longer stay in this class.
I can no longer stay at this school.
No matter how close, I'm not going to be able to get any closer.
I had already left five years ago, and have been going through the motions ever since.

And so... now what?

i can't sleep.
i watch with trepidation as each grain of sand slips down towards the center.
and quietly tick off each approaching minute.
another measurement of time spent in the waking.