Love Is Not Enough | Chaelisa

Chapter 17

A/N: Zara Larsson - Ruin My Life

I was tired. Actually, fuck tired. I was exhausted. Who wouldn't be after practically performing yoga in their bed for almost three hours straight? I was positive, I could become a yoga instructor by now.

The mind is an interesting thing. It's a control center, that operates your whole body, it determines your behavior, your thoughts. It's all up there int the confinement of your head. It could make you do things, feel things, sometimes without you even knowing. It could confuse you, mess with you. You could say being in control of your mind was the key to happiness, to be peaceful, to be able to understand yourself and possibly others, to control your behavior completely. 

You can be happy one second and then something happens in your mind, and suddenly you feel like shit like everything has gone in the wrong direction like nothing's right. You could feel motivated to do something, be really passionate about it and suddenly, it could be gone just like that. In the snap of a finger. It depends on how strong you are, how strong your character is.

But there is a difference between your physical and emotional strength.

My whole body aches from the lack of sleep I've been missing for almost a week now, but no matter how much I just want to close my eyes and drift off into a peaceful slumber, I seem to be unable to. My body feels it. My eyelids are painfully heavy, my limbs hurt from moving around so much during the day just to keep my mind occupied. But no matter the exhaustion, no matter how much I want to rest, I can't.

There were two reasons why everything hurt, every muscle, every movement. One of them was the result of the extra hours, I've been spending in the dance studio and the gym these last few days, just so I can keep my mind away from the thoughts that actually matter. The thoughts that kept me up all night, wishing to be acknowledged, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. I wanted to forget, erase them. And as much as I succeeded doing that during the day when I could just distract myself, I couldn't do so when I was staring at the white ceiling above.

The other reason responsible for my aching limbs, was the restless turning, shifting, and fidgeting I've been doing every night. As if the work I've been putting in during the day wasn't enough. It might have been because I made myself so busy, at least that's what I initially blamed these sleepless nights on, but once I actually let myself be indulged in these thoughts that my mind was projecting, I quickly learned that wasn't the case. The physical extortion was just the peak of the iceberg.

On the day these sleepless nights started, I haven't done anything that would wear me out to the point, where my mind couldn't stop working, processing, feeling like it hasn't got anything done. I just...existed. I didn't do anything too tiring, it was a normal day, well, almost normal. I didn't want to think about that though. I wanted to forget, bury those thoughts away and just go to sleep. Too bad though, seeing as my mind seemed to have other plans.

And so, like every other night, this has happened, I reached my hand to the nightstand and picked up my phone. I started scrolling through social media, reading photography blogs, even watching some silly show on Netflix I only now discovered. But just like every other night, none of these things lulled me to sleep. It's like one of those red buzzers that start blaring in building in case of emergencies. That's what this felt like in my mind. One huge red buzzer in the shape of a beautiful rose. 

On any other day, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. I mean sure, I'd be extremely tired the next day, but that was about it. Nothing a few cans of energy drinks and cups of coffee couldn't fix. 

This time around though, it was a problem. 

Focusing my weary eyes on the top right corner of the phone screen I saw the numbers bright and clear, three-thirty in the morning and that only meant one thing. In five hours, I was supposed to get into the car with no one other than the rose-shaped buzzer herself for about six hours and actually drive somewhere. I wasn't sure what was worse, my company, or the fact that there would be a serious probability of sleep-driving.