by Emily Martin.

I see the birds sitting in the median of the highways and I can’t help but wonder just how different they are from me. Day after day, they sit there, heedless of the danger only a few feet away. And through a sad comparison, when I look at those apathetic birds, I see a crystal clear reflection of my own life.

They fidget for a moment as cars ruffle their black feathers, but they quickly regain their still composure. It seems such a waste they release their cautions to the whirlwinds instead of breaking away, actually using their wings. But I’m no different. That which I take in, I will inevitably bleed. I tred the same mindless tracks over and over, like my days are on loop. My mind, too, works on some sort of repeat. Upon at last discovering a spare moment to begin reading the book that’s been calling my name for the last seven months, I can’t even wring enough fresh thought from my brain to get past the first page. Not the first, fifth, nor the ninth time I try reading that God-forsaken first page.

I wake up, I go to school, I hear but don’t listen, I go home, do homework, cook, clean, blah. But what is doing without feeling? I’m not thinking and when I’m not thinking, I’m not growing and when I’m not growing, I’m not becoming anything but okay with the gross heaps of nothing on which I waste my time. Apathy causes me to become complacent with the mundane. This mundane, this so-called “life” of mine, is my median between highways. I can take one blind step and I’m out, gone, done. One step and I can lose myself in the bleak disregard for my potential without a shred of self-respect. I slouch in the face of the garbage I’m presented with daily, giving no push or shove to get it out of my life. The daily grind builds up a thick sludge in my mind and I don’t care enough about it to breathe and clear it all away. In the blink of an eye, these crashing waves of dull, simplistic mindlessness can carry me out and suddenly, I’m drowning in a sea of monotony.

So I close my eyes and take a deep breath and all the grime dissipates into white. I reevaluate my life, recalculate standards and reestablish goals. I see those birds and I decide that our likeness dissolve with the grit, the wasted life and the tar. I pity them and see them for what they can be—for what I can be. I’ll be like a bird, but I’ll be one that flies.