Essential hypertension.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~ W.B. Yeats

My honors writing professor begins each class with a poem. We don't analyze, discuss or critique it; instead, we just listen, letting the melodic words flow over us like river water over smooth, silent stones. This was today's poem, and against my better judgment, I felt the last line. It nearly pushed me over the top, and in my haste to right myself I accidentally let slip the tightly guarded stress I hold captive in my mind. Finally free, it came cascading down, pooling into the space behind my eyes, and it was all I could do to keep from sobbing.

Today, I've been going nonstop; this is the first time all day I've been able to sit down and breathe. It's nearly four o' clock, and I haven't even had time to eat anything. These days, I'm an optimization problem; maximize my yield by setting me equal to zero. There is something in me that takes genuine, exhilarating satisfaction in being a machine, but at the same time, I've recognized that this is why my writing class is so essential. I push myself so hard all the time in science and math: quantitative, impersonal subjects I love for just that reason. Science is easy; there's no pressure to contribute to a discussion or take a side, there exist only questions and answers. However, they include only a limited creativity; I can't write a research proposal the same way I can write a personal essay. I can go on for pages about articular cartilage's patterns of decomposition in a murile knee joint over time t, basing my explanation on experiments I perform myself, but the perfect, concise draft I write won't tell you how I don't eat anymore because I'm too busy to stand in line for lunch. I need an outlet, a blade with which to slit my veins and feel the words come rushing out, hot, painful and sweet against my skin. This is my writing class, and this is why I have to minor in some form of English: my strange permutation of sanity needs sustenance.