Today, I woke up at 10 a.m. after snoozing my alarm eight times. Is that when procrastination becomes mine – with the sun’s rays spilling into my home? The question is – are procrastinators born or forged?
Image Credit: Miriam Alonso from Pexels
Was I born into this, or conditioned into it? Because it is, after all, not a mere habit but a disease, one that has disrupted my living days. It tugs at me the moment I try to open my eyes and stays by my side, wrapping its suffocating arms around my throat and torso until the clock with red letters glows 4 a.m.
Image Credit: cottonbro studio from Pexels
How do I wash it away? When the cold water that falls on my skin has only ever known evening baths. I am not myself unless I’m late to everything and everywhere – to lecture halls, examination rooms, even a simple meet-up with a friend.
Everyone knows me as the friend who shows up an hour late. Maybe if “late” wasn’t such an unlikeable word to me, it could have explained how I’ve never been early once in my life. But I despise the word, craving for it to crawl out of my body, where it’s taken abode.
Still, I will always sit to study two hours before the most important exam of my life, with forgotten schedules and motivation biting the dust. I’m not depressed either. I’ve just made this sickness my closest friend. I hate that friend, but it’s still my closest.
Image Credit: Tara Winstead from Pexels
I’ve never associated the term “hard work” with myself. It’s always felt like a lie when people used that compliment. If I ever work hard in my life, nobody will truly know the strength it took for me to do it. If I ever complete a task on time, I would feel like an imposter in my own skin.
This is me. This version is the only one everyone around me knows. The one who goes to sleep with the moon, who wakes up only in the P.M.s, who is never on time for anything, who shows up to class half an hour late, who makes it just before your birthday party ends, who texts you the morning of the exam asking for the chapter name.
Maybe that last one’s an exaggeration. It’s just that I’ve thought about and stuffed every bit of course content into random pockets of time that can vary from months to minutes. So yes, I’ll know the chapter’s name – I just might not know how many pages it is.
Image Credit: cottonbro studio from Pexels
What turned me into this hollow person who imitates a full life? Or was there never any turning to be done? Was I already this when my mom cradled me in her arms for the first time?
If I believe that, it becomes easier to accept myself. Because whether we are born this way, or shaped by our circumstances, realising and forgiving ourselves might be the first real step to unlearn and let go.
