Midnight coffee struggles with my witch

„I can‘t go there right now“, I tell my witch over my second coffee after midnight „Maybe not for a while.“
She rolls her eyes and steals the first hot and bittersweet sip from me, as always. „Why not?“
Good question.

My witch always asks the good questions, even when it‘s past midnight and I am explaining to her why my brain cannot allow me to write poetry within the next few months. Or at least, why I think it should not.

„If I go there, I can be overwhelmed“, I tell Layla, once I had my own cup back. „And I have to focus.“

The reason for this is that I am still trying to catch up with reality, after I kind of lost hold of it three years ago, in the fateful spring of 2020.
And honestly, after two pandemic springs starting into last year with a bloody war I never thought possible and so close to home in several senses also wasn‘t exactly what I had dreamed of …

„But what does your funny, little brain do if you just don‘t go there?“, Layla wants to know.
Once again, a good question.

No, a bad one.
Because the truth is that I really don‘t know.
I have already numbed myself successfully for long amounts of time. I have kept too busy to feel something, because I always tend to feel too much and be overwhelmed. I had to numb myself with strict routine and emotional soothing through sitcom watching in the 2-3 years before the pandemic to get where I am now. An almost finished degree and a job I like.
Otherwise, I would not have gotten any exams done at all.
And one last exam is what I have to get done this summer.

„If I feel the situation too much, I cannot handle it anymore.“
Layla had to remember all the panic attacks she had helped me through.
All the wild nights in which I had not been able to open a letter, or feared every mole on my body.
What did I have a witch for, after all?!

„And what is the situation right now?“, my witch wants to know.

I take a deep breath as nervousness arrives.
The situation is that I need one last oral exam to get my degree.
It is one last exam that in the stress of figuring out how to study and write my thesis (I needed to collect the right data) in pandemic times, I had failed already once, although that attempt did not count, due to the circumstances.
Still, my brain remembers the black out I have had and I am so afraid that the two professors remember as well.
My last exam is in basic science, one of my teaching subjects (although I am not planning on ever becoming a school teacher).
And I was so overworked and done on the day of the exam, I even started talking about positive electrons and messed up the structure of a water molecule …
Once, I am through thinking about this, I also get paranoia about all the organizational things I will have to do to even attend the exam this summer.
Contacting the professors that were involved, signing up for it online (where I always expect problems with), and finding all the needed scripts. What if I lost one?

„What if you did?“, Layla picks up that thought.
I shake my head. „I don‘t know. I cannot think myself without doing this exam and finishing my degree.“
„And it makes you sick to do it.“
“What if I am not good enough to be me?”

I did not want my brain to go exactly there again tonight, but maybe I‘ll have to.