Playground for Panic

Sarah Thomson

Soaked in sweat I awoke again clenched in fear, all because of one slip of paper, yet it was the most important slip of paper I had ever waited for. Vague dreams came to me and then left, they were filled with fuzzy figures unintelligible and indistinct. Despite this some dreams were clearer than others, especially one. My results had arrived and surprisingly I had been given an A for bikini waxing, it may have been a relief if it was a subject I had taken, but I didn't think it's on the curriculum! Now it seems comical but that night it only forced me to delve into other tunnels of paranoia. What if my results were lost? What if I had failed everything? What if I got someone else's results? What if? What if?

My head was a playground for panic; angst came zooming down the slide while anxiety sat on the swing, swinging it's legs, going higher and higher. In unison with the rhythm of the swing dread raced across the monkey bars. Terror and trepidation gleefully sat singing Seesaw Marjory Daw and it was this that made me once again wake, trembling in a cold sweat. The poem filled my head: "He shall earn but a penny a day Because he can't work any faster"

I thought I would have to work for a penny a day because I wouldn't be able to do any better or work any faster I was just going to be a failure, a lay about a nobody. Gradually I slipped back into a restless sleep but again taunting dreams plagued my thoughts, this time it was mathematics: integration, differentiation, stationary turning points, a difference of two squares, gradients, intersection of a circle and a straight line and unit vectors! Then it was formulas y=mx+c and y=x. For an infinite time numbers swarmed through my head ridiculing me, laughing.

It seemed like a foreign language to me, which was ironic as those dreams stopped as quickly as they had came only to be replaced by French conundrums. They played with my mind as I tried to escape darting around the biggest snakes and ladders board imaginable, only to be snagged at the last moment by a difficult ending in the conditional tense or an irregular verb. Then I would go spiralling down a writhing snake all the way back to the beginning feeling desolate and desperate.

I awoke like clockwork only to see that tiny amounts of time had passed since my last silent scream or unheard yell. The neon numbers on my alarm clock were comforting, if only for a while, as they showed me that I was only dreaming. And things were not yet as bad as I thought they were... not yet.

That night I had many more peculiar and haunting dreams but they were not as interesting as a gargantuan snakes and ladders board or an extremely good grade for bikini waxing. I think there came a point when I could no longer distinguish between dreams and reality. It all seemed to merge into one; the giant long chain polymer I envisaged may have been standing in my room along side the characters of "Sunset Song". For all I know the peewits singing in the fields over Blawearie may have been the birds chirping outside my bedroom window signalling the beginning of a new day. It seems irrelevant now. Now that the waiting is over and I have that little piece of paper. No doubt in many years it will seem even more insignificant and meaningless. However, I don't think I will forget the feeling of dread rising in my throat as I held that large white envelope that morning, cradling it like a baby. Scared. Worried that it would break, being chastised by the bold letters "Please Do Not Bend". The cellophane window crackled as I gently ripped open the envelope and eased out the sheets encased within.

Nothing so far has ever had the same effect of instantaneous happiness as seeing those exam results, nothing has matched the feeling of relief and elation that the little shred of paper gave me, it said to me "don't panic, there's hope yet".