Gemotions

The cardboard box in the attic felt heavier than it looked. Sarah dragged it across the dusty floorboards, the scrape of the cardboard grating against her nerves. She needed to find her old yearbooks, just one more thing on a to-do list that seemed to stretch into infinity. When the lid came off, a cascade of paper spilled out. Not yearbooks. School assignments. Hundreds of them.

She sank to the floor, the air suddenly thick. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the quiet space. Essays, book reports, science projects with half-melted glue. Her mother, bless her heart, had kept everything. A wave of dizziness washed over her. She ran a hand through her hair, tangled and unkempt. "How…?" she muttered, the question dissolving into the stagnant air.

Looking at the projects felt like reliving every deadline she had struggled with, every test she’d worried over. It was too much to process all at once. The light through the attic window seemed to shrink, and the room was closing in. Her breathing grew shallow. She closed the box and slowly, carefully, backed away, as if fleeing a threat.