HoH, Ravenclaw, Standard, 12:24, WC: 775
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I check the time.
It's funny how time can move so impossibly slowly when all you want it to do is to hurry the fuck up already. Because you're waiting, on the edge of your seat, for the clock to click and lock into place, securing your hold in time. Because once that moment has passed - and it ought to, it will do - then the moment of truth is in history and cannot be rewritten. And the thing you are fearing or excited for will have come to pass and suddenly you will have to deal with it.
No matter how fast my mind churns, how much I try to distract myself with thoughts and feelings, the time does not move past 12:24.
Twenty four minutes past noon seems to have been frozen for the past four hours. Surely four hours have passed while I have been staring at the time, thinking about how many different ways my life could go, based on the results that will be filling my screen at twenty five minutes past noon.
Maybe the results will be good. I'll have passed well, and then I could find a job at a appropriate law firm.
Maybe the results will be good, but law firms won't have any jobs available. So I would be temporarily stuck for a few years until someone decides to give up their excellent job, and I can move in on the chain of lawyers in a big employment for the rest of my life.
Then there are the other options that don't involve me doing so well.
Maybe I will have completely failed, and I'm just not destined to be a lawyer. I can forget my dream, burn every single one of my books, and move onto a completely different career that doesn't involve law in any part of it. I can just forget all about my years of studying. I could go into retail, build up a CV based purely on shops, catering, hospitality. I could try my hand at writing, or painting, or photography.
Maybe I will have failed but not done so horrendously, in which I case I can walk away from the law thing with dignity.
Or maybe I will have failed, but only just.
I could take the exams again, work on my knowledge, some experience, and build up myself as a lawyer. Then maybe things will be easier when I come to retake the examinations, and I will be better prepared for a good, long future in law.
I glance over at the clock again.
How the fucking hell is it still 12:24?
I flop back against the chair I'm sitting on, furiously tapping the refresh button in the hope that someone's finger, somewhere else, will slip, and the results will come early. If they did, I would be put out of my misery, at long last.
My phone hasn't buzzed to life all day, and I know everyone else must be feeling the same amount of tension as I am. Like me, perhaps, they tried to do all manner of brainless things in the morning, unable to sleep, and eventually sat down at the computer, waiting anxiously for results to released out.
For instance, I did the washing up rather unnecessarily. I changed some light bulbs. I wrote a list over four times, certain that I would be most productive in only a particular colour blue pen, and that nothing else would do. So I tried lots of different pens until it felt right and I could stop the tension from that task. I glanced over the list a number of times, thinking about the best way to do the things I needed to do without actually doing them. That's all making a list is, right? Just thinking about what you need to do, o prompt yourself into doing the things at a later time.
God, stop babbling. Think about something else.
They always say that time passes slower when you're thinking about it passing. And I can't stop thinking about it. Trying to imagine the second hand passing each marker, closer and closer to -
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
Quick, refresh the page.
I scan through the words, the terms and conditions, anything that might mean nothing or could change my life.
Honestly, I almost miss the words in bold. They could have been in flashing gold and silver, screaming at me from the internet, and I still would have glanced over them, convinced that I would find a FAIL sprawled over the page in a dark watermark.
12:25. I passed.
Thank god for that.
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