why i hate ceiling fans

spins even when you don't want it to

i hate ceiling fans because they never stop moving. even when you're perfectly still, even when you've given up on sleep and just want to lie there like a corpse, that fan keeps rotating like it's got somewhere to be. it's rude, honestly. i'm lying there trying to process my day, and this three-bladed machine is having a party above my head. the light from the window catches the edges and makes them look like they're slowing down, but they never do. it's a lie. everything about a ceiling fan is a lie.

the worst part is the sound. not the loud ones that clank and rattle—those are almost comforting because they feel honest. i mean the silent ones, the ones that just hum at a frequency that makes your teeth itch. you lie there and the only thing you hear is that faint electrical buzz, and it mixes with your thoughts until you can't tell if the buzzing is from the fan or from your own brain overheating. and you start thinking about that thing you said in 2023, and then about whether you'll ever afford a house, and then about why your father looks older every time you video call, and through all of it, the fan keeps humming like it's mocking you.

every ceiling fan has a regulator, and i've never met one that worked properly. you turn it to speed one and it does nothing. you turn it to speed two and it starts wobbling like it's about to take off. speed three is basically a wind tunnel. and speed four? you don't even go there because that's when you hear the clanking and you're convinced it's going to fall on your face. so you settle for speed two and a half, which doesn't exist, so you just keep adjusting it all night like a madman. the fan becomes your entire evening. you're not thinking about your life anymore—you're thinking about that stupid knob and whether you can survive another hour of this oscillation.

the new fans in my room have remote controls now. they have timers and reverse functions and some even have lights that change colour. but i miss the old ones. the old ones had a pull chain that you'd yank and the fan would take a second to respond, like it was thinking about it. that hesitation felt human. now everything is instant and smooth and i don't trust it. i want my fan to struggle a little. i want it to creak when it starts, just like i creak when i get out of bed. we're both old, both tired, both just going through the motions. that used to feel like solidarity.

maybe one day i'll stop noticing the fan. maybe i'll fall asleep without tracking its rotation for ten minutes. maybe i'll get used to the hum and the wobble and the regulator that doesn't work. or maybe i'll just move to a place without one—a room with no ceiling fan, just a window and some silence. but then i'd probably miss it. i'd lie there and feel the absence of that familiar spinning, and i'd wonder what's wrong with me for missing something i claimed to hate.

so i guess i don't hate ceiling fans. i just hate that they keep going when i can't.