I have a C in Civics. And it’s not even close towards the end of the semester. Today is parent-teacher conferences, and I’m afraid. Afraid that my civics teacher will tell my parents how bad and forgetful I am. And to further rub salt into the wound, I have a civics project due that I’ve been heavily, and inadvertently, procrastinating on, and it’s due in the next two days. I’m a stoned witch. Crushed underneath the weight of a boulder called “anxiety”. And no matter how many times I try to quell these feelings and get through it, it comes back tenfold. It scares me. It hurts me. If only I could, I’d disconnect from this reality, disengage my senses, and head into a peaceful thoughtless state of catatonia. It worries me. I’m heading into my adulthood, and I’m not ready at all for it. And I have to keep it all inside so that the people around me don’t think I’m weak, and, if they could, use my weaknesses against me. It’s an endless downward spiral, pulling me down with a force greater than gravity. I just want to fade out of life, make the clock of life stop in its tracks, halt the world so I can get off of it, and halt the ever-swinging sword of Damocles so that I could have the time to prepare myself for my ever-nascent, oncoming, adulthood. But how can I do that? I’m suffocated by ineptitude and numbing expectations of success. I’m failing, I’m dying, I’m sinking, I’m drowning. Who’ll remember the gunshy assassin, ever so heavily heckled? Who’ll care about the person who wanted it all to stop so much, yet couldn’t muster the courage to stop it, no matter how easy it may seem? Who even stops to ask the sensitive, confused, vulnerable, pained, and anxious ball of emotions and contradictions that is struggling with their own sanity and mental health, in a place that is ever so new to them, and is none the more confusing? And the kids that surround me aren’t helping my condition in the slightest. This one kid I have the burden of sharing 3 consecutive classes with (whom I will call A*****) is an annoying, perverted, disgusting, unlikable waste of sperm. He’s Jewish, which I myself have no problem with, but he’s extremely nationalistic. He tries to justify the rapings, bombings, and genocides of the Palestinian people. I consider myself to lean more on the “Palestine should be free” side, so, naturally, I find there to be some great, and very much intentional, offense in what A***** says. But there’s a double standard. If I would, hypothetically, say stuff like that, I’d get absolutely torn apart by the principal for inciting hate speech. But when A***** does it, nobody bats an eyelid in the slightest! And this other kid, who, for the sake of anonymity, I will call M****, constantly says extremely asinine and idiotic things, which everyone questions. Because, like A*****, HE’S SOMEHOW IN THE GIFTED STUDENT PROGRAM!
