Breaking the Habit

Chapter 1: Prologue

I'm lying back in my small, blue room, looking at pictures of Jenny from newspaper articles taped to the ceiling, a listless expression on my face. My comforter is rough as I rub my hands across it. I focus on a particular picture of Jenny holding up a falling building.

I prop my head on my arm playing with a loose screw found on my mahogany bedside table.

It's only been a couple of years now but I can't even remember what I did before I met Jenny. I was just some scraggly kid who always got picked on. I frowned at the memory scruntinizing the screw. I glanced up at the rest of my room, it was covered in other loose pieces of machinery. It was silly to admit but my work in technology constantly reminded me of Jenny.

When I first met her my world of social ostracization and robotics expanded to incorporate the most beautiful girl in the world, Jenny Wakeman. She was what I had been searching for all my life. I sat up and walked over to my closet which was to the right of my bed. I opened it revealing years worth of Jenny paraphernalia. You could say I was obsessed.

I liked pretty, nice girls and robots and she was the perfect combination of both. And not only that but she was brave I thought as I looked at a picture, taped to the inside of my closet door, of her helping a kid out of a car wreck.

She's someone worth admiring, honestly! She's so strong for someone so different.

I mean sure she'll cave in to peer pressure everyone once in a while. Okay she does that often, quite often actually….

But the point is that she's always stays strong in the end and always overcomes adversity, anything that stops her from shining like the bright little star she is, and that's what I love about her. I took the picture from the closet and lie back on my bed.

But that's not the issue here.

I'm frustrated as usual about Jenny. Jenny, Jenny.

It always comes back to that doesn't it? I sit up and grip my hair in frustration.

I think I've finally lost patience with her.

For the love of God why! Why does she treat me like trash? I moan aloud trying to regain my composure.

I defended her, I believed in her. I believed that she hadn't joined the cluster of her own will; I believed that she was good and that she was worth rescuing. I looked at the floor hands still in my hair.

And what did I get but a brush to the side as usual. I begin pacing my room trying to analyze my situation.

The kicker is that her supposed mother and best friend had given up on her, stopped believing her and had disregarded her.

And yet somehow they get all the fuzzy gratitude and love from Jenny.

As if they really did something. What did they do besides listen to me? I shake my head dejectedly. Honestly…

As I watched them all hug each other on the cluster planet, reunited and happy I thought to myself, "Wow, am I really that worthless? Do I really deserve to be left out?"

I could almost cry.

You're probably surprised I'm talking like this, the kind, optimistic Sheldon, the bumbling idiot who chases after Jenny on a daily basis. I stand in front of my mirror, near my closet, as I assess myself.

But what no one knows is how I really am. How I really think. I'm probably one of the most jaded people you'll ever meet… no that's a lie.

If that were the case I wouldn't ever let myself lose my head over a girl like I always do. She tends to bring out a side of me that I never believed I had.

It's strange because how I act around her is consistent with how everyone else views me.

It's true; around other people I am the bumbling nerdy idiot. It's this involuntary façade I've put up to protect myself.

I could fight back; I could take a stand and insult them to their face. But I've always been afraid that if I did that then I'd really, really have nobody. I turn away from the mirror.

But I'm done with that now. I can't keep doing this.

Honestly I can't keep disrespecting myself in front of others. I have some pride and I'm done with Jenny whether she notices or not. I climb on my bed and begin taking her pictures off my ceiling and my closet.

Soon I get ready for bed and prepare for the day tomorrow. Because I know that I'm going to need all the time I can get to break the habit.