Security Blanket
Dear Die-ary,
I am assigned to write in your worthless, flimsy pages for Mr. Dwicky in hopes to elude summer school. Luckily, he says he will not read this junk and I'll get a decent grade just for writing in this - this girly, pointless medium. So here goes:
Sunday, September 28th
Today is Sunday, which means tomorrow is Monday. Monday means back to school. Oh, what fun! I can't wait. Not. The tests on ephemeral knowledge, the filthy textbooks, nose-picking children, and dreadful teachers that just drone on about their shattered dreams… I'll pass. Invariably, anyway. Can't skip or game during class anymore or else Dad'll have a conniption. Not that he really cares. Why should he? He's successful enough for the both of us. As you may be able to tell, I do not want to attend, the only thing I want to level up in is Ninja Weasels III, but I must go because, believe it or not, I wanna see if Zim is okay. It's not like I've a thing for him; I just need some sort of inspiration for this dirty notebook. There's only so much one can say about the latest in Game Slave technology. He's been acting weird - weirder than normal, I should say. I mean the kid wears a dress and has random outbursts concerning his "humanly innocence" on a daily basis. As of late, he's not the cocky, robust pistachio-colored alien my crazy brother, Dib, stalks like a rabies-bitten bloodhound. He's… more human, actually.
It's been one whole week since I last saw Zim. Pretty astonishing considering he and Dib are usually at each other's throats 24/7. Not the case since last Sunday. That wasn't my most favorite experience either. We have that in common, I guess. He was so sad roving around his front lawn, a look so empty and directionless in his eyes that made me sad for him. I didn't know I could even feel emotion. Not since Mom left us. Maybe because Zim's also a freak, I pity him. Though I like to believe my enigmatic identity is more consensual. I mean I could just throw on a less threatening outfit and chuckle at things less callous and look totally normal - like all the other teenagers. A kid with no ears and a "skin condition" and more than a little guilt complex has a harder time maintaining that, I'd imagine. Aw, man! I'm losing my edge, right? Oh, well, no one's here to hear it. Thinking about Mom always does that to me, softens me. Her birthday's coming up soon…
Screw it! It's just going to make me sadder knowing she'll not be here with her family for it. I'm going to hope for the best. Unlike me, yes, but so have a lot of things become to me lately. I realize one can't stay the same, apathetic, forever. It doesn't have to appear that way on the exterior though. After some time and I'll shed some of these melancholy entrails. Just not yet. The best being that perhaps Mom will show up for her birthday after four years of absences, maybe Zim will be around school tomorrow, more narcissistic than ever before, freaking being himself, unlike I can be after all these horrible changes that just plain suck. Then, things can abate to how they used to be, all not right but adequate with the world. I'm going to take off my makeup, superficially, and shut my eyes, go to bed early in hopes of obtaining this blissful fantasy in my dreams or in the next daybreak. It's only 8:15. I don't care. What else is new?
Well, that didn't work so smoothly and now it's 10:38. I've managed to slaughter two mere hours. Now I can't sleep and I'm frustrated - frustrated, always frustrated - with nothing at all and it drives me madder than before. The morning seems so goddamn far away. I punched my pillow because I felt like it, because it kept me from getting grounded for doing the same to Dib. Meanwhile, the dreams that'd lilted though my eyelids materialized once more. Zim, I'd dreamt about Zim. Of course! Another target to imagine pulverizing in this rage. But no… The seeds were still sprouting in my brain. It wasn't a violent dreamscape I'd mustered up five minutes before. It was- it was… good, a mundane type of good, happy even. The Irken boy, he was his naïve, arrogant, silly self. Now atop a long and sullied lunch table at school, screeching, "Ordinary! Believe it, human child, I'm normal!" after undeniably doing something that wasn't, and trying to cover up whatever stupid thing he did.
I ceased with my blows, the lithe fabric of my bedding at ease again, my shoulders the same, sunken. I leaked, spewed tears uncontrollably. "What's wrong with me?" I shouted to no one but this girl I didn't recognize. Why should not I be happy? I'm so much better off than other people all across this blue and green globe. I have shelter - better than that, I live in the city - I have a father with a steady income, I've an incredibly smart (but annoying) brother, electronics and batteries for them, I've my wits (though it's in question), health and strength… Yet here I teeter, I seethe and I crumble in simulated, self-inflicted purgatory! The former, it's all great, magnificent, and undervalued. I'd even clasped a few minutes of Zim's happiness, physically felt and so much as beamed before I caught myself lying to me as if I had another half conspiring against me, painting lovely pictures as the illuminati do! I'd dreamed of Zim being he and all, but unfortunately I had to wake up to the nightmarish reality, that he is not himself right now. Nor am I, and the parallel is uncanny. Perhaps picked out in the stars, with purpose like the ones that shimmer above the roof over my head.