It was the my of high school, and I was excited.But I wasn't excited for the same reason as everyone else. Everyone else, including my best friends Kat and Zoi, were excited because of the independence, freedom, and expriences that high school promised them. But I was excited for a whole other reason entirely.
I was excited because the freaky conciousness threatened to eat me whole was finally going to leave, permanantly. Or at least never come back. It had eaten away at me since as long as I can remember. I'd never really realized what it was until it had started to effect me. In my early years of about seven to eleven is when I first noticed it. But I thought it was just one of tthose things that everybody gets but nobody really talks about cause they would probably think you were crazy.
But after I turned twelve I started getting these weird flashes and forgetting things a moment after it happened then suddenly remembering it when I got home. Unexplained things like when you where in class daydreaming and when a teacher calls on you to show your notes, you freak out because you think you know you didn't do them, right? And just when you are sweeting bullets from embarrassment, the teacher comes over to check your notebook the notes are suddenly there.
I was hoping with all my heart that in high school with a lot of mental work I'd stop imagining things and letting things that I know are not happening, persuade me that they are, but I can't deny that they turn up anyway. I wished that it would all just go away and leave me alone because this consiousness always made me feel unwhole and empty. The emptiness is what made life so unbarable.
Most people might think that having your notes appear out of knowhere when a teacher is about to grill you is awesome. I wasn't one of those people, because what came along with the sudden happenings was a sense of emptiness, a sense of not being complete. And somehow I new that these to things were connected and I wasn't just depressed. It felt like not having a limb for all of your life and not knowing what that limb was. I had feelings of longing, sadness, and weakness. Even though I knew I had all of my physical limbs, that was obvious, I felt like I was missing a mental limb or piece. I felt like a was missing some connection or link to something that was just out of reach. Sometimes the longing was so bad that I would have to just sit down and wait in pain for the feeling to pass.
Gratefully the pain wasn't sharp like a knife but a dull pain, like being killed with a spoon, slowly and precise. Instead of a knife, as quick as light, sharp and fast. Strangly it was more painfully like slowly being pulling under so you have to suffer for as long as possible before you die. Like just enough to make it worth living, but also enough to make life miserable. Sometimes I would stay up at night in a ball with my knees pulled to my chest with an ache right in the center of my chest, barely breathing.
So as I finished up the traditional first day of school pictures with my mom, Jeanette, I was smiling. This smile wasn't just a happy smile, it was wonderful smile. It was one of those smiles that slipped through only when I was truly happy and briefly forgot about all of my pain. I knew that with my smile and the new designer clothes that my mom always made me wear on the first day of school that I had to admit I looked pretty good. I wasn't a vain person, but I did know who I was and I wasn't like though girls who thought she was so ugly, I knew how I was beautiful and how I was ugly. I probably didn't know how pretty the boys turning their heads thought I was, but I had a faint idea.
Even Zoi and Kat were awed, but not by the clothes or my looks, but my sheer happiness and delight. I was having a slight high because I knew my depression would soon fade and I would gain my freedom from the pain. My high was making me lightheaded so when Zoi called me out of my little day dreams a jumped.
"Hey fluff head, what's up with you?!"he said snickering. "Not to pull you out of your daydreamin' or anything but we have our first period in like two minutes."
I blushed and pulled my Emily bag over my head, and I had to smile it was an intteresting contrast from my plaid red miniskirt, white ball toed flats, and white button up shirt. Kat giggled at my expresion. And as I looked down to the too shiny floor I had to admitt, it was pretty funny. "So we have every class but English and Chemistry together."Kat said. "I know!"I squeeked. Zoi rolled his eyes. He was probably annoyed that we only had three classes with him.
In Kindergarden, our families were friends, so Kat and I knew each other before hand. When school started we were lucky enough to be in the same class. It just so happens that we were in all of the same rooms through the fifth grade. In third grade Zoi moved to Fairfield from some big city on the east coast. We instantly became friends. What sucks was that Kat and I would always, if not most of the time, be in each others classes, and Zoi would have to be the one who got the bad luck.
That didn't lessen our friendship by any means, so it wasn't that bad. The three of us would always hang out at lunches together with our different crowds. In sixth grade we pretty much hung out with three different groups throughout the year. No matter how we changed our looks and behavior on the outside throughout the year, our feelings for each other and our friendship would never change.
Sometimes our frienship got too exsclusive though. There were a lot of clics within groups at our schools. It just so happens that our friendship was so private that even though we didn't like the whole clic thing it was hard to let someone in because we were just so different from everyone else. We have only let one person, ever, join our clic, Oli, and just to prove the clic concept of closeness, we emailed, IMed, and called him all of the time.
"Hurry UP!" Kat cried as she half dragged me into our first class, Algebra. How could I be so lucky. Maybe it was because today was that day that my depression was going to go away. Still, how could it be that I was to get my best class first and last almost every day. As I walked into a classroom with shiny black desks and chairs, cream colored blinds, and half the walls full of whiteboard, and at the excited students mulling around, I started to feel a strong dissapointment.
Why did I feel just as I did outside the door. Why was it that I hadn't had some mager change happen? Why hadn't I had my depressious feeling finally dragged away, leaving me to suffer? It was just because class hasn't started yet, I told myself. Still, I couldn't ignore the ball of sadness, disapointment, and unease growing at the pit of my stomach. Was it never going end?
The bell rang. All of the students shuffled swiftly to their seats as the algebra teacher got up from his desk and walked to the front of the class. He wrote on the board with an orange board marker that smelled really bad.
My name is Mr. DiPiHe spoke. "Good Morning class. My name is Mr. DiPi," he repeated."And I am your algebra teacher." "As you may have noticed, my name is pernounced, dee-pie as in pi, three and fourteen hundreds."A few nervous people snickered."Yes and that is the first, and only joke that will be told in my class, I will not tolerate any jokes, side conversations, or whatever it is youth do these days without my permission. Am I clear."I few people mumbled, "Yes Mr. DiPi," but otherwise no one said I word. " Exellent!" He said.
I knew immediantly I was going to like this teacher because that is usually what the nicest teachers say on the first day of school. Both of my grandparents, being teachers themselves, rehearsed that same speech out of one of those How to be a Teacher books which said that you were supposed to be firm in the first month or so, then you could be nice and cool so that all of the students would respect and appriciate you.
"So, we will start the first class of the year having a little pop quiz to let me see how much all of you know on your algebraic skills," cooed Mr. DiPi. The students groaned. "Fine, how about some homework to soften you all up!" he chuckled to himself.
All the while, I, sitting in the near back was hardly noticing any of this going on.
The pit of my stomach was churning uncomfortably threatenedto make me puke. The feelings of sadness, depression, pain, emptiness, loss, and the feeling that I was being briken by hope was bringing on a wave of nausea and dissiness that made it hard to concentrate. My heart was starting to become painfully clenched, making it hard to breathe. My vision blured for my eyes started to water, but not from tears. It was what happened when you are extremely tired or sick. The water from my eyes never spilled over but it made it hard for me to find the pencil I was just holding. I found it clenched between my fingers. I tried to control myself by gripping it as hard as possible when Mr. DiPi laid the quiz on my desk. I felt a slight crack as he left my pereferal vision. I looked at the pencil in my palm. It had split in half right in my hand.
I was kidding myself, it was never going to end.