| AlgebraAddict |
10-16-2012 09:23 PM |
Dad,
Words are strange. They’re like swords. You can use them to clear your way, or you can use them to hurt people with cuts that never heal. What I say here I’ll probably never tell you. Go ahead and say it, say what you always say. Say it.
I can understand. I’ve been through what you’ve been through.
Have you?
Have you ever felt this hopeless feeling inside, the kind where you feel like you’re searching in a clean and utterly empty room of blank walls for something that can heal these cuts that went too deep? Have you ever bitten your finger so hard that in the bite marks blood made little pools, just so you could concentrate on how much it hurt instead of all the people who are so perfect, so kind, and fit into society as if a mold was made in it just for them? Have you ever looked at all those boxes that everyone fits in and at first just felt disgusted and then started to realize that you want a warm, cozy, safe little box for your own? Have you ever felt that you were in a place where everybody says what they were meant to say and do what they want to do? Have you ever seen how much normal people have and wanted to have the same kind of fun?
Like those people in the front of the bus, or running to the school store with little twenty-dollar-bills in their perfect little fists. They come back with chocolate bars, with huge bags of chips, with skittles. You quietly sit reading a book that was really, really popular for teenage girls—in the sixteenth century—and nibbling half-heartedly at an airhead. Right behind them, while they chat and smile and share candy and talk about cute boys in the sixth and seventh grade and pop stars and just say OMG a whole lot. The girls flirt with the boys and the boys act all masculine and bla bla bla. They stand on their knees on their seats and sit backwards and right in your face text their boyfriends while reciting OUT LOUD exactly the words they write. They talk about parties. They talk about Justin Bieber. They show each other pictures of half-naked people and think they’re cool. I’ve seen little kids run around butt naked my whole life, and right now my boys are in the bath trying to grab each other’s private parts, but if that makes me cool I’ll eat my head. Ignore the term from Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens. What bugs me is that these people are cool. They’re cool, and they have fun, and they disgust me. Aw, a broken heart? Mama wasn’t available to drive you to a date? Oh a-MAH Gawd, as they say EVERY SINGLE SECOND AND YOU ARE LIKE SHUT THE HECK UP. I WANT to be like them. I WANT to be awesome, and have friends and a phone and a list of cute guys, in a weird way. For me it seems the only way out. The only other way is to keep being me. Esther. The weird kid who wears neon yellow and green ankle-length skirts and has only one pair of shoes—a size eight pair of men’s sandals—and who thinks that The Three Musketeers is the most exciting book ever and who talks really fast about evil unicorns and Moomin and who proves that set n can have no smallest real member when she gets bored in math class and whose family is completely insane.
Everyone says things like, “If you are yourself, everyone will love you.”
It doesn’t work that way when you don’t know who you want to be. The dreamy singer? The hyper candy addict? The morbid fantasy writer? The smart little bookworm? The determined pianist?
I’ve been homeschooled my whole life. That means utter freedom, no one to judge you. But then I got into middle school, and went to explore new ground. What did I find? Walls. Glass walls. And then I went back, I tried, and there was another wall towards my family and myself. I’m trapped in the middle, and it’s not my decision anymore. I want to shatter the glass walls, let it all come together.
So now I’m going to go read The Three Musketeers and see what Milady does. Bye.
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