High school as a sophomore

The kid across from me sits and draws giving me an insight to what goes on in his mind without ever speaking a word. I feel unaccomplished in life at the age of fifteen. Mediocre at everything with no time to push myself to greatness. Maybe I could find the time if I had the motivation. I schedule and plan but by 10:00 I have to sleep. It’s like my body’s on a timer and when the clock strikes 10, I’m done for. I just feel like I’m struggling and I know others are too but that’s not an excuse. I just feel so lost. 

 My father wants to me to be the greatest and he thinks I am, but I’m so far from it. Balancing school, family drama, and relationships with trying to figure out who I am and listening to what’s going on around me seems so possible to everyone else, but I fall so short of completing the task.  

I miss the past every day. Thinking about the past seems to be my only escape. I can feel how I felt, smell the air and picture it in my mind. I know that it’s a waste of time,  but I can’t seem to help it. I wish I knew what I was meant to do and who I was meant to be because I’d spend my whole life working towards being that person, but I guess I’m doing that anyways. 

 I want to go out and live my life but I’m trapped. The walls of Central High School cave in on me everyday.  They draw me in and slowly crush me, the jaws of an alligator coming down on me. I don’t know if I’ll make it out alive. From 7:40 a.m. to 3:05 p.m. high school is my place of torture. The assignments build and build suffocating me. I gasp for air when I go home and deal with the consequences of arriving at school. I am not going to continue like this, it’s not who I am. 

  I only feel like this for a certain amount of time. Sometimes I look in the mirror and feel deserving of a good life with someone who loves me and sometimes I see a worthless girl who needs to prove herself to the world. Sometimes I see a strong women ready to let everyone fall to her feet but others I see a weak child begging the world for a good day.  

I am selfish, I always have been. The world around me is falling and the only thing I seem to worry about is when my next chemistry test is. I will worry about the world, but the worry will become too much, and I will forget and go back to my life. When my uncle comes to visit, and I speak about issues at the dinner table, he asks me what I’ve done to support the issues I speak of. My throat is dry, my mind is blank, the air turns crisp, and I have no answer. I know this makes me a bad person, but I cannot help it. I cannot help that I am selfish for I feel the world revolves around me. And after all, doesn’t everyone?  

The kid across from me never finished the drawing. I only saw faint lines with no end. My mind still wonders what was drawn on his sketchpad that day in Spanish class.