Painful Silence [Wattys 2015]

: Day Two :

School...

Seven. Crap. Hours. Of. Our. Lives.

School is boring, everyone knows it. Not only is it boring, it is cruel. Cruel because we have to waste away half of our life's being there. Who cares what the meaning of x is, or the science equation for hydrogen. No one, because most of us aren't even going to use it. We are all going to die anyway, though some may be before others.

In school I am the cheerful shy girl that sits at the back of the class with my friends. My friends are shy as well, but we are very outgoing around each other. We aren't stereotypical nerds who finish all are homework as soon as we get it, because we don't. We are just shy people. Well they are, I have social anxiety. No, I don't get anxiety or panic attacks I just get really nervous and pressured. Not many people know about it, I don't want many people to know. It will just be another thing the people at school will bully me for.

My school is one of those schools, where everyone knows everyone and everything. It's a small school but it's still fairly big, we have a 'friendly atmosphere' at our school where everyone 'fits in'. Which is not true, that's just what people think. The truth is I get bullied every day, my friends try to stop it but nothing works. I get called names like 'fat' and 'ugly' which may not seem like much but when you get called it for 3 years you start to believe these things.

I look in the mirror in the school bathrooms. My dull black hair falls loosely in waves and my lifeless grey eyes stare back at me. I look so ugly, I want to cry. Tears gather in my eyes as I look at my rolls of fat, I hate my body. I turn away from the mirror in disgust.

People think I fit in at my school. But I don't fit in, I blend in, there's a difference.