Short Stories - What I Can't Write At School

Public Speaking

His stomach was churning in pain.

Palms sweating profusely. 

He wanted to run but there was no way out. It was to late to escape. They were waiting.

His throat tightened. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't cry right now, not in front of them.

Everyone was waiting and watching. He knew they didn't really care about this, nobody did. Why was he so nervous then. 

Everyone had seemed to do this with ease. No stuttering or tripping over their words. They had all seemed so confident. Was He the only one truly terrified and in physical pain at the thought of this.

"It's your turn." the dreaded words had been spoken. All eyes were on him. 

He couldn't do this. 

But he had to.

He stood up almost tripping on his chair. He walked to the front of the room and spoke.

It was terrifying. Everyone watching. Judging. They looked at him as if it was his fault they couldn't go to lunch yet. Why did the teachers do this. They act as if they don't know the pressure this puts on them how nervous they are the days leading up to this let alone the hour before. Surely they had done this when they were at school. Right? 

A tsunami of relief washed over him when it was over. 

It lasted only temporarily though. They got the results to their presentations back. He had been graded poorly because he couldn't speak in in front of 20 teenagers and an old dude. They said his information was great and all but his public speaking skills needed work.

Didn't the teachers know how hard it had been to come to school that day and not lock the door to his room and read. How hard it was to walk into the classroom instead of hide in the bathrooms until it was over. How hard it was to stand up and walk to the front of the room. How hard it was to not cry when he started to speak. Nobody would understand how hard it was to live in this world. A world where to survive you must talk to others and speak in public. You can't hide in books forever. 

A world where nobody understands and the ones that do are to shy to speak up and relate. Always silently suffering.

A/N this is mostly me ranting/writing how I feel. Social anxiety really does suck. Its fucking stupid how schools grade us on our public speaking skills I told my mom once and she agrees its not fair. I actually did get a bad grade twice actually because I couldn't speak in front of the class. I'm just describing how I feel when I had to go up there and speak.