Smile On His Lips and Cuts On His Hips (Jalex)

Twenty Nine - Completely Useless

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I squinted critically at the batter, scooting to the left and hoping that they wouldn’t be able to hit the ball near enough to me that my overly enthusiastic teammates would expect me to catch it. My hand eye coordination was about equivalent to that of a toddler, and I was literally completely useless in all sports. Basically everyone who had ever gotten stuck on a team with me in gym despised my entire existence by the time the painful period ended.

Luckily, the plastic ball hurled off into what I was relatively convinced was right field, snatched up by someone who’s name I could never recall as the defeated batter slumped dejectedly away from first base. I didn’t actually know who was winning, having been too caught up in myself to notice or care, simply watching with disinterest as the other team apparently got their third out and we returned to bat. I dragged my heels across the field, glaring at Josh and Kellin as they joked loudly while working their way to the various bases. I hid at the back of the line and hoped that a meteor would come and smash into the earth, obliterating Dulaney completely, before I had the dingy bat shoved into my incompetent grip again.

We’d started wiffle ball last week, and Alex had miraculously developed a crippling grass allergy. I was still somewhat confused as to where he’d gotten the note that excused him from anything involving the green expanse of the field – I’d heard enough about that boy’s neglective parents to fully know that they wouldn’t exert themselves enough to scrawl out a pass for their son -  but DeGirinimo had accepted it, probably only because he didn’t actually give two shits about his students, and sent Alex off to watch from the bleachers during sports. Frowning at Alex from across the field, I eyed the boy huddled in on himself at the top of the peeling structure.  

When my team struck out embarrassingly quickly, I decided that getting full credit for that particular class was not worth the psychological suffering I subjected myself to while standing alone on the field and feeling completely useless, jogging to the outfield and continuing straight on, completely ignoring DeGirinimo when he called, “Barakat, I don’t think the ball’s gonna go that far!”

Dismissing the snickers behind me and chewing on the inside of my cheek to lessen the heat stinging them, I removed myself from the idiotic game and clambered up the bleachers, plopping down next to my boyfriend with a relieved sigh. He raised his head from where it had been resting on his knees, smiling at me with a quiet chuckle as I declared, “I give up. Screw this class”

Alex shuffled closer to me, wrapping his arms round his knees and hiding his fingers away in the sleeves of the striped shirt that he was still wearing under my extra PE tee – he’d asked if I had a spare in the locker room earlier, explaining that his was temporarily lost – asking, “Wiffle ball pushed you to the limit?”

I shook my head, hand tucking under the band of my gym sweats to get my phone out of the restricting jeans I was wearing underneath, beginning to untangle the wires of my ear buds as Alex snagged one and I replied, “No, I don’t dislike wiffle ball any more than any other sports, but DeGirinimo put Kellin and Josh and the other team and you’re not playing, and I don’t like being alone while we’re doing games.”

Normally, I could bear through PE and the stupid activities that we were obligated to do by performing to the bare minimum and joking around with my friends. There was almost always someone on either my or the opposing team that I could chat and make stupid cracks with while completely disregarding the fact that we were meant to be tossing balls through hoops.

I’d spent PE on Friday sarcastically making fun of unsuccessful batters and laughing at missed catches that had slipped through fingers with Josh, cat calling at Kellin as he sulked by himself on the opposing team and chuckling at Ramsay's pathetic batting stance - ass out, chest forward, striking out immediately.

That, I was fine with. As long as there was another person to interact with me and extract me from myself, I didn’t have any issues.

However, when I was alone, abandoned in the middle of a pitch or looking out with anxious eyes from in front of a net, my malicious thoughts set in and started working on deteriorating my mental stability. I constantly had self-imposed insults and degradations ripping apart my head when I was uselessly watching sports go by around me, knowing that I would be worthless to contribute to a win and feeling like a complete and total waste of oxygen that should unquestionably go to a human who impacted our collective existence in a more positive way.

It was ridiculous, of course, absolutely baffling and  absurd that being bad at grabbing airborne spheres out of the atmosphere had me on the verge of a mental breakdown and tearing apart the skin of my thumbs with my nails, but anything that even slightly exhibited my insufficiencies inflated my insecurities and had me unintentionally attacking myself.

I’d come to the conclusion that I would rather get a B in gym than allow pernicious thoughts to attempt to destroy me, leading to my currently leaning into Alex, playing Fall Out Boy on shuffle in honor of their reunion and silently contemplating when I’d stopped placing any importance on grades. I had precisely no motivation to get straight A’s anymore; I didn’t care about school work at all. Avoiding mentally belittling myself seemed to be logically worth going down a couple grade points.

“Huh. Wiffle ball makes me feel really insecure and useless, so,” Alex said, placing the plastic bud in his ear as The (Shipped) Gold Standard started up, implying that this was the real reason behind his forged note and slumping into the hoodie covered arm I looped around his waist.

I was clueless as to how I was meant to respond to that, mind working to figure out if I should try to talk him up or whatever people did to discount each other’s self-proclaimed, often false defects. But I didn’t know how to make anyone feel better - though I probably should be conscious of how to perk up Alex - and concluded that he most likely needed exactly what I did. To be comforted by the knowledge that he was not the only person who felt like that.

We had lots of these odd conversations, swapping screwed up stories and confusing emotions,  never trying to change the other’s opinion of themselves or dismiss their concerns. Alex was basically the only person to whom I applied the golden rule, constantly striving to treat him as I honestly desired to be treated, and I knew that someone trying to convince me that my beliefs and ideas were wrong would certainly fail miserably. It was definitely more beneficial to be told that my thoughts and emotions were totally normal and didn’t qualify me as insane. I didn’t need to be proven wrong, I needed to be reassured that I wasn’t crazy and irreparably damaged.

So I simply held Alex closer, his messy hair tickling against my chin as he tucked his head into the my neck, muttering that I got it and letting the topic change as the period stumbled on. The world would be such a better place if it wasn’t only the broken who understood how to repair each other. 

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If anyone doesn't like Fall Out Boy, then imagine your favorite band in place of them in this. ATL's actually my favorite but FOB make me really happy, so (and guess who I just got tickets for?). Also, for some reason, I thought they got back together in March rather than February, so for the sake of this story, let's pretend that that's what happened. And for the future, I want to say that I love Marianas Trench and think that Josh Ramsay is an awesome person, but need someone to put down in this. It'll be more relevant later. Please comment and vote!

xoxo

Rose