I’m being a bad student- I know I am. Madam is explaining how to conjugate the verb etre (to be) in French, in unnecessary detail. Yet, here is my hand, writing and worming across this piece of blue-lined paper, jotting down my futile, belligerent, incoherent, thespian teenage thoughts... All because I think my life is worth zilch, and living is found to be inane. Truth is I know how to do most of the work in this French class (I know, most isn’t all). Of course, there’s the option of moving up a level. However, I don’t know enough to move on to the next level. I’m stuck. I used Rosetta Stone (amazing program, it teaches you quickly and efficiently) over the last year, and yet, here I sit, in French 1.

Teachers know more than students give them credit for. As we rummage through our backpack to hunt for a single sheet of paper, they almost certainly know that we are really texting to our friend from across the room that happens to be searching her purse for a pen. I don’t doubt one second that Madame knows I’m pretending to take her notes- she’s more intelligent than that.

I can’t help but to be intimidated by this girl’s too heavy, too black eye make-up, and dark ruby lip-gloss. She wears low cut shirts that are definitely too revealing, and shorts that are shorter than her underwear. Where I would customarily hate her, that feeling of disdain is replaced by pity. I pity that she feels she needs to provoke attention by dressing like a s***. I pity that she chews her gum like a cow, and certainly fails virtually every class. I pity the family problems she has… And most importantly, I pity when she’s a pregnant teenage girl in high school. What do girls who dress like that feel they’re accomplishing, by dressing as the lady of the night? By wearing clothes a size too small, and smearing on cheep, pore clogging make-up? To be frank, they are yelling, “look at me, I’m a w****!” to the world. I guess you can’t blame girls like that. I mean, everyone does things for a reason, right?

My eyes have deep self-made circles. The amount of energy girls sped in the mirror, trying to conceal their imperfections; I channel that same amount of energy making those imperfections. I don’t brush my long hair, even though I abhor the tangles it twiddles into. I use brown and purple eye shadow to create the dark circles under the eyes girls try to camouflage. I want to prove to people that I am very, very different from the social definition of “normal for society”. I need to prove myself.

I worship the rain… I love being trapped in a building, watching the rain come poring down. I love walking in the rain; feeling the cold, merciless, trickles and downpour of water efface my sin. I think in the rain. Rain is comforting. The more I live, the more I want to die. Humans live, cause Drama, and then die. There’s no point in living. I’ve thought about suicide, but the more I pondered, the more I apprehended that suicide is for cowards- I am no coward. So, you know, suicide was erased of my life of “Things To Do Before You Delete” list. Such a shame, too, since I had an awesome suicide death plan- to die as Anne Boleyn, just because I love her so. Suicide is also selfish, but that doesn’t bother me- I’m a selfish girl, always have been.
I’m an introvert, I divulge. I go to school, come home, do my homework and study each subject for fifteen minuets, and then contemplate. I muse over everything I can think of: protesting that I want to do, Obama’s presidency, abortion, stem cell research, my budding novel... but mostly death. I spend most of my days terrorizing death, and thinking about death, and trying to live death (which is virtually impossible, but I like to pretend I’m dying, frequently). Death intrigues me... I feel death interests everyone. I want to know! I want to know what happens when I die, I want to know how I will die, and I want to know why I die (the common, pathetic teenage needs)! No, I don’t want to know, I have to know! It’s inadequate. What’s the point in living, if you simply die at the end? No one will now if I die! Heck, half the word could die, and people wouldn’t notice, until the gossip started infesting the field of crops like blight. In a world full of zebras, would anyone notice –or even care- if a single stripe went missing?