I just sit on my windowsill and I watch the rain fall. The soft taps of water from the sky to the earth comforts me. It makes me feel like I’m not the only one who is sad.


I reluctantly pull myself away from the window. Another day at school, facing the same people, day-after-day, that know how to tick me off. What will it be today? That kid in my English class will ask me if I m********* to lesbian porn or people-drinking-urine porn. Maybe that other kid in my study hall will shout my name in the library and call me a “liar” and a “negative Nancy”? Possibly that other guy in my Math class will want me to “pound it” with him and for the hundredth time I will say no… And the cycle continues; each trying so hard to get my attention and aggravate me, but I just can’t do it anymore.


These hallways aren’t roads to success and these classrooms gateways to knowledge, it’s all a joke. Everything. These teachers stuck behind their desk, grading papers, hating themselves for agreeing to work for such a lousy salary, the students and their lack of sense and decency, with their drama and gossip, and the administration and their politics; it’s all a joke… And to think, at one point I actually enjoyed school.


This place is a prison. It really is. You try to grow and become an individual then suddenly you’re labeled a “freak” and then BAM! All the seriously deranged people are attracted to you. If I try to stand up for my friends and those that are made fun of then I’m labeled a “d***”. When I do my work and try to learn, I’m called an “over-achiever” and looked on as being a “snob” and a “b****”, but they don’t even know me.


Sometimes I can’t handle the pressure to be me, or the “me” that high school has painted for everyone to recognize me as. I can’t get a “B” or else people start to whisper. I can’t have a differing opinion, or else I’m just weird. I can’t be nice, or then it is turned into a back-handed compliment. I can’t be myself because it is wrong.


It gets harder to stay happy when you can’t hold onto friends because they refuse to look beyond your quirks, or to be respected by classmates when they think you have an attitude, and impossible to start relationships for both reasons. Yes, high school is a prison; it’s dark and cold. You aren’t here to make friends, but to do your time and move on. I pray that it gets easier, but it won’t. If people could just look past the walls and the masks that have been made, then maybe there is hope.


I love the rain. It’s just so beautiful and pure. It is cleansing. I can’t help but think that its water can turn into ice or even steam, but people can look past its physicality and understand and see that it is still H2O, and always will be. Why can’t they do that for me?