Keep An Open Mind {Lynn Gunn}

2) Stuck In A Rut And A Wasteland

School was always the same, classes were always boring. I wasn't even paying attention to the lesson - like always - I felt like I didn't need to. There were more important things to think of. and I didn't really have any friend to exchange notes with, so.

I kept sketching on my notebook, living in my own world, until I heard Mrs Sullivan clear her throat near me. I looked up at her, catching her gaze. She was staring at me with a hand on her hip, expectantly. Everyone fell silent.

"May I help you." I said, with sass in my voice.

Wow, that was weird, I usually would never talk like that to a teacher. But I was getting frustrated... My father's words kept popping in my head as if they were glued to my mind and would be stuck there forever.

Ms. Sullivan took the notebook from my desk and stared at the drawing with a puzzled expression, then looked back at me.

"What is this?" she asked, quietly.

"It's a rabbit." I replied, stating the obvious. I was pretty good at drawing, so it was damn clearly a rabbit. Everyone in the room chuckled and Ms. Sullivan just sighed.

I knew why though. Teachers were tolerant with me, they thought my behaviour was influenced by my situation. I didn't like it one bit. To me, that means being treated like a sort of monster. Because that's how they make it out to be, it takes an uncommon opinion on facts to be labeled as 'problematic'.

"Lyndsey, would you like to tell the rest of the class the answer to the problem?" she said after placing the notebook back on my desk and pointing to the blackboard, revealing a math problem.

I poked my head out of the desk to get a better view and analyzed the problem in a few seconds.

"The answer is 2x minus 3y." I said. She raised her eyebrows at me and looked back at the board, to make sure my answer was correct.

"Correct..." she said in a shaky, annoyed voice, and went back to the lesson. I have this thing called eidetic memory, so it was really easy for me to remember all the passages and formulas of math, or memorize whatever is written in the school book.

I went back to my drawing, occasionally glancing outside the window. I was so glad to have the nearest desk to the window, sometimes school looked like a prison, and feeling the rush of air on my skin, the cold breeze coming from the mountains, sent electric shivers through my body.

Whenever I looked around me I just saw an empty room, I felt like being in a wasteland, even though there were people everywhere. It was like they didn't even exist.

It's sad to think I'm stuck in here when I could be enjoying the world, experiencing freedom.

Somewhere, out here, there was a magical place. A sort of Wonderland. It may be between those mountains, that now looked so far and so unreachable.

This is not just all your head.