A New Kind of Feeling // Creek

Chapter 1- Craig

Sometimes I feel like an outsider in my own body, like I'm just going through the motions of life, but I'm not really in control. Sometimes it feels like brain isn't really attached and I'm just watching my life go by through someone else's eyes. I wonder if that's something other people experience.

Probably not. At least, probably not normal people.

I find it very likely that I  have some deeply rooted psychological issues, maybe depression, I don't know. I don't often cry, and I don't think of hurting myself, but there aren't many things in life that I genuinely enjoy. In fact there are only three that easily come to mind:

• Race cars, and race car driving
• Outer space
• And animals, Guinea pigs mostly

I don't think I really fit in with the other kids at school, though I guess I do technically have friends. It's complicated really. They all get along so easily, effortlessly saying the right things, but I constantly feel like I'm faking a better version of myself so that others will like me. Maybe we're all just fakers and I'm only noticing myself because I'm me.

I'm pretty quiet mostly, listening to the conversations happen around me, and interjecting when absolutely necessary. Sometimes it feels like the world is a puzzle and everyone has their set place, a spot to belong, and I'm just the lonely piece that got mixed in by mistake just hoping nobody notices I don't really fit anywhere.

It sounds sad, but I don't feel sad about it. It's more of an observation really. I don't mind being alone. When I'm alone I have more time for the things I like, and don't have to pretend to care about other people's interests. Unfortunately, my alone time will be taking a massive hit as tomorrow I start my first job.

If I could choose any career in the world, I'd choose to be an astronaut, because as I previously stated, I love space. However, I recognize that this is unlikely to actually happen, so after thinking long and hard I've decided I could live with becoming a veterinarian instead. Neither of these careers are available to fourteen year olds though, so instead I'll be working at Tweak Bros Cafe.

My dad lost his job, so I had to get one to help out with bills while he finds something else. Not a lot of places in town will hire you before you're sixteen, but I asked for a favor from a classmate and managed to get hired at his parents coffee shop after he put in a good word for me.

I wish I had any other classmate with parents who ran a business though. I wish I didn't have to ask this of him. It's a bit awkward considering our interesting past.

When we were in fourth grade, someone, I'm not really sure who, had drawn a picture of me and Tweek holding hands, and then the school ran with it. Before we knew it more and more pictures of me and Tweek were showing up. It was embarrassing. Everyone had basically, decided we were a couple without our consent. So for a while we pretended to be.

It was easy enough. We'd hold hands in the hall, sit together at lunch, always be partners when the teacher told us to split into pairs. Dating in elementary school is just friendship with the perk of being able to flaunt your relationship status to your single friends really. It was simple, kind of nice even.

But when we got to middle school there were expectations, everyone was putting so much pressure on us to kiss. And they kept making comments and jokes about other activities that made me feel uncomfortable. I was tired of being just one part of this gay couple everyone was creepily obsessed with, so I stopped.

I started dating girls for a while. People still had their expectations, but a much smaller percentage of the school bothered me about it. I guess nobody cares when you're in a straight relationship. That's fine by me.

Eventually I did start kissing girls. I don't see the hype really. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel something emotionally, but to me kissing a girl my age feels the same as kissing my grandma, like something I just do to be nice.

I started to think maybe I was gay. Over the summer I fooled around with Kenny. I feel like a dick about it, because they were in the middle of a whole gender crisis and I took advantage of that to kiss a guy who might not actually identify as a guy so that I could look like a real great person and a trans ally for seeing past their biology and accepting their identity as a girl, which were the kind of people I was supposedly into. Really I'm just a selfish asshole.

Kissing Kenny didn't make me feel much, so I thought maybe I just didn't like kissing, so I let them do other things (not like full on sex sex, but like, ugh it's awkward to talk about, you get the idea). It's weird 'cause my body recognized that it felt good, but fucked up in sending signals to my brain because I just like didn't actually care emotionally. If anything the whole experience was boring and a bit uncomfortable.

I think I might be asexual, probably aromatic too. I bet I'll spend the rest of my life alone with no company except my 15 Guinea pigs. That sounds nice actually. I don't think I'd mind a life like that.