The Kids Aren't Alright ✓ | Peterick TeacherxStudent

Prologue : Stuck In The Jet Wash

Someone once asked me what it was like to be me.

It fucking sucks.

It's like you're drowning and everyone else is swimming. It's like you're crying and everyone around you is laughing. Like you're falling while everyone else is flying, like you're dying while everyone else is living. Living in vivid, bright colors, and I'm just alone in black and white.

It's like I'm fading away while everyone around me is shining brighter than ever. I'm trying to grasp on to even the smallest ounce of life that everyone seems to possess. It bounces off the walls of the hallways in rays of laughs and smiles, but it always seems to reflect around me. I'm wallowing through this abyss of darkness and despair while everyone is gliding through the radians of light, swimming and laughing and flying and living as I'm drowning and crying and falling and dying.

And all I can do is sit there and watch.

I haven't always been like this. Just last year I was one of those people gliding through the halls, absorbing the light and throwing around smiles and living a life that any High School Sophomore should. I was happy and no one bullied me and I could walk around school without having to hide my face or skirt around anyone.

When I decided to come out at the beginning of this year, everything changed.

All of my friends immediately abandoned me. Joe and Andy, my two best friends, were going to start a band with me at the beginning of this junior year. But they couldn't stand to play music with a faggot like myself. All of my other friends slowly began to fade away. Some truly did accept me, but they didn't want to be labeled as a friend of a homosexual. I was a freak, the monster, the kid that no one wanted around anymore. At first, I said fuck them, who cares? I couldn't care less about the names that were thrown my way, and I didn't believe that no one loved me.

But I soon did.

I'm thrown against a locker every day. I sit alone at lunch and watch as everyone is living their lives around me. I've gotten to the point where I can't take it anymore. I end up running from class to class in order to avoid the bullies in the hall, only to be confronted by them when I'm the first person in the room of my next class. I've ended up eating locked in a bathroom stall, crying as I stare at my food and wonder if it's really worth it.

What are you supposed to do when everything crumbles around you?

It gets worse by the day. I begin to believe the things that people tell me I am. Faggot. Monster. Freak. Pathetic. Useless. Worthless. Better off dead. I go home and lie awake at night, trying to forget everything that's happened to me over the past six months. But the scars and bruises that pollute my body beneath my clothes are constant reminders that no one loves me.

My heart isn't breaking anymore. My heart can't even feel anymore. I used to feel the sting every time someone threw me into the corner or broadcasted my contagious homosexuality for all to laugh at. But over the past six months of the beatings and abuse, I've grown used to it all. Sometimes it hurts, but it's okay because I'm used to it. The pain reminds me that I'm alive. But I begin to feel the pain less and less. My heart has become more of a dark, cold cell rather than a pumping and thriving organ. It doesn't supply my body with blood and oxygen, but it instead sends this abyss of emptiness and numbness through my veins.

I've stopped putting effort into everything. I've stopped caring about the way I dress. I'll wear the same pair of jeans to school several days in a row because I can't be bothered to change them. I've stopped caring so much for my hygiene. I've stopped caring about everything. I've stopped doing my work the in three AP classes my parents and teachers pressured me into taking. I'm failing almost all of my classes, and I hear shit about it from my mother every day. She doesn't seem to notice that I'm not okay at all. It's not that I'm struggling with the class, it's just that I'm struggling with the burden of making it through every individual day.

People tell me to just get over my depression. But people who don't have it just don't get it. Would you ever go up to someone with cancer and say "get over it?"

Depression is like a war. You either win or die trying. I feel like I bother people just by being alive. I'm worthless. Pointless. Useless, pathetic, depressed. I guess you could say that I'm just tired. Tired of trying, tired of hoping, tired of coping. Of existing, breathing, living.

I'm tired of being tired.

Hey guys! I'm so excited for this story, I've wanted to write a student teacher peterick for forever. But please let me know what you think so far!