Here's your Shitty Essay

Chapter 2: How to Write a Paragraph

Max:
The cycle seems endless. We walk into class. We sit down. She talks at us. We pretend to listen. Today she is wearing black jeans. They are spotting in white dust. They are tight, too tight, and I try not to look. She tells us that our writing is flawed. She talks about paragraphs as if they matter. "They have a topic sentence." She writes the words "topic sentence" on the board. Her hips sway as she writes. There is a stack of papers on her desk. I wondered how many stacks of paper have found their way to her desk. How many paragraphs have been written. How many kids have sat in these desks and written paragraphs and words and more words and endless  words that seem to proliferate like plastic masks kids wear for Halloween. The masks aren't real. They are cut from some mold in some factory in some foreign country.
I glance at a kid sitting next to me. He is wearing a Harvard tee shirt and he is writing something in his notebook. It dawned on me that all of our words circle back and back and we never actually leave the room.

  Shawn:
  I take my seat towards the back then pull out my notepads, pens, and place my phone neatly on the corner of my desk, my headphones falling off. I peer ahead of me and spy a kid with a Harvard shirt on, I chuckle and under my breath comment, "he probably has a better shot of getting there than me." Either he had the brains or the cash to do it but either way, he was getting there. Ms.Cobb starts the class off with a little droning on. After another late night taking care of my siblings, making sure dinner was done and the kitchen cleaned while mom was away, I needed to get some damn work done or my head would hit the desk and I would be out like a light. She brought up paragraphs like we didn't know how to write them, I threw in my other headphone to drown her out. I looked at my phone and scrolled through the playlists looking for something good; some heavy metal seemed to fit with the way this day was going.
    She wrote topic sentence on the board with a little sway in her hips, I look down to my other notepad trying to think of something to write until she gives the assignment.
   I think about how we've gone over this time and time again, year in and year out since middle school. Most teachers refer to it as sharpening the blade but most are just grinding off more steel, not refining the cutting edge. I start drawing little stick figures going to war with guns and bats, trying to get the swirl of thoughts out of my head. Good, bad it all goes into the notebook and in time I may store enough thoughts to de-cloud my mind.

Adam:
        The cold sweat is running down the side of my forehead. Running mile after mile, breath after breath, my heart pounds and pounds. All the colors forming into swirls as the sky turns grey. I just can't escape this endless cycle of nothingness. Just trying to get away, far away. No matter how hard I try, no matter how fast I run, the thoughts always come back. Every time, they come back clearer and clearer than the next. I repeat the words in my head over and over again, "you are worthless. No one needs you. I don't want you here. It's all your fault. Why can't you be like your brother?" The only thing keeping me going is the light at the end of the tunnel, but every step I feel closer, it gets farther and farther away. Thinking about what might be on the other side, I just can't grasp the feeling that it's not going to be what I was expecting. That what's on the other side isn't what I think I want, but somewhere deep inside of me there is an underlying problem that I don't know about. A subconscious feeling that I long for, or a part of me that is missing because I've spent so much time trying to push it to the back of my brain so I would forget it even existed.
         One of the best ways to express how someone is feeling is through writing, which contains words, sentences, and paragraphs. We speak in paragraphs every day. So then why is it so hard for me to write a paragraph? All i have to do is put down what i would say onto a piece of paper. Yet all i can think about is letting go, letting go of everything that has held me back for the past four years. At least this is just one part or paragraph in my lives chapter right now. My life is like when i am reading a book and i can't seem to remember what i read so i keep going back and re-reading the same sentence over and over again, because i keep dwelling on things in the past instead looking forward to what is going to happen in the future.
I sit here and look around the room, everyone's happy and smiling whether it's  their phone or another person. I sit here and think to myself, "why am i like this, why can't i just be happy?" I look at the person sitting across from me and i wonder how hard it must be for the people putting on fake faces. I know that smile all too well... it's the smile that makes the people walk past you seem blind, it's the face that hurts and screams for help in agony. I put on this face every day drawing closer and closer to the black hole that comes with fake faces that you put on to hide your sorrows. Sometimes the only way to live is to put on a fake smile, a fake laugh, a fake set of happy eyes just to make it through the day so that people won't ask a million questions that you know they are only asking because they want to seem like they care when they really don't.
This teacher always treats us like we are the stupid people on the face of the planet. Like we haven't been writing paragraphs for the past 8 years of our lives. Every year it's the exact same thing over and over again, "You need a topic sentence, and a conclusion sentence." Treating us like we are 1st graders. Still even when writing paragraphs and essays is like another part of me that just flows through my hand onto the piece of paper, I still can't write. My mind so cluttered with thought, with everything that i've been trying to escape from for the past 9 years. Now i'm behind on work like always, I'll probably just throw some crap together to get at least a C so it looks like I'm somewhat trying this year.