A memoir of madness

Exam pressure

Every step she took she felt took Sia closer to God. Each thump of her foot against the pulsating earth sent a warm feeling in her chest and she felt her eyes to be opened to the beauty of nature. She sat beneath a tree and put a hand on the root feeling the life throbbing through its veins. She could almost see the fumes from the dirty traffic been filtered into clean air that covered the park with a blanket of pure oxygen. Taking a deep breath she closed her eyes as the crows called above her and she felt her heart race as a northerly wind blew in her face. She was sure that the note she had left on her door "Gone for a walk" would only surpass for a short space of time before she would have to resume the grueling revision which had taken over her life.

She had stuck the grades she had needed for Portsmouth on the mirror; that was her aim. Her life was consumed by revision, she only had time for coffees and pushed the food on her plate around taking a few pathetic bites before she had thrown up the contents she had managed to just about chew and eat. It was hopeless. Eating was time wasted that could of otherwise been revising. She did not want to admit to her father that she had spent most of the year not bothering with homework or asking for help instead substituting that with meeting friends, wasting time helping other people and taking unnecessary trips to the small park near her school with her best friend to "talk" and eat junk food. She took one last breath before she went on her sister's bicycle and peddled home. "That was quick" her father said on the stars as she lugged the bicycle up, panting, she put the lock around it and dejectedly walked into the flat. She could have spent more time at the park, damn not having a watch, it had seemed like ages. Even her sense of time was going as her appetite had done. It was economics tomorrow, she looked at the mass of papers in her room and tried to make sense of the mess. Nothing seemed to stick in her head. She took the revision book into the sitting room and began to walk around the carpet reading out the book, as though she was teaching a rowdy bunch of students "pay attention!!" she would yell at a blank space before resuming her circular motion around the carpet repeating the book; closing it only to ask a student what she had said and then regurgitated the information she had just read out to herself in a student's voice. Her uncle came into the flat from next door and she abruptly stopped not wanting to sounds crazy talking to herself. She had always talked to herself ever since young age it had started with toys as she bustled them around telling them what to do. Her voice changing for each toy as she grew up she pretended to have conversations with people she had known in school. Before she had got into six-form she had fantasied about it and wearing high heels and a short cherry dress she had seen on TV. She had also pretended she had a boyfriend, sometimes a cheating husband or a baby boy called Theo and a girl called Penny. She was good at stories and English. Her creativity for words and writing was what she considered strength, although this fantasizing could be considered as an unhealthy obsession born from a lack of reality.  She had never been good at Maths' and was okay at science although she had loved chemistry. Not this year though, although she was in her second year of six form she was redoing AS Chemsitry as she had failed it the previous year. She was miserable as her old chemistry teacher hated her because she had cheated in her test and was terrible in lesson. She had gone from being an A student to an incompetent piece of shite she had said in her own words to her best friend.

"Sia you're so good at chemistry you got an A* remember?!"

"That was in GCSE this is different, plus Mr James hates me" she had said miserably

"He told Mana she wouldn't get an A ignore it we will all do really well" she had smiled cheerfully.  "If someone tells me I can't do something I make it my goal to make it happen" she emphasized the last three words like a politician pumping her fist three times in the air 

Sometimes she hated her best friend. Kind, beautiful and smart Norah had one thing Sia wished she had the ability to do really well in exams without much revision or effort. The only positive was that Norah was hated by most of her teachers for being lazy, not doing homework, not coming into school on time and general nonsensical attitude. She had felt bad giggling when the head of year had a confrontation with Norah. Norah being Norah had argued back feeling like it was her right to do so, which enraged the teacher even more. Sometimes she had intervened telling the teacher Norah was sorry and pushing her out of the room.

"Why did you say I was sorry!" 

"because you will just be in more trouble"

"Trouble for what?!"

"Not taking anything seriously! You can't come into school so late, not do any homework and expect the teacher to want to answer your questions in class"

Norah had preceded to burst into tears

She had felt bad being tough on her friend but felt it was necessary in order to help her. Norah had potential to do really well and wanted to get into Cambridge to study medicine. That required dedication and not the laziness that Norah had shown so far. Sia felt like she wasn't helping either. She would at times force Norah to come with her to the park or go for walk around to get food before "revising together" which constituted of  talking about each other's lives, people they liked and teasing.

Sia lay on her floor desperately trying to answer 15 marker and 20 marker questions. Economics required a lot of analysis. She had spent most of the year not understanding microeconomics due to her dislike of her teacher and unwillingness to get help, however macroeconomics was a doddle for her. Fortunately for her both her case study for Geography and Macroeconomics was on East Africa making it easy to use real world information and facts for both. She had felt doing economics was a benefit and put her at advantage compared to her geography class mates that didn't study it.

She quickly wrote out a 15 marker and 20 markers using the book as a source of reassurance, scanned it in and sent it to her teacher. Sia got the creeps around this particular economics teacher. He always came to close to students when explaining things and his breath didn't help. She shuddered remembering her leavers club celebration. She was wearing a red dress tight fitting with a slit on the side. She had never made an effort for anything but that night she felt like making an effort to wow her year. She felt pathetic thinking about it now. She had got compliments all around with everyone telling her she looked really good, one of the best dressed. She had just come out of the bathroom which was at the time full of girls throwing up and peeing with the toilet doors opened. Her economics teacher was walking in and looked her up and down making her feel immediately uncomfortable and then proceeded to tell her that her dress looked really good. She had thanked him and abruptly left complaining to her friend's Sam and jasmine about his inappropriateness. They had all felt too hot and gone upstairs to gossip about the behavior of the year in particular the girls

"Did you see Fin and Tam"

"Me and sam saw him with tam in the corner where no one could see them and then Fin came out zipping up his trousers he saw us looking at him and didn't even look ashamed!" Sia had exclaimed

"Disgusting" Jasmine said "They are all sluts did you see V?!"

"What about mat and Grace?" Sam had said

"The guys are just taking advantage" Sia said tutting

They all looked as V walked passed and threw up on the pavement outside. They all looked on with disgust.

Sia had never been drunk, drugged up or smoked. She had very good friends like den and anne who went out. She would be at their houses when they were getting ready but never felt the need to go with them and be part of the girls out of their minds, throwing up and doing sexual things with guys. It was just never her. She wasn't a social climber she was respecting at school for not being influenced by anyone but she was a good judge of character and kept away from bad influences but she was always kind to everyone not wanting to judge anyone's lifestyle.

Sia made a quick coffee feeling like she would need it for the night. She had no choice but to stay up. She had never attempted this before and thought that it was foolish but she couldn't take any risks she didn't know anything and everything that she was learning was quickly forgotten. She hastily refreshed her emails and found a reply from her economics teacher. Opening the scans she felt alarmed by the masses of 0's and crosses she quickly flicked to the end pages which were faded from the scanner making it hard to read the comments that he had written.