In A Week I Will Be Dead

Chapter One: One

!!!TW!!!

Bullying , unkind thoughts, mentions of SH, ED, depression and anxiety 

IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING, CALL THE SAMARITANS 116 123 <3 <3 <3

Noah

One thing I realised when I was younger was that the word lonely was an interesting word. It has the word 'one' in it, and I thought this was clever. Then I noticed the word alone, abandoned, and bone did too. But I couldn't tell people I thought this was clever because they would look at me funny. Because people who notice what's inside words are full of emotions, and people who are full of emotions cry a lot and they don't fit in. Therefore, by analysing the word lonely I became lonely. And that meant that my brain wired incorrectly, and that led to bad things.

And that leads me onto where I am now.

Casually my fingers draw a line around the outside of each brick which forms the classroom. I'm not going to go into it in much detail. It's just so pointless. Everything is pointless. I must be the only person in the whole stupid school which thinks this way. My therapist thinks that I should write stuff down to help me to sort out all the stuff in my brain into compartments, but I don't even know where to begin. And I don't want to keep a journal because some people may say that's a diary and they'll kick the shit out of me for that.

I sometimes imagine that when people hit me and punch me that I'm a famous boxer in a ring or something like that. The thing about getting bruised is that I don't really care anymore. Some sick and twisted section of me thinks that I probably deserve it for being such a screw-up. What's a few extra bruises to an arm covered in scars anyway?

School has always been part of my downfall. Last year, I was getting really bad grades because I just didn't see the point. Sometimes, although the analysis sheets say I'm better, I still think this way. It's not justified that a set of letters on a page determines how good you are as a person. Everybody's individual; we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. It's not right that we judge each other on being able to do everything. When we try to do everything, we forget about the thing we're good at, and we subconsciously downgrade ourselves as a person. They say the teenage years are the years that make you who you are, and that's probably why our minds break in the first place. Because in these teenage years, our ability is measured by a simple set of undignified letters, and that's what sets us up for life.

My attention switches on when I hear my name being called. I try to flick my mop of black hair out of my eyes, but it's permanently moulded around my head. It swishes around my skull, and I like it this way. This way I can keep the demons out – but hell still remains inside.

Something rectangular and hard smashes into the square of my back. I don't even flinch. Somebody laughs. They all laugh. I hear the question again.

'Noah, can you please tell me what starts the process of natural selection?' Sitting quietly, I muse to myself all the different ways how to kill the people sat in front of me. I say, 'a random mutation' and relax a little, knowing the attention will now be diverted. I turn around on my chair, but the object is gone. Whatever it was, the person it belonged to must have claimed it back by now.

However, by a horrible miscalculation I realise that it's not over. As they say, I have won the battle but lost the war.

'I bet you were a random mutation Noah, bet your birth certificate was an apology letter from the condom factory.' They all laugh again, and I sink lower into my chair, wishing to be invisible. I pull down my sleeves over my hands and start to bite the inside of my cheek.

'Nah I bet they didn't even write a letter of apology, more of a congrats for bringing the cavemen out of extinction.' Somebody else then decides to pipe-up, 'But he seems to get confused about what to cut – it's the prey you moron not yourself.'