Hello There Loneliness LenovoBackToSchool Writing Contest

Welcome to Here

   New year. New school.

   I could spit. I could curse. I could scream.

   But I don't, I just sit there, and let words of liquid nothingness wash over me. Teachers.

   I should be listening but I'm not.

   Why am I even here?

   My mind is already in college. Gone. (My body remains, in solid defiance of my wishes,as usual). Or worse, it wanders into the unkept garden of now. I never tend it as I should.

   'I'm a senior! This should be my year! With my friends!' I think it, but I dare not say it. There's no one to say it to, honestly. 'Maybe if I look over my shoulder I'll find them.'

   I look. Nope. Just some strange kid who keeps looking at me. (It's probably because I've been turning around in my seat an absurd number of times since class started, but to wall myself away I say he's a freak and ignore him.) No friends to be found.

   If I had any good sense I wouldn't miss it. But I'm a fool, darn it all, and I miss a place I didn't think I survive. Well, I miss parts of it... 'just the good parts', I pretend

Ah, all those good sad thoughts percolating in my unhappy little head! It's useless to let myself think of such things. It won't help figure out the statistics problem that my teacher has up on the board (the board that is new and shiny and that my old school could never afford). I know all this, and what's worse, I know I should be grateful—to my parents, to myself—for making it out, but I can't. I don't know why, but I want to be a miserable person.

'Eh, no. Gotta be the school.' I counter myself. Back and forth in the ever-playing tennis match in my head. What's out the window? Pretty clouds. Pretty sky. Pretty, pretty world I can't get to because I'm trapped in here. I sneak a peek at my phone. Oh, lookie! I passed three minutes with my internal monologuing! Only forty-eight remaining! Or something!

It's math, and I really should be paying attention. I look at the board in some vague hope that it will pique my interest. Nope. My second nope in five minutes... I'm really starting to scare myself.

Before I can hit the brakes—I forgot to put my emergency brake on, again— I'm backsliding into reverie.

For a split second, I'm cloaked in the must-free air on my new school, and the next... ah, a thousand colognes and perfumes battle each other for supremacy. Fighting a losing battle for second are a cacophony of hairsprays, lotions, and delightfully scented hand sanitizers (like the kind a kid once karate-chopped into my eye in elementary school—no lie— it burned). And then there are the less desirable odors... the smoke trailing out of the decrepit bathrooms, the reek of three-month-old milk that Joe Clavet forgot to take out of his  gym locker again, perspiration, the stench of clothes too seldom washed. All these things aromatizing an air heavy with helplessness and apathy.

   And I miss that?

   I shake my head and try to chalk it up to some back to school thing. I always get funny around that time— I start getting all fuzzy and reminiscent.

   I can't figure out what's wrong with me, and so I give up on trying and look out the window again. I almost look behind me again, but then remember why I don't wanna do that. I check the time: thankfully class is almost over. I can't help but hope that I can pay attention in the next class and be distracted from my prattling mind. I always get tired of it after hearing it go on for a while, it's like listening to an old man's 'back in my day' speech... even from far range I away tell how flawed it is.