Fights & Flights

[ one ]

Nate looked around the cafeteria. There were hundreds of students there and he didn't even know a quarter of them. It was strange to know that he had spent almost 4 years with all those people surrounding him and he had only memorized a few faces. 

He looked at his two best friends and he started wondering how much he knew about them. He came to the conclusion that he didn't know much more about his friends than he knew about the strangers in his school. He knew their names, he knew the type of stuff that friends usually know, - like their favourite sports team or which girl they wouldn't mind dating - he had visited their houses and he had played football with them; but did he really know Adam or Max? No.

All those thoughts led Nate to think about something else. Did his friends really like him as much as they affirmed? Were they just using him? Were they desesperately waiting for him to fail?  

In reality, Nate thought that nobody ever really knew each other. No one knew what the person sitting next to them really felt or what their deepest secrets were. People lied all the time and that was humanity's biggest problem. People faked smiles, some faked being happy and a few even faked liking other people. What was shown on the outside was just the positive side of each person, a side that seemingly was perfect - the only problem was that we live in an imperfect world.

Plus, everybody seemed to be just so desperate to try and fit in that most of the time they forgot to be themselves. Society tells you to be yourself and to love diversity but then crushes your uniqueness with judgmental stares. There are rules about how you need to act, what you need to say, the clothes you should wear or the way you ought to think. Nate hated having to follow rules and he despised even more how much he worried about them. He felt like the real Nate was closed in a cage inside of himself and fear was holding the keys that would lead to his freedom. He believed he didn't know who he truly was anymore.