Too Serious

Isolation

It was the summer between seventh and eighth grade that I began to realize the sacrifices my parents made for my sister and I to live comfortably in a free country. They both had travelled so far from home to pursue a happy life with a five year-old me in the middle of a middle class suburb in Missouri. Only to live a life full of hardship and troubles to maintain their family, which added a new member five years later.

My mother dropped me off and picked me up from school everyday before dropping off and picking up my sister at daycare. She hardly spoke other than to ask how my day was and how I did on a test. The bags under her eyes were a telltale sign of her exhaustion and I didn't blame her at all for not making more conversation. Her job at the local supermarket required her to stock up half the store, she often picked me up sporting a new bruise or scratch from the boxes at work.

My father came home every morning from his job as a delivery man for a big bread baking company, he worked through the night, every night, driving through the dark streets. When he came home, he slept through the day, but I could tell it wasn't enough. He still had those bags under his eyes and exhausted raspy voice. He often too came home sporting bruises from the crates of bread he had to carry.

I began to think of their hardships more and more and started to think of ways I could possibly help, but to no avail. I once even asked my mom if I could do anything to help. She let out a long and deep sigh and said "Mari, por favor estudia duro para no tener que pasar por tanto trabajo", I took her words to heart. She didn't want me to help her, she wanted me to help myself, she wanted me to study so I wouldn't have to go through what she was going through.

And it was around this time that I decided I was being a nuisance with my childish banter and unproductive thinking at school. I felt guilty for not taking school as seriously as others, I felt guilty for not doing the one thing my mother said I should be doing. From then on I wanted to be the best student I could be, I wanted to be focused on school and my grades, I just wanted to help.

When school started again that August, I was determined to concentrate more on my studies than anything else. The vain conversations I once immersed in with my friends were completely out of focus. In fact I considered any conversation at all a waste of my time. I started talking less and less, my once short replies of yes and okays were cut short to simple nods. I think that's when people started distancing themselves, when my friends began to sit at another table during lunch, if I'm being honest, I didn't notice it at first but everyday one or two friends would sit somewhere else. Eventually it was just my table, not that I minded, I usually spent lunch revising for my next class or reading a book anyways, though I think deep down it stung a bit.

My antisocial ways continued throughout the entire year, even throughout spring, what was once my favorite season. I was still on the tennis team at school and as an eighth grader and the best girl on the team, I was co-captain along with another boy I'd never talked to. Practice would mainly consist of drills, which would always earn complaints, but I never once uttered anything to disrespect my coach's efforts to make us better players. Everyone on the team thought I was a bitch, understandable. I knew what people came to think of me that year, regardless I didn't feel the need to talk to anyone, nor did I want to. I found whatever said between my peers to be utterly boring and quite annoying.

It's amazing what you can see once you're just observing and not interacting. The biggest realization that came with my muteness was that no one really knows what they're saying. I guess when you're thirteen you don't really know much. That much I knew.

The year flew by and soon it was time for high school. What everyone depicts as the absolute hell hole. But how bad could it possibly be?