Old Yellow Pages ✓

6. offense

21st october, sunday, 2018

dear diary,

We went to a picnic last year, in class 11. We were divided into different buses, section-wise, and since most of my close friends were in a different section, they were put on bus 9, while I was stuck with my classmates in bus 10. I thought, I have to enter that other bus somehow.

Looking back, I know that if I had simply told a classmate that I was going, and climbed into bus-9 without asking anyone, I could have easily traveled in it. That's what another kid from my class did. No one would have bothered to hunt for me and bring me back.

But for some reason, I asked my teacher if I could change my bus, and she said no, because I was an indisciplined girl and had to be kept in her watchful gaze.

That upset me. I was so stupid. Why the hell did I bother to ask? I had never hesitated to break rules, so why this? I guess it was because I had never done anything of that sort before. Stupid rules. That too on a picnic. People just don't know how to have fun. And now she was definitely going to notice if I tried to sneak out.

Anyway, then a comparatively sweeter teacher came, and I requested her, and she asked me why I wanted to do that. Did I not have friends in my class?

I had so many emotions bottled up at that time.

➤ Loneliness; from not having anyone to talk to whom I genuinely liked. And I had tried. I had changed my company often in the beginning of class 11. I sat with a new kid every second day, talked to them, tried to crack jokes, yet I hadn't found anyone with whom my frequency matched.

➤ Stress; from not being able to score well in tests.

➤ Frustration; from not being able to give time to my hobbies because the academic pressure had suddenly increased so much.

➤ Worry; that if I didn't give time to them and didn't practice them regularly, I would lose my command over them.

➤ Inferiority complex; because most of the kids in my class had already figured out what they wanted to do in their lives and were working towards it, and here I was, stuck with the wrong subjects, like a shitty loser.

➤ And anger; at myself, for being a coward and not even changing my bus when I had the opportunity to.

Without thinking straight, I said, "No, I don't have friends here."

There was a moment of pin-drop silence.

Then the teacher went away, and my classmates all got talking. Later, Ronit, my 'best friend' at that time, told me I had a lot of attitude, and he was angry about it. Now that I think about it, it was always that way with him. He didn't want to understand my problems. He just wanted me to be perfect and happy so he could have a good time with me and not feel embarrassed about who I was.

I felt a pang of deep hatred for him. It went away quickly, but it left a sour taste in my mouth that lasted for the next two months.

Who was he to get angry? What right did he have to tell me how to behave? He was, and still is, a very immature person, and that is why I kept most things from him, and since he had no clue what was going on in my mind, he always reacted in a way that frustrated me.

But it wasn't just him, I realized. Most of my classmates were offended. And why, I couldn't understand. We weren't friends. It wasn't as if I actually mattered to them. Even they knew that we weren't friends, then why did they feel this way about me stating things as they were?

People take things very personally sometimes. They don't realize that how a person reacts to a situation reflects the mental state that he is in, and it has nothing to do with anyone else. I can sometimes say, "I hate you," to my best friend, but that just shows that I'm upset. It does NOT mean that I hate my best friend. 

I apologized later (I can't believe I had to apologize for feeling unwanted), saying it was a misunderstanding. They said no, now they knew how I truly felt about them, and I was against them all and whatnot, and they passed remarks about that for the next three months, till the final exams came and more important things occupied their minds. 

Maybe they were all joking, but jokes must be within a limit. Sherry, my best friend now (I'll write about him soon), was the meanest of them all, the most relentless. I started disliking him. He didn't stop even after I went to him personally and told him I wasn't liking it.

What immature pieces of shit all of them are, I thought.

Sometimes I wonder what my classmates think about me now. Do they still think of me as a girl with attitude and sourness?

  ❄