The stares were heavy, pressing in on me, making me want to cower away and hide anywhere, nowhere, fall into a neverending pit, and fly past the farthest star. just to get away from the staring and the whispers and the glares. The disapproving glances, the disgusting thoughts on the guys faces broadcasted for all to see, the teachers pitying stares, the people falling suddenly quiet when you pass. It weighs on you, making the pit of your stomach a festering pit of embarrassment,, fear, anger, confusion, sadness, stress, anxiety of social estrangement.
You get headaches, you cry without realizing, you become so focused on ignoring the emotions that you don’t react strongly to anything, good or bad. You say poisonous things to the people you care about, you lock yourself in the closet and sleep for days. You start to have symptoms of human sickness, throwing up, passing out, hot flashes, inability to move. You smile and say that you’re alright when, just the other night you had a horrible argument with your mother, almost got kicked out of the house, realized that you have four projects due this week, your period started, you have no pads, and you nearly fainted backwards down a flight of stairs. Your friends ask you how your day was and you smile, shake your head a little, crinkle your nose. Okay, you say with a shrug.
Even if you were leered at by the creepy people next to the bus stop, the bus driver let you out three stops past the stop outside your school in the morning, you don’t know how you’re getting home, and even though you nearly threw up and have an awful headache, you can’t go home because mom’s at work and you don’t have a fever.
Even if you just broke down crying in the middle of class because you don’t deal with noise well, and you’re on your last pad at lunchtime, and your friends all use tampons, and some guy called you a slut for not walking fast enough even though you were carrying an instrument and you backpack was ridiculously heavy, and when you got to lunch you realized that your lunch is back in the locker room, but the coach is gone for the day and you can’t get a lunch because its late and what they have left you're allergic to.
Even when you can’t get out of bed because you’re afraid of school, but don’t know why; and you’re so nauseous you are permanently attached to the spare trashbin so that you can move around; and when you get back to school a guy in your Intro-to-Law mock trial makes you want to kill him, then follow alice’s example and make a sea of tears; and you’re stressed out.
Even if you just got notified that even though your grade point average was good, you won’t be getting credit and might have to repeat the year because you were absent too much; not to mention the small problem of not having the right medicine or the right diagnoses’ for all of your medical problems; the cherry on top being, your talent of pretending you’re not affected when you really are has made many people think you are some crazy psycho bitch who needs to be locked up, and you throw up everything you’d eaten in the last 24 hours every time your period comes.
Even if all of that had happened, the worst you will say your day was to your friends at school is “Could’ve been better.” Because you are a girl in middle school, and that’s what you’re expected to do, even if many would like to say differently.
