Logging Off

I listen.

The safest place I had was my own bedroom. I hated being out in public. The anxiety that consumed me was too much most of the time. It wasn't because I didn't enjoy being in a place or seeing something new. In fact those were the moments that reminded me all of this was real and for a reason. It was because others were usually there too.

I liked trying new things and seeing what the world had to offer, not that I got to do so often, but being around people made me feel sick. And if I had to narrow it down even further, it was everyone's eyes on me that made me uncomfortable.

Of all things that required me to leave my house, I mostly hated being at school. I would rather be anywhere than school. Seriously.  Alaska in the middle of a blizzard or you know, hell. Anywhere.

I could tell my teachers thought I was weird because I never really spoke to anyone. They didn't look close enough to see the fear. Sometimes, it felt like they cared about appearing cool to the other students too.

I thought maybe they were just trying to be relatable to the youth to make themselves feel younger. Maybe they had some strange desire to be liked by everyone too.

At the end of it all, people just wanted to matter. I wanted to matter, I didn't want to be relatable to anyone and so I couldn't relate. I preferred being invisible.

My classmates were what made school really so awful. They bullied me and while they had a lot to bully me about, I never really understood why they did. I had a few assumptions.

I never met the expectation of what I should be. His little sister. Georgia's little sister. I wasn't who I was suppose to be and plus, I was an easy target and I was different. People didn't like different.

My mother didn't believe in mental disorders and so I had never been properly diagnosed but enough Google searches led me to the self diagnosis of anxiety. I wasn't entirely sure and I wasn't a doctor so I suffered in silence.

Once, I voiced this to my sister and told me that I didn't suffer from anything. She said that I never tried to make friends. I wasn't sure if my self-diagnosis was correct or if my sister's theory was. Regardless, dealing with how I felt never made it easier trying to make friends. My brain was on a constant loop and the track playing? People hurt you.

So really, I had many moments like this. In fact, it was habitual. Moments where I would walk down the hallway watching the floor and hugging my things tightly to my chest, hoping no one would notice me.

Moments where I would sit alone on the bus, as low in the seat as I could go, hoping no one would notice me. Moments where I wanted to matter but prayed that I didn't.

The bus came to a stop in front of my house. I sucked in a breath and held it as I exited, still hoping I was transparent or something. I always sat behind the driver, close to the door.

A lot of the time, I wished Georgia would let me ride with her to school. Sure, the topics her and her friends would converse about were likely to drive me insane. But that was preferable to risking the antics of my classmates. But most of the time, I was sure Georgia hated me and that really hurt. I loved her more than ever.

As I made my way to my front door, I thought about my school more. The school was too big for its population of only 1,113 students. The county spent millions building a new school. Of course this was because we needed a great, new stadium for Friday night football. We were still lacking necessary textbooks and teaching material.

Everything in the school commemorated sports. The floors and walls were white, adorned with blue decorations that celebrated the Bears. Go Bears, I guess. In between the structures that cased trophies and other awards, you might be lucky to find an anti-bullying poster and maybe some student artwork. The school was a joke and a waste of money. Our old school did fine and instead of new walls, we could have really used a better education.