Cyan Sleeves

Monday Morning

I hate Mondays.

I mean, most days suck, and on Wednesday we have PE (screw Wednesday), but I think Monday is the worst. I hate getting up early for practically no reason, and I hate the cold, and I'm honestly getting tired of wearing emo-esque sweaters. I hated that tomorrow was a Monday. And, believe it or not, I don't hate everything. Really.

I just can't stand... living.

My name is Oswald, but people who know me call me Oz, and by extension, my nerdy friend calls me 'Wizard of Oz', or 'Wizard'. I told him if he shortened it again and called me 'Whiz', I'd kick him out of our two-man club – but in all honesty, he's my only friend.

I'm just like basically every other twelve year old. I wake up way too early, and I probably go to bed way too late, though I don't have the honesty to tell anyone. I go to school, find girls gross, and ignore everything that everyone says, just like I'm supposed to at this age. Looking at me, you'd think I'm the perfect carbon copy of your annoying older or younger brother when he was my age. But barring all that, I just have one, not so normal flaw.

I'm confident that the universe hates me.

It's nothing I did, right? I ask myself this every day. Now, I've screwed up pretty ridiculously in my life time. I'm not going to get into much detail here, because you're one of the few people who don't know yet, but trust me, I've made decisions that no one I've even met has, even beyond the little dares others pass around in my seventh grade. But I think I was cursed with bad luck before I did anything stupid.

"Don't you agree?" I whispered to my brand new stuffed animal. I would never tell anyone, but stuffed animals were incredibly good at listening, even if they weren't as talkative as I'd like them to be. I used my hand to make the little rabbit move his head up and down, and felt an odd feeling of satisfaction, as if someone really, truly got me.

"Wow, even I can tell I'm a dweeb." I sighed and set the toy down on the floor. The moonlight shone through the curtain, a surprisingly clear night for late January. I was huddled in a blanket, trying to dispel the cold, waiting for any sense of exhaustion or sleepiness to kick in, but it never did. Above everything else in the world, I hated the cold, and I'll probably never be able to sleep with it lingering.

I'm really not a hateful person. Hateful people don't talk to their stuffed animals at night about their problems, I'm certain of it. It can just be hard when you feel like everything hates you, and that's how I feel all the time. Cold and dark, and like at any moment, things are going to fall apart. I pick myself back up and try to grab the missing pieces, but there's always something left over, missing. I think it might be my joy.

I didn't want to feel alone anymore. I picked the stuffed rabbit up again and held it. "Don't ever tell anyone how much I care about you, little guy," I whispered. It was somewhat similar to something my mom and dad said to me when I was younger. "You will never know how much I love you."

It was too late at night to go bother my parents, so I settled on holding the rabbit under my arm and going back to 'sleep'; the part of the night where I close my eyes and quietly regret things I've done. Of course, I would never tell anyone that, either. I have a lot of secrets. Some are big, some are small, and the one that people think is the craziest is just a decoy for the real problem. I know, I know, I'm being vague.

Can't we just pretend I'm normal for one second?