Smile On His Lips and Cuts On His Hips (Jalex)

Three - Not Good Enough

I folded a slip into neat thirds, shoving it into the pocket of my skinny jeans. It was a flyer for college workshops, handed out during the last advisory of the first week of school.

The piece of paper advertised a class where they’d taught how to go about applying for college. Apparently it educated on writing entrance essays, filling out the appropriate forms, what schools would be easiest to get into, how many community service hours you needed to apply for Harvard, whatever.

The only problem with applying to college for me was – well, I had no idea where I wanted to go. Or  any fucking idea about what I was doing with my life at all. 

Pushing aside the fact that I’d never been into extracurricular activities and passing out broth in soup kitchens, I didn’t even know which of the remaining colleges I had some semblance of a chance of getting into I wanted to apply to.

You know all those little kids, who had their dreams of growing up to be superheroes and pirates? Or those young girls who wanted to be fairy princesses and beauty queens. They got older, fantasies evolving into living a responsibility lacking life as a rock star or professional football player, next Taylor Swift or world renowned vet. Well, I’d never done had those big shot dreams.

The thing was, I basically had no confidence in myself whatsoever. Not in the looks or personality category – no, I was all too aware that I was attractive, funny and charming, though my complete asshole moments were more frequent than I’d like to admit. The girls throwing themselves at me over the past years, undeterred by the constant reassurance that I was gay, had solidified those thoughts.

It was more that I just wasn’t really good at anything. Almost everyone had their thing: Zack’s Dulaney’s star quarterback, Rian’s the school genius, my sister May was Junior Miss Dance of Maryland. Everyone has that special something that they’re just naturally fucking amazing at, or work their asses off at until they become the best there is in it. 

I didn’t have that thing. I’d never been motivated enough to pressure myself into perfection in any subject, and wasn’t born with an astounding talent. A barely maintained B average and complete failure in anything that involved balls – the ones used in sports – knocked out those categories. No artistic talent and a voice that had the deaf cringing didn’t help, either. There just wasn’t anything I was amazing at.

Sure, I could play a couple decent sounding notes on my beloved guitar, and got frequent praise from my English teachers, but that was about it: I was no Tom Delonge or Shakespeare, and never would be.

So whenever a dream started to develop, something I thought would be fun and would actually enjoy spending my life doing, it was immediately crusheded by the thoughts of, Oh, no, you’re not good enough at that, no one would hire you, and, that would take years of school, you’re too lazy, it’ll never work. I’d never found anything that suited me, or that I had the confidence to pursue.

The fact that I also had absolutely no idea where I wanted to live when I moved out of Baltimore didn’t help narrow down my options, either. All I knew on was that I wanted to get the fuck out of that city.

The part of the city that I lived in was overrun with pretentious snobs and school obsessed parents, placing far too high a value on grades and looks. Not the kind of place I wanted to spend the rest of my life in, nor where I wanted my kids to grow up. If I ever had any – another on the endless list of things I wasn’t sure about.

I’d love to live around woods somewhere, since being surrounded by green nature just put me completely at ease. Some of my favorite memories from the recently terminated summer were when we went camping and I spent half the trip lying on dead tree, shutting out the world with my iPod.