The Point Of Life.

Being the new kid

Today is my first day back at second school and it’s my last year before I go to college and have to start working.

I haven’t been to school for approximately 11 months because of the bad things that happened and I guess you could say I was oozing with anxiety. As per usual I woke up at 3am, this is usual for me because I rarely sleep more than 5 hours. I was trying to figure out what to wear whilst reminding myself how to act around other people and by ‘other people’ I mean people my age who weren’t from hospital or fictional characters. An important part of fitting in is looking normal and so I focused on what I was going to wear. My outfits ranged from trying to fit in with the cool kids who wore all labelled outfits, the kids who wished they were alive in the 80’s and the anonymous poet in all black. Needless to say I went with a look that fitted all three categories.

After a burning hot shower whilst questioning my existence as well as everyone else’s I got dry and wore my boxers before catching a glance of myself in the mirror. I was pretty tall, well 5 foot and 11 ½ inches to be exact, and my body was… You could say my body was pretty average. I was raw-boned, to the point you could just make out the outline of maybe three or four of my ribs which entirely depended on how hard you concentrated. My hair was brown and not the type of brown that stands out just the bland brown you imagine in your head when actually saying the word ‘brown’ out loud. My legs were slightly longer than my upper body which is a long term impact of living in the mountains where walking is the quickest way to get anywhere. I was an owner several moles here and there and a few scars which were also a side effect of bad things happening.

My face was what my Dad use to call ‘full of potential’. Yes, my Dad actually use to say that my face was ‘full of potential’ which I always concluded to meaning my face was okay looking but not good enough to be noticed or adored. My face structure was also rather skinny as you could see my jawline to the point that when I ate, you could see it tense and relax. My eyes were dark blue, not some metaphorical ocean-deep-blue just a blue that looked like it belonged next to navy blue on the colour chart. I had less freckles than my sister and in all honesty you could barely see any of them because of how cloudy my skin looked.

Eventually I ended up wearing black jeans, my black and white new balance shoes, a clean white long sleeved t-shirt with my knitted, baggy turtle neck over it and my overly necessary thick coat to protect me from the 84.1% chance of hail, rain, snow and temperatures below zero degrees.

I gave up trying to organize myself at around 4.15am and I switched positions on my bed so that my head wasn’t on the same side as my window but so that my head was on the foot of my double bed so I could watch the sun rise and read with only the sun as a light. It was this point that I realized I was not only going to a school where I couldn’t locate anything but that I didn’t know anyone automatically making me the new kid outcast. The thought depressed me and so I crawled back into bed and shut my eyes, hoping that I would get ill and have to miss school for another 10/11 months.

. . .

After one short tram journey I finally reached my new school. Unwillingly I groaned a curse whilst standing at the entrance of the large and apartment block looking building which led a small gathering of what I assumed where the ‘cool kids’ to laugh outrageously. I glanced at their faces and realized that I knew one of the short and surprisingly muscular boys there. I mean I couldn’t exactly recall his name but I remember having Norwegian with him for a semester. With the humiliation of already being laughed at in the first 10 seconds of seeing my new school I buried my hands in my pockets and walked towards a door labelled ‘Reception this way’.

The rest of the day was a blur of learning the direction of each of my classrooms, finding my way to the canteen, navigating the toilets then going back to reception to hand in my given questionnaire about my first day and out again to the tram stop. In all honesty the school was fine if you minus the fact that no one talked to me, even when we had to work in partners in biology the small Swedish girl next to me physically moved away from me to go and chat with another girl three rows behind us. I guess everyone knew each other and I just didn’t fit into this ongoing rota and so on my first 7 hour day back at school I was completely invisible.