Short Stories

Who are we ?

School is like an African Safari. You have the Lions at the top, the peak of the social peaking order. Everyone wanting to be them, with their speed and popularity. The cheetahs and Jaguars trying to be the king and queen, but never reaching their goal. You then have the Zebras and Gazelles, moving around in tight packs, never letting anyone infiltrate them. Then there are the Hippos and the giraffes one trying to be the other. Never happy with the shape of their own body. And then there is me. A tiny little dormouse, a lion stuck inside a dormouse.

I'm sick of hiding. I want to be able to walk down those long school corridors and be noticed, for the person who I really am, and not an easy target for obesities to be shouted at.  I want to be picked first in class to take part in discussions, not put in a group by the teacher and then left to work on my own because no one wants me there. You see those posters as much as I do, you know the ones. Telling you how hurtful your words can really be, you sigh in sympathy saying ill never say that to another and yet here I am, the words as hurtful as ever.

I'm no different from you, I listen to Rhianna, Bruno Mars, Take That, JLS, Ellie Goulding, Katie Perry, Cee Lo Green, Cheryl Cole, Pink, Usher, The Saturdays, Lady Gaga, Beyonce. I read the same Magazines week in week out. Laugh at the men overheard in MORE! along with every other 16-24 year old all over the country. I sit down on an evening to watch Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Eastenders as does the population of Britain. I go to school, I do my homework,  I stay up late and believe it or not but I do actually back chat my parents. What makes a Lion so different from a Gazelle? They both eat to survive, and live in the same habitat. They co-exist in a kind of harmony. What makes me Different from you?

When there is a new Kid people change. They all become the Cheshire cat with big smiles and friendly eyes. Everyone wants them to be part of their own group. I do get to talk to the new kid sometimes. I hand them a forgotten pencil or a text book they don't yet have and the moment I mutter my name another group has flocked in, pushing me away once more. The new kid moves from one group to another passed around like a chew toy. Once everyone has had a taste they fight over the new kid like a pack of hyenas with the last scrap of meat. No one ever fights over me.

When you shout out names, you laugh and joke. I cry and break. You think it is comical to call me fat. And yet you don't notice that I have become anorexic because of you. But you still continue to call me fat when there is hardly an inch on my bones. You say my clothes are ugly, and ask if I got them from a charity shop. Afterwards I see you walking out the shops wearing the clothes I wore, but by then I have shredded and burned them, trying to get rid of the memory. I'm a little dormouse, hunted and preyed upon because I'm an easy target.

There are times when I don't know who I am. Am I a dormouse really? Or can I be a gazelle, Zebra or even a Lioness. Who am I? How can people label me as something when they don't even know who I am? Am I simply here for your amusement, or is there a greater purpose to my life? In ten years time where will I be? Could I be the head of a major cooperation raking in the money, where every minute I spend at work earns me a few thousand? I could break out of this; I could become a Lion while you become a dormouse. I could get a major job, while you are stuck in McDonalds. I believe that I can become anything. I can be anyone.

These are all just fanciful dreams. In our society its not about what you know, or the qualifications that you have. Its about the people that you know. The ones with connections. A dormouse has no connection. So why should I try? I'm doomed to fail, to be preyed upon my entire life.

This is my goodbye. I hope you can forgive me. I do not want to take the route that I must.