I can Change...

Never again, I said, and look where I ended up – back in the same place, as if a yo-yo had pulled me back. I never can seem to move on.

Never mind that you have problems, on top of everything else- SHE says -just mind your schoolwork.

And I did. I minded it at school. I didn’t mind it at home, though, because that’s different, and look how I ended up again. Stuck and wanting to leave the office and go home where I can sleep.

Oh, it’s easy to see now where I went wrong – one assignment here and there is enough to undo you these days. Sad but no matter how much I want to learn I can’t unless it really interests me.

I know all they teach, anyways. Writing compositions for dummies, how to start a computer, what happens in a story or poem, how to say feed me in a foreign language – stuff I know.

I guess I should just shut up and do my work. That’s what most people do.

But I see more than they do. The system is the problem – if a kid actually knows anything, they still make her do all the baby work to prove it.

So just prove it, then, and then you can leave – SHE says.

But I want to learn things. That’s what school is for. The school is failing if they can’t find something I can learn that I don’t already know. Least, that’s how I see it.

But maybe I should explain – I mean, it just sounds like I’m complaining (which of course I am). But that’s not all.

I have problems, like SHE says. But the problems aren’t enough to actually give me a break, just enough to hamper me from doing what I should.

Like take, for instance, the fact that my parents are divorced. That I’m the middle-man some of the time, and was permanently thus when I was a child. In my formative years, if you want to be psycho-analytic about it.

Tons of kids have divorced parents – not of your behavior, stop whining – SHE says.

Right, and are your parents divorced? I mouth off. Get sent out of the office.

And she ignores the problems.

Like, take for instance that I can’t sleep at night.

She says – take some Benadryl, exercise, read a boring book, do homework etc. etc.

But I WANT to sleep. I can’t quiet my mind down, it just runs around and around at night like a car on a race track. I get these ideas – about writing, especially – and I have to go through with them at that moment else they’re lost and who knows when a moment of pure genius can spark something amazing?

She just shakes her head, and tells me to sleep, for the love of Mary.

I guess this means she’s a Catholic.

And take for instance this – I can’t do math. The numbers are spiky and cruel and just hurt my brain thinking about them.

At this she always rolls her eyes.

But it’s true. I can’t do math. I can’t think straight through a problem, and I know I could be good at it if I could slow down but – guess what – I can’t.

And take for instance that I get depressed – but don’t mention that to the principal else you’d get put on a 72 hour fun-ship – and I can’t get out of being depressed. I stare at the walls like a zombie and just wish that I could die, or be someone else, or something. And it has nothing to do with my day, like she says, or my hormones. It is in me, and I can’t break it.

Bet tons of kids feel this way, and none of them can make anybody see because they’re too blind. They only see in you what they want to see.

I fail, therefore I am stupid.

I talk, therefore I am a nuisance.

I cry, therefore I am – crazy? I don’t know.

And being depressed is never an excuse because so many kids use it. They say they’re depressed when they’re really just sad. But being depressed is wanting to rot into the floor, to stop breathing to stop thinking to stop…existing. And wanting to die isn’t normal.

They think it is. And I say it’s the system doing this to us.

Six kids in the hardest program at school killed themselves just last year. And that is normal.

Fix your own problems; you are the change that you want in yourself – cheery signs in the office.

Wish I could fix my own problems but I can’t make myself work can’t make myself change – if I could, I would believe me- I say. They shake their heads, have heard it before. From me, from others they’ve heard it. Have heard it so much they’re cynical, and I don’t blame them.

Get me help! After school, get a competent math teacher, someone who actually cares about literature – something – desperation.

She shakes her head, and says - sorry there is nothing else I can do for you. You have to change yourself.

I leave the office again at this. So many days spent in here, waiting. Because one day – one day I’ll show them.

One day everyone will hear my name and say oh yeah – I know who she is. And one day I’ll be on TV, smiling and laughing in a spring-yellow dress, laughing at something, looking beautiful and smart and everything I will be.

And one day, I will see my name in a newspaper because I will be the best at something, anything. I’ll be cooking on TV with Rachael Ray or Tony Danza or Emeril, getting cookie batter all over the place and smiling, on top of the world.

One day...

And never again, I said, and look where I ended up.