It is five twenty-one in the morning. I am eight years old. I am sitting on my floor. I feel really sick and I don’t know why. I haven’t eaten anything nasty and I felt okay when I went to bed last night. I felt okay but then I remembered that I have to go to school tomorrow and that makes me feel a little funny, like the corners of everything are spinning a little. I think I’m a little bit afraid.
I don’t know how I can help myself anymore, I have to go there tomorrow, and Mum says that it’s just ‘not an option’ to come and go as I please. Even though I wouldn’t go to school at all if I didn’t have to. I hug my knees to my chest and try to imagine a world where no one could get me, a world where I am safe from all the hurt, from all the people who need to see my cry. I don’t want to have to explain myself to my teachers, my mother, and my classmates. I don’t want to have to try so hard to keep happy. Everyone wants to pull me down; I think it must make them feel a little better. The problem with this is that even though they feel ten times better I feel one hundred times worse; it’s proportional to the square of. Sometimes I get a little bit annoyed but it’s mainly with myself for being such a pushover and not being good enough to make them stop. I think I deserve it though and sometimes that makes me feel a little sad.
I feel very sad right now, everything feels all wrong and I don’t know how to make it right. It is so stupid, it’s my fault; of course it is. I should just cope with people bullying me, the teachers don’t mind and none of the other people in my class care. I think that I am just supposed to be hurt.
For just one second I wonder what it would be like to hurt someone else, whether it makes you feel better than them. I wonder who I could hurt- even if I had the chance. I don’t know if I could actually do that to someone else. I glance down at my arm. It is white with only a few darker bruises and flecks. I take a tiny amount on skin between my fingers and I pinch myself. I am surprised- it doesn’t hurt one bit.
|