Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Altered

Doig, Beki. "Bipolar 5." Flickr. Yahoo!, 15 Mar. 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
“Don’t eat that.”


“What?”

“Don’t eat that, you’ve had enough, look at you,” I subconsciously rubbed my stomach as she said those words to me looking down at my stomach. I threw away my half eaten apple and trudged to my next class, feeling uncomfortable and self deprecating. As I passed my classmates I avoided their weary glances. I sat in my seat during class; I couldn't ignore the intense feeling of stupidity, as everyone answered questions I didn’t know the answers to. I could feel Debbie's judgemental thoughts as if they were my own. I was shaken out of my thoughts by the sound of my name, being called by my agitated teacher.


“Go on, answer the question,” Debbie taunted. My thoughts were all jumbled in my head as I tried to make sense of what was on the board. Suddenly, all the previous knowledge I ever had left my head and all I could do was gape like a fish.


“Bet you know the answer,” she said in a menacing tone. I stuttered trying to find the words in my head, everyone looked at me with amusement in their eyes, and all I wanted was to disappear into a vacant place.


My teacher looked at me expectantly; his eyebrows rising as he awaited my answer.  I answered the first thing that came into my head and saw his disapproving glance afterwards. As the class started laughing, the sinking feeling approached once more. The laughing stopped as soon as a loud bell indicated that the class was now over.


I stared out of the tinted bus window, trying to make sense of the surroundings outside of the tinted window as well as inside my own altered mind.


“How was your day?” Debbie asked slowly.


“It was okay.”


“No, it wasn’t,” she droned into my head.


"Well... I... it was fine, the nice new girl spoke to me today. She seems like the type of person I'd be friends with."


“You don’t have a type of person you’d be friends with. You don’t have friends. Everyone hates you. Look at you” The bus hauled to a stop and I got off the moving vehicle and walked down the street towards my house. I kicked a stone as I walked home, my grey Chuck Taylor's connecting with the pavement in an odd rhythm. I saw the familiar green door I grew up with and picked up my pace; I was greeted with the smell of cinnamon as soon as I walked in.


“Mom, I’m home” I called out through the house “I brought Debbie with!”

“Honey, I keep telling you, we don’t know anyone named Debbie, that’s your name,” as she laughed and shook her head.




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