Time
is difficult to understand but easy to accept. That’s my conclusion. Digging
deep into the far corners of the cerebellum can result in a sleepless night or
two, or three, or more. It is 5:21. Cerebellum… crumble eel, celeb lemur… That one’s too hard. Everyone’s been here
I think. I can’t be the only one at Clear Ridge still up thinking about why we
have thoughts, dreaming about sleeping and waiting for morning to come. It
always boils down to concepts that I don’t think I’ll grasp.
It makes a smooth transition from staying up
mindlessly watching Bill Nye re-runs until roughly two, to settling down and
thinking about some philosopher. I play this game where I try to debate them on
their own philosophies, I usually end up winning, but I am both sides of the
argument. That’s when the anxiety hits. What if both my parents have died in
their sleep? I get up, go check. I’m always surprised that I’m surprised that
they were alive. Repeat these thoughts for the next hour or so. Then the
depression nestles its way into bed with me like a blanket of black sludge. I
feel trapped. My friends could all have died tonight. What would I do? What if
Russia just bombed an innocent town? I role-play the tragic thoughts that those
fictitious families feel for fake freedom from the thoughts the feed on my
mind. But it doesn’t help.
It’s 5:58. Morning.
It’s 5:58. Morning.
I never found my place, at least that’s what they
are telling me I’m supposed to find. Basketball didn’t go well. Neither did
ceramics. That was freshman year and I was off to a poor start at Clear Ridge One
could say I never recovered. I shouldn’t even been at Clear Ridge, this
breeding ground of human filth. The people that pass me in masses and pretend
like I’m a ghost are just genuinely bad people. Maybe I’m the bad one, and maybe
these are what people are supposed to be like and maybe I should adapt like
Darwin told me, but I wouldn’t “be myself”.
I’ve been in and out of therapy for a while, and I
can’t remember when I start. I don’t really sleep that much anymore. It’s all her
fault.
The day is hazy in my memory, but I remember her
crying. She didn’t try to hide them as them streaked down her cheek. They fell
like boulders. There are times when you shed tears with strength, with
perseverance, with courage. This wasn’t one of those times. She sat on the
hazel couch in our small apartment six years, four months and seventeen days
ago and wept like a weak animal while I looked on in disgust. I was too young
to attack the man that eerily crept out of the backdoor as she spouted excuses,
but I couldn’t. Her lies were white noise. It wasn’t his fault, he probably
didn’t know she was married. It was all her fault.
I was feeling sick and since I lived so close to
Clear Ridge, I chose to walk home in pain rather than call her, that way she
wouldn’t yell at me. It was roughly one in the afternoon, so the walk was
comforting even in pain due to the welcoming spring of Phoenix. My father was
working while I had walked in on my mother, and I immediately told him. He
wasn’t surprised, maybe he expected it. My mom and this man were right on the
couch and I opened the door not expecting it, as if anyone could. I was old
enough to know what was going on. He jumped up and left as soon as his empty
eyes hit me. She was screaming. I think that’s when I found out I wasn’t a
normal kid. I didn’t cry, I didn’t yell, I just knew that I would never look at
my mother the same. My parents divorced four months later. I’m with my dad now.
I don’t trust women anymore. I don’t trust anyone anymore.
But then I met her. I know you are sighing as
another troubled teen finds his true love, but I swear this one is different.
Maybe I’m biased.
Middle School was a strange time for me. They gave
me a lot of tests with really nice ladies and I usually didn’t have to do much
of the work that was assigned to my friends. I was given the work for a couple
grades ahead of me. It didn’t matter, it was still incredibly easy. Around 6th
grade is when I realized this was becoming a social issue for me, not that I
didn’t have enough of those problems. I couldn’t make friends in either grades.
I was trapped in a nether of too smart for my classmates, but too young for the
older kids. I hated it, I just wanted to live a normal life at the time. I
still do. I started failing the tests to get moved back down. I hated being
smart, and knowing all the answers means it’s easy to get them wrong. My
parents couldn’t afford for me to get to a snobby, “everyone is special in
their own way” high school. My parents didn’t seem to care that I was so smart,
but I cared even less. I got a 162 out of 200 on the Phoenix Public School
Entrance Exam on purpose. An 81%. That’s a C. I was finally average.
And about three weeks into high school I had
realized what an awful, immature mistake I had made. On the third day of my
freshman year, Brizzy Kleins asked if Oregon was one of the original thirteen
colonies, justifying it with her in-depth expertise at “Oregon Trail”. I
watched Renata Williams try to multiply eight times four, turns out the answer
is not twelve. This continued every day for the first year of my Clear Ridge
experience. I sat in the back of class rooms calculating how long a “bathroom
break” could be without it getting unreasonable. Through trial and error in all
of my classes, I came to the conclusion of about nine minutes. Nine minutes so
I could get away from all the other insignificant kids that I shouldn’t be
around. Nine minutes so I could replay the day I watched my mom cry over and
over again. Nine minutes so I could reason with Nietzsche, Foucault, and Zeno.
The other forty-four minutes of my class were spent spinning pens and drowning
out teachers. I still aced the tests.
Year two was better. Two years, nine months and four
days ago Mr. Schelmer marked me off a point on an essay for using the word
“better”. I still spite him for it, I never missed points, and he didn’t ever
tell me that I wasn’t allowed to use it. It was November and rather than
lethargically droning through each class period like freshman year I decided to
challenge myself. I was reading more novels, I was doing extra homework problems,
I had put down my controllers for the first semester and picked up a trigonometry
calculator. I still had no concept of a social life or relationships; I grew up
sheltered and my parent’s relationship made me feel like the answer would
always be “Google it”. My first semester of year two came to a close, my only
lost point being from Mr. Schelmer. What an ass. I hate this school. The second
semester, my teachers noticed I was doing so well that they wanted me to take
junior classes. I had been down this road before, and I promptly declined. My
mother was indifferent, as usual. She never cared about anything. My dad was
insistent that this was “my one-way ticket to Harvard”. I didn’t need a ticket,
I argued. He signed me up behind my back after a day of discussion. I called
upon my early grade school days, saying how it messed my life up forever. High
school is different, high school is different, high school is different. No it’s
not. These kids are just blow up dolls of the lifeless creatures of 3rd
grade. They have no humility, empathy, or grace. They are dumb, evil and will
do whatever they can to hurt me for no other reason than entertainment.
He signed me up the following day for 2nd
semester junior year classes. I hated him. Not nearly as much as my mom, but I hated
him.
Until the next day when I met Lloris. French, and
she looked the part. I know, I get it. What
kind of name is “Lloris”?! Is he buying a croissant? No, no I’m not. But
she was sweet, golden brown, and different on the outside than the inside. Long
brown hair, shorter than me, sky blue eyes. She was wearing a faded pink crop
top with a leather skirt. Her face was slightly disfigured due to acne, but you
could look past it. Her teeth were white and shiny but about as straight as
Freddie Mercury. She came with a hard copy of Harry Potter on the first day I
met her, I can’t remember which one. She sat next to me, unheard of.
“Hey.” she mumbled, it was a morning class. She
couldn’t be talking to me, maybe through her headphones?
“Hey man are you like taking a test for another
class? Sorry to bug you.” She was talking to me. What. How. I had only seen
this in the movies.
“No, I’m transferred in. Sorry I was just tired.” I
played it passive. Conversation is a chess match and I had been practicing like
Bobby Fisher.
“Oh, no! You are tired? Let’s run you to the nearest
cot and get you a little nappy time! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were tired.” I was used to bullying, but I knew
from her sweet tone that she was just witty. A smart, witty girl. We ended the
conversation there, but it was a win, I promise. I went four days without
saying a word to her, I didn’t know what to say. Friday approaches, she walks
in, I’m always first to class, yet she still sits next to me with all of her
options.
“Hey.” She was stern this time.
“I know I’m supposed to talk to you. I’ve seen the
movies. We talk before class for like a week, then I start walking you to your
next class. As a “joke” you steal my phone and throw your number in it. We text
and text and text and then call and call and call until suddenly we are a
couple.” I was praying that I was right. Because if I was wrong Lloris would
tear me to shreds with her charm and wits, a more gaping blow than just the
usual insults.
“Good morning.” Passive. She copied me.
“Am I right?” This had to be the worst way to ask
this I’m positive, but I got to the point.
“Yeah. I’m tired. Yeah.”
Checkmate.
It’s my second semester of junior year. I woke up
this morning in the middle of the night. It was the day my mother cried. I don’t
feel bad anymore. I still don’t trust anyone. Except Lloris. She’s kind of
amazing. We’ve been together for 1 year, 7 months, 14 days, 12 hours and about
4 minutes, and I’ve loved her every step of the way. She taught me to trust.
The relationship is typical of high school so I didn’t want to bore you with
mundane descriptions of dates and conversations that end with hearts and hugs.
Lloris got me past what I thought I never could get past. I still argue with philosophers,
I still watch Bill Nye. I still anagram, and I still have anxiety and depression.
But I love my mother. I don’t like her, but I love her. That’s a concept that I
think I’ve grasped.
