So, I've finally gotten some writing done. Not a lot, mind, but enough to make me happy. It's been pretty slow-going, though, so I hope you like what I've done so far. I've changed the beginning up a bit, and this is still part of the introduction, but I guess I want to know if you guys like what I'm writing before I post any more. Here it is:
Confusion
had become the dominating theme of my life.
It happened without warning. I lost
my footing on what had never seemed to be a tenuous reality, lost my sense of
complacency. Everything I did rode on a feeling of insecurity and hesitation: it
seemed as though nothing I did was right. For the first time since I could
remember, I began to question myself, my decisions, and the path I had chosen
(a path that was not really a path at all, but rather an agreement between the
two halves of my brain that I would be allowed to bide my time in
deciding…whatever it is I was supposed to decide). I felt like I could no longer
be the strong, independent individual everyone had always considered me to be.
Of course, the newness of my situation forced me to invariably maintain a
façade that conveyed this image, while effectively hiding my “inner turmoil,” a
clichéd label for what I had cynically considered to merely be an
attention-seeking act employed only by those desperate enough to do so.
But
there I was, in exactly the same position. I struggled to find answers that
seemed entirely out of my reach, and that in itself required an explanation
that could not – or would not – reveal itself.
So maybe it was this that resulted in
my reaction. At least, that’s what I told myself, sitting on the floor in the
empty hallway right outside my first period class.
It was the first day of school, and I’d
arrived only ten minutes before the main bell, the one that told everyone that
stress was about to once again become very much a part of their lives. My first
period class, World History, was inconveniently located in the remotest corner
of the building, giving me a perfect excuse for going there directly from the
parking lot, bypassing any and all opportunity to commingle with the friends
that I had missed so very little.
To my surprise, the class was already
full, although there was a pair of empty desks standing at the very back of the
classroom near the windows that seemed reserved for me. I wound my way through
the bags left carelessly on the floor to the desk right beside the window and
sat down, dropping my tote on top of the other to ward off potential seating
partners.
Looking around the room, I realized
that every other seat was filled, but not by the bookish types that I had come
to associate with History courses. A third of the boy’s soccer team was there,
along with our star basketball player. A gaggle of girls, apparently dressed
for the beach, surrounded them, their voices high-pitched and incessant. A few
of the Brains were there, too, sitting with impeccable posture at the very
front, often shooting annoyed glances back at their more popular peers.
And then there were the people that
composed the vast majority of our school’s population: Everyone Else, or the EE’s,
the ones that did not fit into any of the defined categories (consisting of the
Brains, obnoxiously studious students that did not have any true intellect, but
rather an immense and unnecessary knowledge of all of the school’s textbooks;
the Athletes, unimaginably ignorant boys and girls whose sole purpose lay in
missing numerous classes on account of yet another
basketball-soccer-volleyball-you-name-it tournament; the Girls, shallow,
fad-obsessed females completely unaware of the outside world, preferring to
surround themselves with expensive toys and Athlete boys to increase their
so-called appeal; and the Dead Ones, so often drunk, high, and/or passed out
that teachers had ceased to realize they were still enrolled), but sometimes
wished they did, because even the Dead Ones seemed to garner more attention
than they did. You may think I’m kidding, but there is a section in every
yearbook that names the following year’s potential Brains, Athletes, Girls, and
Dead Ones. It is a baffling school tradition that cannot be deterred.
There was another category, though
rarely mentioned and never written. It was the one that the “definable” ones
feared, because it was the one thing they could never be, and yet everyone wanted
to become: the Indefinable.
