Now I’m home and there is nothing to do but replay the whole embarrassing scene in my mind. “When will I ever be able to forgive myself for being simply myself?” I ponder aimlessly. Sometimes I have an idea, that maybe while I sleep, the world is creating an obstacle course especially for me. An obstacle made not of ropes and tires, but of questions. Silly questions about the meaning of privacy and seclusion. About the results of hatred and greed in the world. This is as far as I have gotten: Hate is the spawn of ignorance. People hate because they are uninformed, and everyone is afraid of the unknown. Abuse is created out of self-hate. You think making others suffer will make them understand how you feel when your own self conscience beats up your soul. Maybe they’ll pity you. Murder, is the cause of jealousy or vengeance, whether it be on that person or on God. Do you people realize how many people blame their troubles and strife on God?

I grew up in a Catholic school where such things were considered blasphemous. Everyday at exactly 9:00, all thirty us in my class would march in a single file line over to the cavernous Cathedral and ‘pray’. We were told to pray for our loved ones and sometimes told to pray for the sick. Of course I never prayed. Ever. I was always too preoccupied with watching how the priest’s top lip went slightly up and how white spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. It was gross, yes, but entertaining. Either that or focus my mind on a single thought for longer than three seconds! I hated school. I remember sitting on the scratchy, cheap green woven seats of the church. A couple of times I refused to kneel. My excuse was that I didn’t think the sermon was logical or even sometimes I simply stated that I had bad knees. Mostly I just wanted to see the Principle turn purple with uncertain rage. After all I was only in about 6th grade, and I spent enough time in detention to get to know the principal pretty well. Usually she started off with the same question: “Why must you always be testing the limits Samantha?! Why?!” She would splutter anxiously. By this time she is only slightly red, so I decide to push a little further into the violet spectrum by answering with “Why do you always expect me to answer that question?” I smile my sweetest smile and expect her to turn pink, which she does. Then the conversation always turns to what I have done or not done, but in the end she always turns beet root. I think the term for my strategy with the Principle would be called McCarthyism, which is the answering of questions with more questions.

I snap out of the contemplation of history terms and turn my attention to the present for the first time since I got home. “Oh shit!” I say out loud when I see my empty backpack thrown against the wooden table leg. “Now I can’t even do my fricking homework!” I say to the air. “What have I done? What have I done??” I relapse into another bout of guilt. If my Mom finds out I skipped another day of school she’ll go nuts and probably think of something REALLY good to take away. See, every time I do something bad, or unexpected should I say, instead of grounding me or yelling at me, she gets really white in the face and gives me this look that’s supposed to scare me…(Yeah, It doesn’t) and then she takes something away. The most popular phrases being “No choir then…”or “No going to your father’s house…” or even sometimes she takes away my journal. Which is the worst.

I know I could always write somewhere else, but it doesn’t have the same impact for me. All my collected thoughts in the same place, all my imagining in the same spot left to ferment and stew and come to life. I walk in the kitchen half heartedly and start my usual rummage of the white glossy cupboards. I grab out a blue glass cup, the only kind of cup I ever use in my house (I don’t know why… I just like them better than the plastic kind). I am pondering my punishment as I pour out a fizzing glass of Diet Cherry Coke. I head back to the brown woven couch with the cup to my nose, letting the fizz jump up and tickle the inside of my nostrils. The promised excitement of cold beverage comforts me as much soda usually does. Something so obliviously happy, something so unknowingly spry and jubilant makes me smile and wish I was the same. I drink the pop down slowly. Enjoying every last drop. Then thinking things might be better in the morning, I slowly pace to my one haven of lavender and green. The one place where I can stretch and have room, even though it is by far the messiest place you can imagine. My room. I crawl ashamedly into my cold paisley green sheets and fall almost instantly to sleep, all the while wondering if it all was a dream. Maybe I’ll wake up with a different life, a different goal, and a different morning.