When people mention high school, it’s always linked to the phrase, “the best years of your life.” But what they miss is that these aren’t the best years of your life at all, they’re the worst. You lose the people you thought were your best friends because you aren’t cool enough, you lose your math homework and have to accept an F rather than explain how someone stole it from your locker this afternoon, you lose who you thought you were. You’re ridiculed on a daily basis, and fitting-in is a fragrance/pill you wish they sold at Walgreens. You miss your friends. You miss your life. Day after day you go home, wanting to cry because you know you’ve lost the only people you can count on. You can’t tell your parents what’s happening, how high school is like picking teams during gym times a thousand, and how much it rips you apart when you’re not even the last one chosen. You’re not even cool enough for last place.

And it will hurt. It’ll hurt more than you ever could have imagined, and you’ll beg for a break. Plead and wish that you could graduate early and get away from all the drama, all of the “I-love-you-I-hate-her-lets-go-bowling” attitudes and break free. But breaking free and graduating early is only a fairytale they tell you to keep you in line. There is no escaping, no perfect body, no popularity pill you can pop whenever you want to disappear. Some days your head hurts so much you just wish it would explode already, that all the thoughts flying around in your head faster than bullets would shoot out onto the nearby desks.

You wish you could tell your old best friend that you miss her, that you could tell the cool kids “please accept me”, that it was as simple as putting a band-aid on a scrape. But this is too big for that. It’s too big for “I’m-sorry”s, “it-has-to-get-better”s, and “you’ll-be-fine”s. It’s so big you wish you could jump off a building some days just to make all the thinking stop. How they hate you. How much it hurts to remember how things used to be. How much you miss your friends. How it felt the first time you learned you couldn’t trust anyone anymore. How all you’ve got to look forward to after school is an empty house and a silent phone.

You’ll hate yourself like the girls on an after-school-special about eating disorders, wishing that there as a real problem to explain all this misery. That there was a reason that you hurt this darn much. But there’s no real reason or excuse to let you off the hook. No quick explanation as to why your heart is tearing itself apart, why people pass you as if talking to you would deem them “uncool”. Why no one hears you silently screaming inside. You’re left alone.