all those rage, and i'm still here?

twenty - four

"Society's Odd One Out."

To be labeled irrelevant, that is.

Seeing others working tirelessly to carve their path into the world, I remained an underachiever. I remained hidden as if being hidden would do me good. Being certain that I'll someday own up to my success, I'm still too scared of taking a step further toward what I want. Too scared to take risks, too frightened by new opportunities. I had cowardice embedded in my blood. A scaredy cat.

Dominated by the feeling of uselessness where everyone fights for greatness and reaches the top, I was out there watching their every move, wishing it was me. I held my hair in frustration. My ego could not easily accept remaining stagnant, yet my terrified of failure self couldn't bear to expose myself to the world.

I was the definition of a loser. Giving up easily and being a walking disappointment was my forte. The only image that pops up in my head whenever I think of the past is an image of me in a room, where I was drowning in my sorrows, up to the point where I just wanted to end my life. I figured it wasn't a solution, in the end.

Did I even try hard in this life?

I remember that I liked writing. When I was younger, all I did was read stories as they fascinated me. I liked living in my imagination. It was so beautiful that I couldn't bother to leave. As a child, dreams felt so freeing, so wonderful.

Brought back to my high school self, the vivid memories were gray. There were quiet sobs, stifling my cries because I didn't want anyone to hear. It felt unfair for a fourteen-year-old kid to experience so much pain that the only resolution she begged for was to end her life.

The summer of my enrollment in seventh grade, my mother already asked the teacher for the school publication about some requirements if I was to join. In the middle of the school year, I read the works of my batch mates, and I felt like I couldn't own up to their level. They were so good, I thought to myself. I could never be as near as good as them.

"You're the same age as Aria? And she's achieved so much already. What about you?"

"77 in Mathematics? Continue with that kind of grade—you'll stop going to school by then."

The people around me made sure I was fully aware of my predicament, and I drilled it into my head. I honestly felt like I wanted to scream by that time, but I kept my anger. My emotions piled up, one by one, and I continued to become quieter, and quieter each day. I was fragile like an egg's shell, and I figured I was just going to toughen up if I kept up with them.

Honestly, I did think I was.

I wrote those days. Every certain word carried every certain emotion. I did not merely write, I poured my soul, all my deepest sentiments into it. I couldn't do anything about my predicament, so my escapism encouraged me to just...write it down.

I coped, I survived, I walked back on the road of life like nothing happened.

As if I didn't just beg to end my suffering. To just end living.

"Stop writing, you can't even correct your grammar. Just let me do it."

That was supposed to be criticism, but it felt like a pang in the chest. I merely nodded as if it didn't bother me at all. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Every time I did it for other people, they'd change it. They'd reject it.