White chalk and the blackboard
The words on the blackboard are fuzzy. Why am I even coming to school if it means dealing with all this crap? I keep asking myself that, but I can’t find an answer. I cannot hear the teachers or the boys around me. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in a boarding school. The joy is drained from my days. I want everything to end.
All I want to do is disappear. I hate going to school and can’t even pay attention in class. Everything is a blur. If I want to stop, I need a good reason.
I’ve thought about telling my father but can’t bring myself to do it. How nice it would be if I could tell him everything about the boarding school and its wicked brothers. Or say nothing.
I don’t want him or my mother to know what’s happening to me — especially my father. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if he found out. All I want to do is go home and do nothing. Stay home forever.
It is not me who holds the pen, but the pen that holds me. My hand follows its own logic as it writes on the paper.
But dropping out isn’t an option. Everyone must finish middle school, and even if I get my father’s permission to leave, what am I supposed to do next? Go to another school? Come back to this one? I have no idea what to do with my life.
I can’t keep going back to the boarding school. I want to leave now. But if I don’t finish the GCE exam, I won’t be able to attend high school or trade school.
I don’t know how I will make it through the rest of the year. All I want to do is drop out and never come back. Nobody will know er college.
I wish I could talk to my friends about what’s going-on, but I don’t even know if I can trust them. I am confused. My ears are hot. My cheeks are red and hot. I sweat everywhere. I feel that the earth would swallow me whole.
And what happens after school? Will I be safe? What if they, the ones in robes, come after me?
The school day finally ends, and I can’t sit still. As soon as my classmates get up to leave, I grab my bag and head out with them. I’m not going back there.
I walk fast to the bus stop, leaving my friends behind. My stomach is in knots, and I don’t know if I ate lunch. All I can think about is getting home and away from all this. I don’t know what will happen next, but I can’t worry about that right now.
Reconstructed from a fifteen-year-old boy’s journal entry from 1970.
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