Looking back I was always searching for a way out; a window without a screen, a made-up excuse to walk through the empty halls, a believable lie to tell the school nurse so I could go home early. So often it all just became too much for me. I didn’t want them to see me fall apart; I needed to get out and go home to under the covers where I could cry quietly and no one else would know.
It scared me because I knew there wouldn’t always be an easy way out. I knew that someday I’d have to face everything; look it all straight in the face, unflinchingly. I wouldn’t always have the option of running away.
Other people seemed to get along fine, day after day after day, without any such breakdowns. They could manage to sit through the nothingness for hours on end without even seeming to blink.
I just kept on thinking about the rest of the day in the cold building and think of all the sitting and paying attention and note-taking and nodding and smiling and listening and small-talking and I knew it was gonna kill me. Some days I let it, too; I covered my face, or looked the other way, so they couldn’t see that I was fading, my sanity withering. I don’t know how they went along with it all so easily, without even a thought. It was so difficult for me just to be there. Just to exist.