“Yo, Pumpkin Princess, I heard Marie’s lunch went MIA yesterday, did you eat it? ‘Cause it seems like there’s plenty of space in there” Mark’s pinching accusation rings in my ears, as I watch the waves push and shove each other. From one aspect, the waves are just like my schoolmates except they are all equally rude to each other by the way they are all crushing against one another ruthlessly or maybe they are just tickling each other and having some fun.
I guess I have very little resemblance with these black-blue waves because I am that little shell within the fold of these water layers that gets tossed around hard-heartedly. I am tossed like this at school as well because of the extra pounds that I wear, except that I don’t wear them very proudly. In fact, I just want to turn into a snail and get lost within my shell. Because this dark, fat skin makes me more conscious as it gets me more attention. And the attention simply hurts. The only solution I see then is an end of a life that no one values.
It is really not easy to ignore all those girls and guys hooting behind your back, calling names based on your skin. Most of us would say, it’s just skin but no it’s not just skin; it’s a cover that represents you and it just builds up the poison that is already coursing through me, which reminds of the screams that the walls of my house and I silently witness and at the end develop an understanding that it has to stay within us.
Since nobody gives me anything, I expect nothing to give in return as well. But somehow my teachers always pinpoint me out of the enormous rows in the classroom, only to embarrass me with further questions of where my thoughts exactly were.
I wish I could yell and explain them that they were with the people sitting just behind me, muttering ugly comments; they were torn between my parents’ brawls, and they were stuck in finding ways to change the coat of my skin so I can be recognized as one tolerable person not dark as the fencing that outlines the school’s building.
I take a deep breath with a slow step forward from the railing I am standing on. And within a matter of a fraction of a second, I would bridge the gap between me and the waters that are beckoning me towards themselves.
A few tears prick my eyes, as I wonder if my head would strike against the rocks that might tear my skull open, maybe then my thoughts will scatter and unburden me. Breaths after breaths rise after one another with my heart fluttering like a nervous bird in its golden cage, ready to set free or back out again.
But for the last thirty minutes that I have been here, my mind has remained adamant, set on what it has decided. Although my body has locked up and jammed tightly with the frozen thoughts of hitting the waters now, my brain is so far determined, stubborn as my parents and the people in making ignorance or inhumanity as the motto of their attitude towards me.
But my bones have buckled up, unable to move, as the inevitable approaches. I close my eyes, one last breath and my mother’s laugh penetrates my jumbled thought bubble, scaring me of bringing more tears in her eyes because the last time I got seriously sick with a fever that took me to the hospital, she cried like a child, all sobs and pain while my father hugged her tightly; as though if he left her, she would break apart. Involuntarily, I take a step back before I realize I have gone backwards.
The minutes are measured but her face lurks around, if they can’t give me anything, does that mean that I do the same? Another breath, a little sigh, and I turn around to return to my room and the uninviting black hole that my life is.
