Fatma

I’ve been living in my own bubble for the past few weeks, trying as hard as I can to focus on my schoolwork because I’m constantly worrying that I won’t pass my GCSE exams in the summer. This worry intensified when I got my history mock paper back and saw that I got an F. My bad attendance last year put a lot of gaps in my knowledge but I’m trying my best to go to as many extra classes as I can during the week to hopefully improve my grades.

Boys are as confusing as they’ve always have been. I don’t really have time for a crush because the last year of secondary school is the most important. But anytime I come close to developing one, my mind instantly stops it because I’ve learned from past experiences that boys don’t like me. Because I’ve built up this wall with my personality in school, boys only see me as a quiet girl who really cares about schoolwork. When in actuality, I feel like I’m dying inside constantly and I only look serious because I don’t feel comfortable around most of my peers. I wish boys could know the real me. I wish they could know that my favourite movie is How High but they prejudge me so I guess they’ll continue to assume that I’m so serious that I never watch films, but sit in my room with the lights turned off, instead.

I can’t be bothered to try to get people to change their perception of me. It is what it is. Stephen King said that Tommy Ross was, “a rarity: a socially conscious young man,” in Carrie. I guess the boys in my school aren’t the same.

Sometimes I feel like no one I know is as rare. It’s like all of the young people around me in school use their youth as an excuse to be ignorant to the ways of the world. But I can’t be like that. I can’t lie to myself.

Maybe I’m a rarity, too.