It’s gotten to the point where I no longer watch the clock. What am I really relieved of when the bell rings? It’s not the grammar lesson I wish to escape, but the thoughts inside my head that follow me out the classroom door — the emotions I’m unable to put into words.
Perhaps I can escape for a moment. I think about how cold the hard, plastic chair is, how it’s been pressing against me for almost an hour and I have yet to move. I think about how the clock ticks every second and everyone’s so anxious for the last one. I wonder how the teacher feels, speaking the same words to kids whose minds are so clearly somewhere else. They must struggle to find the purpose too.
The girl in front of me shakes her leg and taps her pencil. Her eyes look through the teacher like she’s studying something far away. The boy across the room glances at the clock every two minutes. I used to think he was cocky and stuck-up, counting down the seconds until he could drive away in his Mercedes to his three story home. But now I wonder if he’s dreading the moment he gets home, the moment the yelling starts and he’s forced to endure.
We all convince ourselves that we’re alone, that no one understands and they never could. But it’s all a lie. Everybody is struggling no matter how perfect their life seems from outside the wooden, white picket fence. We don’t hear each other's demons. We hide our own and cry because we think we’re alone. But we are only all alone together.
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