Flowers

Once, when I was very drunk, I ran into an old tormenter from sixth to ninth grade. Both pretending that it was great to see eachother again, that we were old friends, got drunker and drunker and somehow in that dim pub he ended up giving me a sincere apology for everything they had made me go through back in school. I didn't understand, at first. What was he talking about? My first thought was that he had been far from the worst one. If he had been one of those in lead I wouldn't even be there, drunk, surrounded by people, at the same table as him. My second thought was that he was being ridiculous. Not only was he taking the blame for all the rest of them, which he shouldn't carry alone; but I simply couldn't remember there was anything that he needed to be apologizing for. Surely it had never been that bad. Surely this was just a sling of bad conscious that suddenly gripped him as he grew more and more sentimental with his drinks.

I said to my mother a few years ago, soon after this incident; that I didn't even remember much of obligatory school. She said there was a reason for that.

I remember that I had to grow very cocky. I was one of few who refused to disappear into the shadows like a scared rabbit, although many times that was exactly what I wanted. To just be invisible, so that no one could reach me. So that they'd leave me alone. Instead I shouldered a fuck the world-attitude, answering every remark with something worse. Of course, this became fun for them, became a game. I didn't realize that by fighting back I just made everything worse. Maybe I did realize, to some extent. But it didn't matter. I just wouldn't do it. I knew I had every right to exist and to walk down those halls and be myself, without any of them haunting me like poltergeists. I knew, and I defended that right, to the point that it got almost scary.

I can see why I was an easy target. I didn't care much for clothes. I put on whatever was clean, and I never wore anything new. I had bad skin, and glasses, and liked to read. I was good in school, in everything except gym and maths. I wrote. I painted. I joined a group of outsiders, or whatever we might be called. There were the popular and trendy ones, and those that really were outside of the clique; me and the friends I had back then hovered somewhere inbetween, not belonging in either category. Sometimes, I talk to one of them nowadays, but in essence, none of them are really left. They were never really friends, in that sense. They were like me, only clinging on to eachother because it helped to survive. It made us a little bit less vulnerable if we stuck together.

That girl, bitching back to everyone daring to come close; that girl, afraid to talk to guys because she thought they'd only make fun of her; that girl, anonymous and geeky, that girl, pacing those halls, learning how to take shortcuts that avoided the worst pits... what happened to her? Did I lose her, because I forgot about her? Or is she still in here, somewhere, and that is the reason I still get chills every time I come near my old school, my old home, a place I'll never return to willingly in my life?

I like to read. I love to write, and to paint. I'm working, I've studied. I wear jeans and tee's. Sometimes skirts or dresses. I wear a black leather jacket and a cap and thick gloves that my mother made for me. I love the big geeky glasses I'll soon be getting, something I would never have picked out when I was in eighth grade. It'd make me even more geeky. I'm geeky now, but in a different way. I love my geek stuff such as lyrics, music, games, silly things. I love to drink, to be with my friends, to do fun things. To hang out. I don't have to worry anymore, because I can be me. I can be myself. But the person I've become is so, so different from that girl I used to be, only alike her when you scout the surface.

Someone I used to go to school with came up to me a few weeks ago, also drunk as hell, telling me how I looked pretty and that I had really bloomed out since we quit school. She was from secondary school, and probably knew nothing of what happened in obligatory school; but it felt like she spoke for them all. Telling me I'm light years away from that shadowy creature, learning how to survive by feeding on cynism. Telling me I've become a blooming flower.

I wonder what happened to everyone else.
If they have burst into flowers too.
POET in the REMEMBERING JAR