Last day of school

Metamorphosis by Lupin Lois

"Soaked in sweat, shivering in rage,

the compulsory shifting of her body started.

Reality was evading through her fingers,

from beneath her trembling feet.

The world lost its orientation,

her skin combusted with the unbreathable air

that filled that dark undefined space,

revolting against its own condition.

She was pulled, tossed, forth and back

by the violence of her convulsions

until her body gave in dollishly.

Her entire life destroyed in a split second,

not a ray of sunlight to hold on to,

not an explanation for this coating curse."

It was just another end of my life! So many things end, and the more you enjoy them the more they tend to do so. However, I was optimistic that also the not so enjoyable things in life ended.

I had gone through different schools all over the country. My father couldn't keep the same job for too long, a temper issue he kept saying. Though the wonder was rather how he got those many jobs in the first place.

I had seen schools for the first time too many times if you asked me! Though nobody ever really did. The denial the day before as it was just another school... the anxiety felt in my stomach as the school would reveal itself in the horizon through the bus window... the panic as I lay my first foot in the school front side walk... and finally at the end of the year the aggravation of knowing that now that ``EGO venit vidit et superstes'' (I came, I saw, and I survived.), I would have to start all over again... it was the never ending cycle of my life.

Not today it wasn't! I thought back at all the people I met last year, half of which I can't even remember the name, for my time here ran thin. Today I whispered, within the sweetest exhale- no more school next year. I wouldn't have to get through any of those gates striped of life, walk through the smokers and feel the unbearable weight of fate knowing that I would have to walk back in some day soon, too soon. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even into the same school, but into one just like it.

I don't think there is ever much difference between schools. You can have them with towering gates, like this one had, or shrinking gates that limited you to your size, but always large, too large. So they can swallow you better? It didn't matter if it was one block of concrete, well craved stones or even a small wooden pavilion, they all smelled the same. They all smelled of crowd sectarianism, all soaked in the fear of exams, of acceptance and the stress of incontrollable hormones.

No, that's just in movies. I don't think that the ``smokers'' only smoke to prove they have grown enough to make terrible mistakes without resistance... that the ``posh''s just want to get the idea that they control something in their lives... that the ``hipsters'' just want to sound refreshingly artistic... that the ``outcasts'' are just hurting more than they should or can express... that the ``sports guys'' just found something to channel their emotions through...

or that the ``pompom girls'' are just afraid of being empty dolls and are thus working extremely hard to keep at least dolled up. Maybe I do, just a little.

People are all the same wherever you go and they are all trying to belong. They are more afraid of you than you are of them, they just conceal it better, at least from you. Also the better you blend in the less you have to figure out by yourself. The more you cast aside the less you have to compare yourself. They all have hearts and all of those are lost, hurting, waiting, alone and longing. Of course they are subjugated to their natural predisposition to react more intensively towards one feeling or the other. And they were already born with better skin, less money, more love or worst habits, but they all have feelings and they all go through school and they all devise their mechanisms to survive, much like animals in nature.

As some find others to share a common ground, neglecting all that space in between, and develop thus social bound. Others just wonder if they can be as unique as lonely they feel, and no matter how many smiles are cast upon them they will feel set aside. People struggle to find comfort in trivial things, some actually find pleasure in the simple fabric of life, as mumbling about generic stereotypes without ever spending the time to get close enough to peek. Yes, I know I am terrible. Not my fault though, I never really stayed long enough to work my way through and find the core of the people surrounding me.

Of all people alike, the smokers aggravated me the most somehow. They filled the school air freshly in the morning with the excess of cologne to cover for their habit's stench. The mixture of that intoxicating burn of tobacco and that floral highly alcoholic fragrance of perfume would ultimately combine in a nauseating essence. The reek of which would only pass when, my nostrils got so fed up with sending the overloading impulses to the brain that, I no longer felt anything, numbed of one of gods most precious gifts, smell.

Why did people give up on the simple smell of herbal shampoo or fruity moisturizer? Sure, dismissing your lungs capacity or redecorating them in tones of chalk was understandable. Still why would they compromise the brightness of their front teeth, the yellowness of their fingers, the prematurity of their wrinkles for a cigarette was beyond me. I spent serious efforts trying to grasp this, and all I could conclude was that smokers exceed my understanding and that smoking should really feel like heaven, for it smelled like hell.

I blamed my parents for this curse! They never smoked or used strong fragrances, and as I grew up in a mild environment my sense of smell was too sensitive to endure school, a lift with the wrong neighbor or a pub for that matter. It's also said that the children of smokers have less physical sensitivity. Why couldn't I get just a little of smoke growing up? Some sporadic visit from a nicotine addicted distant aunt and I would enjoy some sick time form time to time or even have the normal dose of anesthetic when going to the dentist? It's all their fault! They conceived me; couldn't they have done it in a normal way? Did I have to suffer from hypersensitivity from my toes to my nose?

No use in rumbling, this world had ended to me! I was out! Gone! ``Adios amigos'' and I had no idea what came next. No more cheerleaders, no more... Suddenly it all seemed less and less appealing. I never really thought ahead, maybe I should have and I always got to that same conclusion. But only for mere brief seconds, before I argued with myself and realized that this blind flow through time keeps my jumpy heart fit. I couldn't endure the stress of tomorrow summed up with the aggravations of the present, and so I went through life.