The Little Bottle Inside Your Mind

You wake up at six in the morning for high school. You already feel like this day won't be a good one. You quickly put on an outfit that you're not really fond of and rush to the bathroom. You spend thirty minutes fixing your hair, brushing your teeth, and doing other things to make yourself look presentable for school. You pick up your teal colored book bag and go downstairs. You see your dad sitting on the couch. You say good morning and he just replies with a grunt. You sit quietly on the couch until your dad tells you it's time to go to school. On the way to school, your dad cracks a few jokes to wake you up and you laugh a little. You pull up in front of the school and step out of the car.

Once you walk through the huge double doors of your high school, all the confidence you had suddenly vanishes. Everyone is dressed in much prettier clothes than you and you silently pray that they won't make fun of you. But what does it matter? You might've just come to school in your pajamas. It wouldn't make a difference. You feel they'll still ridicule you. The bell rings and you go to your first class. Algebra, your worst subject.

You sit at your assigned seat in your group of about seven people including yourself. Why did your teacher put you in groups? They don't talk to you anyway and whenever you do talk, you feel like they just want you to shut up. The teacher walks into the classroom and starts teaching. About fifteen minutes into the class, she calls on you to answer a question you can't even understand. Of course you get it wrong and the teacher makes you feel like a total idiot in the process. One strike to your heart already. You can feel tears brewing in your eyes, but you suppress them and put them in the little bottle you've created in your mind to put all of your bad feelings.

About 20 minutes later, the teacher tells you to graph a system of inequalities on a graph. She walks by your desk and yells at you because you're not using a ruler to make your lines. It wasn't your fault you couldn't get a ruler. They were all gone by the time you got to class. She also yells at you because your line is going the wrong way. There goes strikes two and three to the heart. Once again, tears come. But you put them and your sadness in the little bottle inside your mind.

The bell rings and your off to your favorite class, history. In history, you feel like you are actually excelling and learning something new each day. You also have a friend in that class. Her name is Aileen. She is funny and always tries to get you to laugh. Each day, you put on a fake smile for her so she won't have to worry about you. Today, the teacher is giving out bonus points for a big test to the person who finishes today's assignment first. Once you get started, you fly through the questions with ease and know for a fact you got each one right. But you get stumped on the last one. The question asks "Name 5 things invented by the Chinese."

You think for a minute and list four inventions. A magnetic compass, paper, printing, gunpowder, you just can't find one more invention. You think harder and harder until you find the answer deep in your brain. You write down porcelain, but it's too late. Another student has already turned in the paper before you. You feel like a failure and feel like you could've done much better. Strike four to the heart. Aileen sees your sad face and tells you that you did great. You fake a smile and nod at her.

You move on to P.E. It's complete torture for you. You hate changing in the locker room because you feel the other people will tease you about your body. You hate running too. You have to run three laps today and by the second you feel like you're going to pass out. On top of that, your coach is yelling at you to keep moving even though you can't. You also have to play football too. You can throw just fine, but you fail to catch very ball that's thrown at you. Strike five to the heart. You feel like a failure again and want to cry. But you seal your feelings inside the little bottle inside your mind.

Lunch time is awful too. The people you sit with don't even talk to you and when you do speak, they just give you a look that says "Oh my God, shut your freaking mouth." When you get up to get food, you try and start a conversation with a girl named Elizabeth, who has P.E with you. You try to bring up topics like how you two are doing with football and the other sports. But she quickly loses interest in you when some of her friends come up and start talking to her. You feel ignored and abandoned. Strike six to the heart.

Last class of the day, fashion merchandising. Your teacher tells you to get into groups of four. Luckily, you also have a friend in this class. Her name is Lauren. She has blonde hair and blue eyes and has so much in common with you. Today you try to partner up with her, but she says she's joining another group that will be filled up once she joins. You feel abandoned and alone. Strike seven to the heart. You feel like crying again, but you put your feelings inside the little bottle inside your mind. The teacher puts you in another group where you feel like all the girls hate you for taking the empty spot. You stay quiet and fade into the background. You suddenly feel invisible. A feeling you've become must too used to feeling.

The final bell rings and your dad picks you up from school. He takes you home and you decide to take nap, since you lose sleep at night from your worried thoughts. You wake up for dinner and notice your mom got out of bed today. She just had a baby and she lost a lot of blood during the delivery, so she's not feeling too well. You see your little sister who's in sixth grade. She gives you a mean look and continues eating her food. You know she hates you guts, she's hated them for a long time now. After dinner, your dad starts to lose his temper for no reason. She yells at you and your sister to go and do something productive while he blows up at nothing. Strike eight to the heart. His bad temper has become a regular thing for him since the baby was born. You run to your room and take a shower. You start to cry quietly since the water can hide your whimpers.

You start to ask yourself many questions. What's wrong with me? Am I deformed? Do I have a mental problem? Am I depressed? Am I not worth anything anymore? Would people care if I died? Do I even deserve a place on this Earth? You quickly stuff your feelings and questions inside the little bottle inside your mind.

You get out of the shower and change into nice, soft pajamas. You turn off your bedroom light and crawl under your blanket. You toss and turn, trying to go to sleep. "Come on! Go to sleep!" You tell yourself. You don't want people to make fun of you because of the bags under your eyes. You finally have enough and you open the little bottle inside your mind just a little bit. You cry quietly until you can feel yourself slowly go to sleep. You think to yourself and think a very strange thought. "If I could describe myself in three words," You think, "I would use failure, invisible, and dead." You close your eyes and reseal the little bottle inside your and compact all the emotions inside of it to make room for tomorrow.