I’m sitting on the bus when I finally feel comfortable enough to bring out my dollar-store blue wired headphones. I plug them into my non-iPhone and rest my head onto the semi-frozen window, playing a random pop music Spotify playlist. Closing my eyes, I try to distract myself from the lack of warmth generated from my slightly holey, oversized hoodie — the same one I’ve been wearing for about three or four years now. People at school always ask me why, in the middle of a typical cold Midwest February, I’m not wearing my “winter” coat yet. I always respond in a sarcastic manner that is something along the lines of me trying to argue about what exactly defines a winter coat and that coldness is a mindset to deflect from giving them a real answer.
As the bus finally takes off to take me home, I think about why it is that I don’t have many friends at school. In an attempt to avoid questions like this and other intrusions into my personal life that could reveal more about me, I’ve responded to classmates who ask me stuff in what I thought was a joking, sarcastic manner. Now as a junior, though, I’ve come to learn that people just think I’m weird. I would disagree with them and try to communicate how I’m just a product of my environment. Sometimes I’d point out how their definition of someone being “weird” is probably classist, racist and other -ists I don’t feel like writing out, but I realized that this would probably make them like me even less.
I bet you’re thinking that I have to have some friends — everyone knows that there’s always a weird kid friend group in high school. Sorry to disappoint yet another person, but I haven’t had the chance to be a part of a friend group. Yeah, I’ve made the occasional class friend, but they never stick. With less than a year and a half of high school left, I’ve given up on trying to fit into the social hierarchy of my school. I’m tired of getting excited about someone talking to me in class just to find out that they never had any real intentions of getting to know me. They’re usually only using me for homework answers or to do their in-class Spanish worksheet. Being one of the only Hispanic students in my Spanish 3 class, I’ve come to learn that my classmates aren’t inclined to talk to me, either because I’m wearing one of my only six permanently stained shirts or an unintentionally ripped pair of jeans or just because of my brown hair, eyes and skin. They see my traits that are different from theirs, assume I speak Spanish, hit me with the friendly “Heyyyy,” chat me up a bit, then boom, ask me to conjugate ser or something. This always confuses me because if I was a Spanish genius I would’ve already taken AP. But that’s not even worth discussing considering I’m not even fluent.
My bus stops in front of the rusted stop sign in front of my apartment complex. Somehow the mint green painted walls with brown stains randomly scattered throughout kind of blend into the depressing gray backdrop that is the winter sky. Though my building isn’t the prettiest, it definitely feels like home for me. Here, I have my own room (rare for people like me) and Wi-Fi, free from the judgment of others. Most of the time I’m alone, too, which is nice. Having no friends is a perk, especially when you always have something to study. I’ve come to learn that loneliness can be filled with reading, writing, math, history, science and literally any other subject. It’s a pretty cool way to distract yourself from your bad social and family life. It’s an escape, a reason to dive into a new world. I know this could pay off in the future, too. Having straight As and a good ACT score is what I hear the white people talk about as a necessity for college. Most of them have also seemed to start their own non-profit funded by their parents to help their applications, but I’m not so worried about starting that anytime soon. Moving away would be fun and would feel like a new start, which is something that I deserve. College in the movies looks so awesome, yet deep down I know it probably isn’t a reality for me given my mom’s status of being a cashier at the local fast food place that exclusively sells shrimp. Today is Tuesday, so she works the afternoon and night shifts. More alone time!
I open the door 20C and have my daily thought about how I was destined to live in this apartment. I was born on the 20th and my last name starts with C! I have many thoughts like this throughout the day. If you couldn’t already tell, being lonely means having to constantly think about something — even if it’s as ridiculous as thinking fate destined me to live in poverty through an apartment that shares the same number as the random day I was born on and coincidentally the same last name as my father. It would be cool if my dad lived here but I don’t think that would’ve ever been possible given the last time I saw him was when I was four and a half months old (according to my mom). Living with my mom is cool though. I think she provides enough and she gives me way more space than I already need. I hear people at school talk about their crazy helicopter parents knowing their teachers’ names, asking about their grades and making them their lunch for school. My mom is not that type of mom. If she’s not at work, she’s at some mysterious location doing something I probably don’t want to know about with someone I would be scared of. I think I get my annoyance of others from her. When I ask her questions about her life, she refuses to answer and deflects by giving me some sarcastic and ridiculous answer that will make me laugh. This is what I love about my mom. Despite her bad decision-making, I know she tries to find joy in life. She’s always on top of the bills, which is the most important thing, and she knows how to have fun outside of work.
I turn on the pee-colored yellow overhead kitchen light as I walk in and sit at the table. I take out my school-issued computer and set it on the sticky and loud plastic sheet that, according to my mom, protects the one-of-a-kind handmade tablecloth she found at a garage sale a couple of years ago. She tells me that it’s probably a Van Gough or something (even though it’s pretty well known that he was famous for painting and not knitting or crocheting or whatever technique was made to use the table cover) and that one day it’ll sell for like a million dollars at one of those “Going once! Going twice! Sold!!!” fancy auctions. As I start up my computer, I look at the clock and calculate that I have four more hours until 8:30. In case you were wondering, 8:30 is my time to relax and lay in my bed for about two hours before I usually fall asleep. Getting yourself to do homework and study can be hard, but with a reward system like mine, it makes getting to 8:30 feel awesome. In just four hours, I’ll be able to grab a Nutty Bar, run to my room, change out of my annoying school clothes into comfier ones, and turn my phone off of Do Not Disturb. There will probably be no notifications waiting for me, but I can spend the next two hours doing my daily social media rounds.
I open Google Classroom and look at my homework assignments for the next day. Tonight is going to be an average homework-load day. I have AP Gov, Psych and Lang readings to do and a couple of pre-calc problems to finish. I’m looking forward to the chapters I have to read because I’m going to feel smarter and better about myself when I finish. Even better, too, is that if anyone ever brings up the Supreme Court, asks what the amygdala is or wants my opinions on Kafka, I’ll not only have the opportunity to talk to someone but I’ll also sound cool and smart doing it. This is also another opportunity for me to be distracted from the realities of life. My bus rides home are always really tough on me because I’m forced to drive past McMansions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with a smiling nuclear family and expensive dog inside. I try not to always be so condescending and mean but sometimes I can’t help to think how unfair it is that I was destined to apartment 20C, which is right off the highway, and other students in my school are destined to live in an actual subdivision that is named Whispering Pines or something like that.
I’m finishing up my psych readings when I’m rudely interrupted by my stomach growling. I walk over to my white refrigerator and open up the freezer section to see what frozen meal I am eating today. Today I am lucky because I get to have the last frozen pepperoni pizza — my go-to. Another reason why my mom is so cool is because, even though she’s usually not home to cook for me, she gets me everything I need to eat. Obviously she gets the food, but she also bought this rotating pizza oven. Not only does this thing cook the pizza better, but it also means that I don’t have to be scared of burning myself if I have to open the actual oven and touch the hot pizza tray with a thin cloth. This works for all of the frozen stuff we buy too; whether it’s chicken nuggets, taquitos or fries, you can put anything on there and watch it spin around. It’s pretty cool to watch, even though I don’t really understand how it works.
I put the pizza on the rotating pizza oven and sit back down at the table. It’s about seven o’clock now when I once again escape reality. The loud “ding!” noise startles me and pulls my eyes off of the English book I was reading and onto dinner. I get up and look for the pizza cutter. Unlike some other utensils or kitchen tools, I know I’ll always find a kitchen cutter because we have at least like three in the messy drawer that houses the miscellaneous kitchen items. To the “average person,” that would probably seem like an excessive amount of pizza cutters. Having frozen pizza multiple times a week, however, means that having an abundant supply just makes sense. Imagine only having one and it’s dirty so you have to wash it. Or worse: you lose your only pizza cutter.
After cutting myself two slices, I return to the table and fall back into my book. After an hour, though, I can feel my eyes getting heavy and my head starting to sway down before I catch myself and jolt back awake. It’s so unfortunate and annoying that after eating you always feel tired for some reason. It still confuses me because I’m pretty sure I learned that food was supposed to provide nutrients and energy or whatever, but I guess processed frozen pizza from the discounted grocery store probably doesn’t add much to my health or melatonin levels. I get up to get a glass of water that I pretend is coffee when I drink it, hoping that the placebo effect magically wakes me up to finish my final math problem.
I finally finish but am still unfortunately stuffed from dinner, so the Nutty Bars will have to wait for another day. I walk to my room that is illuminated by red LED lights lining the ceiling. I have some posters up on the wall that I got from a couple of Christmases ago. I have a problem with the Minecraft poster that hangs just above my bed though, and as I walk into my room I sigh and grab more tape to hang up the falling corner. This is, at the minimum, a bi-weekly occurrence for me. Because I’ve had to tape and re-tape over and over again, the poster is starting to tear and my mom says I should get rid of it, but it does a good job of covering up the ugly cracked wallpaper around my room.
I change out of my day clothes and into my middle school PE uniform that now works as a set of pajamas. I instantly feel at peace and jump onto my bed that is a mattress on the floor with a blanket I got for Christmas this past year. There’s only one outlet in my room and I didn’t want my bed to be in that corner of the room, so I bought one of those 10-foot chargers that charge your phone very slowly but can span across my whole room. I plug my phone in and start my rounds of social media. After being slightly disappointed, yet not surprised that I didn’t have many notifications, I then turn to YouTube and watch a video showing the process of how bubblegum is made. Before I know it, I’ve fallen into the YouTube hole and suddenly I’m learning about the history of Neanderthal migration at 10:30 p.m. I’m fighting my eyes from closing and falling asleep by now when I hear my mom stumble into our apartment, drop her keys on the floor and throw her body on the couch.
I get up and out of bed to perform my final acts of the night. I walk into the living room and set my mom’s keys on a hook by the door that says “keys” in cursive font. I take her shoes off and place a blanket on top of her. Finally, I grab the glass bottle that is slipping out of her hand, pour it out, then throw the bottle into the recycling bin.
I get back to my room and grab the remote with about 15 different colored buttons on it to turn off my LED lights. I turn my phone back on Do Not Disturb to hopefully wake up surprised to have notifications other than the one telling me I need to update my phone. I finally close my eyes and am left thinking about what new, better life I can dream of tonight.
Former MiC Assistant Editor can be contacted at hugoq@umich.edu.