My wrists were itching as I pulled the sleeves of my new hoodie down over my hands, clutching the fabric in my cold fingers and staring at the wall on the other side of my room. There was no way I was going to get the sleeves of this one bloody, too. I needed to pretend that I’m too good for that, then maybe it’ll work.


Slowly, I pulled myself up from where I was laying, sighing as I felt my bones crack and I wiped the sleep from my eyes. All of my actions were slow lately, unless I was forced otherwise. Everything was dragged out and annoying to me. I don’t know why I’m like this.


I’m fourteen years old right now, far too young to be feeling the way I am. I feel sad, worthless, annoying, lonely, depressed. Nobody even cared enough to notice. I guess I can’t blame them for not caring though, I tried to hint to them how I was feeling all the time and I figure it probably just annoyed them to the point where they stopped listening.


I guess you could say that everything started changing for me in fifth grade, which was four years ago. I lot of things became different in fifth grade. I wasn’t even out of elementary school, and my family was already having me research private high schools that I could potentially be attending. At ten years old, I didn’t think that they would actually go through with uprooting my life, but now at fourteen as I stare in the mirror at my new school’s name printed across the chest of my hoodie, I know not to believe what I hoped would be a forgotten idea.


I also developed asthma when I was in fifth grade, which may not sound like a very big deal to most people, but once it started to affect me academically, it became more of an issue. It started in the spring of fifth grade, I would have these unexplainable “coughing spasms” and would have to run out of the classroom (with the teacher’s permission, I bet they got sick of it happening, too) and would go to the nurse where she would give me water and cough drops as I tried to calm my breathing.


This went on all throughout the end of fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh grade before I made it to eighth grade and something was finally done about it. I got really sick at the end of my either grade year, and during one of my numerous doctors visits, it was also discovered that I had asthma. I had spent so much time out of class in the nurse’s office when I could have been on this stupid medication controlling it and doing something useful with my life.


I missed out on too many things because of my inability to participate, thanks to my lack of easy breathing. Basically everyone that knows me at this point has witnessed me running from a room, searching frantically for my inhaler and a bottle of water. I guess the embarrassment of almost passing out in front of my peers due to a lack of oxygen has become a part of my life from now on.


Another thing that impacted me greatly in fifth grade was the night before Thanksgiving of that year. Sure, I’m used to listening to my parents arguing with each other all the time, it’s customary in my house, and the yelling turning to screaming and slamming doors wasn’t even unusual for me. But when my mother tried to drag my older siblings into their argument, my dad was just done. The sound of the front door slamming and his truck starting up and accelerating down the road is one that still haunts me to this day, even though he came back by my mother’s request the next day. “We can’t ruin Jack’s Thanksgiving,” my mother reasoned, but I know that even though she claims he doesn’t do anything around the house, that he does a lot for me.


With my mother being an alcoholic and my dad living in a bubble and being mostly oblivious to the world around him, my older sister May is really the only stable adult that I have in my life. And even then, now that she has a boyfriend who she plans on moving in with, and then being engaged with, and then marrying, even she has been slipping further and further away. I suppose this would be the roots of my constant lonely feeling. Nobody ever makes the effort to show me that they’ll actually be there for me.


My name is Jack Barakat, and I would consider myself a depressed person. I’ll never be able to get the help I need to actually be diagnosed and cured, but I have enough time spent alone to do enough research and know that these feelings that are constantly bottled up inside of me have lead me to be depressed. I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt any other way.

Notes

So this is basically a pretty vague insight into Jack's life, but I did that on purpose, with many different stories to tell based on this introduction. My other chapters will be longer than this (I hope). Thanks for reading, and don't forget to subscribe and check out my other fics <3

~SaraBethGaskarth