Stevenson

Now thesse are excerpts from something written awhile ago but they are my story and maybe it will help with our exploration of what got me to this point.



It was September, the leaves were orange and red and they were gracefully falling to their final resting place. I watched them as I walked thinking about how September seems to signify a time of change. My stomach was queasy; the walk seemed to go on for miles, when in reality it was just one short block.
I light a cigarette, hoping to alleviate some of the stress. I could see the kids standing there, chatting anxiously about their summers, the vacations they had taken, the late nights, the parties they had been to. They stare at me, like I’m some evil alien invading their planet. I put out my cigarette, look at the ground begging it to suck me in. I stood there silently, hoping that one of them would notice me, even just a “hey! Who are you?” would have been nice, but they didn’t, instead they just continued their conversations.
The bus ride was short, a mere 3 miles, but it seemed to take forever. I sat in an empty seat in the front, hoping really that no one would sit next to me. I had no such luck, a boy who I would later learn is named Bronce, sat down next to me. He tried to make small talk but I mostly ignored him. I hated him for talking to me; I just wanted to endure my misery alone.
Being the new kid is tough, there’s no way around it, but moving from Redford to Livonia, made it even harder. In Redford I had been the equal (a 50% black to a 50% white ratio), now here I was, in the whitest city in America. I had dreaded this day all summer long, I had moved one mile and had to change schools. I didn’t think it was fair, I hated god for doing this to me, I wanted to die, hide under a rock, just anything to not have to do this.
I was told to go to the counseling office when I got to school, they would assign me a “mentor” to help me through my first week at Stevenson. As I walked through the halls, I could feel them staring at me, somehow they knew I was different, they knew I would never conform to their ways, I would never let the drama suck me in.
I hated Stevenson; the people were so different compared to where I had come from. It wasn’t just the way they dressed, or the way they talked, but it was their whole attitude, like they were somehow superior to the rest of the world. They were quick to judge and they were malicious.
I still had Ian though, and in my mind that was enough to get me through anything. We had grown up together, he started off as my best friend from the age of 7 and slowly as the years went on our relationship developed into something much more substantial. We went from best friends to lovers; it wasn’t an overnight change but something that happened gradually. The more time we spent together the closer we seemed to become.
He had gone to Churchill, a school in the same district as Stevenson, and though he was three years older than me, it never felt it. I would come home from school and he would hold me as I cried for hours, comforting me, encouraging me, and most of all loving me. At times he was all I needed, all I was living for, days we spent apart were few and agonizing.
He was my first love, the one that I didn’t know how to live without. Anything and everything I did was about him or for him, even if not directly connected.
My mentor’s name was Amanda, and without out her I don’t think I would have made it through my first few months at Stevenson. Her job was to make sure I got to all of my classes the first week of school, show me around, help me make some friends, maybe eat lunch with me. We had one class together; Choir. She soon become a friend, she wasn’t like the rest of the kids at Stevenson.
We went to concerts together, hung out on weekends, had girls night and painted our toenails. She took me under her wing and helped me learn how to fly on my own at Stevenson.
Second semester she dropped Choir, we slowly started to drift apart. We no longer had anything in common, we no longer had a class together, she had a different lunch period. I was slowly slipping into a depression again. I remember going home to Ian, crying telling him I didn’t know how I was ever going to make it. My life seemed so worthless at this point, I was losing my grip on reality, I was so overwhelmed.



*A side note, Bronce and I later became very close friends, though it was almost 3 yrs later.