Confinement.
It started when I was suddenly sent to the principal's office during my freshman year of high school. It happened during the middle of a class. I think someone had suddenly walked into the classroom and told me I had to go. I don't really remember. When I walked in there, I saw mom and dad there. They told me that I was going to be taken somewhere. They had a vaguely optimistic tone of voice. They told me that everything was going to be OK and they would be with me soon.
I remember leaving the school building and walking into some car driven by some stranger I barely even remember the presence of. The car drove onto the freeway and went north to some huge building in Sylmar. After the car stopped in the parking lot I was escorted inside and walked in some boring nondescript room. I sat there until I was escorted into another boring nondescript room. This one having these sorry excuses for beds lined up near eachother. There was also actual people my age there was well. I was uncomfortable with the idea of having to stay there, but I quickly stopped feeling anything less than an hour later.
When I was there all I would do is just play games of UNO with other people stuck there. I couldn't get to know any of them due to them only being there for short periods of time before they left and got replaced with other people. Rinse and repeat.
On the next day after I was first sent there, I saw this girl go up to one of the staff and ask her if she would ever leave the facility.
"I've been here for a week." she noted. She wasn’t given a real answer.
Later that night, I was laying down on my bed. Across the room I saw that she was laying on her bed too. At first she just looked sad. She suddenly began crying. But then, I started crying too. I didn’t understand why this was happening. But seconds later I realize that part of the reason I felt this way was this confusion. This whole time I was meandering through an empty life, not feeling anything. But now, I was crying.
That night dad had drove to the building. I was allowed to leave the room in order to talk to him in the hallway. He told me that I would get to leave tomorrow. I then went back to room to go to sleep afterwards.
The next day mom came to pick up me up from the psych ward. We had some small talk as we walked outside to the parking lot where her car was. After I got home I found out I had been expelled from school.
This all happened because I wrote a letter to Larry, who I hadn’t talked to years. 9th grade made me hate life so much I decided to write a letter to this ex-friend containing empty death threats to blow off steam. I’ll admit I fucked up when I decided to give it to a teacher for a class me and Larry shared to act as a messenger.
Why I am thinking about this now? Well I found out that I’m not gonna graduate high school this semester. After I got expelled, I spent 10 months being a NEET and losing my mind in my house while my parents were trying their best to find another school for me to attend. The school counselor said I have to do one more semester in order to make up for the lack of credits. The previous decade keeps haunting my life. I keep seeing reminders of it everywhere. I want to move on, but the future seems bleak...
I need to write that novel.
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