As I stare down at my biology worksheet, I can feel you watching, but I chose to ignore you. 20 questions, 20 paragraphs, due tomorrow. It’s pointless. I can do seven today, maybe ten if I stay up really late. But that’s only 50%. An F. I flip over the homework sheet and examine the rest of my homework: Analyze two Shakespearean sonnets…I’ll do that in Algebra. Algebra review sheet…screw it. French vocabulary… I’ll finish that in Biology. Great. Now that that’s out of the way, I have a free afternoon of doing nothing ahead of me.
I guess everybody has their secrets, right? Some people smoke, or take drugs, or have a lot of sex. Well, I have a secret too. I am lazy. That’s my secret. That’s not so bad in comparison, is it? I don’t think so either. I’m still in all Honors classes. I still have one of the highest English grades in my class. Most of my teachers like me well enough. Yeah, I’ve lied to every single one of them, but I have all A’s and B’s. Except for that F in Biology. But I’ll get that up. I’ve done it before. In fact, I’ve never gotten a grade lower than a B. Do I deserve my grades? Probably not. But I’m not hurting anybody. And please, don’t you give me that “you’re hurting yourself” crap. You know I’m not. And honestly, I do some of the work. And the rest is excuses. I have the most abundant stash of excuses in the world. I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Excuses Told in Fourteen Years”. That has to count for something? Right?
At home it’s harder because I have to lie to my mom. But you know I have no choice. Why haven’t I cleaned my room in 2 months? Why, I’ve just started high school!, I tell her. I have SO much homework. It’s true, I do. What I don’t tell her is that I don’t actually do most of it, that I have Internet Explorer opened to the same article every day so that I look like I’m studying whenever she come into my room. What I don’t tell her is that 5 seconds ago, I was watching the latest 30 Rock on Mozilla Firefox. That the moment she leaves, I’ll minimize the article and continue watching it. But that’s really none of her business, now is it? Thank god my mom isn’t computer savvy.
See, my life is almost perfect. Except there’s you. I hate you. I hate you with an intense passion reserved only for people like Hitler and Stalin. I wish you’d shut up forever. Sometimes I think you have, but you always return, whispering, criticizing. You drive me crazy. You keep me from sleeping. You torture me into promising myself that I’ll improve, and scream at me when I break those promises. You kick me with every lie I tell. You crush me whenever you overhear my parents telling their friends about how hard-working I am. I should sue you for abuse. You would get the death sentence. Too bad I’d have to die with you in order for that to ever happen.
You tell me to come clean, or at least to stop where I am. It would make your life easier, you say. You would have more confidence in yourself. Yeah, I would have more confidence. I would also get kicked out of school. I would hurt my parents. I would lose my little sister’s admiration.
BE QUIET! Don’t you dare tell me I deserve any of it. You don’t know what it’s like. How can I stop lying? People have so many expectations of me! How can I stop watching 30 Rock? Tina Fey is so funny! How can I stop procrastinating? There’s no point in that. I’ll just make up another excuse.
Those are all just cover-ups, you say. You can’t lie to me.
I know. That’s why I hate you so much. You are the only one who isn’t fooled by my clever white lies. You are the only one who knows about my double life. And you are the only reason I keep trying over and over again to get out of this horrible mess that I’ve made of my life.