As a Person, I have always been very different from most of my peers. I feel, I have always thought differently, behaved differently, felt differently. Most of my life I have been in the company of adults. I am barely 15, yet I have often participated in adult discussions, and not been taken as a nuisance.
My mom and my Grandparents, for the greatest part of my life- till I was about 11, to be precise, kept me away from violent material, and the more kiddy channels like Cartoon Network and the like. Instead my time was spent watching Nat-Geo, and Discovery. I learnt to make friends ow of books, to ask whatever I wanted, to gather information from every source. Most of my peers, and definitely my fellow school student, did not. I knew about some of the more censorable body functions, when I was in third grade. I never found it weird, it is but nature.
My reading and choice of channels, along with good manners and refusal to speak almost any slang word resulted in an amazing reputation with the teachers, and I was regarded as the most intelligent student in the school. Another thing was that while I live in a quite large city of India (Ahmedabad has a population of 5-6 million) the people here are generally not that good at English or Computers. I gained access to computers when I was 4, which made me very good at them, and my mom started teaching me English along with the state’s native language (Gujarati) which we are expected to learn, and Hind which is the national language. I became very good at English thanks to that and my love for reading.
Due to this, after their initial respect for me evaporated I became a freak to them. I have a height of 5”8 and am more than capable of causing them some damage. But I am not the violent type, preferring to channel my energy to more useful locations. Hence I became an easy target. Year after year, their vocabulary of slang words increased, while they began realizing the body functions as they turned into adolescents, and well..... They became obnoxious and annoying. I had already (thanks again to Mom) mentally prepared myself for the changes, and thankfully found some other kids in the school who had too. Thanks to this last year, it was almost bearable. But it keeps getting worse. The slang words that they say are enough to drive anyone mad, but they insult me in many ways, making every second of those 6 hours so horrible that I have begun to contemplate multiple methods to get rid of them. The teachers all but ignore these happenings. Every day is straight from hell.
And it gets worse. They all behave like simians. I am pretty sure half of them never bothered to evolve from the Neanderthals. Just today, I was walking around, my face in a book. I like doing that, it helps me read. Then suddenly, I came across two boys fighting with long bamboo poles, which hand splinters running all the way to the bottom. One hit and I knew I pretty much gone. One of them came after me, ready to smack me right on the head, when the other got in the way, blocking it. He instructed the other to dot it as I was his ‘friend’. When I started walking away though, the second guy came up and hit me hard in the back. Thank god he used his hand and not the pole. But it hurt.
All this has happened to me and worse. And it is not like I take it lying down. More than once I have blocked hits, attempted to insult them and once every managed to say every possible insult in the English language ever devised. But I have given up. It is pointless. There is no need for me to sink to their level. Plus I can’t change my school for another year. I have nothing I can do. Finally I just decided to give up. I have begun retreating into a small bubble. I only interact with my friends. If, for any reason I do have to interact with the rest, I finish what needs to be done, then stop all interactions.
I have been in hell for 6 years. I may have to be for another. But it gives me solace to know, soon I will be somewhere, and they will be untraceable. Even of Facebook.