the plastic palm tree hell

Original draft 30/10/2022 Finished 22/08/23

There’s this classmate you have. You’ve been cautiously observing him from afar since the beginning of the school year but never quite thought to meaningfully interact. He doesn’t have friends, not stable ones anyway. He mostly hangs around the corridor at recess, phone or book in hand, cut off from everything around him.

The entire class, even your own friend group, laugh at him behind his back. He speaks in this slow, monotonous fashion, sometimes locking up in a stutter or two. He moves all clunky, as if constantly weighing every flinch of his muscles. He gets easily upset when confronted about much of anything, or worse yet, joked about. Kids being kids, this gets exploited time and time again.

His political views are extreme, painted with a broad brush and very emotionally loaded. They often get mixed in with humorous hyperbole, so you never know if he’s being serious. Every other day he says something so inappropriate to the situation you want to bury yourself underground.

And yet, you are drawn to him. There is an invisible force pushing you to get to know him, an unexplained curiosity, a sense of familiarity even. You phase into his life slowly and without promises. He’s surprisingly easy to talk to.

While in your presence, he changes from being reserved and quietly terrified to going on long detailed rambles and absolutely glowing while doing so. He laughs at your jokes, even the ones your friends scoff at. The debates you have are so silly and off the charts, but boy are they entertaining.

After a bit of this, you come to a realization. The two of you are the same. Well, maybe that's overstating it. You share a lot. Next time you go out of focus during a conversation, you hear yourself speak, your shockingly odd and rhythmic cadence. You compare the facial expressions you imagine yourself making with the real thing, and realize that your mental image of how you act is based on people you’ve seen in movies. You start noticing every time you drop something or ram head-first into a door frame, how often people joke about your weird ways of doing everyday things. And for the record, your opinions aren’t any different, just as passionate and absolutist as any kid’s, with an added taste of rage against reality.

All this time, in your struggle for survival in a demanding and hostile school environment, in laughing at that guy who sits alone, you were the same breed of kid, just very wrapped up in trying to tear yourself away from all that he represents.

Questions flood your mind. Does it show? Is the whole class laughing at you too? Is your life a lie, your way of being a persona? There is no way to know. The guy doesn’t ever mention it. He seems ashamed to think of it himself, let alone to speculate about you. Your parents assure you that you’re normal, “nothing like those unfortunate disabled kids” – you sense the disdain for the Other in their tone. Your friends make light of it, implying that even the thought of such a thing is ridiculous. You feel alone. Misunderstood. Torn.

Your normalcy is frail, you realize, it’s hanging on by a thread. It’s about as strong as your ability to say the right thing at the right time. It seems like you are constantly a word away from social suicide, and the fact that your friend group still hasn’t alienated you borders on a miracle. How safe is it to continue forward?

You have no words to describe the way in which you are different, for no one has dared to give you any. As if the lack of a word would prevent you from noticing that you stick out in the first place. But you know. You can’t un-know. Not after you’ve seen him.