The Nightmare

Ten years ago this month I started my senior year of High School.

Since my middle and high school were in the same building, it was year number SIX of the same people, the same hallways, the same shit.

I still have nightmares that I'm in the final few months of my last semester and somehow I am failing a class suddenly and I'm a credit short for graduation. The scramble to keep myself from having to return to that hell hole for yet another semester or even another year makes me wake up in cold sweat.

I wasn't openly bullied, at least in the last few years. I was pointedly ignored by many people I thought were friends when I stopped trying to be a carbon copy of every "popular" person in school. Severe social anxiety, introversion, a strong strange streak and a love for weird art and drama club meant that friends were few and not to be trusted.

The nightmares have receded in the past few years, but for a while it was a recurring dream every month or two that I simply could not wake up from.

I see a Facebook group for my graduating class that I haven't been added to and think good. Fuck almost all of you. I never want to see 95% of you again.