Throughout my childhood, I had very little interest in the real world outside of nature, so I mostly kept my head in a book—any book I could find. Besides, there isn’t a whole lot that you can’t find in a book. Adventures! Dreams! Possibilities! Lives upon lives and experience after experience, all craftily strung together, providing hours of entertainment. It was like entering a different dimension. I couldn’t get enough of it. A perfect distraction from reality. I knew since then that I wanted to be a writer someday.
One by one, I’d line my books up along the shelves. All three hundred of them. All color coordinated in a row. So pretty. Just like so.
A sense of satisfaction would wash over me as I did so. There’s just something innately soothing about color coordination to me. I don’t notice it, but I begin to color-coordinate everything, not just my beloved books.
Before long, those same beloved books, get me in trouble.
“Jessi!” Jeff scolds me. “What happened to your straight-A grades? This is a B! You don’t get a B. Why is this happening?”
Staring at the floor, I let out a small shame-filled mumble, “I don’t know.”
“You do know!” my father insists.
“I-I don’t,” I stammer. He’s right, though. I do know the reason why. I know precisely the cause of the decline. I can barely look him in the eye.
“It’s boys!” He insists.
I jump slightly, shivering beneath his accusation. Boys? Why would boys ever make my grades lower?
His accusation makes zero sense to me. After all, I’m only 8. What I do know, is that the fault is certainly my own. You see, for months, I have been secretly reading in class.
Reading anything and everything except the actual assignment, that is. My precious books just fit so perfectly inside my textbooks. I can’t help that.
To an unsuspecting teacher, I look like an invested student. Only I know that I’m not.
I don’t dare confess to the actual reason why. Instead, I let him think I’m some boy-crazed third grader. He still grounds me from reading, but I still don’t confess. I also don’t let a small thing like punishment get in the way of what I want, though.
Perhaps this is why I was called rebellious.
When my parents slip off to their rooms for the evening, I climb into bed and snuggle deep under my cozy comforter, gripping my latest book. With the blanket tucked behind my head, flashlight in hand, I clumsily turn the pages, getting lost in the story.
A few short minutes later, my dad barges in my door. The sound nearly scares the childhood out of me. Startled, I jump and lose my grip on my flashlight.
“What are you doing?” He demands.
I can feel a familiar sense of fear wash over me. He stares at me without blinking. I stare back at him blankly. The thoughts have left my head. I feel the fear of a thousand gods shoot through me. And then it happens.
His face softens.
Smiling, he throws me a wink. “I won’t tell your mother.” He assures me.
I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m grateful for this act of loyalty. I need the escape that only books can give me. More than sleep. More than peace. More than anything, I need to get lost in my imagination. Besides, it’s not like I was ever going to be a great student anyway. Not really.
With my head always in the clouds and my body always out of my classroom seat, I wasn’t exactly what one would call studious. If I’m honest, I made a terrible student, a halfway decent head cheerleader, and a pretty entertaining class clown. I was interested in almost anything more than school—even thrifting. Anything but school work. Sadly, I wouldn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was 18, but there were signs along the way.
It’s at the age of thirteen that the anguish becomes vivd in my memory. The despair. The anxiety. The constant state of uneasiness. almost as if I don’t belong in my skin. And even if I did, I’d still have wanted to climb out of it. To shed my skin like a costume, just so that I didn’t have to experience existence.
It’s then that the rage begins. The kind of rage that could clear a room.