An Educated School Girl

Written by Lucy, age 17, a Ventura County high school student.

An educated school girl like me carries a backpack that holds all of the knowledge she owns which forces her spine down to the ground. An educated school girl like me carries books, pretty pencils and highlighters that mean nothing but for some reason it matters that they are pretty, an iPad, the clothing that she contemplates over and over again, a phone, and one of those hydro flasks that just about everyone has.

An educated school girl like me is supposed to carry the ego of a skyscraper, the mouth of a viper, and a world full of lipstick and material everything that she begs everyday for. An educated school girl like me is supposed to carry ignorance of all the ups and downs, happy tears and sad tears, dress-ups and mess-ups, as she sits in bliss while there is a person outside her window crumbling to the floor.

An educated school girl like me isn’t supposed to carry the sleepless nights, the mind-boiling thoughts that send people into mad swirls of despair, and the tears that cause your whole body to burn up in muscle cramps as you lay screaming silently on the floor, begging for some sort of relief that doesn’t seem to ever be there. An educated school girl like me isn’t supposed to carry the dreams the size of the universe, the weight of a 13 head family that doesn’t see all the doors around them to a normal life because of everyone’s blindness, the real-life monsters of the memories of the past-but-not-the-past, or the unspeakable illnesses that only crazy and dead people have.

An educated school girl like me isn’t supposed to carry dreams that are based on desperation and need, dreams that aren’t for her but for everyone else who is shoved to the bottom of the pot, dreams that will come true because of fire-like hopes that burn through every boulder in her way, or dreams that were deemed impossible by everyone except her because school girls are supposed to know that impossible means that it can’t be done, rather than it just hasn’t been done yet.

An educated school girl like me isn’t supposed to realize that she doesn’t need to listen to the screaming whispers of everyone that says she needs to hide all of the things she isn’t supposed to carry because I am educated, not only by school, but by all the explosions that blow up my path everyday, every minute, and every second so that no one can tell me who I should and shouldn’t be because being an educated school girl like me is just that: a girl like me that goes to school to get educated.