chapter 1- paint it yellow

In, out, in out. It’s the routine which I’m getting so use to lately. In and out, in and out, don’t stop breathing. Control. Relax. Breath. I start to panic more and more as my breathing gets more rigged and harder to control, I don’t want to cry out or call for help. I can do this all myself, I know I can. I think about the task at hand, nothing else. Just that constant breathing; in and out, in and out. Finally I get some control over my lungs and I can finally breathe without having tears come to my eyes. I hate these moments when I feel as if the air has been sucked out of me and my head starts to spin. These attacks use to be very rare and far between but lately they have been at least once a week and always when I least expect it. In the school toilets, at breakfast, while I’m playing sport or just while I’m lying in bed.
I fall back onto my pillow with a sigh of relief glad that I didn’t anyone in the house up from their peaceful slumber. Slowly my eyes droop and I fall into a restless and disturbed sleep.
 
 
You know when you hate something so much that you take all your rage out on it without giving a shit. Well that is how I feel about school. I can’t stand it. The pressure of fitting in, doing well but not too well so that you look like a nerd, the teachers, the stupid year eights who are so up themselves, the looks that you get if you are the slightest bit different and the class work itself. This is why I hate school. People are always telling me that I should try and do better but the truth is, who gives a fuck about school work, the teachers sure don’t care what grade you get, I mean as far as they are concerned they would rather be down the pub downing their sorrows with a bottle of beer. Besides I don’t want to be anything that involves countless hours of study and stupid revision! I don’t think being a cat lady requires any qualifications!
 
So trudging of to school you can imagine if I’m feeling a bit down. My school is suppose to be one of the best schools in the state where young people go to get a good education and a brighter future but the truth is it is where young people go to get stoned and laid. Not that that applies to everyone but I can assure you that out of all our year one quarter have done either alcohol, drugs or had sex or all of them. The other three quarters just say that have.
 
There is nothing I like about school, nothing at all no matter how people try to twist something bad into something positive. People tell me that it must be fun to catch up with all my friends and gossip but there is nothing I loathe more than having to sit with my friends and talk to them about my feelings or other people’s feelings.
I’m not a loner; I mean I have friends just not many that I can relate to.
Anyway school is school no matter who my friends are or how I think of it.
It 's all just a bunch of old, stuffy classrooms with just as old and stuffy teachers trying to hammer the square root of pi, creative devices and the dates of when old kings and queens lived into our heads.
I get told of by my maths teacher today, for tardiness apparently. I swear that bloody Mr Mallow has it in for me. I wasn’t any later than half the kids in my class but I get in trouble for it. Then he decides to have another go at me for not knowing the answer to a question, saying that I wasn’t paying attention. He gave me double the homework for it. Obviously this made me mad as hell so I yelled at him. Saying that it wasn’t fair and he had no right to do that as I was paying attention and wasn’t late. This made him boil with rage and you could see his forehead get sweaty and go red. Once he had somewhat calmed himself down, he gave me a detention for disrupting class and talking back to a teacher. Does he seriously expect me to go!
 
I’m in a real huff when I get home. I got stacks load of homework from school, not that I’ll do any of it as I can’t see the point in spending more time on school work when I have already done 6 plus hours of it. I also didn’t go to the detention I got so that will mean I get into more trouble at school, they give me another detention I don’t go to that and it's a continuous cycle. 
So getting home I plonked my school stuff down and head straight to my fridge. My mum is slack. She can never be bothered finding the time to go out and do the shopping, I could go out but whenever I suggest this my mum just tells me not to interfere with her routine. This drives me mad! What routine would that be mum?
She just spends half her time either at work or on her bed. Can’t be bothered cooking, can’t be bothered cleaning, can’t be bothered doing anything really.
It is annoying but it is what I have to live with and it's better than her not being here altogether. Still I have to get up and go to school, do homework and all so why can’t see just be a mother!
Deciding to give up on the food idea I walk to my room, turn my music up really loud and plonk myself down on my bed.
 
Slowly I start to do what I dread the most, thinking. Thinking these days is my equivalent of death. One bad thought and memories start rushing back thick and fast. Memories that are better of tucked away because once they start coming back I start getting upset and agitated and start crying until my lungs start seizing up and I can’t breathe properly. SO you can see how much I hate have deep and meaningful thoughts. The only thing is, if I don’t have deep and meaningful thoughts then I will never be able to sort my problems out but if I do have deep and meaningful thoughts my problems get worse. Really I can’t win.
I think about mum and why she is how she is, of course I know the answer to that one without much difficulty. I ponder over why I never see my older brother anymore who I love and trust. I think about how I can never manage to make friends and then realise that I don’t care. I don’t care if people call me weird when I sit in the library all day reading or when I sit in the art room painting. Why would I? I think of why I am like this and why I am always so angry with the world and unable to get on with my life.
It drives me insane. Of course I know the answer to that, and to all the other questions. It is something I don’t want to think about or ever want to relive but the thing is I have to live with the aftermath of it every day and every night and am unable to get it out of my head. And eventually it wears you down, having to drag that weight around with you wherever you go like it is an anchor and it's slowly pulling you out to sea. The unfairness of it all makes me want to scream and shout at the world, how can they just ignore us. How do they manage to go about their day to day lives without once thinking about what I may be going through or what my family may be going through? It’s not as if I wanted this to happen or that it is our entire fault. I mean who would want their dad to die and their mum to start drinking?