During my drop year, life blurred into something hollow and formless. I didn’t do anything worth mentioning. I didn’t explore, didn’t build, didn’t even pretend to enjoy the empty freedom people said they envied. I was driven by lust and regret, both clinging to me like parasites from the past, whispering that I could rewrite the script if I just tried harder. I told myself that every night, lying on the same bed, staring at the same ceiling, thinking the same thought: I wasn’t always like this.

And just like that, another memory lane opened, dragging me back into the labyrinth of old wounds.

I was in 8th grade again.
New school.
New buildings.
New faces.

Everything felt sterile, polished, as if the place was built on promises handed out to wide-eyed students, promises no one intended to keep. I wasn’t eager to make friends, but I always ended up collecting a few, like accidental souvenirs of survival. On my first day, I met him—Eliot Walker, a boy whose presence felt like gravity itself. He became my pillar, but it often felt like I was the one holding him up, bracing myself so he wouldn’t collapse onto me. He was a friend, but also a burden I never asked for.

8th grade went well, on the surface. I scored decent marks, enough to stand out as a quiet nerd. But somewhere along the way, cracks formed in the walls I had built. I don’t know when they noticed—those invisible vultures circling above me, sniffing for weakness. I don’t know when they started paying attention to my face, but they did. And once they saw it, they never un-saw it.

It started small. Whispers. Smirks. Side glances that lingered too long. Then the words came, sharp and precise, each one a scalpel slicing deeper than the last. They called me ugly. Over and over again, until it wasn’t just something they said—it became something I believed. A label I couldn’t peel off, not from my skin, not from my bones, not even from the reflection I tried to avoid.

Wherever I went, the tag followed.
Not scribbled on my schoolbooks, but engraved into my heart.