It was a crisp October morning.
She was walking to school, thinking about her insane week full of midterms and assignments due.
Stressed, she started walking faster, she was kind of late; nothing had been going the way she had hoped it would these days.
She got rejected from a job that her friend got hired for promptly, she got a 35% on her first assignment in a course she thought she was finally getting the hang of, she hadn’t told anyone. At home, she just had an argument with one of her roommates for being too loud too late at night, hence why she hadn’t been getting enough sleep, just, nothing was going right, especially the things she thought would go right. She thought it would all be fine, she’d be fine, she kept on telling herself that. “Life wasn’t the best at the moment, but it would all get better, everything would just be uphill from here,” she would tell herself.
Finally getting to school, she wasn’t late, thanks to her speed-walking skills. Not surprisingly, her professor assigns yet another assignment in addition to the midterm that’s in less than a week. “Just another thing to add to the to-do list…” She jots down the due date of the assignment. As she’s putting the cap on the pen it flies off her desk somehow and ends up under the chair in front of her.
“Oh god, nothing’s going right,” she sighs to herself. She’s already in a bad enough mood because of everything else.
She meets up with her friend for her 2-hour break between classes, they’re complaining about the midterm they “messed up” and got a passing grade on. All she could think about was her 35% assignment. “You’re fine, stop complaining,” she says. Her friend looks shocked. The rest of the 2 hours was relatively quiet.
As she’s walking to her conference she gets a text message: “Why didn’t you send me your notes from the reading for today??” Oh no. “I thought we were going to be doing them separately from now on, I reminded you to remember to do the readings when I saw you the other day, remember?” she replied. “Ugh well I’m not prepared at all for the conference, I didn’t do any of the readings, I’m definitely not getting a good participation mark in this class! Let me just pile that in my ‘mistakes that aren’t my fault’ category. It’s all on you dude.” She looks at the screen shocked, she didn’t know how to respond. But she did feel herself getting more and more heated, she puts her phone away and tries to focus solely on the music flowing through her headphones into her ears.
Everything’s going wrong. She feels so horrible. Just, about everything.
She walks home, the second she steps into the door, her roommate asks her what she wants for dinner. At this point, she’s so tired, she’s so done with the entire day, she still has to stay awake enough to do her 2 assignments due the next day. She says, “Whatever, honestly anything.” “Wow, so helpful,” her roommate replied.
That’s it.
She exploded, she was so annoyed, she didn’t have time to deal with any of this. “I said anything because I literally do not have a preference, but it doesn’t matter anymore, I’m not hungry.” She storms into her room.
Sitting on her bed, she felt all her emotions catching up to her – fear (of failing her most important required courses), anger (because of the whole misunderstanding that wasn’t her fault that somehow turned into her fault), annoyance (at herself because her poor roommate that was only trying to cook her dinner got the worst blow, she was the one that least deserved it). She started crying, very quietly.
Because she was tough, everyone she knew, knew that. She never cried.
Sometimes, being strong means being weak and being weak means being strong.
This is this girl’s story, but the people that she had interacted with this entire day had used the words “bitchy”, “moody”, “unreasonable” and many many more, you get the idea.
Many a time, knowing the story of a person will make everything easier, but you’ll almost never get that, so just understand, that’s all anyone could ask of you, be more sensitive.
Images from:
https://stylearena.net/sad-pictures-and-wallpapers/
http://www.whyohwhyradio.com/about/
https://www.gaggle.net/speaks/byod-1-1-a-post-from-a-frustrated-kid/