Page 40 - Student: dazed And Confused

Sometimes, reality is scary, even through all the lies people tell to make it more
bearable. There's no getting away from it. For a time, I thought I had completely cut myself
off from reality, I was convinced of it. I made my own little world and lived there. But I
hadn't gotten away from reality, I was deeper into it than I could have imagined, at the very
core of it all. I was simply seeing everything in a new light, from a different perspective.
I don't know why some people are scared tp face up to the actuality of life. Your life
isn't worth living unless you're prepared to try to make it work. Yes, it's scary, but you can't
just hide from it.
The girl didn't run away from her problems when they showed. Don't forget, she

was only nine at the time. She didn't try to ignore them, pretend they weren't there.
Grown ups did that, adults tried to gloss over everything, invented stories to make things go
away and smooth them over. She dealt with them head-on, wasn't frightened off by things
that others would have shied away from. Some said she was fearless, others said
headstrong, even old beyond her years. She was all of these things and neither of these
things. She was a child.

THEN

She wasn't going to let him see her shed even one tear over him, not going to give
him the satisfaction of knowing how much he had hurt her.
"Jess ! " yelled Micky Foster. "Coming to play Tag in the yard?"
She didn't turn her head to answer him. Micky was one of the boys who went to her
school; they always played together at the weekend. She didn't feel like playing today,
didn't feel like playing ever again. She looked up into the high branches of the tree she was
sitting under. There was so much to think about now, so many problems that had decided
that now was the time to attack, so many questions to ask that she needed to find out the

answers to. Nothing was as simple as it had been a week ago.
"Jess ! We need you to make the team," shouted Micky. "Hurry up."
This was part of her life now. There was no room for him in it, not even thinking
about him. But, somehow, he had squeezed his way into her life, hadn't he? She got to her
feet and pushed herself off the tree trunk. "Coming," she sighed and started over towards
her friends.
Why couldn't he see that he wasn't a part of her life, that it wouldn't just change
now that he had decided to turn up. She didn't need him, he would only complicate things.
Who was to say that he had actually grown up enough to accept his responsibility, and not

just thought that it might be fun to have a daughter for a while. Why did everything have to
change now? He had never wanted to know her before - why did everything have to
accommodate him now? The world didn't revolve around him; he wasn't the centre of