I'm fighting a losing battle. This is what Ive come to realize. This is what high school means to me. Swimming upstream, pushing two magnets together, climbing up a down escalator, and not in the good mushy high school musical way. I am not "standing out" and "becoming my own person", I'm being beat down and constantly ground on. I'm like a knot in a hunk of wood and everyone keeps taking turns with their own piece of sand paper to erase me, to make me submit and lie flat. I'm like a tangle on a head of particularly curly hair, they might not be able to brush me out at first, but with enough detangling spray and combing, they will pull me out eventually. They will make me like them, they will take me away from who I am. They will convince me that it is okay, that this is what high school is all about. They will fight with me, tease me, call me out. They will kill the conscience inside my head with the smoke and the alcohol. Sometimes, they may not even be trying to. Sometimes, their blows hide in simple stories about the last party, or advice on the best way to hide the scent of weed from parents. They do it when they remind me that they outnumber me, 781 to one. They do it when they ask me why? Why wont you do it? because every time, little by little, the answer starts to become I don't know. I don't know why I bother resisting, I don't know why I bother passing up the joint and setting down the beer. I don't know why I cringe at the sight of alcohol in a car, or why I force myself to stand apart from nearly everyone on the dance floor. I don't know why anymore. I don't want to disappoint my parents, I don't want to ruin my chance at college, I don't want to die in an accidental car accident, but no one else seems to care about those things. No one else wants to fight the up hill battle on the losing side. No one but me. It seems as though if I think absolutely everyone around me is crazy, chances are, it's me who is the crazy one. This is what high school means to me. Tug of war with sumo wrestlers, swimming while tied to an anchor, and falling up a waterfall. Different. Apart. Fighting a losing battle, and then, to no real surprise, losing.