Did you know that half of the great barrier reef has died since 2016? Or that 150-200 species of flora and fauna die become extinct every 24 hours? Here’s another not-so-fun fact: 80% of humanity lives on 10 dollars per day. These are some pretty depressing figures. Unfortunately, I have a habit of retaining all terrible statistics. My mind latches on to them and puts them in a special area to be released when I am anxious, upset, or uncontrollably livid.

As someone who is self-conscious about every grade on every assignment, these thoughts pop up when things don’t go the way I thought they should, like below an A-plus. Recently, as I was rigorously training for golf tryouts, I did not study for a Physics test in the way I normally would. During the test, I came across more than one question I didn’t know. Suddenly, I remembered  that 6,316 people die each hour.

Two days later, my teacher handed me back the test. It was scored 81 percent. I immediately thought about how insignificant life is. After all, I am only 1 person out of 7 billion people on 1 planet out of 8 planets, orbiting 1 star out of 300 billion stars in 1 galaxy out of 2 trillion galaxies in 1 universe out of an infinity of other universes.

Generally, though, grades aren’t the catalyst for my doomsday almanac. Bunny is.

The other day in the cafeteria, the subject of Bunny, a freshman and former “friend,” came up.

“Hey, did you guys hear that Bunny is dating a new guy?” I asked,  knowing that everyone will excitedly jump in with their own two cents in a split second. Some people add fuel to the fire. I know how to start the fire.

“I heard he’s an upperclassman,” Lucas said.

“Bunny only digs upperclassmen because they can bring her to prom,” Cynthia added.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kimberly jumped in, clearly interested in the tea, so much so that she actually took her eyes off of her phone. “I thought she was still dating that senior boy. You know, the one with glasses, short, dresses like he’s going to the Paris fashion week. What’s his name, Andrew?”

“No his name is Alex, and they broke up a month ago” Cynthia replied.

“Oh ok, whatever I don’t care. It’s really hard to keep track of her relationships anyways.” Kimberly resumed to scrolling through instagram.

“So… does this one look better?” Angelina jokingly asked.

I didn’t care about Bunny! Okay, so maybe I was the one who brought her up. I don’t know why I made that mistake. I guess it’s like when you watch the Kardashians just so you can feel a lot smarter. But once I did and they all took the bait, my blood started to boil and I was suddenly reminded that the average temperature of Earth has risen 1.62 degrees over the last few decades. And, of course, that leads to the melting of the polar ice caps, which leads to rising sea levels, which leads to extreme weather, which leads to the end of life as we know it!

Originally, I had no desire to befriend Bunny. Even in eighth grade I knew that she was too wrapped up in appearances. But we had a mutual friend who was moving away and suggested that we hang out. I gave it a shot, and I soon realized that I shot myself in the foot. Actually, it was much worse than that. It was more along the lines of stabbing myself again and again and again for eternity.

For someone who has no desire to read Shakespeare, Bunny had a lot of drama. The drama didn’t happen on a stage, however. It happened over the phone. Every other hour, she would call me up with another problem. “People don’t like me!” “Everyone says I’m shallow!” “I have nothing to wear for tomorrow!” I would get these calls before I went to sleep. I would get them when I woke up. It was driving me crazy, or to think about how 795 million people in the world are starving and the one on the other line is doing it on purpose.

When freshman year began, I realized that our lives were on separate tracks. I was focused on my classes and volleyball. She was focused on boys, parties, and impressing people by talking about boys and parties.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I did something about it. The next day, Bunny confronted me in the locker room.

“Why did you block me on messenger?”

“Because I don’t want any negativity in my life.”

“How am I negative?” she asked.

“How are you not negative?” I answered. “You know, for the first time, I agree with your ex. This relationship is too much to handle.”

“What do you mean?”
“You only ever talk about yourself and leave no space to let others have a chance to talk. You use emotional problems as a reason to treat your body poorly. And you think you’re the only one who has problems. Stop victimizing yourself, everyone suffers. It’s part of life.”

She stormed off. I stood there and thought about how 760,000 people die prematurely each year in China because of air and water pollution. Then I stormed off.

We didn’t talk after that, at least not directly to each other. Sometimes Bunny would be within earshot distance, and she’d say something like, “She thinks that she’s so good, but she doesn’t even have a boyfriend.” And I know she was talking about me, and I know that she was saying it just loud enough so that I could hear. I would resist saying anything to her. It wasn’t worth it. But my mind would naturally jump toward my almanac of doom.

I remember one day after one of Bunny’s comments snapped into my ear like a firecracker, I went to see my math teacher, Miss K. I couldn’t hide my thoughts. “Do you ever think that humanity doesn’t deserve the earth?” I asked.

“That is really dark,” she responded alarmingly.  “Are you sure you weren’t just having a bad day?”

“Well maybe,” I conceded. “But if you think about it, it makes sense. The majority of society is full of shallow, greedy, narcissistic creatures. Of course that excludes the 30% of the nice human beings on this wonderful planet. But 70% is a lot, and if we don’t lower that number, we are all going to die.”

“Maybe there’s some truth to that,” she yielded, “but we should try and be optimists, no matter how difficult it is.”

When I left Miss K’s room, I started to think about my pattern of negative thoughts. I knew that I couldn’t help those thoughts from popping up, but I wanted to find a way to counterbalance it. I felt overwhelmed by all of the negativity coming from my mind every time something made me anxious or upset. To remedy this, I started to look about happy statistics. Just to debate my reflexive thought process.

A month later, I saw Bunny in the cafeteria. She was with a new boyfriend. I think this might’ve been the third one! I started to think about the sun’s eventual death and how it will first fry Earth, and then I stopped myself. I took a second and remembered Bill Gates donated $50 billion to charitable causes, the World Wildlife Fund has helped bring back the Amur tiger and Africa’s black rhino from the edge of extinction, and the nonprofit Rise Up has advocated for over 100 laws that have impacted 115 million girls and women around the world.

The bottom line is that there is hope for humanity, at least until the sun dies.