Sophie Volpe

Ms. Reed
English 9
February 18, 2019
The Ocean of Obsession
My butt actually aches from sitting on my hard dining room chair for so long. I shake my
hand to release the death grip I have on my pencil. I stare down at the paper scrunching up my
nose while silent tears roll down my cheeks and I don’t understand anything that’s on the page in
front of me. My hair falls like a wall around me, imprisoning me in the numbers. All I can see
are x’s and y’s and a bunch of numbers that don't make sense. I feel like I’m wearing horse
blinders on except it’s torture, and it doesn't help me focus. I throw my pencil across the table
and start crying. Mascara is smeared down my face and my eyes start stinging. First, it’s silent
tears but soon it’s full on crying. All I can think about is the fact that I don’t understand. At this
point, I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe, and I’m not even making any noise.
My mom sits next to me on a dining room chair and tries to talk me off the ledge. I don’t
know what ledge I’m on because I think I’m deep into the sea of insanity. I’ve been teetering on
the edge of this cliff for a while, and failure has finally pushed me off. I’ve been staring down at
the sharks of crazy and the rocks of madness, and finally, I’ve fallen over. I can feel the sharks
gnawing at my legs and the rocks scraping up my back.
I’m hysterically crying while my mom gives me a “motivational” speech about how
smart I am, how I’m gonna change the world, how no one cares about math. After a while of
crying, I switch into a dazed and kind of _____ state. I say to my mom “I’m fine. I’m fine, I just
need to study some more. I just need to study.” She asks, “Are you sure? It’s ok if you want to go
watch a movie or something.” My hair has already fallen around me and I mutter “I’m ok. I’m
ok…” Numbers fly around my head for the next three hours, but none hit my brain. None of
them stick. They’re tangled in my hair, stuck to my cheeks, attached to my clothes. I try so hard
to understand, I try so hard to get it, but I don’t, I can’t. I may as well have just spent three hours
doing absolutely nothing, given how little I’ve improved.
At 11:30 I deem it too late and pack up my books. I finally go to bed and when I close my
eyes I dream of the quadratic formula and evil parabolas. I wake up the next morning and I don’t
even put on any makeup I make a beeline for my textbook and stare aimlessly at the pages. Sleep
hasn’t seemed to help anything and my face is just as scrunched up as before . I go and I take the
quiz.. I scrunch up my nose and my eyes well up. I hear everyone else flip the page when I
haven’t even passed the first problem. I walk out of class, and this time I stand atop a different
cliff, the cliff of obsession. This time, nothing’s pushing me off, I have to choose whether to
jump or not. Whether to jump into the never-ending ocean of obsession or stay on the cliff and
walk away from the edge. Being the masochist I am, I jump and swim for the bottom, determined
to feel the sand and see what lurks beneath the cold black water. The sharks of time and the fish
of happiness are swimming around me, taunting me. My whole day is spent in the ocean. Hell,
my whole night is spent in that damn water. That water is the color of failure and the taste of
defeat. The water that suffocates me, filling my lungs and drowning me.

It’s almost two years later and I take my very first math quiz of high school. I freak
myself out, study longer than I need to, but shockingly enough I don’t cry. No tears. Not even an
almost tear. Then I take the quiz, and I think I did ok. After every assessment I’ve ever taken,
I’ve predicted my grade. I predict in my headand tell my parents. I walk out of Ms. Karim’s
room and when I get in the car I tell them that I think I got a very low 80, they say that it’s fine,
they only care that I’m doing my best. So when I get my quiz back and it has a circled 67 at the
top, I’m shocked. I shove it in my bag and move on. Compartmentalize. Move on, cry later, I tell
myself as I walk to bio. I take a deep breath, and I put on my fake smile. I’ve become way better
at this. If fake smiling was a class, I would have a 100, and I wouldn’t even be mad that I didn’t
have a 105. Eventually, I get out of bio and walk down the hill. I get in the car and I say “67,”
my mom knows what I’m talking about. She’s dealt with plenty of car rides like these. She
understands. I start crying, and once again mascara is smeared down my face and my eyes sting
with tears. I cry and cry and tell her about how dumb I am. And once again, I stand atop the cliff
of obsession. This time, nothing’s pushing me off, I have to choose whether to jump or not.
Whether to jump into the never-ending ocean of obsession or stay on the cliff and walk away
from the edge. This time I don’t jump. I sit eating a picnic of growth and enjoy the view. I slowly
talk myself into reality. We decide I need a tutor. I decide that it’s ok that I need a tutor. And I
decide not to hate myself because I got one bad grade. I decide I’m no longer going to be known
as ‘that smart girl’, I’m going to be known as me. I decide to not let a grade define me. I decide
to enjoy the view and stop jumping off cliffs. And as the last tear slides down my cheek, I realize
that I have just decided to be happy, and it feels pretty damn good.