Narrative Essay On Substance Abuse

On a scale of 1-10 of rude interruptions, I’d say getting punched in the face was an 11. I had missed the end of my friend Kyle’s theory about how our history teacher is definitely going to grade our DBQ harder this time, because an upperclassmen just had to get his friend to notice him. Unbeknownst to me, a small shoulder-level freshman, an unspoken rule of high school is that the only surefire way of getting someone to notice you in a crowded hallway is to hit them on the shoulder. Of course, my freshman naivety convinced me that being the same height as a certain someone’s shoulder would not paint a target sign on my forehead and as a result, I learned that valuable lesson the hard way. What ensued was arguably the worst thing that ever happened to me: being noticed by more than two people at a given time. “Oh my God, they’re all looking at me,” I thought to myself, as I desperately tried to avoid eye contact with the offender who punched me. I quickly mumbled, “I’m fine, I’m fine” under my breath, breaking through the wall of people going down the commons stairs, kool-aid man style. I speed walked intensely, trying to put distance between myself
and the scene of crime, and when I finally arrived at my class, a full-on bruise had developed on my cheek and my eyes were tearing up. But, the real pain was the stinging sensation that came with too much attention.
An important thing about me is that I dislike standing out. If I could describe myself as a sandwich, I would be a regular PB&J shoved in the back of some middle-schooler’s JanSport backpack, you wouldn’t know I was there unless you had a preference for PB&J's, and that was how I liked it. Don’t get me confused with a three week old PB&J, I’m not going to ruin your backpack if you forget about me. But either way, I preferred going unnoticed and prior to the face fiasco, I went to extreme measures to maintain invisibility, like instituting a strict “no turnaround” policy in the hallway, and waiting until I was in my classroom to tie my shoe, sometimes walking for five minutes with the ends of my shoelaces slapping the sides of my shoe like a bongo drum.
My issue was that I thought attention always meant judgment and scrutiny. I honestly thought that something as little as tying my shoe in the hallway would magically flip the judgment switch, causing everyone to suddenly become aware of my presence. But when something as large as a one sided fight between me and a senior happened, my personal belief was contradicted. Two days later, and the only person still pestering me about it was my sister, who thought this was an act of bullying and not, as I believed, the universe’s punishment for my abnormal lack of height. I hadn’t received an invite from the Ellen show to talk about my experience, and even my friends had forgotten it had happened.
In the time following, I realized that maybe getting attention was not an earth shattering event.
My embarrassing moments would not be permanently etched into the minds of strangers, and no one was going to conceive a gossip column to discuss my faults if I attracted the slightest notice. I realized that maybe the world doesn’t revolve around me and my faults, and that the slightest mess up, like going in the wrong direction, is not an Earth- Shattering event. Even though you won’t find me turning around in a crowded hallway, or screaming to my friend across the classroom, I’m not longer afraid to make my presence known anymore. Sometimes, it takes getting punched in the face to learn that getting attention is not the end of the world, and that football players need to find nicer ways to get their friend’s
attention.