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I’m 13 years old. Most of my time is spent just trying to get through a day at school without anyone talking to me. Talking is hard, and other people scare me. When I walk down the hall I usually keep my nose in a book so I won’t catch a glance from anyone. Today my nose happens to be inside of a Bruce Covil book. I’m not sure which one, but it’s in the Alien’s Ate my Homework series, and the protagonist has just left his home to travel the stars with a group of interstellar peace keepers of sorts. With them he finds acceptance, and so do I. I may be 13, and afraid of everything, but this hiding place is safe, and warm. I can stay here, in this place until I am stronger, and it’s safe to look up into the real world. Maybe someday, I will leave middle school, go to high school, and find a group of friends who care about me. Then I won’t be afraid of the world anymore. I’ll just hide here, until then.  And so I did, and that book kept me safe until I could manage to interact with the world on my own. I graduated from high school, and I’m not a freak anymore.

I flip through the channels at my girlfriends house. MTV is playing something about promiscuous girls, with underdeveloped social skills, and the ridiculous men who pursue them.  I can’t look. It’s too painful to call myself a human when I know this exists. Next. NBC is showing a police drama, CBS is showing a medical drama, and that other network is showing a legal drama, and all of them center around a group of professional 30 somethings who can’t figure out how to hold a steady relationship. Next. Seinfeld reruns are playing on Comedy Central, and I watch for a minute. It’s pretty funny. It’s just as pointless as the other shows, but at least it isn’t pretending to be serious. I think I can handle this. Yes, from now on I shall watch sitcoms, because in the end television is a waste of time, and any show that demands emotional investment from me, is asking too much.

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I walk into the mall, and a short boy faced man in a seer sucker suit approaches. He straightens his jacket, tugs his goatee, and five hundred dollars, all in freshly minted twenty dollar bills. Before turning and disappearing into the crowd he informs me that I have to spend all of the money inside of the mall, in one go. My rumbling gut pulls me to the food court where I splurge on pizza at Sbarro, and a glass of each type of lemonade from Hot Dog on a Stick, setting me back twenty bucks. Now my gut is stagnant, but not in good way. I have gone from hungry to the opposite end of the spectrum, and need a place to sit for a couple of hours while  I digest, so I walk up the the AMC they opened in the new third floor annex. It’s already after six so my ticket costs fifteen dollars. Not that I care much. I fall asleep in the movie, and wake up two hours later, somehow more tired than when I went in, but my stomach is no longer swelling. I’m sick of being at the mall, so I head to Brookstone to blow rest of the money. I immediately take a liking to a paperweight with shrimp living inside of it, and beyond the shrimp world, I buy a massage chair for three hundred dollars, a fancy pen for fifty bucks, and a fancy box that holds accessories for wine enthusiasts. When I leave Brookstone I still have fifteen dollars, so I blow it all in the arcade on the way out.

I don’t consider my life entirely fulfilled. I have so many plans I haven’t yet done, goals I haven’t achieved, and places I haven’t been to consider my life fulfilled. I am a person who is truly interested in seeing and doing everything the world has to offer so in reality I don’t know if I will ever feel like I am done with this life, like it is fulfilled enough to be over but I do feel I will at some point be aware of the fact that I lucky to have done and achieved as much as I have in my lifetime. At that point I think my life will be as fulfilled as possible.