Between a Nerd and a Jock Place

Its strange looking back at my life. I've never been much good for anything. All my efforts to be a good student or a good employee were nothing more than a pedantic waste, that amounted to nothing more than me becoming the most boring person in the world.

I've always been stuck in a strange roll in life. I was usually the top grade in my class, or at least in the top three. When teachers would grade finals on a bell curve, my grade was removed so that others would pass. I could do algebraic equations half asleep, fifteen minutes before class, and still get them all correct. I was the best reader in my classes, and I always put 100% into all of my work.

I would always strive to do my best in gym class. I was usually in the top five in running. On weights, despite my slight frame, I managed squatting over twice my weight. I never liked doing sports, but during sports days, I would do my best, which overall was below average, despite my best efforts.

So even though I was smart, and got good grades, I was a slacker, and didn't fit in with the other top students. They viewed me as a waste, and it seemed to upset them that I was coasting through the classes while they studied, and had a social stigma attached to them. Even so, I did become friends with a select few of them.

Even though I wasn't a slacker in P.E. the jocks didn't like socializing with me, because they viewed me as a nerd, and since I didn't participate in after school sports clubs, I was usually rejected.

I was never part of any group, yet I would visit all the different social groups of my school. I'd know one person at least in each one, and the rest of the group would hate me. I quote, "Why are you even here? No one here likes you, so why do you even hang out here? Go away!"

At the beginning of school, in both middle school and high school, the jocks would try to establish their dominance over the nerds. Most of the poor geeks would be bullied into submission. I would fight. I would scratch and bite, and yell, and punch and kick. After their first try, I would never be bullied again. Instead, I would be ignored.

Despite all these social limitations, I made a couple of friends (which I still talk to today, 10-16 years later). I was too much of a slacker to be a nerd, and I was too nerdy to be with the jocks. I refused to do drugs, so the slackers ignored me, after their first invitation. My laziness meant that I never tried to succeed, instead I'd get my A's, and I'd ignore everything else. I ignored college prep, I ignored life goals and planning. I got out of high school without a direction to go in. I wasn't interested in college, viewing it as nothing more than a continuation of the torture I had been experiencing for over 10 years.

I started working. At work I had the same attitude as I had in school, get the A, but don't bother with anything after that. It wasn't until I met the woman that would become my wife, that I went for a promotion.

So now, I've started planning for my future. One of those things is going to college. But old habits and feelings die hard, and the time to act is slipping by. Once again, I'm sabotaging myself. Even knowing this, looking to go to school, I feel the same strange weighted feelings in my chest. I'm not sure if its fear, or hate, or loathing. But the more I try to think about going, the more I feel like crying, and curling up.