A short ode to Justine of Boxes 2, victim of the failing school system, prisoner of her own ambition.
500 words
Just a little longer.
Just a little bit longer and this would all be over.
So you kept telling yourself. Just a few more classes, a few more hours, a few more sleepless nights, wasted weekends, eons of seconds spent turning page after page, swelling knuckles with graphite, bleeding your eyes from the computer screen’s myriad of infinitesimal clicks.
And there it was. The degree, the baseless celebration, the promise of a future of prosperity if you would just keep pedaling – keep lifting your head, the golden prodigy, and not disappoint.
A beautiful decoration for your wall. The pain didn’t stop coming. Your fingers wept, like mourning mistresses, over your computer keys – day after day after night. And it seemed as though none of your endeavors were getting you anywhere – that none of your attempts, your passions, your persuasions were bringing fruit. You were fruitless, you were dull. Your life was leaving you in grades and in notebooks and in click clicking computer mice.
It wasn’t enough. You were slipping, you were running out of time. Your future was at stake – you couldn’t afford to work anymore, there wasn’t the time or the money or the energy to maintain your grades.
What are you doing they told you, in hushed but angry whispers. You are our golden child, you cannot disappoint us. What are you doing?
Desperate now, slave to the flashing screens and updating gradebooks and turning pages, you sought for an escape. Scoured for a way out, for an opportunity. Wept red and blue at your screen, graphite bruised fingers wet from your reddened eyes.
This isn’t going to end, you needed a way out.
And then it came. A promise, a lie, a beautiful ray of hope to lift you from your despair. The perfect job, the perfect postdoc. A job that your ruined courses didn't deserve, with enough pay to cover your cost of living.
And experience – beautiful, necessary experience with the world’s leading company in biochemical research. You were the most fortunate creature in existence, turning your disastrous fortitude into good fortune. The opportunity of a lifetime for an ambitious golden child.
Your eyes sweep computer screens once again, entering data, watching over experiments, fingers shuddering with the memory of failed tests, of ruined blood and agonizing mistakes.
One agonizing mistake, the memories of which roam these halls even now, prisoners of your blind ambition.
You were a bright-eyed, ambitious student once. And now your eyes are dull, restless. Anxious with memories and responsibilities, weighed down by guilt and stress.
The ward’s golden child, who turned a blind eye to injustice for the sake of desperation.
You ask yourself now as you do every day, the cameras weeping pain and agonies before your eyes, the creature within your flesh stirring like a second heart with the knowledge of what you have done – what you have helped create, with your excitement and your dedication and your unyielding support of this facility.
The same question whispered from the back of your mind, in sleep and in dreams and in the staircases that you walk, soundless but raw with pain:
