"Hey, Nikhil! What block is next?" Ryan asked as he plopped his tray down at our dirty table in the corner of the cafeteria.

"P.E," I replied. "I'm so excited for soccer!" I said reluctantly.

"Are you any good?" He asked me like it was a rhetorical question. He knows I'm bad. Like I am at everything compared to him. I vividly remember when we stole money from him because he was so good at running his business! I try to turn the conversation around, and just tell him the truth. My fearful eyes search the room, but they find no answer.

"Yeah man. I'm amazing. I've been practicing a lot!" I reply with a fake smile, and I know that he knows.

Why. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I deliberately put myself in situations that will make me lose my trust and self-esteem? I guess it just intimidates me that everyone can do anything better than me.

"Prove it." He says in a 'You're going down' tone, as we both walk off, a grin on his face and a hand on mine.

It feels like the world is the ocean and we are jellyfish, and I’m the unlucky one, floating away from the rest of my friends, who are the lucky pack that gets to stay together. It reminds me of my relationship with my mom, and that I’m getting carried away so far that I might not be able to come back and patch up the ripped parts to fix the connection

As I turned around, I caught a glimpse, behind the tables that are screaming to be cleaned, of the sun hiding behind the clouds, darkening the squishy courts and everything around it. I'm carrying a backpack of regrets that my bony spaghetti legs can't hold up. They can't even carry my weight. I hear the clouds rumble and smell the monsoon. I'm like a train with a blind driver in this weather, waiting to slip off the tracks. I look down at my wimpy little feet, stomp on an ant, and walk out of the cafeteria. I was depressed. Guilty. Like I was a wanted fugitive.

The next week, I was hanging out around the lockers, when Ryan came back to me. Confusion struck me like a lightning bolt. I hadn't seen him since PE the other day when I blew it. I thought he would erase me from his life forever.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," He replied with a dodgy tone. "What did you get on the math test?"

In an instant, I was reminded of last week. But instead of being a no-brainer, I thought a little bit.

"It can't hurt, to tell the truth" whispered the voice inside my head.

"I got 98%!" He said.

My legs are about to give way. My heart is pumping faster than ever before. 98%? That's insanely high. I take another moment to think before I reply with my answer.

"60%" I reply.

He's going to laugh. I bet.

His mouth starts to open.

"Oh, that's a shame. Want to come over so I can help you with your corrections?"

Suddenly, the weight of the backpack floats off my shoulders. My legs are still holding me up. My heartbeat calms down. I'm the lucky jellyfish now. Everything in my brain turns around, and I see the fogged mirror a little clearer. Lying didn't get me anywhere. If anything it set me back. I finally can start to believe that I can be the person I want to be. Disappointment and frustration can't stop me anymore

August Wilson said “Confront the dark parts of yourself and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” I feel that I needed to banish the dark parts and fight the demons but I didn't believe that I would stand the battle. I needed to have more faith in myself to be able to mend the broken bits of my life.

Sometimes, we let others control where our self-esteem stands, and we base the feelings we have about ourselves on them. We get stuck in this trance that there is someone better than us, and there probably is. But sometimes, you have to look past it and realize that you are you, and they are them. If we allow this to happen, we start to become insecure. To get past this, we have to break ourselves out of the trance and base our feelings on what we think, and not other people's opinion. This was the old me, and now I realize that putting myself in situations I can't control, just to fit in, won't help me in the long run.