At my desk,as many do from day to day.Eyeing my computer’s clock. Three sets of ten minutes . Hanging  onto these sets until the bell rings, the sound shivers up my spine and releases me at my neck.I follow the perfectly symmetrical beige tiles.Stepping through three tiles with one step,until reaching  my locker. The three minute gap between classes becomes a methodical strategy weaving out the best routes to take.Avoiding the usual troublemakers,screaming,and paper basketball. Then rushing into the classroom. The class is divided with intense groupage. The empty desks look like invisible dividers but to me we’re still a collective class. Boys on the left and then the girls surrounding the rest of the room.Locking the boys under our dominance. Dominance gifted to us since we have more numbers. And class began. The usual immaturity at this age is the most appealing.Because we understand we are being immature therefore we understand when we get in trouble. And then we get to act like we don’t understand it gets all theatrical  blah,blah,blah. It’s a process.And since the teachers always have low expectations for us  this plan usually succeeds. Always finding the weirdest picture in the textbook and saying that that’s me or that’s them.Arguing over which is the best way to attack a castle.I chose fire…..of course.And of course my strategy gets debated but I’ve learned to argue. My opinions are always tested through multiple hand raising and interrupting but I adapt.I go from class to class, and obstacle through obstacles and in each and every class the divide is always  present.The friend groups barely intermix gender wise….  Happening to notice this and then throwing away the thought due to distraction.Why do girls prefer to be friends with girls? And the same with boys. A curiosity never pondered on. But the thought leaves when scaling  the masses of assignments my teacher begins to assign.

The new neighbors are unloading their two children from the car along with a multitude of groceries. A girl and a boy is what is seen when the two children run through the garage across the street. The pink and blue rooms, a staple amongst straight laced suburbia, one laced with dolls and the other with monster trucks.A classic, really.  Almost gagging at the colors and I imagine the children painting over the hideous colors when they grow up. Many of these things were most likely  purchased before the baby even stepped foot into the world.When I imagine the rest of their house I continue to think about the two rooms and their contrast.Eventually they’ll teach different things to the son rather than the daughter and the other way around.Or even pushing them into certain hobbies and fashion making the two children barely able to find similarities in their interests.Even from young ages these differences were spotted.The innimanent passivity in girls and inherent dominance in boys. Dominance that I’ve watched sprout from football bets to arm wrestling.Practically urinating around their territory. I see myself sitting around the kitchen island and I can barely lift my head without hitting their dangling yellow light. The laminate countertop is yellowish with brown streaks through it that could almost look like cracks from far away.  Trying  to think of how dirty their house would be if they hadn’t cleaned up. The bleach smell lingered throughout the house but the febreeze overbeared creating a soup of smells.I bet when the football game comes on the dad immediately rushes over to his son to usher him to the couch while the girl sits at the countertop. Is this a personal interest? I would guess otherwise.And when swiveling  the barstool around  take a look  at the game on the flatscreen and eye the bonding moment. And when returning to reality I tuck myself into my bed and reach for my phone.

 Looking  at my phone and scrolling the various reachable platforms. I follow mostly women so that’s the experiences I am exposed to. My recommended page looks like a nightmare filled screen with the first video being’’ Sharing my abuse story.’’ But with one scroll down my screen goes back to being the usual screen of a teen.With titles such as 

-Random videos I watch at 2am 

-Movie/rant review on Twilight 

-Why tik tok is toxic for teens

-New details on Ariana grande’s engagement 

Sometimes  skipping  the haunting videos and deciding I want to sleep peacefully and skipping videos makes me feel icky at times because I always like to listen to people and their experiences, maybe even give the video an extra view so maybe it gets recommended to other people. But yet it’s skipped. About three percent of American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.As many young women enter the world many realize the truth hiding behind innocence and daydreams. I have started to realize that for women being disrespected may be a daily occurrence compared to the once in a lifetime situation I thought it was.The world is actively trying to kill women .With mass spreads of media it gets harder and harder to cover up the underlying issues.  As we all know sexual assault is predominantly a woman’s issue caused by men. So what does this create for the two genders? It creates a….. very multidimensional place. The immense catcalling, mental abuse, and sexual abuse creates a predator and at many times prey like situation. There are a lot of videos on catcalling and girls just walking through the street and getting harassed.As women they’re taught and shown to be petrified of their counterpart . 1 out of every 6 woman has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. So now with such accessibility these experiences and facts can become known knowledge.  I’m glad I get to listen to all these experiences so I can peak through the curtain a bit, but it can feel very pessimistic.  I decide to not click on any of the various videos and by clicking on the screen it slowly fades. And the videos slip away and probably will never  be seen again. But I turn myself over to face my wall and silently doze off to another dream-like state.

How am I going to avoid all these statistics?How am I going to essentially ‘’get lucky’’ and stay safe? Envisioning my older self strutting through a new york city street. Windows full of embroidered skirts and mannequins envying my movement.Surrounded by business moguls and looking up to see skyscrapers toppling me. But of course Pink pepper spray in hand along with a pocket knife. Going along everyday having to look away and ignore. Or Maybe the world will be entirely different by the time I’ve come of age. Maybe we’ll be inching closer to the utopian we all dream of.But that isn’t likely. My mind rambles onto the usual matters of the future. I see a house perched on a lightly combed colony of green grass.The grass would be so green it looked cartoonish and even comparable to a simulation. NEighbors would wonder if the grass was fake or even edible but I would assure them it wasn’t.When trying to imagine all the ins and outs I try to imagine the whole entire layout from an overhead point of view but that analysis proves to be too tiresome for my mind to bear, so I move onto easier topics. It feels hard to imagine living with someone for what would be a considerable part of my lifetime. And having to choose someone to do that with is a whole other war to conquer.It feels hard to imagine that with such binaries in place that I shall ever meet my match.  The hobbies are different, the problem solving tactics are different, and the dependency rates are different. And among all that there is a natural divide.