[Alex Dunphy]
Every morning I wake up at six am, on the dot. It doesn't matter if it's a weekend, summer vacation, or one of the rare days off I manage to get from school, I'm always up at six in the morning with no questions asked. My body's become so adapted to this routine that I don't even need an alarm anymore. Sometimes I wonder if my internal clock is more reliable than my phone. Still, every morning, just like this one, I'm so tired I don't want to open my eyes. My limbs feel heavy, my neck stiff, and for a moment, I lie there, cocooned in my blanket, bargaining with myself for just five more minutes. It usually takes me a good three to four minutes every morning to wake my body up enough to actually prepare myself for the daunting task of getting out of bed, even though my mind is already running a million beats per minute.
Once I am up, however, I am up. No snooze button, no crawling back under the covers. I throw myself out of bed and quickly hop into the shower, hoping that I can beat my older sister Haley and her two-hour readiness routine. She always takes the longest showers, meaning on the days I do not beat her to it I always lose a good thirty minutes off my morning routine, which can throw me completely off schedule and ruin my day for good. If you haven't already noticed yet, I am a girl of strict routine. I have always made sure to stick with what works and I don't stray away from it.
Everything down to the way I dress, what I eat for breakfast, what time I need to be at school by, where I sit at lunch, and how I do my homework. This basic yet very complex routine at times can be hard to meet with all the chaos that goes on around me both in school and at this house, yet I have always managed to keep it with me through the tests of time, for it is what I am able to attest to as being my main reason for success in this life.
I had come to adopt these routines in middle school after discovering that a steady routine and solid foundation of morals is the best way to maintain a healthy and stable lifestyle. Of course, there were tweaks that needed to be made along the way, but once I got to high school I'd locked down what I believed to be the best avenue for success. It would quickly become the very backbone of everything I'd do.
Within the last three years, I've fought very hard to maintain this steady course of action, which in turn has allowed me to achieve the best grades in my class by far. Not only limited to grades, my academic resume is quite impressive to say the least. Surrendering fun activities and social interactions, in my eyes, was a necessary part of implementing this foolproof plan. It may suck at times, but I thought that once I am in college and getting my life together I will be in a much better spot than my classmates spending their days partying and throwing caution to the wind.
Standing under the steady stream of coursing water over my body, it's easy for me to think about these things and get down on myself for what has still not gone good in my life. I can lie to myself all the time, yet there have been so many things I have missed out on in my seventeen years on this earth; from prom to homecoming, a genuine connection to someone, a solid group of friends. There's really no one else to blame for these faults than myself, for I have always been the one to ostracize myself from those around me. But lately, everything has changed.
My efforts to change my course of thought to something else have proven to be futile once more, as I just cannot seem to get this nagging thought out of my mind. I have gone through so many years of my life without really doing the things I would deem to be fun. I've never been one to branch out and do the things that most high school kids my age enthrall themselves in. Usually, I am able to put aside my feelings of loss long enough to involve myself much deeper into the great escape of homework.
Yet my life has changed drastically in the last week. I got together with Lucas and made an actual effort to know his friends. Leonard and Josh were great, actually. They had their quirks but they were still good, but Debbie has been hard to get along with. I tried to be friends with her despite her cold attitude towards me. Today I decided that enough is enough.
I manage to push these thoughts aside as I exit the shower and make my way toward my room, where I quickly dress myself and put on the minimal makeup required. In doing so, I begin to once again think about my life.
It comes so easy for me to isolate and rationalize these feelings of emotion that I have when I have to tackle social challenges. But this time I cannot do that because Lucas has changed me in more ways than one and I know that I will have to overcome Debbie's act of bullying myself. I have not told Lucas exactly what she did because I don't want him to get hurt. I don't want him to choose between me and Debbie. I will make her understand her position—that she is just a friend of Lucas now and nothing more.
Taking those deep-seated feelings I've reflected on and actually moving them forward in a constructive manner has proven and continues to prove itself as one of the most frustrating feats I have yet to conquer. It is my biggest fault, my most predominant character defect by a long shot. It needs to be fixed.
If only life were as easy as getting good grades I would be the most popular kid in school by far. I look at my sister, Haley, and how she had been so popular throughout the years. How she's been able to garner the love and support of her class, having them at her fingertips. In a way, I want everything she's come to have minus her brains.
I want it more than anything in this world. Yet I know that in order for me to obtain such a status, I would have to surrender my life to the cause, something that I just could not seem to talk myself into doing.
At seven on the mark I am perched waiting by the door for my mother to arrive. Sometimes I go join her in the kitchen, where she usually spends her early mornings milling around trying to get everything settled for my brother and sister before their days start. She has always loved my brother with all her heart, spending most of her time coddling him with showers of love and affection.
She and my sister have had some issues over the years but now their relationship couldn't be any better. They go to the mall together, cook dinner with one another, watch sad movies and cry together. Ugh! It makes me want to vomit sometimes just thinking about it. Then there's me, a stark comparison to be had from the way my siblings are treated. For some reason, it seems as though I have come to receive nothing but continuous criticism from my mother, even when it comes to the most trivial of things.
This isn't always the case though. Ninety percent of the time she is still kind to me. She can have her moments with everyone I suppose, only it seems to be that I am some kind of an exception. Don't get me wrong, she is a great mother who is supportive of most of the decisions I make in life. The only time she becomes a real pain in the ass is when it comes to decisions she feels I should not be making... The most recent example of this being my decision to take on a ukulele class online on top of cello and the stacks of different books that I made my own challenge to complete.
Her logic behind her 'necessary' critiques of me would be that I overwork myself. She's mentioned to me before how I do not give myself enough time to have fun in life, it's always about work. I'm not going to sit here and tell you she's wrong. I'm reminded every morning of those problems. To myself I cannot lie, yet I would never admit such a thing to her. Instead, I used to find my way around it, mostly by making up these false stories about my friends and I going out when I'll just go to the library and study for five hours. I guess in theory it was better than having my mother make friends for me at seventeen years of age.
I still study in the library but now I am not alone anymore and Lucas is perfect for me in a way because our relationship is not like normal teenagers where they are very clingy but more understanding as we both have things in our life and we understand that and we still make time to have some fun for ourselves like we did at the library yesterday. I blushed thinking about that.
"Are you ready to go?" My mother asks, clutching the same handbag she's had for the last six years over her left shoulder with the same smirk on her face. Her usual mom jeans and a t-shirt sitting somewhat frazzled on her body, indicating she was more rushed this morning as opposed to others.
I nod in approval of her advances and stand myself up from the stairs. I don't let her see me study in the morning. She will give me too much grief about it. I'll have plenty of time to study before class as Lucas will not be attending school today.
Once I am situated inside the family car and we have made our way, I begin my morning ritual of wishing for just two things to happen. One, that my mother doesn't ask me about my boyfriend because I have not told her yet and second that she doesn't advise me about how to live my life according to her.
"Alex." My mother breaks me from my chain of thought. My tunnel mind, as I like to call it, causing me to completely forget that I am in the car sitting with her. "How is he treating you?"
"What!?" I blurt out, caught completely off guard. My cheeks flush, and I feel my heart skip a beat. I try to play it cool, but my voice comes out a little too high-pitched. "Who?"
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AN: I got too absorbed writing this chapter and made it a bit long. So I divided this in two parts.
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