In A Parallel Universe Somewhere...

I ddn't used to be this unmotivated all the time.

For as long as I can remember the only thing I ever wanted was to be a vet but I knew how hard it would be for someone like me to get the high marks that would be necessary to get into university, so I used to study a lot, especially in maths and science. But the truth is that even though I thought I had a superior intelligence to almost everybody I knew, I actually, in fact, am not that clever. I'm not saying that I'm stupid neither, but I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I do not have the brilliant mind and insight that I thought I once did.

I was awfully nasty, for instance, to my little Sister when she had to repeat a year at school. For years I called her a failure- which is now ironic- being that I am so much more of a failure than she ever was. In truth, I had to work twice as hard as the other kids in my classs just to get the same marks that they did. I didn't tell my Sister that though. And that wore me down, five years of swotting, so I stopped going to school altogether when I was in year eleven and took up drinking as a hobby instead- right after I got the results back from a particularly nasty physics exam.

I think now that all the pressure I'd put on myself to become this brilliant horse doctor was becoming more impossible by the minute to live up to. It had to be a breakdown of some kind because everything just sort of snapped in my brain and became different from then on; like the entire 'before' had never even happened at all. It suddenly felt like I was a whole different person from who I had been. I let everybody see who I really was. I flaunted how 'corrupt' I had become in front of my parents. I did the dreadful things most teenagers do, snuck out to pubs, drank, smoked dope, and hung out with people who weren't approved of. I was awful to everybody who really cared about me and spent time with people who couldn't care less. But I was never really bad.

When I left school most of my teachers had begged me to stay and consider what I was throwing away, which in the end has been sixteen years of my life, so far, my dreams and my sobriety; and I was grateful that they tried, but for some reason my physics teacher felt somewhat differently about me dropping out of school. He said it would be 'good to see the back' of me. I don't even know why he thought I was such a bad student because I actually wasn't. I wasn't 'bad news'. I used to try my hardest in class. I would tell off all the other students and call them immature for laughing when he went hypo and all wierd from being diabetic; didn't I; humph, I wonder if he ever got rid of that really bad comb-over? He still had it the last time I saw him.

But the burning question was how could I be a vet without being any good at science? I think if he had been a nicer person and a better teacher he would have been able to explain physics to me but it was like he didn't even want to try, actually. He was always saying there was no simpler way of explaning things- which had to be a bullshit line he made up to tease me with- for there is always an easier way to explain things. He just didn't try.

Why couldn't they just have taught me how to operate and diagnose animals without me having to do all those stupid equations first? I can read a book, you know; I can observe. I could have learnt how to be a vet if I'd been shown. Why can't you get into vet school on aptitude alone? I think I would have had aptitude enough...

I still think that I am supposed to be a vet in a country practice. Maybe I am- in a parallel universe somewhere...