what will become of you?

After you fail a test and feel like you're the stupidest person on earth.
How can you even continue to exist?
You can go no further if you've hit the wall of stupidity - judgement, as if it's a permanent condition that you can't recover from.
A disease that strikes you down and renders you useless for the rest of your life.
You lose all sense of ambition.
What is the point if you are just going to fail because you are not smart enough.
Others are smarter.
There is no wonder.
I'm saying what will become of you?
What they are really saying is - how do you even live?
How do you get dressed in the morning?
You are too stupid to live, to breathe.
If your body didn't breathe automatically you'd be dead.
What they mean is that they know what you'll become, its predetermined from one failed test.
You will have to do manual labour, work for someone who isn't smart but not as stupid as you.
You'll be told what to do for the rest of your life - every day.
There is no wonder.
They are willing to write your story and make you fit their dictate based on one failure.
It makes them feel superior and comfortable.
They stand in judgement. They look and shake their head in the negative, sadly, almost regretfully, as if they foresaw it but they waited for the marks as proof on a failed test.
Limiting you to a moment in time, pigeonhole, labeling, defining who you are and your whole future.
There is no wonder in who you'll become because you are, you are a failed test, the bad marks.
You are stupid.
Your future has now been ordained.
There is no wonder, only a limited future in which you become them.

By Catherine Elder