And I don’t mean that I can’t string words together because I can, when necessary, and they’re often grammatically correct, and spell-checked enough that I appear knowledgeable, but my literary voice is drier than weeks-old freezer bread, toasted with the intention of nutrition, and then forgotten for a day in the toaster. I’m not original enough to write creatively.

Today, you are here to mourn the modern world, or so says my art teacher, Mx. Watt, with glee. Art will live on by stealing tidbits from the dead. Cuts your work in half, my friend agrees as she helps draw the blackout roller shades, an inevitable struggle with the chain, and she raises the stiff fabric a few inches before the moody atmosphere can take hold of the class. Our tables are scratched and stained by the artists who came before us, an endless performance piece on the school’s budget. Watt is at the teacher’s desk—so what if I fancy myself a comedian?—and it sparkles in the warm light before my friend reverses course and casts the entire classroom in shadow.

The drama classroom is also dark, but as I shuffle past they put on their fancy spotlight. Acting is the embodiment of zero creativity, with everyone repeating the playwright word-for-word since before Billy Shakes invented half the words in the English language. In our yearly art showcase, they regurgitate every last reprise of the latest misery musical.

I can’t write lyrics either, though my head is a chain of everlasting earworms combined into five-second remixes. Post-modern, Mx. Watts would call it. The music room sounds like this: misused violins screaming for mercy, and that kid who can play all the latest hits on the piano, by ear. I sit in the middle, having taken up the accordion a few years ago to experience new things, like back pain.

Our music teacher is sympathetic, though pretends his “guess the song by the intro” game isn’t to stop the cymbalist from blowing up our eardrums. As if he had spawned a creeper nearby, for the purposes of blowing up our faces instead, the bass notes are quick and reliable; the class picks “Ice Ice Baby.” His face loosens in tired disappointment but he gives it to us. The class cheers in excitement, louder than the crash of a cymbal, and the bell ringing for the end of class.

Music becomes the backdrop of dance. I’ve heard physical activity increases creativity, though the helpful effects could be more forthcoming. The only moves given to me are a vague-contemporary style to match the melodramatic teenage actors taking this class for their theatre productions. Grab for my chest here, collapse into a puddle there. Stretch towards the sky like my ancestors can tell me why I artistically died in my youth. The emotion I feel is stupidity.

Be it salsa or hip hop, each genre is defined by the types of movements possible within the beat. This includes the move the dance teacher loves to make toward me: “I’m Pointing at You to Include You in our Freestyle Dance Session.” Choreography is a puzzle of fitting the right moves from the right genre into the predetermined melody, requiring musicality. I couldn’t dance the salsa to “Ice Ice Baby.”

And so, you might begin to see my problem.

Sweating here, in the glaring fluorescent lights of my English classroom as students around me draft stories, my pencil is still on the foolscap. To use the good phrases from books is cliché or downright plagiarism, but how can I be original when all I know is to repurpose Mx. Watt’s magazine clippings? Use them ironically?

No one wants a piece spliced together like I’m a DJ-writer; I’m a copyright hazard when I get into anything my generation. My voice is—insert Hundred Points emoji here with a percent sign—self-published unironically edgy writer.

My English teacher would love to tell you how much more likely you are to be placed in the white room of my writing than face overused metaphors of the five senses—which by the way, is only a quarter of what we can actually sense—every time you reach a new location. I’ve never tasted the gum stuck to the underside of my desk, nor want to. The room smells like nothing, since we’re all responsible near-adults who used deodorant. The class is silent because we are writing. Well, they’re writing.

I can feel the pencil in my hand, and the paper under my other hand, as I doodle on the top of the page. I can see my doodles as they form, random junk-like squares and murder and humanoid felines. The tip of my pencil rips the foolscap and I can’t tell who’s more frustrated, me with my writing supplies or the lined paper with me. Write what you know, she says, hovering and looking down at the students hunched over desks, like that isn’t the Entire Problem. Follow a writing prompt on the board, drink more water, it’ll come to you. Patience. Try poetry.

Well, the joke is on her. Welcome to postmodern writing, population: 1.