A Freshman's Middle PAssage

For a girl as inexperienced as I, it's quite a difficult task for me to think of some "middle passage" that I have come to endure. For someone to expect a three page paper from me about this "middle passage", having no story, fictional or not, is a problematic circumstance, as you may have guessed. Sure, I could write about my freshman year of high school, or how I am still on my voyage, or even write a long-winded rant on how someone's entire life is a "middle passage".
I despise sounding cheesey when I am genuinely attempting to be serious, so I'm sure that you can see why I am avoiding so desperately the possibilities I've listed above, despite seeing them as my only options that deem themselves worthy of being potentially three to four pages in length. I've also completely abandoned the idea of writing a fictional story because that would require more time, thought, and effort to write rather than recording an experience of my own that I know only too well.
It's interesting, to me, my own strong reluctance and resistance of putting my nose to the grindstone. Why am I so reluctant to write about the most important year of my bleak life so far? Why am I avoiding the subject I know so well? Why am I trying so earnestly to avoid, in my mind, a cliche subject despite my previous willingness to use them? Why am I dodging an easy minimum of six pages?
You know, before my freshman year, I never posed questions like this to myself or anyone. They never really passed through the head of mine that previously only held thoughts and feelings of blank hatred for so many things. Granted, that dark period was also the time when I met my best friend of three years. We got along so well probably because partly we both held that redeemable hatred for the world and its inhabitants. When we had our falling out in ninth grade, I remember her saying "You've changed, Osa." I'm assuming for the better, which she didn't seem to want to accept. It felt as if she wanted to have me preserve my junior high attitude for the duration of my entire life. I probably would have kept those angry thoughts if I hadn't moved on to Como Senior High and met my good friend Sam Woodman.
Sam Woodman is the type of person who is just outright random and odd. He ended up being the beginning of the change of my views on the world and life in general. If it hadn't been for my attraction to him, my naive and shallow brain probably wouldn't have listened to him as much as I did. Sam Woodman purely told me once that he enjoys life. I was stunned at the harsh impact of those few words and my mind blew open, leaving the hole to only expand even further later on. Just the pure idea of enjoying life made all the sense in the world and no sense at all to me. Suddenly, school wasn't so dreary and dark.
My enlightenment didn't really begin to take shape until I started to learn more and more about my English teacher. On the first or second day of school, he told the class about his trip with his wife to somewhere in Asia. They had been riding their bikes everywhere and came upon a bridge. This particular story is also where I learned how frugal my teacher is. There was a toll for the bridge, which was about twenty five cents per person to cross. Mr. Bonnett and his wife thought that was ridiculous, so they turned towards the small river and, holding bikes above their heads, they crossed the waist deep running water.
Well, this story earned my immediate respect for Justin Bonnett. And because of that respect, I listened to him exponentially as compared to my other teachers, and allowed myself to bother with his many critical thinking and discussion questions. As it turned out,
I feel I might have lost that joy for life again over time. It's not that I hate being alive. I love breathing, being conscious, being able to feel such strong emotions like joy or sorrow. But as time passes I feel as if I am losing that strong sense of excitement for life that I once had. I'm glad that I could experience that excitement when I needed to most.
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