Personal Piece- Contains upsetting material - Almost Autobiographical

[wolfyrocker]

This is a story, based largely on my life. All the names, including those of the teachers have been changed. It's nearly 4000 words long, and some bits are graphic. Seeing as it's so long, I don't expect anyone to read all of it, or even any of it.

Everything that happens in the story is as true to life as I could make it, but the more depressed I was at a certain point, the more gaps there were in the memory, so I filled them in as best I could - but those accounts are probably far from perfect.

The order of events may also be slightly different from reality, but again, it's the best I could do from the memories.

I wrote this in a couple of evenings when I was feeling really low - my creativity only seems to get going when I feel bad. Anyway, I'm going to shut up now.



-----------------------------------------------------The Story starts here

It's year 7 and I've just started secondary school. I'm eleven years old, and sitting in a Latin class. At the front, Miss Johnson is rambling on about present participles, seemingly oblivious to her students. At the back, I am drinking a bottle of Powerade: it must be Friday. That's always my Friday treat. Break, English with the coolest teacher and DT to look forward to in the next few hours. Next to me Anna passes me a note, a comment on how I will end up addicted to Powerade if I drink it on such a regular basis. I reply saying that of course I won't, it isn't drugs, and finish with a jibe about Sascha and Lewis. We pass the scrap of paper backwards and forwards a few times, each time our story becoming longer, more graphic, and less mature. As the bell rings and people start packing away, we glance at each other and burst out laughing, and Anna says 'I love that I sit next to you in Latin, you're so fun!'

Later that school year, Katy Perry releases a song called 'I Kissed A Girl'. I don't like the song, it's not my style of music, but I've heard it enough times on the radio to know the words well enough. The girls in my class snigger and giggle, Anna says 'Ok, so now we know you're a lesbian Katy. I don't mind, but please don't sing it out loud quite so much, it's a bit... eww'. I'm preoccupied with formulating an excuse for my missing homework and searching my locker desperately for my Biology folder, so I don't join in the discussion. Green Day are better anyway – I think of myself as a hardcore nonconformist.

Now, a year older but perhaps less wise, I peek inside the folded piece of paper. Inside are some of the coldest remarks I've ever read. But they're not meant for me, and I'm not meant to be reading them. They're intended for Sascha, who will not come close enough to Anna to even accept written conversation. I hand her the note, with an apologetic look in my eyes, and wait for her to scribble down an equally venomous reply. As I approach Anna once more, I see that she is gossiping with Michelle and Alice about something. They stop as I come closer. I look blankly at Michelle, feeling left out of proceedings. The bell rings for Maths, I am pleased that none of the four is in my Maths set so that I'm no longer involved.

At lunch time, Anna and Sascha are in the counsellor's office together, trying to sort things out. I cautiously sit down with my tray next to Michelle (Alice is on the other side of her), and fumble a start of a conversation. I mention that I have been feeling left out, and they apologise profusely and promise to make things better. When I have cleared my plate, I leave the table and make my way to Animal Welfare society, where the eccentric art teacher tells us about her pet lizards, why the leather trade is repulsive and the pros and cons of going vegan. I sign up to take part in the sponsored silence for Compassion in World Farming.

A few weeks later, maybe a month, I am at home on my computer. I check my emails: I have one from Michelle, detailing her latest celebrity crush. I look from the pictures to her overexcited comments on them, and feel nothing towards them. I dismiss this, hoping that my obsession with boys will continue to wait as long as possible before imposing itself on me. I sign in to Skype, but nobody else is online at the moment. Having checked the forums on my current favourite fansite, I open up Youtube. I select a song called Monsoon, by a band called Tokio Hotel. Michelle recommended it to me, so I'm not feeling optimistic about it - we don't really share the same taste in music. It is alright, but a little slow and boring for my liking. I look at the related songs, and choose a song called Scream by the same band - maybe this one will be a bit shoutier and more to my taste. I'm watching the video, and two girls kiss at a rowdy party. I consider the images, and feel something I’ve never knowingly felt before. I quickly dismiss that too, stashing it into the space in my brain reserved for things I don’t want to be thinking about. In my mind, I nail the lid down on the box. I then turn the computer off and go to bed.

Over the course of the rest of the year, the nails slowly pop out of the lid of that mental box of mine. The thoughts float around my head when there’s nothing else to take their place, and I really want to tell someone about them.

A new school year, and Alice has left for another school. I see this as my chance to take her place as Michelle's favourite, and start trying to be Alice 2.0 to her. Ignoring me, Michelle draws closer to Anna and I again raise the issue that they seem to be purposely excluding me. They shrug me off and apologise, but with markedly different expressions in their eyes. I find it hard to tell which is genuine. But they seem to really change their behaviour towards me and there are a couple of weeks where I truly feel part of their conversations, but it slowly tails off. I look forward to the times I am alone with one of them, when they are together I feel invisible.

At a sleepover at Anna’s house, her birthday party. We sit, some of us slumped in sleeping bags, others sitting cross legged in pajamas and slippers, we form a rough circle shape between us. Numbers are counted around the circle, and Michelle has the misfortune to say 21. ‘Truth, Dare, Would You Rather, Hug, Kiss…’ The group sniggers, we are all girls. ‘Or Bubble?’ Bubble means that you skip your go, but you will also forfeit any respect the group has for you. ‘Truth.’ Michelle replies. A girl that I don’t know too well asks if she has a Deepest Darkest Secret. Michelle replies that she has, but that she won’t say what it is because the questioner is only allowed one question and they used it.

For all of the next week, I badger Michelle to tell me her secret. I know what I want it to be, and I ask her if it is that many times. ‘No, I’m not a lesbian’, she replies, and internally I feel crushed. I want someone to share my feelings with at least, and I might have a tiny little bit of a crush on her, although I don’t want to admit this to myself, let alone to her.

Eventually, one night on Skype, she tells me that she had a crush on Anna for a period of time. She is very clear that this was just ‘some kind of weird phase and I am definitely not bi, I’m totally straight’. Which to me feels like having my mind picked up and flung several times against the nearest wall. I pick up my mental crate and nail the lid back on hurriedly.

Cut to several months later when I am very visibly having a bad time. I can sense Michelle is too, and I can tell that Anna has cut her ties from our friendship group. I don’t consider why. I don’t consider anything to a great extent. I get in from school and flee to my room before my mother queries how my day went. I spend the evening and the night up there, breaking only to shovel down fishcakes and baked beans. I tell mum that I am doing homework, but I am in truth filling a piece of paper with ramblings about the end of the rainbow. I know there was a reason why I picked that image, but the reasons float away from my mind before I can grab them.

The red pen I was using has slowly run out of ink, and the writing on the page slowly becomes smudged and wet. I try to keep quiet, I glance at the clock, and I sense that I can get away with this. I open the bedroom door, the light on the landing blinds me with stark contrast. I call downstairs that I’m tired from school today mum, so I’m going to bed now and neither her nor dad is to wake me. I can’t move to get into bed. I can’t take off the tracksuit I changed into after school. I can’t pick up the pen and continue writing. And so I let my hunched sitting position on my carpet slowly relax into lying totally motionless.

I can’t remember what that poster has on it when you look at it in the light, but at the moment it looks like a devil. He laughs, and I say I will give him what he wants if he leaves me alive. I don’t think it’s out loud, but I can’t tell. He says that he just wants to take the reins for a little while, but once he’s done I’ll be fine. He says nothing he does will hurt permanently. My body stiffens in apprehension, and I can sense that if I don’t comply he will do more. So I extend a hand, and he takes it. I am paralysed. An eternity passes. I wake up, it’s dark outside, I never drew the curtains. I don’t look at the clock, but instead search for my pajamas in the dark whilst realising that the poster is of a wolf and that I was dreaming. I get into bed and sleep dreamlessly. It feels like only an instant before my father is knocking on the door to wake me – my alarm clock is broken.

The school day is a series of excuses for homework I should have done last night. My head is pounding; all I want to do is cry and cry and cry and fall asleep forever. I get in, and again rush to my room, but not before grabbing my laptop. I plug my headphones into my CD player, and put a song called Sober on repeat. Signing on to Skype, I see that Michelle is online. Maybe some sane conversation will help things.

I am subjected to whining about how Cian doesn’t love her back and how it’s the end of the world.

I pause, considering how to reply. She is someone at school who isn’t constantly spouting hate at me, and I want to keep it that way. I tap out something about how I don’t know what to do to help her, I don’t obsess with boys like she does, but to keep talking, and I’ll listen. She talks, and in what she says I see a great deal of my own experience reflected. Cian is simply the last straw, the last person to turn on her after everyone else already has. She feels hopeless, ugly, disgusting. I tell her that I never turned on her, that I’m always here for her to lean on, although inside I feel that another person leaning on an already heavily burdened mind cannot work well.

The next morning she shows me the bright red scratches, like rungs of a ladder, down her arm. Anna approaches, and Michelle hurriedly pulls the sleeve of her jumper down again. The exchange was wordless, but we knew at that moment we understood each other. I walk away as Anna arrives, I can tell that they need to talk in private. Regardless of that, the tension between the two is high, for reasons I know I once knew but have forgotten.

Lunchtime, and it turns out Anna has apologized. The tension has shattered.

At home, I carefully remove the lid of my mental box. I look inside, and put the lid down on top again. But this time I don’t feel the need to nail on the lid. On Skype again, and Michelle tells me she has obtained large amounts of vodka, a couple of ecstasy tablets, and several boxes of Paracetamol. I don’t ask where she got them from, although I suspect Laura’s brother and his friends. I don’t ask why, because I don’t need to. We make our arrangements for the weekend.

Saturday evening, and I walk down the high street with Michelle. We are wearing rucksacks. She holds my dog, Flossie, on a lead. We need some companionship. We tie her up outside the newsagents. I buy us four large cans of Red Bull, she buys a packet of cigarettes (the vendor doesn’t ask to see ID or even her age) and a can of deodorant. I look quizzically at her after the second purchase, and she subtly points out the ‘Solvent Abuse can Kill Instantly’ warning on the can. Having understood, I pack my purchases into the top of my bag, Michelle does the same with hers. We untie Flossie from outside the shop, and continue walking down the road until we reach the park. We find a secluded spot, and unpack everything.

It occurs to me then what a messy attempt this is, so many kinds of drugs because we want to make sure one of them works. Michelle lights a cigarette, I open a can of Red Bull. We have smoked one cigarette each and finished the Red Bull between us and I suddenly know that this is not what I want to do. Michelle wants to go ahead without me. I beg her not to.
The cigarettes are in the bin, the vodka bottles smashed and emptied, the pieces collected into a plastic bag, the pill packets crushed and destroyed. I don’t know how I convinced her, but at that moment all I feel is an unrelenting surge of joy that I did. We run home, tears streaming down our face. But we know, all the same, that we must hide this. We wipe our faces and try to hide the shaking. Mum welcomes us in, says that she has prepared our sleeping bags, our movie, and our pizza for the sleepover.

It’s midnight, we’re shaking. Our hearts are going so fast we can’t bear it. I reason that it would be better to get into trouble for drinking four large cans of Red Bull between us than to die of a heart attack. I tiptoe up to my parents’ room and explain the situation to mum. Not why we were drinking the Red Bull, just that we were. She is, of course, angry, but she comforts us and tells us what to do. She brings us glasses of water and blankets, and she stays awake with us until we fall asleep.

The next week, and my need to talk has finally outrun my fear of reactions. On Skype, because the fear of doing it face to face is too much for me to bear, I come out to Michelle. I am prepared for a highly negative reaction, and when Michelle replies simply with ‘Ok.’ I feel like I’m going to faint. I have no idea how to respond, and I sit there in silence shaking and crying with relief. Having got that out there, I know it will take me time to work up the courage to tell someone else. Michelle asks if she can tell people, or if this it to be a highly guarded secret. I want people to know, and so I give her permission.

A couple of days later, Michelle tells me nobody she told believes her.

Anna is using the computer in the classroom. She is looking at the top 40 hits chart, which technically she shouldn’t be using school resources to do – although, as a frequent rule breaker myself, I’m in no position to talk. There is a picture of the album cover next to each entry in the albums chart. She scrolls down, and catches sight of a picture of a slightly androgynous woman with short, boyish hair. ‘Eww, she looks like such a lesbian’. She says the ‘L’ word in a tone dripping in sarcasm and hate, knowing I am right behind her. I doubt that nobody believed Michelle when she told them. I raise my eyebrows in an expression of how infantile I deem Anna’s remark to be, and she rushes a giggle-smothered ‘Sorry.’

Hidden under the thin cover of curiosity, snide comments disguise themselves as questions. Over the next weeks, Anna’s remarks become more cutting until they culminate in ‘I hate you. Go away. I never want to work with you again.’

Today we are finishing our sculptures in art. I pick up the clay cutting knife, too blunt to be any use to me, and I stab it through the still soft clay of my artwork. Before the teacher sees what I have done, I put the sculpture in the kiln.

When the piece comes out, the knife is baked solid into the clay. I take out black paint and a paintbrush and slowly suffocate the orange-red baked terracotta in darkness. I’ve forgotten what the sculpture was going to be when I started making it. The sculptures will stay in the art block, on display for the Open Weekend in a couple of weeks, and we may collect them on the next Monday.

The Open Weekend comes and goes.

Most of our class are in the art block, collecting their sculptures and all their other art pieces. I don’t want to squish up the tiny staircase to art at the same time as Anna, and so I am planning on collecting mine at a later date. Olivia has clearly taken the same tactic as me, although equally clearly for different reasons: she has just returned from her music lesson and wants some time to eat lunch. Her saxophone sits beside her on the floor as she tries to get onto youtube - the school have blocked it.
I’m not close friends with Olivia, so I sit, looking out of the second floor window, eating a ham sandwich and studiously not speaking to her. My last conversation with Olivia was a heated debate on the existence of God, which I am really not in the mood for. Given up on her pursuit of music videos, Olivia turns instead to games – games on a site, which, earlier this week, was not blocked. The site is now blocked. ‘Oh, those stupid IT people, they’re so gay!’ The tone in her remark is different, not deliberately offensive as Anna was, just born of ignorance. On an impulse, I take a deep breath and say: ‘Um, I’m gay, you know, and um, I find it hurtful when people say things like that’.

She asks many questions along the lines of ‘How do you know?’ and ‘Do you fancy me?’, which I answer willingly and without getting too annoyed. As we talk, the class starts to filter back in from art, and they, of course, want to know what we are talking about. I figure that now I’ve come this far I may as well go the whole way, and the classroom descends into 27 girls all asking one social semi-outcast the same questions. The outcast feels slightly overwhelmed, but when the class have satisfied their questions she feels content that she is no longer hidden.

The last day of the half term. We are in a Geography lesson. It passes, slowly, as Geography lessons do. The bell rings, and we rush out of the classroom, excited for a week of half term holiday, but apprehensive of the end-of-year exams after that. The coming half term will be our last of the year.

Monday. I’m not asleep. I should be asleep. My arm aches and aches. I look at it for the thousandth time this night – or is it technically morning by now? There are no marks on it. No cuts. No burns. No bruises. In frustration I punch the wall and my strength surprises me. The shock travels up my arm and the pain stops. It returns after an undefined period of time, and again my anger at some non-existent thing takes control of me. It’s a long night. I wake up, boiling hot and sweating, with bleeding knuckles.

Tuesday night. Wednesday morning. I look at the notebook on my desk, and consider the drawings. Drawings of pain and death and fire leap off the pages at me. I close the notepad and stuff it at the back of my wardrobe.

Wednesday night. I light a match, and look at the flame until it burns my fingers. I drop it into a bowl of water and light another. Slowly the knot in my mind unties itself and I open the window to let out the smoke. I get into bed and sleep, but I wake up an hour later, not tired. I read under the covers until morning.

Thursday. Tired. I don’t know why I couldn’t get the sleep I needed the night before.

Thursday night. At last, I’m asleep. Demons and angels act out a million years of battles before my eyes. Stars glow around a dark planet and two armies collide. Something takes my hand. I want the battle to end, but morning comes and they are still fighting. I am pleased to leave the world of dreams behind.

Friday, and my mother is angry with my lack of work for the exams. I try to do something, revise for them, but my body simply won’t obey me.

I fail the exams.

Year 10 now, the first year of GCSEs. I am summoned to Miss Griffin’s office, and Miss Minton, the head of year is there too. Miss Griffin is the one responsible for ‘Individual Learning Needs’. If you’re one of her lot, you’re really thick, majorly antisocial or mentally ill. I wonder which I am. They ask me questions, about how I am doing, if everything is OK at home, lots of seemingly endless questions. I brush them off, tell them I’m fine.

A few weeks later, I’m back again. They’re asking me why my results have slipped, asking me why I never do homework. The only words I have are ‘I don’t know’

Maybe someday I’ll get myself out of this mess. I really don’t know anymore.

The back of my hand is stinging.
I look at the blood.
I get up, make my way on shaky legs to the sink and rinse my hand.
The stinging only gets worse.
I grip my hand tightly with the towel to try and deaden the pain.

I rub the softness of my cheek against my hand, the feeling of the thin, raised scars making me sick to my stomach.

I don’t want my story to end yet. But when it does, I want it to be a happy ending.

[Sprinkles]

More? :)

[Silent.Tears]

emotional much? i like it though