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| Detail from Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time*. |
But for those of you who'd prefer not to read these words I advise you to steer clear. Hyperbole and a Half is back up so maybe you'd prefer to drop over and see what Allie has to say about depression. It's accurate, let me tell you. Make sure you read Part One as well as Part Two. She's been out of action for a long time and sorely missed by everyone.
In any case, to continue. Again, if this will upset or bore you don't read it. I won't think any less of you if you don't.
* = This is actually Envy but I couldn't find any decent pictures of anger or rage.
My memories are primarily painful.
I don't mean that to sound whiny (even though it does). I have a lot of good memories and my place in life isn't bad when compared to someone from a war-torn country or someone starving on a street without even basic wifi coverage. But I've experienced a lot of pain in my life and I inflict it upon myself over and over almost every day of my life. I don't use the s-word lightly so be aware that I mean what I'm about to write:
The fact that I haven't committed suicide is a miracle.
I have Marfans Syndrome, epilepsy, cyclothymia and an anxiety condition. None of these are good for memory and mine is pretty shocking a lot of the time. But it always latches onto the painful memories, rarely ever the good ones. I can remember with clarity the moment when my brother (the dead one) said I was a terrible son. I find it hard to recollect anything more than the vague circumstantial details of the first time I had sex despite it being easily one of the better moments of my life.
So, as a result, most of my memories are bad ones. They're the only ones that really stick; biology and emotion gang up to strip me of my good memories and leave me with the startling ability to remember with clarity, as an example, the moment one of the boys at school broke my rib (a wound that still causes minor pain to this day). Those sorts of moments. Those and movie quotes (for some bizarre reason).
In the quiet moments of my life I don't experience quiet. The quieter my life gets the more loud my memories get, clamouring for attention, thrusting themselves insistently into my forebrain. One could suggest that I should therefore keep busy - get a job, maybe, you slack fuck. The problems there are my anxiety disorder makes talking to people almost physically painful at times and I take even mild criticism very poorly. Externally I can nod and take it on board but it eats me up, cripples my ability to perform. I'm a liability. Facing my demons every day is a lot more constructive than joining a workplace and watching my behaviour deteriorate until I just can't care any more and even going to work makes me want to be dead.
I'm not exaggerating. It makes me want to be dead. I'll take memories over feeling like that.
I fill my life with games because they're one of the only things that doesn't make me feel like the world would be a brighter place without me in it. I don't want to do that to my parents or my brothers. Not after what Brian did to us all.
Sometimes I feel so much anger. Such roiling rage. Most of the time I just feel... flat. See Hyperbole and a Half for a better explanation of this than I could give. Tonight, though, I felt rage. Real, burning fury.
I'll tell you why.
My schooling life consisted of exactly the following.
I would wake up hating myself, usually after consistent bouts of insomnia the night before. I would then go back to sleep until my Dad woke me up, usually several times. He only lost his temper at me enough to put his fist through the wall once, which helped secure my ongoing and innate terror of him. Sorry, Dad. It's true. You're a good man, you're a gentle soul, you're more soft-hearted than you prefer anyone knowing, you love kids - and I'm scared to death of you. Don't feel too bad, though. I'm scared of everything.
Finally I would get up feeling queasy (which I do every morning, some kind of chemical imbalalance thing probably), eat breakfast that my father would order me to eat (he had to order me; I wouldn't eat it otherwise). If I was lucky it was a normal sort of breakfast with Dad cracking jokes here and there. If I was unlucky it was quiet, tense and there'd be warm milk involved (to this day that smell makes me want to vomit).
Then I would go and wait for the school bus, which was driven by a man I was petrified of and filled with kids I abhorred. That abhorrence was mutual. A good morning involved me looking out the window lost in my imagination and only peripherally feeling like a worthless sack of shit. A bad morning was... well, it wasn't fun.
I'd get to school where I would maybe get to my locker without having insults flung at me. More commonly I'd hear a minimum of three creative reconstructions of my name before getting to my home room for role call. Classes would involve snide remarks and hostile glances from anywhere between one and all of the kids present. The worst involved me being actively jeered at by the entire class whilst the teacher at the time stood by and waited for the name-calling to die down.
Recess and lunch usually involved creative ways of avoiding people, often alone and sometimes with the few people at school actually willing to associate with me. A couple were very good friends so at least I had those. For a while.
Most commonly I'd be accused of being gay (which hadn't too long been decriminalised in my home state). Mixed in with that were comments about how I was stupid, cowardly, weak, boring, unappealing, ugly, smelly and so on. Bear in mind that I received almost no positive feedback at all during those years. Or maybe I just missed it amidst the sea of bile.
Most commonly I'd be accused of being gay (which hadn't too long been decriminalised in my home state). Mixed in with that were comments about how I was stupid, cowardly, weak, boring, unappealing, ugly, smelly and so on. Bear in mind that I received almost no positive feedback at all during those years. Or maybe I just missed it amidst the sea of bile.
Then I'd go home.
While he was still at home Brian would then make my life hell in small ways. A snappish comment here, hostile criticism there. How does one speak ill of the dead? He probably felt he was trying to toughen me up. In a way he did; I've learned to separate myself from the rest of the world in truly imaginative ways. I hated him and loved him. I idolised him and yet I knew there was no hope I'd ever be like him so I didn't try, I just went into my room and did nothing much, telling myself how worthless I was all the while.
At night I'd find it almost impossible to sleep (and about a third of my dreams involved nightmares). My parents didn't really know what to do with me, I suppose. I was reclusive, quiet, sensitive and not much good at anything. Even my performance in Art and Drama was varied (and it varied toward 'poor'). Mum even got me a maths tutor. The tutor said I had a great head for maths, but it bored me. It wasn't lack of intelligence. My report cards are emblazoned with things like, 'He has potential. He needs to apply himself more.'
It's hard to apply oneself when one is taught on a daily basis that one is worthless and useless. It's hard to see the point. For a little kid it's nearly impossible. It's not much easier as an adult, either.
My pain wasn't absolute. My life was pretty good, comparatively. I had a roof over my head, I wasn't physically beaten, I wasn't raped or tortured. But pain is subjective and I'd been bearing it for longer than I can remember. I don't remember a single time that I wasn't at least a little bit scared, a little bit depressed - and my earliest memories were when I was four. I'm now thirty-seven; that's thirty-three years of depression. If you think that doesn't make an impression then you're very mistaken.
My pain wasn't absolute. My life was pretty good, comparatively. I had a roof over my head, I wasn't physically beaten, I wasn't raped or tortured. But pain is subjective and I'd been bearing it for longer than I can remember. I don't remember a single time that I wasn't at least a little bit scared, a little bit depressed - and my earliest memories were when I was four. I'm now thirty-seven; that's thirty-three years of depression. If you think that doesn't make an impression then you're very mistaken.
When I was in Year 9 I snapped. A kid called Shane, someone who'd been tormenting me more or less continually since we were in primary school, sold me a particularly illegal butterfly knife (a bali-song). I have no idea where he got it. I just knew I wanted it. Not because I wanted to hurt anyone (or even stab anything inanimate). They were just cool and I wasn't. So I bought it, brought it home, looked at it, tried flicking it open and closed one-handed.
Then I took it with me when I went back to school the next day.
I was mostly abused verbally. There weren't many kids who'd bother getting in an actual physical confrontation with me; I couldn't fight and everyone knew it. I was prime picking material but nobody was going to prove anything by beating me up, and making me scared of them verbally was much more fun for them, I guess.
But that day two boys tried to bail me up in one of the corridors.
It was pure chance, really. They had no idea I had a knife. They'd just chosen that day, of all days, to try and get physical. It was two against one and both of them were fighters - wiry, scrawny and shorter than me but even one of them could have taken me without breaking a sweat. My only hope previously would have been to run, but they were cornering me.
So I did the only thing I felt I could - I pulled the knife out and opened it.
They both turned and ran. I ran after them. I didn't try anything, I didn't lash out, I didn't attack them. I put the knife away and ran out of the first junction door they ran past. I didn't want a fight, I wanted freedom. But damn, seeing them turn and run was exhilarating.
I left for my next class, which was Drama, in the school hall. A teacher came and got me. Word had gotten around. I gave him the knife without hesitation and followed along to what I knew would be terrible retribution without making excuses, without pause and without question. That teacher... I don't know his name. I never really did. He'd never taken any of my classes.
"What's it going to be next time? A gun?" he demanded of me as we walked. It was like a kick to the guts. I was shit in his eyes, shit in everyone's eyes, nothing but a common criminal who liked scaring people and hurting them. I hadn't even swiped at one of those boys and it'd taken nine and a half years of constant torment and two kids putting me in direct fear of my physical safety to push me far enough to even pull a knife out. None of that mattered to him. He didn't give a shit. I was the evil one, the wrong-doer, the victimiser and not the victim.
I don't just have perfect recollection of his words. I have perfect recollection of his tone. I could point to the precise place in the school that he asked me that question (if 'ask' is the right word) but I don't know his name and can't remember his face. Fuck you, memories.
Things got a lot worse.
The police should have been called. They weren't and I have several theories why. I doubt pity was a part in any of them.
The principal's name was Ian Snell. His family had been friends with mine for years. And without any hesitation or doubt he laid the whole thing on me. "You've upped the ante," he yelled (yeah, actually yelled) at me, "you've upped the whole ante!" On reflection I'm rather sure he didn't know what that term actually met. Either way he stood over me and yelled at me, mocked me, accused me and terrified me.
His faculty, his staff, his people, he had failed to help me for years. Not one of the teachers in the school was unaware of who I was and what I was going through. Not one of them was unaware that I was the target of bullying - constant, ongoing bullying - and they'd failed to stop it. Most of them didn't even bother to try. And now he was standing over me bellowing at me as I cried and tried to explain that I didn't mean to hurt anyone, cut me off mid-sentence whenever I tried to say anything more than 'I'm sorry,' dumped the whole thing - years of abuse - on me.
Well, let me tell you, Mr Snell, you purulent piece of maggot-ridden dog shit:
FUCK YOU.
Go to Hell and die.
I hate you. I hate your spineless nature. I hate that you made me into the bad guy and never once acknowledged that I had actually snapped, and that the years of your failure to protect me had led me to one single act of tremendous error. I was no hardened criminal, nor was I in danger of becoming one. I was a scared kid who had nowhere to turn. The teachers wouldn't help (in my kinder moments I amend that to 'couldn't'). My parents had no way of protecting me. I couldn't be home-schooled because both my parents worked.
I hate that you took no blame. I hate that you treated me like shit. I hate that you made me feel worthless. The first time I got up on the roof of my Dad's shed and considered throwing myself off was because of that moment. The only reason I didn't is because I wanted death and could see too many options in which I'd survive in agonising pain.
I hate that my parents think you did me a favour by not calling the police. You were protecting yourself and you fucking know it. You wouldn't want that mark on your name as principal. Whether I deserved a permanent record with the police was a secondary consideration at best. You crushed my heart. You wiped out my ability to trust authority figures. You betrayed me.
When I got home - which I did because my parents came and got me - they then sat me down and gave me the third degree (or so it felt). Dad did most of the talking, as I recall. He wanted to know if the reason I liked role-playing games was because they contain violence - as if I was mentally ill! As if I were just waiting to gut people! None of what I went through to get to that point meant anything. As far as I know it still means nothing.
I can hate Mr Snell but I can't hate you, Dad. But you have no idea - no idea - how angry I am at you. I have enough pent-up rage at you to fuel a small city. How dare you talk to me like that? I was in pain and I was terrified and the world felt like it had hated me for nine years. My parents and solitude were the only things that made me feel safe. You took one of those away that day. I was a little kid. I was your fourteen year old traumatised miserable son and you asked me if I wanted to apologise to you and Mum for the way I'd acted.
And I did. So badly. I couldn't even make the words. I nodded and burst into tears and you both hugged me as if it was all okay but it wasn't. It won't be okay, not for the rest of my life, not until I die. When the last electrochemical pulse in my brain stops and I cease to be as a person, then it'll be okay, and not before.
But I won't kill myself. I won't seek death. I saw what it did to you when Brian did that. I felt what it did to me. I never want anyone - not even someone I'm angry with, not even my worst enemy, not even people I hate - to feel like that.
Maybe if I'd killed myself first Brian would see how much it hurt you and he'd have chosen to stay alive. Then you'd have the worthy son back and wouldn't have to put up with the damaged disappointing one,but that's not how it played out. I don't want to hurt you, so I won't kill me.
Plus, of course, that's the easy way out and I don't deserve it.
The worst moments of my life are compared to Year 9. Only Brian's suicide ranks higher. Even the death of my grandmother is slightly lower because even though I miss her so badly she was old, and it was her time, and she died in a comfortable place surrounded by people who loved her. It was upsetting and I'm still grieving but it was right. It was part of the natural order of things and she wouldn't have been sad to die like that. But Brian died sad. He died in pain. He died without hope.
This post isn't going to end on a positive note. Don't scroll past all the blather trying to find the uplifting end because there isn't one. I won't commit suicide but I don't have any hope this will ever get better for me. I'll have this pain and rage for the rest of my life and if ghosts really do exist I'm likely to make one very angry spirit.
Fuck you, Mr Snell. You don't get to be the good guy, not in my life story. You're not even the bad guy. You're the flimsy side-character whose self-important bullshit makes him yell at the wrong person, the one who can't admit he fucked up. And I don't care if you don't like that. You lost the right to deserve my concern that day. I hope the rest of your life is free from toil or confrontation because you are really fucking bad at coping with it.
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