The Opposite of Normal - Andrew Boggan (readnow .txt) 📗

blowing spit bubbles at me but I was pretending they didn’t exist. Ms Anderson got up as she requested to say a few words. “Id like to talk about the Queensland Young Play writers Competition presented from the Queensland Theatre Company” she said. Suddenly she had caught my attention and my ears pricked up along with every strand of hair on the back of my neck. She wasn’t going to mention my name was she? “Several weeks ago one student from our college submitted an application to the Queensland Theatre Company; the winner would have their script produced in front of a live audience. Well I have the results here with me today and I would like to thank this student for all the time and effort this person has given up purely to enter this”. I suddenly froze yet I could feel every pulse rush gallons of blood through my body in time with my heart beat, all of a sudden my senses were heightened and my breathing appeared to have stopped out of shock.

“120,000 submissions went through for the Young Play writer’s award and 5 were selected. Our student has come 12th in the competition. While it may not be within the top 5, I, the principal, and the Queensland Theatre Company would like to thank Brendan McCall for his huge and timely effort and utilizing a remarkable and creative touch and putting it into practice. To come 12th out of 120,000 is simply an astounding and commendable effort. Congratulations Brendan” The entire assembly hall clapped but I got a few evil eyes rather than a hearty congratulation from my classmates.

I was so overwhelmed in the fact that got 12th out of 120,000. Sometimes we never truly believe our true potential until somebody else sees it first. I have to admit tho; Ms Anderson saw more in me than what I would see myself. I never could have imagined that I had capabilities that could go to this level. I was certainly filled with pride at the outcome of the competition. To be honest with you, I really thought I would have come last, not 12th and although I didn’t get to have my script produced, I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

The outcome from the competition had me on such a natural adrenalin rush for days that I started doing some serious thinking about my true writing potential. I said to myself I wouldn’t do anymore writing until the next lot of the school holidays, but I didn’t think I could wait that long. There’s a strong deep urge to write and, to write about so many different things that affect my life, and other things that affect the world that we live in.

My weekends filled up with writing. I was determined to get to at least 30 feature film scripts written by the end of the year. Who knows, I could even sell them to a movie producing company and make a million dollars. Yeah well that’s highly unlikely but the feeling to be able to just get in there and write in my spare time was more than enough for me, and it was a great distraction from the harsh reality that I faced everyday at school. The one thing that makes me proud about writing is that I know it’s a rare quality to put forward a great story, but I feel that I’ve actually accomplished something and all I want is to rub that into the noses of my classmates. To me that would be my own version of revenge.

I’d now made an official commitment to myself: To write write write and more write. If this is what will take me far in my life then I have to pursue it as much as I can.

Ω

The persistent bullying at school had almost turned into an unwritten law. After spending countless nights replaying events over in my brain, I simply couldn’t fathom why this was happening to me. I’ve heard many people ask “what is normal”, well I’m certainly not one to be able to answer that question and to be honest with you, I wouldn’t have a clue what defines the truth of normal, but what I am sure of is that I’m not normal. It never mattered how hard I tried to be normal it simply didn’t work, particularly when placed into a social environment.

I often thought of my schooling as a war that just could never be won no matter how hard I tried to fight it. Perhaps my classmates probably never saw it this way but I always had a habit of looking at things from a totally different perspective. I’d see myself standing at the bottom of a towering hill and an army of classmates would come rushing at me with their sadistic intentions and no matter how hard I attempted to run away, a bone chilling cold snap would freeze me to the core and I couldn’t move. The end result, my vulnerability would be left open for the world to exploit and destroy any sense of integrity within myself that ever existed.

It was a warm late spring afternoon and the sun was beating down on the dry brown grass and not a sole could be seen in the park. The only existence of life that could be heard was the sound of baby birds chirping in the trees which seemed to echo from afar. The afternoon sun began to set behind the trees in the park causing the sunlight to slowly dissolve. As I sat and watched the sunlight slowly slip away, part of my emotional soul when down with the sun, disappearing into horizon and probably never to be seen again. As the dark night sky consumed the remainder of the day, a change was taking place within my mind. There were no stars that night and it was almost as if the night was empty and lifeless. As an empty and lifeless night set upon me, I soon realized my soul had drowned in the setting of the sun.

Ω

Last night my soul had passed away, and as a person so open about my emotions I couldn’t cry anymore. A sea of tears had dried up the night before taking my emotions into the unknown abyss. Only then did I realize I was just the ghost of that young boy that existed last night who passed away at sunset.

Another school day was finally over and the only piece of emotion that I could feel was the excitement to get home and begin writing. As usual I sat on the train by myself reading through my geography textbooks completely oblivious to the hype and commotion of the other school kids on the train. One of the guys in my class, Daniel, happens to be an obscene moron. He’s got the ability to use such offensive language and thoroughly enjoyed intimidating people with his hollow threats. Daniel had never really bothered me in the classroom before so I didn’t feel that worried he was sitting opposite me on the train. If I kept my head buried in my book and didn’t make eye contact I was sure I could stand the situation until I got off the train.

About 3 stops away I put my text book into my bag so that I could take in the view before exiting the train. I heard Daniel mention “I’m bloody starving mate” and yelled out “who’s got any food”. Well I noticed a piece of fruit that I had in my bag left over from lunch. “Daniel did you want this, I’m not going to eat it” I said as I politely handed the apple to Daniel. With my brain subconsciously blocking a serious incident that had just occurred, I was almost certain I just experienced a seizure. My entire body felt like I was just slammed into by a truck and my head was about to split in half whilst I tried to recover from the blurred vision that had just so blinded me. As I bent over to reach for my bag a wave of vomit immediately began flowing from my mouth onto the floor. Several people began moving out of shock whilst a few others were laughing. I couldn’t believe I was vomiting because I don’t remember feeling sick or even lurching forward. My vision started to return to normal and I looked down to see the evil substance that so quickly threw itself out of me. I hadn’t been vomiting, copious amounts of blood was spilling from my mouth, down my body and onto the floor. Blood had even ended up on the window of the train. Daniel had violently hit me across the mouth.

I started reaching my arms out for help but everyone kept on running away from me. It was almost like I was drowning in the ocean and reaching out for a life line but nobody was willing to rescue me. I ended up stumbling through the train carriage, blocking out the deafening sound of evil laughter and headed for the train guard to get off at the next train station and call an ambulance. My cousin, Eliza, who I was somewhat distant with, noticed what happened when I stumbled into the train carriage and sat me down outside the guard door waiting for help to arrive while her friends called for the ambulance. Never could I have imagined feeling blood so icy cold that felt like a million razor blades slicing me open.

The humiliation of what had just occurred was too much to bare and my balance had completely gone from beneath me. Turning into jelly I fell onto the seats. Eliza and one of her friends were gracious enough to help me back up and sit me properly onto the seat until help arrived. At this point the train guard had been notified and an ambulance had been summoned. Turned out that my entire left bottom lip ripped open like a piece of paper and I received 35 stitches across the mouth.

I will probably never know the true meaning behind this violent attack. I simply did what any normal person would do and that’s offer food to someone who’s hungry, or perhaps that’s just not the normal thing to do. I tried to be friendly and I got pelted for it.

The recent events pushed my lifeless soul even further into darkness and I became so overwhelmed in the fact that the only existence of me was my physical being. It was time for this to end. I truly believed that physical and emotional existence had to live in peace and harmony together. Without the two, I had become nobody.

After the violent attack on the train I made a personal oath to myself: To put an end to the emotional and physical torture.

Luckily for us, my parent’s house sat on a set of stumps allowing extra room under the house for storage. There wasn’t really extra room as all the space was taken up with card board boxes cluttered up above each other. On my dad’s old dusty work bench was a 5 meter rope and his work stool. I found the ingredients that were needed to end the torture and anguish. As I began tying the rope to the wooden ceilings I suddenly began to feel a smile on my face. I was overwhelmed with a soothing comfort of joy and happiness and perhaps this was the feeling that I had been searching for, the end had finally arrived and I was about to place my physical being into darkness with my soul. I had the rope finally tied