Victim Of Circumstance

Just like a dream, life is not what it seems. What happens when you go to high school in your first trimester, and you know no one and are finding it difficult to make friends because the others label you based on how you behave? What happens if one of those early days you feel belittled, emotionally crushed because who you hoped you would be did not turn out to be the reality that others saw when they looked at you? What about if on that same day, you feel deprived and lonely, on the brink of tears as you walk across a busy intersection, facing the world with an ephemeral visage, when a car speeds from the road ahead and smashes into another car only a few metres away from your little body? How stricken do you feel when you hear the sound of metal clashing, of glass shattering and scattering, of a baby suddenly bursting out crying? How do you feel when for the first few seconds after the shocking accident, your tongue numbs and your expression whitens as you look at the wreckage? And then what of the baby who wants reassurance that he or she is alive? What happens when you walk away, because the weight of the day's prison sentence leaves you unable to help because you think you might do more harm than good? Would you say life sucks? Jokingly, I might have, but I never came to the conclusion that, I would learn four years later, Veronica Mars came to when commenting on Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man". Her words, "Life's a bitch until you die," spoken like a philosophy to be adopted and lived by as a sort of life motto, a proof that there is a reason for the madness that life sucks, because it sucks. This pseudo-logic did not occur to me in such a formulated and cynical format, not only because I did not know what cynical meant, but because I still had expectations of how my life would turn out. After all, I purposely chose to go to a good public high school, mine being a 'college', despite the large distance that I had to cover with a bus each day. I ventured it was worth more to go to a place where it appeared that academics were valued highly, because that's where I would fit. I was brainy, smart, intelligent, a brainbox. I knew answers to questions in class, not because I went home everyday and did homework and extra study for five hours - I don't think I've ever done that. My tool, which others mistook for my secret, was my ear. I listened, because in class I was brought up with the idea that you were meant to listen, absorb information. So I did. Others, probably brought up in different types of cages and regimes, zoned in and out. Because my prowess allowed me to excel, even in the reputable academic environment of my high school, I had a goal to strive for, to be the top. I had come to school to learn, so that's just what I did.

But academics was certainly not the biggest lesson I would learn. My parents stressed that it was imperative for me to do well, meaning academically, and me being a good little boy did as they said, though not directly because they said it. Their influence on my values went past academics, but performance at an academic level was a strong core of those imprints. I soon found out, however, that academics was not of the highest priority to other students, which made it difficult for me to bond with others. I was timid, I didn't really know how to get along with people. Awkwardness was an idea that was previously alien to me but somehow entered my consciousness and vocabulary, and sort of then became an excuse to try relate to other people, sometimes by lying about myself. The magnifying glass I can now place on my high school experience shows me that I didn't know how to make friends and my unwillingness to go out of my boundaries slightly halted the development of my social skills beforehand. When it was time to attend my 20-minute-away by bus school, it was clear that the social world is something I would become a member of, warts and all.

My English teacher in my first year, Year 9, came to me one lunchtime. I was sitting down on the wooden steps, alone with my sandwich, looking at the library, not knowing if I really was allowed to go in there and scared to ask for fear of rejection. I may have been on those steps because once the bell would ring, probably more than twenty minutes away, I would be ready to enter class, the door being just a metre behind me. I sat and gnawed and chewed and swallowed. She came to me, maybe she sat down next to me. Already having answered questions in her class, in her and the pupils' eyes, I was 'good at English', so she knew I had my academics sorted out. If my memory persists, she asked me how I was doing. Don't remember what I replied. She then may have asked me about friends, and I said I didn't have any. She introduced me to the actual concept, then, that high school was half-academics, half-social. There was an element in this experience I never consciously concentrated on. I never had to until then, because I always found somebody to bond with, at least superficially, to fulfill my friendship 'needs'. In high school, the rules of the game had changed, because the other students weren't willing to give me a chance. Judgment had set in - you make your friends by finding common things between each other. As a shy boy, I never got to the stage of sharing what I liked. Assumptions were made that I studied a lot, so I was a nerd, a geek, whatever. No one knew me, no one cared to know me, nobody knew themselves. Some of this realisation came to me at that time. I behaved a certain way around my classmates, and like a missile shield they were in defensive mode because they felt I fired at them by not bending to a status quo. I acted different to them, I got different marks, I talked differently. So people treated me differently - what else could I expect? This made me an outcast and within the first few days of this discovery, I went home and I cried. Simple: I hated myself and I wanted to change to be accepted because back then, I was nobody. I wanted people to like me. I wanted to be known, to have friends, to laugh out loud and to do the things the other kids were doing. I wanted to belong, so I had to change. I thought all I then had to do was change my behavior, an experiment which failed within the end of that first year at high school. I didn't know how to act like someone else. I didn't know how to add new imprints into my behavior, even though subconsciously I was doing it all the time. Unwilling to make that conscious decision, I had surrendered partly to the idea that I could not change. But it was more like a step of procrastination, because I felt that if I knew how to change, then I could change. So the process of figuring out the how was the aim I had set myself, though not in those words.

My arrival from intermediate into the much bigger pond of fish that was high school made me more aware of my behavior. Hints were dropped during childhood, by my cousin, by friends, by my mother and father, at times even by the mirror. But the bombs came in 2005, when the people around me were old enough to use labels that actually dealt my self-esteem some serious damage. They were not wise enough to understand what they were really doing, but they were able to use them so they could achieve their unconscious goal of separation. I acted differently. That didn't make me less of a person, but I was sure made to feel that way. I remember once I was in science, and the weapon that everyone used on me hadn't been used for some time - which gave me an opportunity to recharge myself. It thus came to be quite a memorable blow when I was again labeled that way when we were making phones out of tin cans and string. I was paired with some guy that was quieter than the norm. He spoke into the tin, and his words traveled through our white string into my tin can. At the time I was smiling, having fun, child fun. He asked me a question and through that stealthily dropped his bomb. I quickly replied with a negative answer, but the shock waves of the blast went through me. My 'no' was almost a tremor. I felt ashamed for the rest of the day, my innocence gone.

It's true that people are allowed to ask questions, but I did not recognise that at the time. To me, it was painful to be asked questions about who you are that were marginalising. It was not 'who are you?', but 'are you...' and they didn't know any better. Neither did I.

But I came through. At one point I wanted to be a victim, I wanted to be pitied. I thought it might gain me favour, morale, but nothing like that can make you whole. High school, especially at the beginning, was hard. It's hard to be told by people around you that you aren't enough. It's hard when you believe them. It's hard when you think illusions are real, and when they do too. But suffering is a great teacher. One way, or another, life is the greatest teacher. It will teach you exactly what you need, in the best way possible. You are allowed to object, to resist, but you only would if you were scared, if you believed that there was another way. This method creates friction, pain, and its discomfort then becomes your teaching method for the lesson that life tried to teach you in the first place. One way, or another, life teaches you what you need to know. How can I possibly say then, that life sucks? I can't say it and speak the truth. Veronica Mars had her own circumstances which she had to deal with, and in her pain and confusion, she made her conclusion. "Life's a bitch until you die." She believed it, and in her representative power as a human being, it came to be her filter through which she saw her experience. You may believe it too, which is why life hurts you and you feel victimised. After all, so long as life is a bitch, the bitch has to live up to her name. You'll still learn, but in an unpleasant way, until you discover that there is a much more effective and authentic path you can take. As students, the best thing to do is learn. Then we teach. It is with hope then, that I recommend learning truth before attempting to teach it, because once truth is learned, life will teach it through you, for the benefit of all.