High School

 

High school wasn't as bad as junior high school, but it was still rough. At that point, I was so depressed I could barely speak in a loud voice. To this day, I am now a quiet talker. I never used to be, but that's what years of verbal abuse will do to a person. I tried to let on that it didn't bother me whenever the class would turn on me, or whenever a friend would suddenly stop being a friend. But in all honesty, it hurt like Hell. (Which is why I refer to this time period of my life as Mell's Hell.)

 

When I began grade 10, depression from years of getting verbally abused was affecting me in ways I didn't realize. I became far more withdrawn than I was in junior high. Comic books and the subsequent fantasy world I had created for myself became my life. I started to flirt with the idea of being a writer, and found myself distracted a lot in math class (for instance). I sat at the very back of an almost two-length class, writing little stories, but not really concentrating on what I was supposed to be learning. Escapism became my life at this point.

 

I also found it difficult when I realized I had really only one friend left at school. At this point, any odd friends or acquaintances had made their choice to join "the dark side of the force" and either ignored me as though I was some kind of disease, or made fun of me horribly with the others.

 

I think the only classes I enjoyed in high school were English, French, Art and Drama. In art class, I could get creative and got to be messy on occasions with painting or sculpting. In drama, I could forget who I was for awhile and pretend to be someone else. In English I enjoyed being able to discuss books and watch the VHS movies of the books or plays we were studying. With French, though, I have to admit the only reason I enjoyed that class was because of a teacher I had there. I think she was one of the few who actually tried to help me a little bit with some words of encouragement. In fact, she was the one who said she saw me living in Vancouver some day, which is where I live now. While I did of course enjoy learning another language, I was learning French for six years in a predominantly English community, and really had no one else to talk to en français, so that skill sort of went the way of the dinosaurs for me.

 

While most girls were busy worried about hair and make-up and boys, I was more concerned with getting through the day so I could go home and hide away in my room, either blasting music, reading comics, watching TV, playing video games, or reverting back into my fantasy world. It was so difficult trying to get through each and every day, and indeed there were days in which I didn't say much if anything at all, and could barely even hold my head up high. Particularly when I started to hear rumours from a couple of people about the one friend I had left was telling people lies about me.

 

I'm not sure what happened between the summer of junior high school and high school, but suddenly this friend I'm talking about decided she was done hanging around me. I guess an old friend of her's who moved away came back for a year or something and she started hanging around her, completely ignoring me in the process. At the same time she would be telling my brother and his friend things about me that weren't even remotely true, and of course my brother would report these things to me. Feeling like the only friend I had left in that town was also starting to turn against me, made me even more reclusive.

 

My room became my Fortress of Solitude. While I still say I get along wonderfully with my brother, there were days that I just wanted to stay alone in my room and shut the entire outside world out, including him. And for some odd reason whenever I would have that desire for aloneness, that's when he would try to get in my room. So there were constant battles of me standing behind my door blocking him from entering my room, while he was on the other side, pushing heavily against the door trying to get in. I didn't know how to say I just wanted to be alone other than yelling, "GET OUT!"

 

Weekends saw me sleeping in way past noon. Indeed, some days I didn't crawl out of bed until three o'clock in the afternoon. I know looking back I was so obviously depressed, but I didn't realize it at the time. I just wanted to shut the outside world out and hide away in my room, which is probably why that Beach Boys' song In My Room really speaks to me.

 

In grade 10's social studies class, I had another incident occur where a teacher used me as punishment again, as happened in almost every class I had in that town, but this particular class was the worst example I have of this and I feel the need to tell the story here. In the beginning of the year, we were seated alphabetically. For some odd reason, the alphabet really worked to my advantage, as I was seated in the more academic side of the class, and there weren't a lot of jerks in close proximity to me.

 

About halfway through the semester, the teacher decided to shift the room around as there were too many loud-mouthed assholes on one side of the classroom. I cringed as I knew exactly what was going to happen next, as it happened in every class I had, but this one made me want to crawl into a hole and die. The teacher moved every good kid over to the other side of the class except me, and moved all the aforemented loud-mouthed assholes around me in a semi-circle, though it would have been a full-circle I'm sure if I wasn't already sitting on an edge aisle.

 

All class long I'd have to sit there, listening to them telling each other bullshit stories about how wonderful their lives supposedly were (which wasn't all that great to be honest with you). Then when they would discover they had nothing more to say (which was quite quick), they would then focus on attacking me personally.

 

Social Studies class was always a difficult subject for me, and I've come to realize over time that that reason was because I had that problem of being the "punishment". In the beginning of this class, when I was seated around the good kids, I was doing alright in social studies for probably the first time in my scholastic career. I wasn't getting A's, but I wasn't close to failing either. After the class got shifted my grades plumetted to near failing again.

 

This is when I finally made the connection that my grades problem was directly related to being verbally abused by these assholes I was forced to sit by. I wasn't stupid, it was just hard for me to concentrate when I had insults hurled at me all the time. When I made this connection, I asked the teacher if he could move the room back to where it was before as I couldn't concentrate in class because those guys "won't shut-up." He told me that he thought my "good behaviour would rub off on them" and that's why he moved them all by me.

 

Ahem! Good behaviour? My good behaviour was a severe case of depression which left it next to impossible for me to talk to anyone in the class. And I'm not a psychologist or anything, but even I know that one quiet person isn't going to influence a group of loud assholes, but that group of loud assholes would probably influence the one quiet person instead.

 

By the second year of high school, I realized that my one friend had, in fact, started hanging out with a couple of girls who were always insulting me in the hallways, and I began to realize that she was no longer interested in being my friend, unless there was absolutely no one else within the vicinity that she could hang around. Knowing all too well that familiar pattern with so many previous friends, I knew our time together was drawing to an end. It was only a matter of time.

 

As I previously mentioned, I was interested in art and drama. At the school there was this group of kids who called themselves "The Freaks". These were the drama club enthusiasts (mostly guys, though they were constantly trying to recruit girls if memory serves me right) who considered themselves to be non-conformists. To a person who gets insulted a lot from the conformists, I think you can see why I would be drawn to this group.

 

They started this little drama group that would put on skits at lunch-time to draw in money for the drama club and to entertain us in our mundane little town. I enjoyed watching them perform. They were fabulous actors, and very funny.

 

This little drama group called their act "The Green Boot", and this actually made high school somewhat bearable for me. The name came because one of the guys bought a pair of old army boots, and they just found it to be a funny name for their comedy troup. For a lunch hour on Tuesdays, I could forget my troubles and laugh at their silliness. I've always been drawn into silly comedies, and found these guys could be just as good as The Kids in the Hall, or Saturday Night Live back in the early 90s (you know, when it was actually funny).

 

One day they decided to take a risk and do a skit that had some "questionable material" in it. Basically, it was a skit about a waiter who was turned on by everything the couple mentioned. Now, I found this skit to be quite hilarious, in fact I was in tears laughing and busted all kinds of guts.

 

Halfway through their skit, the drama teacher flagged down the stage lights (which was her way of saying CUT!) and they were no longer allowed to perform this particular skit. I was one of the first people to boo her, as I don't believe in censorship at all, especially when it comes to the arts.

 

The next day, news spread around school that The Green Boot had officially been canceled by the principal of the school, because the office received student complaints about the scene. Since I was being treated as an outcast, someone must have thought it would be funny to say it was me who did it.

 

I have no idea who started that rumour, or where that came around. All I know is news spread fast in that small little Hell town, so when I went into my drama class, I received the nastiest icy looks from everyone in the class.

 

Every once in awhile, I find myself reflecting on this event in my life. I do believe it to be one of my defining moments, and it wasn't a good one. Once again, I didn't defend myself at all because that was the event where I finally gave up trying.

 

I thought these drama guys were self-proclaimed anti-conformists, and didn't go in with the "in" crowd at all. They seemed different, and wouldn't actually insult me or anything, so that's probably why I enjoyed watching their skits. But when I saw those looks on their faces that morning, it made my self-worth sink right into the pit of my stomach. Great! Now, even the non-conformists hated me!

 

This was an event that I found myself constantly looking back on even a decade later, wishing I had defended myself, or found out who spread around that rumour so I could kick his/her ass. It was the last straw, the last break, that I had for any kind of hope that my life would turn out okay.

 

So, I don't know if anyone from The Green Boot will be reading this or not. In fact, I have no contact at all with my former high school (or Strathmore) life at all. But in case they find this in a search engine, I would like to set the record straight: I didn't complain about that skit.

 

In fact, I support freedom of speech, especially in the arts. I absolutely hate it whenever some uppity people get upset about some rock band they don't like, and have to complain about it to the point of getting it canceled. If you don't like it, don't listen to it. Just don't ruin it for everyone else!

 

Take Marilyn Manson, for instance. While I may not like all of his music, I do like some songs here and there. When he was scheduled to play a concert in Calgary back then, all the parents who believed he's an evil influence on their children complained to the point that they got the show canceled. I can't stand it when people do this about anything, really. Like the UFC. I'm not personally a fan of this kind of sport, but just because I don't like it doesn't mean that I have to ruin it for people who do like it. Make sense?

 

Anyways, as I was saying about my story. I just want to send out the message that I didn't cancel The Green Boot. In fact, I actually find it more of an insult that people thought I would be offended by that skit's material. It wasn't really that bad. (Actually, I discovered from my brother that they ripped it off from an old low-budget movie.)

 

As I mentioned earlier, I do link this one event to be the last time I gave a damn about my life. It was the very last straw I had left that I thought I could pull myself out of the Hell that was my life. Perhaps it's why I haven't really accomplished much in my life since, other than failing at quite a lot of things. I just felt like, why bother?

 

Now on to the third and final year. I had an English 33 class together with that aforementioned "friend", if you can call her that. This year she managed to find herself an out-of-town boyfriend. I had became the person she hung out with if there were no better options.

 

One week, the only thing she would say to me was “I can’t wait to see [insert boyfriend's name here] this weekend!” Over and over again, word for word, for an entire week. By the time Friday rolled around, I was a little tired of hearing that same sentence, so I rolled my eyes. She accused me of being jealous, which wasn’t the case at all, I was just sick of hearing her say that sentence to me. It was almost like she wait baiting me or something.

 

After English was over, we had a homework assignment. I was a little annoyed as it was a weekend, and this was the second class of two classes already that day that gave me a lot of homework for the weekend. I mentioned how annoyed that made me feel to her. She then snorts, “Why? It’s not like you do anything on the weekends anyway!”

 

I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, but that really pissed me off. It was the final straw. I thought a true friend wouldn’t say something like that to me. And remembering all the times she was badmouthing me around to other people, I finally decided that if she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore, then I wouldn’t want to be friends with her either.

 

I want to point out that none of this was motivated by any jealousy towards her, as I’ve never been the type of person to be jealous of someone because they had a relationship with someone. I was angry because it seemed so mean-spirited to me. After a couple of years of not hearing much from her unless we were in a class together, and hearing her tell stories to people and my brother about me which weren’t true at all either, this was just the last final thing I could take.

 

Plus, I had so many friends turn their backs on me in this town. People I thought I got along nicely with would suddenly join the dark side of the force and start making fun of me. It made it really hard to feel like I could trust anyone, which is an issue I still have today. She also was the very last friend I had in that town. So I just finally got annoyed enough with the bullshit that I finally just said, “Fuck it!”

 

I decided I just wasn’t going to talk to her at all anymore and just ignored her completely, as she had been so accustomed to doing with me if another friend was around. So on Monday, as I was sitting in my desk waiting for English class to start, she came in and starts to tell me about her weekend. I gave her the iciest, coldest shoulder I’ve ever given out in my life and just ignored her completely. After a little while of trying to get my attention, she said, “Fine,” and that was that. Incidentally, she didn’t get her homework done and I did, which kind of brought a smile to my face.

 

I wound up graduating from high school with no friends at all. It was very lonely. Hell, people even kept the details of the Grad camping party away from me, even going to the point of telling me I "wasn't invited". Yeah, like I really wanted to hang out with a bunch of assholes anyway! Graduating high school is quite the accomplishment, but I found the first "year of freedom" to be a very difficult one.