Am I normal?

I am silent. I have no confidence, no will to stand up for myself, to talk, I am alone. People have told me so. When I speak up they pierce me with looks that could cut diamonds. Some tell me I should go home and never come out, they tell me I should never have been born, and others – tell me I should die.
My heart hurts most of the time; I’m not sure if this is because I have a medical condition or if their hate actually gets to me physically. All the hate and anger makes a bad coat, but it seems that’s all I wear these days – summers colder and winters below zero. They aren’t that stylish either. It’s pretty similar to when you’re a kid and your parents cook dinner and it’s something you hate, but you have to eat it anyway because you don’t want to starve. I take the pain, how else am I supposed to move on? Some think that they can walk all over others who are “less” in their eyes. In reality they are the lesser.
As much as this hurts I think what hurts worse is the amount of people who sit around and watch as the endless harassing continues. Their faces, I remember everyone’s faces. They stare all the time. No emotion, no guilt that they are letting this happen, and no thoughts of trying to stop it. It’s become so much of a routine that when something occurs they glance, find out what happened this time, and keep walking. When you see an innocent animal getting beaten do you walk by, do you let them continue to hit the poor animal? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Not to mention a person! A human being, one of us! How can they be so heartless? They are ruining me, inside and out. I feel like there is nothing left living for. I could die and they won’t care. They will laugh and find more people to pick on, and make their lives a living hell. It’s a shame that I’m silent.
It’s too late to speak up. By now this is all that is left to change the world by. I see that I can’t change what’s happening to me, I can’t change what will happen, but you can change what will happen to others.
It all started in third grade. The bell would ring every day at 12:15 PM exactly. The bell would ring and the halls would fill with raucous talking, and children funneling out of their class rooms into the halls. The walls covered with paintings and pictures the students created while in class. Lions and tigers in standing in the grass, cars with whole families driving down the 2D roads with unequal sized wheels were a few among them. Face masks made of construction paper and snowflakes hang towards the top still not having been taken down from the holiday season. Mainly the best pictures and artwork were put in the hall, mine was not.
The children rushed down the halls trying to reach the exit to the playground. Five or more would try and squeeze through the giant double doors almost as if they were escaping prison. Once outside everyone would flee to their favorite part of the playground: the swings or the basketball court, some to the slides, others to the soccer field. I used to flee. I used to be the first one outside every day, I mean back then it didn’t matter who looked like what and who wore which clothes. We didn’t care about all that stuff. But this day was the first day I was looked down upon.
I remember running to the soccer field, soccer was my favorite. I loved to sprint down the field with the ball and try to score in the goal. When I would score I would run and slide on my knees like the famous soccer plays and pretend the crowd was cheering my name over and over – they loved me.
I got to the soccer field and there were a few kids wanting to play. I didn’t know these kids, I’m pretty sure they were new to the school. I had heard one of the other kids talking about them earlier that day. They looked like friendly kids, wearing normal jeans and plain shirts, one was red and the others were white, although I think Chad, the taller one at the time, had some words on the back but I don’t remember.
Jake, the one in the red, was the one who had gotten the ball from the teacher and was holding it in between his arm and his side. His posture seemed to stand out; he stood with confidence – something I had never seen before in a kid my age. I approached him.
“Hi are you playing soccer?” I asked, feeling kid of dumb because he was holding a soccer ball and standing on the soccer field.
“Why yes we are.” He replied.
“Can I play with you all?”
“No, you can’t play with us.” His words hit me like a sucker punch to the stomach. I had never had someone been this blunt and frank to me before. He was telling me I couldn’t play soccer – I always play and I love to play.
“How come I can’t play?” I asked Insulted.
“Because you are fat, you won’t be able to keep up with us.”
This hurt, I felt the punch and the next, and one after another they beat me down with their words. I didn’t know what to do. This had never happened to me before. I’m not fat – am I?
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go tell a teacher, that’s just s sissy thing to do, and I didn’t want to say anything back because they obviously weren’t going to let me play or they would hurt me. The fear is what got to me first. I decided I would sit out that day and come back the next day and continue playing soccer like I always did. That didn’t happen. They continued this for the rest of the year, and all the way up till middle school. Once we got to middle school, I was glad that there was no free time, there would be no chance for them to tell me no, and maybe things would get better. I was wrong.
Middle school was the beginning of a new kind of bullying. They started to become the popular kids. People started hanging out with them outside of school. They were popular and I wasn’t. They started calling me names, names that did more than cross their teeth with breath but crush me like rocks. It was like the old day stoning. One would be singled out and placed upon a pillar; the whole town would take a rock from the pile and hurl it at the lame. Every single word a stone – Some larger than others, yet they hurt, all the same.
Later this turned to physical acts. They would trip me in the halls, or shoved me into lockers, receiving punches depending on how their day went. Since when did people turn to punching bags? I tried to ignore it but when it happens every day it’s hard. When the abuse shows on you, there’s no hiding it. Other kids followed suite trying to fit in with them. The kids that didn’t follow would sit back and not say anything because they didn’t want to get picked on either – so they left that for me.
High school was hell. I was damned. Maybe I was road kill in their world, and they were vultures it was like they followed me. They would hunt me down like a lion would its prey. They would stuff me in trashcans and take my money. Bad is an understatement, and yet the whole time I never said anything to them. I just let it happen, all the anger and hate built up inside me. I am surprised it didn’t arise sooner than it actually did. I’m not surprised at the repercussions.
I could count all my friends with my fingers, and none of them we close to me. A few were from video games online. I spent most of my time playing games. I didn’t care about school, and would skip days here and there because I knew if I went it was going to be the same torture I had to endure every day. It was getting to me and I knew it. There was nothing I could do, I had kept it in for so long that I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was self-conscious, insecure, and hated almost everyone. What could I have done?
My parents began noticing a change in my behavior, I was eating less and I stayed in my room from after school till I went back to school, if I did. They tried to schedule appointments for me to go see someone, they said it would be good for me, they said it would help. Nothing would help me now. I wanted to go I really did, but I knew I couldn’t. No one else could know. I wasn’t a sissy. That’s how bad it got. Most days I would sleep all day, and when I would wake up I would take sleeping pills to go back to sleep. Some days hoping I wouldn’t wake up. Looking back, I should have made an effort to improve, maybe transfer schools, or something. I should have tried to find a way out other than what I chose.
Days ran together, holidays came and went, and birthdays didn’t have the same meaning. Life didn’t have the same meaning. I was ruined. Everyone knew it, everyone saw it, and no one tried but my parents. No one cared. I wandered the halls as a lifeless mannequin that could move. Nothing inside – my heart was beating, but for what good? What meaning? Keep me alive to be a punching bag for others? That’s not what I wanted and that’s not what I was going to be.
It was August 4th 2009 when I made up my mind. I knew there was no purpose for me, I had convinced myself that there was more for me on the other side and I was going to find it. As the darkness crept deeper into the night, after my parents were asleep I found my way downstairs to the basement. I hadn’t been down here in years. I had forgotten the table where my dad and I would work on miscellaneous projects, and the couch where he would sit and watch Espn after late nights at work. It smelled like fresh cigars and beer, my dad loved cigars and enjoyed drinking beer but it has gotten worse since I got bad. I walked over to the closet on the far side of the room. The door squeaked open as it always did. It was a heavy oak door, it had been carved by my great grandfather, the door smelled amazing, and I wish he was here to talk me out of it.
I flicked the switch on the inside wall and turned the light on. The gun safe lay straight ahead. Its green body lined with a gold trim around the outside. There was a hint of metallic in the green, It sparkled with some mystery and hope that beyond this point was a better life. I typed in the pin, 8, 4, 9, 1. The safe beeped and blinked green and I twisted the safe open. Before me were two shotguns, a rifle, and two pistols. I studied them all, trying to figure which was easiest and cleanest for my parents. It came down to the pistols. I grabbed one of the revolvers. At the top of the safe was a shelf with all the bullets lined in order in the way the guns were set up. It was just like my dad to keep them organized like this. I pulled out a single bullet and opened the chamber. I gently placed the bullet in one of the empty chambers and spun it closed. I had always wanted to do that, like in the old westerns.
The gun was heavy, but it didn’t compare to the weight of my heart and everything I’ve had to bear. I sat down on the couch, leaning against the back looking around the room, flipping through my whole life like a picture book. Everything I had been through and everything that had gone wrong. I started to cry. The tears flowing down my cheek, and they fell to my shirt and were soaked up instantly. I didn’t care; I just wanted to finish this. I rolled the chambers around till the loaded one came to the top. I pulled back the hammer, my finger quivering along the way. It locked into place, my finger lightly on the trigger, shaking waiting for my brain to squeeze. I raised the gun to my temple, placing the barrel just at eye level. This was it, my pain would be over, my life would be better now, and I would be in a different place. Somewhere were people cared, where I would be loved. That’s all I want, I want people to care. Maybe this will open their eyes.