The End

Connor was found dead on September 5th, 2013 in Bristol. He died from blood loss. It was asked by his family that his suicide note be translated and shared. Parts have been removed. Comments are open to share condolences to his family and friends
-David John, the manager.

   I’m sorry that it has come to this.   

    I feel like I’m going mad at times. I’m uncertain if I’m in a dream, if maybe I’m supposed to wake up. I wonder if I’m in a coma, if I’m supposed to be someone else. If the agonizing pain I feel all over my body is my soul trying to escape me, and go somewhere better.  All I want to do is go somewhere else, to be someone else. If there is a God, maybe I’ll come back and fly kites, smile, have a proper childhood.  Maybe my mother will want me. Maybe my life won’t be so fucked, and my memories won’t torment me.

    I feel haunted. My life is good; it’s the past that haunts me. I’m not present; I live two lives at once. I see what is real, but the past is always lurking in the background. I see them, everywhere.  My memories don’t fade, like a photograph a single moment will live on forever. I see the moment he died everywhere, I remember his face when he died. I hear his last words over and over in my mind.  I hate him. I can’t concentrate because of the voices. I hear their screams in my mind all the time. I feel as though, if I’m not here they will rest as well. When I die, the memories of them will die along with me, they will be freed.

    I’m living in a post apocalyptic world. I’ve watched my friends die; I’ve watched everyone around me die. I remember screaming through a door for friends to stop, I remember the blood trickling beneath the door, indicating that my efforts meant nothing. Most of my efforts have meant nothing. I hope to see them all again, this time not in my dreams.

   My mind is foggy. I know it’s the drugs, but I would rather live in a haze of confusion than feel their beatings over and over again. I forget what I’m like. They once tortured me, and now I torture myself. I wake up at night, bleeding all over my body. I rip myself apart, trying to escape the jail I’m caught in. I hate myself. I hate what I’ve become. I’m a black cloud that drags everyone down along with me.

    To my family, you’re the most dysfunctional people to ever walk this earth. I feel as though my parents dying in a way wasn’t negative, because I found you. You raised me; you turned me into the person I am. You’re the strongest people I know, you’re going on while I can’t. I would have been gone years ago if it weren’t for you. I wouldn’t have asked to spend my days with anyone but you, I have no regrets. All my childhood memories I have that involve happiness and laughter involve you. Ben, I love you to death. You’re the brother I’m supposed to have. You’re my other half. Without you, I’m nothing. You’re the constant in my life. I’ll see you soon; I’ll wait for you. Aiden, stay fucked. Keep yourself out of too much trouble. Try not to lose any more fingers. Matt, you’re a pig, you’re disgusting, I think I have herpes from your floor, you son of a bitch.  Sonny, I hope you find your voice. Knowing you even without words was a pleasure. Thank you boys. I’ll wait. We go down together.

    To the people I never met, the fact that I’m writing this to you says a lot in general. I feel pathetic doing this, but you’ve done so much for me and I’ve given you nothing in return. You’ve saved me so many times. In those times I felt so alone, you were there. You know my darkest secrets; you never judged me or found me disgusting, I wasn’t a monster to you, like I was to everyone else. Thank you.

    To my beautiful daughter, I hope you forget me. I hope you never realized who I was; I hope you never hear of what I have done. I hope you never become the useless, self-destructive person I am. I hope you break the curse. I’m sorry I never spent more time with you. I hope you grow up beautiful, smart, happy. I hope your family is everything I wish I could have given you. I’m sorry I wasn’t what you deserved, I’m sorry I’m doing to you what they did to me.

    Aron, I don’t think two people could have been happier than we had once been. You’re everything to me. You’ve made these last two years for me bearable. You bring me back to reality. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, inside and out. Waking up to your stupid face is all I could ever ask for; wrapped in a knot that’s impossible to untangle. I hope my afterlife is everything that reminds me of you, I hope it’s the calmness you bring me, I hope it’s that feeling I get every time I look at you, I hope it’s that silence I hear in my mind when I’m close to you. I can’t stand to be away from you for a second, I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I know I hurt you, I know I’m about to hurt you; I know I’m going to continue hurting you. I’m sorry. I love you so much. I want you to be free. I want you to explore. I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you Aron. I’m never going to stop, I promise.

   I am selfishly taking the memories that once were, myself along with them. My motivation for getting up every day has been my fear for those who will have to bury me, and that they will go through what I once did. The fact is that I’m not getting better. I can’t pretend anymore. I’m not going to get better. I am crumbling apart, I feel as though I am slowly becoming nothing. I’m an empty vessel. It is easier to end things before they get worse, before I hurt more people than I already have. I feel so guilty, I feel so much fear. I don’t want to cause sadness, I want those who read this to live the life I wish I could have had. I want no more death. I feel so much guilt.

    Sunny, you ruined me. You lied to me. You tore me apart in every way. I hope we burn in our own self-pity together. You told me you would wait, so here I come.  I hate you for taking away everything I loved.

    I’m about to take a great adventure. I will miss you all. I hope we meet again, in due time.

-Damek Kwiatkowski

You’ll find me on his grave.

Orphanages

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I haven't been home in 5 months. Hopefully I'll start writing regularly again, but I guess it's pretty clear that I'm a slacker. 

You might want to read this before this post makes any sense

_____

   I don't have that typical story of being left at the doorstep of some church or hospital by my mother only to be found by some wonderful family who took me in, no. My mum was 17 when she had my brother and I, we weren't born in a hospital so no official papers are available, I'm not even sure of my name or the real date of my birth, I doubt she even gave me a name. My mother didn't hold me in her arms or speak loving words to me. When she killed herself she just left my brother and I in the house, if you could even call it that, she lived in. We were found two days later by curious neighbours, with broken bones and almost dead from dehydration. 

   I spent a large majority of my life in orphanages. I guess they weren't all bad, because compared to most I'm extremely blessed in terms of my development and overall health. At least half of the people I met in my childhood are probably dead or in some kind of mental facility.

    Orphanages varied throughout Europe, with Eastern Europe being the worst. Most of the people who work in orphanages aren't paid enough to survive themselves...so it's like they want to take it out on the children living there. That, or just the amount of children severely outnumbered the workers to the point where we became nothing. I remember being treated like I wasn't human...I was just some kind of object. I could be moved into different areas, but there was no point in interacting with me because I was the same as a piece of furniture.

    I've mentioned before that I didn't start talking or even making sounds until I was 3 or 4, which led to me not being adopted and trapped in the system until I was 18. It wasn't abnormal that I didn't speak, it was just that nobody bothered to talk to me or teach me. I remember growing up in silence. Most of the kids didn't speak, they didn't even bother crying because nothing would come of it. I used to pretend I was in a room full of statues, because that's all they were.

    I was initially put in a grouping called "Section Eight". Section Eight consisted of about 40-60 babies under the age of three taken care of by one person at only select parts of the day. We were left alone in cots, usually 3-5 to a crib. No one spoke to us. When the worker came in, she would quickly give small portions of food, and change those who were deemed worthy...meaning those who would survive. I don't blame her, those workers usually face 24 hour shifts. Nobody was taught to talk. Nobody was taught to walk. We wouldn't play, we weren't loved. I remember going back to Section Eight rooms when I was older...and I wasn't sure if the children were even alive. From far away you wouldn't be able to tell. Section Eight children don't do much buy lay there, wide eyed. That's because Section Eight children aren't expected to ever become anything, they are a burden to society. The dirt beneath your shoes.

     I remember when I left Section Eight I didn't know what outside was. I had no idea of the existence of a tree, or what the sun felt like. I knew the curtains and the people around me. I'm not sure why I was moved from the first orphanage to be honest. I don't know why I got out and the others were left to rot. I'm not sure how I came about being able to walk, because Section Eight children are usually left to a life of just laying there like vegetables, with no soul or no mind. It's scary, if I showed you a photo of a Section Eight child you would guess them to be about 5 or 6, when in reality they'll be 16 years old.

    I'm assuming I was smuggled out of the Section Eight room and brought somewhere else, which does happen frequently. Maybe that person knew I had potential and that I wasn't mentally disabled like most of them were. They'd probably be disappointed to see how I turned out.

    When you turn five years old in an orphanage someone from the government comes in to decide where you go next. You're given a test, which is pretty basic. They ask you what a certain colour is, where to find a tree etc. Most Section Eight children can't answer those kind of questions, in fact they won't even acknowledge your presence, I'm not sure they're even aware of their surroundings. If you fail the test you are deemed retarded. You are an embarrassment to society, and you are nothing. You are sent to...kind of an insane asylum for children. You continue to lay in your bed, you continue to receive no attention. You will never be "alive", you will never speak, you will never walk. You will never be adopted, I'm not even sure you can adopt one. The ones who were severely disabled were just left alone to die.

    I'm not sure who saved me or how I knew of anything, but I could at least make out basic words so I wasn't sent there. I was sent to a state owned orphanage, not associated with Section Eight. There was still a low worker to child ratio, but when you get older in orphanages it's kind of your...duty...to help the younger ones I guess. I remember teaching hundreds of children to talk, walk, read, write or even play. It wasn't because I was a good person...it's just what you do. Someone did it for me, or I wouldn't be writing this right now.

    I was extremely lonely as a child. Most of the children I lived with had extreme effects from things like Chernobyl, or they were like those of Section Eight children who couldn't cope. I remember some kids wouldn't do anything but just rock back and forth all day. You could pick them up and move them, but they wouldn't really notice. They would just keep rocking. Some had severe mental disabilities due to Chernobyl, or had...mutations. Missing noses, missing limbs, heads...collapsing. I would just try and get them to speak with me or play, but they couldn't. They couldn't do anything. I mostly just played alone when I couldn't find others like me.

    We were usually given one meal a day, some cabbage soup and a piece of dry bread. Sometimes if the hunger got too much we would just eat sawdust because it fills you up quickly. It would make us extremely sick so I didn't do it too much. Those who got sick wouldn't get better. It's too risky to send orphan children to hospitals, and I guess too much effort. If you're sick you're fucked. Sometimes Americans who I guess felt guilt would bring us clothes or food to eat. The workers would act like they cared while the Americans were there and we would feast on the food and finally wear warm clean clothes. The second they left the workers would sell it all, and we would all get sick because of the high quality food. It would be better if they never came, it was just false hope and a plaster to cover up the problem.

    Most of the workers were abusive. They weren't afraid to hit you. Sometimes they would leave you alone in basements with nothing and nobody for days on end. They certainly weren't afraid of breaking bones. One time, I was so scared of one of them who cornered me that I jumped out of a fourth floor window and broke both my legs. I thought she was going to kill me. She probably was going to.

    Kids would go missing constantly. Missing in various ways. At one of the orphanages I lived in one person would kill themselves a month. One girl slit her wrists in my room and nobody bothered to move her for two days. Some nights I would go to sleep and in the morning two people would be missing, and there would be new blood stains on the wall. Some people would go missing for days, and when they came back they never spoke again. At night I could hear girls screaming, usually taken from their beds by men so they could sell them. Not a lot of the girls made it out.

    I'm not sure how my friends ended up in Eastern Europe. They aren't really sure either. Ben, Matt and Aiden only spoke English when we met but we bonded immediately despite language barriers. We always stuck together, and at night we would take shifts sleeping because we were terrified of being taken away. When the person awake heard someone wandering the halls, we would all hide as quickly as possible. It didn't always work, and when we were caught we were put in solitary confinement. Sonny and I were taken away the most. I don't know why those memories are missing, and I don't want to know what happened.

    To be honest I didn't usually associate myself with the others much. It wasn't easy making friends since I was in and out so often. Honestly, most of them scared me. If they weren't so messed up they couldn't communicate they were either emotionally distant or just...ruined. They had trouble looking into people's eyes, they didn't trust anyone and I guess we all have a weird thing about touching. I'm still friends with some people I met, but most have killed themselves. It feels weird seeing each other in "real" life. It's easier to just hide the truth and pretend I'm like everyone else, I don't talk about my childhood a lot and I don't want to be forced to remember by being faced with it.

    The conditions we lived in were horrible. There were massive rooms where we would sleep, a couple kids to one bed. There wasn't air conditioning or heating, and we never had proper clothing/ blankets. Usually the clothing you came in was the clothing you were going to stay in. The beds had bugs in them, and the bugs would frequently go under my skin. We spent a lot of time building up courage to cut them out. Water came out brown and usually made us sick. There were holes in the walls, garbage everywhere. A few of them didn't even have electricity, so at night it was terrifying and cold. The worst were definitely Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Austria and Croatia. The best were in Denmark, the Netherlands or the UK. The worst was Novokuznetsk, but that's something I'd rather not talk about. Russia was always the scariest place because that's where most would go missing,

    We weren't really allowed to do much. Sometimes we would smuggle cards in and play with them. There were always rumours about the forests surrounding the orphanages so we would just stay out. Escaping wasn't an option, because the towns the orphanageswere in were more dangerous than the orphanage itself. My friends and I mostly spent our time with the younger ones. Honestly, we made up stories about how great the outside world was so they wouldn't kill themselves when they got older.They probably did it anyways when they found out we lied.

    Those older than three are fucked. If you aren't adopted by then, that was it. You were going to be part of the system for the rest of your life. People don't want to adopt a 10 year old, they want a child who will forget their past life and easily fit into their new life. Usually orphanages lie about the age of a child to keep them available for longer. I'm most likely much older than I think I am. I don't remember any adoptions happening ever after I turned 5 years old. A lot of my friends killed themselves because it's hard knowing that someone isn't going to swoop in and save you from your misery one day, that just isn't reality.

   The last orphanage I was in was in Poland when I was 17 in February, before I was sent to my last group home. When I turned 18 and finally was free of orphanages and group homes I kind of went insane because I wasn't used to choices and freedom. It's shocking to be able to walk outside and go wherever you want when you've never been able to do that. Going shopping was a new thing to me, going to a park was something I had only dreamed of. I kind of still forget I'm free, it doesn't feel right eating food,  going out for coffee, or even buying a new jumper. It doesn't seem fair. I have a lot of trouble in my day to day life with it, I just feel extreme guilt when I try and eat a lot of food or do something for myself.

   The worst thing for me was always, and still is, seeing normal people. I'm not going to pretend like I don't feel bitter towards those who have parents. I have extreme jealousy towards my friends who grew up like you should. I feel like I'm being stabbed in the back every time I see a son and his mum out together. I feel like I'm missing a huge piece of my life, I never got to experience what everyone else did and that's the worst thing for me. If everything in my life fails I have nobody to go to, I'm all alone.I have nobody to speak to who really knows me like a parent would. I don't really understand what a home cooked meal is. Nobody has disciplined me, I feel as though I have no morals because I find it difficult to tell the difference between right and wrong. It's hard being in an orphanage for 18 years and knowing that nobody wants you. Plenty of people came in to adopt when I was younger, but nobody wanted me. I feel like everyone hates me and I'm inferior to others because I wasn't chosen. I feel as though if my own mother would rather kill herself than raise me, nobody is ever going to want me. I could die and it wouldn't truly effect anyone. 

   

The Memory of an Eating Disorder

    You are your memories. Your memories define who you are, without them you aren’t really you. You act the way you do because of what you were taught at a child. You grow on the memories of what you were built on. But what happens when your mind stops processing memories as a past event, and they become your present?

    Having an eidetic memory means that I remember everything that’s ever happened to me, but for some reason when I recall a memory it isn’t in the past. This means that something that happened 17 years ago is just as vivid in my mind as something that happened 2 minutes ago. I can’t decipher my past from my present, because in my mind my memories are my present. In my mind, if a friend dies they aren’t really gone because I can literally remember seeing them 2 minutes ago. If I go through a breakup, how can I move on if my mind processes my memories of them as current events? How can I make the pain of a horrific event stop if it never really ends for me?

   When I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to eat much. In orphanages there was always a shortage of food, we rationed as if there was an impending war. There was always someone who needed food more than I did, and since the orphans were family, we took care of each other. If I was given bread but someone else was hungry, they would get my bread. That was just the way things went. I don’t remember ever not being hungry as a kid; I hardly slept because of hunger. “Safe homes” were never any better. A form of torture every single family I was put with would use was starvation. I was locked in rooms for days without food, usually until I passed out from hunger. If I ate in an orphanage, it meant that somebody else would go hungry and would potentially die. If I ate in a safe home, I was beaten because hunger was a sign of weakness. Because of this, I always associated pain with food.

   I remember one time in an orphanage when I was 8 years old there was a little girl, about 6, who looked like one of those children you would see on an ad asking for money for starving children in Africa. She couldn’t get out of her bed, her skin was almost grey and her eyes the shade of blue you would only see after death. She hardly ate because she had a younger sister she would feed instead of herself. She gave all her food to her sister, except every second day when she would eat half her share. 6 years old, and she was making sure someone other than herself lived. I shared a room with her, my bed right beside hers. I could see her staring at me every night; her dead eyes would pierce me. I was so hungry I could barely function. I needed food. I stole food from the kitchen one night, just one slice of bread. In the morning the officials discovered that one slice of bread was missing, and as punishment they decided that nobody would eat that day. That was the day she was supposed to have her half. She never woke up the next morning.

   When I went to boarding school food was abundant. I could have anything I wanted and even as much as I wanted. I couldn’t do it. I was afraid if someone saw me eating they would think I was pathetic, worthless. If I ate, there wouldn’t be enough for anybody else. If I ate, I would murder someone. I was a murderer.

   I hardly ate at school. I would eat enough to keep me on the brink of survival. I was constantly made fun of for being so skinny but for me it was more of an…accomplishment. I was proud of myself because I was conditioned to believe that not eating meant strength. My weight was a medal I could wear 24/7 to prove that I was stronger than everyone else.

    As I got older I had to stay in bed most of the day. I could barely lift my own head because I was so weak. The only thing I would really ingest was my drugs, when I had them I couldn’t even remember that I was hungry. I couldn’t remember that girl I shared a room with. I was that girl I shared a room with. I was hospitalized 15 times in 4 months at one point. I was sent to a mental hospital after mental hospital. I tried to kill myself because I took a bite of an apple once.

   Mental hospitals specifically meant for eating disorders were the worst. I wasn’t usually allowed to bring anything, so I was forced to walk around in a hospital gown all day. At every meal I was forced to have two glasses of liquids, either juice or milk. I wasn’t allowed napkins so I couldn’t hide food. No cutting up food or drinking water between meals. Every morning I was forced to strip and be weighed. I was under supervision 24/7. It was supposed to be a safe haven for people with eating disorders, but realistically people just gossiped about each other being fat or we shared weight loss tips. It may not seem that bad, but honestly when you have anorexia it is like living a nightmare.

   Through mental hospitals I learned that I could trick people into believing that I was eating. I could just throw my food up later. I don’t know how this fit into my philosophy of not eating to help others, but I did it anyways. I would barely eat a meal without throwing it up after. I would purge until I was throwing up blood and chunks of my own flesh. My throat was ripped apart, my mouth ripped apart, my hair falling out, my nails falling off. I was disgusting. I was everything my “families” told me that I was. I was exactly where I thought I needed to be.

   I had a teacher who absolutely hated me. She thought I had killed my family, and I deserved everything that was coming to me. She recommended me to a mental hospital in Romania. It was far away from “civilization”. This was the kind of place you were sent when there was no hope for you. The kind of place people didn’t want to be around because of fear that someone would escape. This wasn’t a place for me.

    Everyone in this “hospital” seemed to be drugged to the point where they didn’t know who they were. They would just…wander the halls…going nowhere in particular; I doubt they even had thoughts at that point. Their hair was falling out, and they had that same, unblinking dead look as that little girl from my room.  Doctors never tried to cure anyone. They just sedated them if they went out of their wandering routine. It was like I was living in the house of the dead, and I was the only one alive.

    At this point my schizophrenia had begun to manifest into something…beyond schizophrenia. I was delusional because I wasn’t eating. My memories were coming to life. I was alone, all the time; I had nothing to remember and therefore nothing to grow upon. I was nothing, I was nobody. Even now my schizophrenic delusions are just my memory recreating things and bringing them to life, but this was different.

Every time I tried to eat something that little girl would appear. I wanted to go home. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t….dead. I wasn’t like the others. Every time I would bring food to my mouth there she was. Her eyes were just big black holes. Her skin was rotting. Her hair was grey straw. It was like she was falling apart…all because of me. When I would put something in my mouth all I could hear was an echo of “What about me?” When I tried to throw up, there she would be, staring at me. She would scream at me and cry, telling me to die and that I deserved to starve just like she did. She was everywhere. She was in every room I went into. When I tried to sleep, her rotting self would just stand at the foot of my bed and stare at me. I was torturing myself by not eating, and she would torture me if I tried to eat.

    One day I got a roommate at the hospital. She was an old blind woman. She hadn’t talked for ten years. She never did anything…just laid there. Dead like the rest of them. I decided to start talking to her since I was so lonely and she was the only physical thing there. For about a week I made her my real life imaginary friend. I told her about the guys, about Sunny. That was until she finally talked back to me. She was panicking, telling me that I had to start. I had to make “her” go away, that she would never go away unless I started. I still have no idea what it means, but because I was losing my mind I took it to be about my situation. I ate enough to get out because I was so scared.

   It was better for a little while. Of course, this became a memory. My schizophrenic delusions are my reality. I don’t see them apart from my real day to day life; they are my day to day life. Therefore every memory I have includes my delusions. This means that every single time I see food; I go back to the hospital and see that little girl screaming at me. It’s like she’s haunting everything I eat and I can’t make it stop. That little girl made me never want to eat again.

    At the same time I saw that old lady screaming at me to start. Since I associated “start eating” with that memory, that’s what I feel like I have to do every time. That makes me start eating, then throw it up again. Eventually it got to the point where I would throw up even if I didn’t want to. My natural response to food was to throw it up. I literally couldn’t eat, even if I wanted to.

   For two years when I started university I had to be tube fed. I literally had a tube sticking out of my stomach that I had to feed myself with. When I fed myself through the tube I didn’t gain weight, and I didn’t see the girl because I wasn’t technically eating. I didn’t really mind it as long as I didn’t have to take my shirt off. I ended up ruining it for myself when I tried to shove pills down the tube one too many times in a suicide attempt, and my stomach cancer ended up making it almost impossible to get any nutrients from it anyways.

  Last year when I had stomach cancer I never actually wanted to remove the tumor. The tumor sucked up my nutrients and made me feel better about eating…like it was okay. I think I was more heartbroken about that when I had it taken out than anything I was dealing with in recovery. It’s still kind of…nice…to not be able to eat much/ eat certain foods because of it.

    I still struggle with my eating disorder, only because of memories. I’m 6’9, meaning that I should weigh around 210 pounds. Instead I weigh about 116 pounds. I plan my meals months in advance so I eat less than 1000 calories a day. I don't get pleasure out of eating, I don't like food. I pass out constantly if I do too much in one day. When I look in the mirror, I see myself disgusting and skinny, but when I look back at the memory of me looking in the mirror I’ll get it mixed up with a memory from another time when I weighed more and then I feel like I need to lose even more weight. When I try to eat I hear everyone yelling at me that I’m ugly or worthless, because in my mind they were saying that to me two minutes ago, not 15 years ago. I see myself eating that one last piece of bread every time I eat. It’s almost like I’m traveling through time, suddenly going back to a moment in my past when I couldn’t eat.

    I don’t have memories because I’m still living them in my current life, so am I really me?

   
March 2013 diet

Coming Out

 This is pretty awkward and humiliating...I know.

    I guess I never really came out. I mean I’ve tried before, but it’s always ended in disaster. I feel like if straight people don’t have to come out as straight, I shouldn’t have to come out as gay, but then it’s just awkward to suddenly bring a guy back to meet my friends. I’ve always wanted to be in a band and tour the world, but I never expected to be playing the genre of music I do. If I was in some crappy electronia band I guess it would be easier to just come out and say it, but my fan base consists of creepy bald guys with beards who think drinking blood is cool, sadly, I am not even kidding. Coming out could jeopardize absolutely everything and fuck me over…which it has before. 

    As a kid I never thought I would actually grow up. I always thought I wouldn’t live to see another day so thoughts of romance didn’t ever pop up. I never saw a loving married couple so I didn’t understand the concept of a relationship. I didn’t have my first HUG until I was 12 years old so intimacy wasn’t a thing to me. I just believed that babies popped out of nowhere and you would magically just be placed with a girl to live with. 

    Through school I learned that guys and girls get married and have kids, and that was the purpose of life. I was conditioned to believe that I liked girls and that was that.  When I was around 9 years old I thought some guy was attractive and literally beat myself up for it. I was always made fun of in school for having two different coloured eyes, coming to school beaten up or being an orphan so doing anything out of the norm scared the fuck out of me. I jokingly brought it up to one of my girl friends just to gauge her reaction, but she just laughed at me and told me it was disgusting. 

    I guess I developed my first “crush” (is that what you call it?) on a guy when I was 11. I never acted on it or brought it up, I’m pretty sure I actually avoided him. I hated myself for it. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. It was around the time I started to really get into drugs so I just…self medicated. 

     When I met Sunny I never thought anything of it. I didn’t exactly bring it up to people, but it was never what it was like with Ben. Looking back I guess I kind of knew in the back of my mind that Sunny wasn’t all female. There was always something off about him, something that made him “genderless” in my mind. He never brought up gender, and I never saw him on the guy’s side of the boarding school. That made it okay for me. Of course, I didn’t actually know that he was transgender until I was 14 years old, which is when it really hit me that I was actually gay, but I would never admit that to myself. 

    The first time I ever said it out loud was when I was 13 years old. Ben and I were alone in our dorm room at night because Aiden was off getting his stomach pumped. Ben and I had slept in the same bed since we were 2, I know it’s kind of weird…well no, really weird, but it worked. [We had watched people disappear at night and never come back while growing up. We were forced to share beds in orphanages. He had really bad night terrors because he actually watched his family died, he would wake up screaming and would always end up badly hurting himself. He was the only consistent person in my life (and still is) so I wouldn’t let him out of my sight (I HAVE ABANDONMENT ISSUES OKAY BYE).] That night as he was getting into the bed I told him that he should probably go sleep in his own bed instead. When he asked me why I actually came out and said it out loud for the first time. I told him that I thought I liked guys. He just laughed and told me to prove it, to kiss him. I laughed because I thought he was just being an ass, trying to hide up what I had just done. Instead he grabbed my face and kissed me. When he pulled away he asked if I was sure. I was. 

    The second person I told was my brother. Since we met when we were twelve years old he didn’t know much about me. When I found out that his life was perfect, that he was adopted into a loving family and had essentially no problems I hated him. I didn’t tell him what I was going through. I told him that I was adopted too; I even made up a fake family. I didn’t want to be beneath him and I didn’t want his pity. When he finally decided to transfer to my school and move away from Australia I couldn’t exactly keep it a secret anymore. On the first day of school I came in with a broken leg that hadn’t been tended to, ripped out hair and bruises everywhere. I finally came clean and told him absolutely everything. When I told him I thought I was gay he seemed to be okay with it at first. Him and Ben would jokingly point out guys to me and never made it out to be a bad thing. That was until we got into a fight. After the Christmas break I came back bruised and broken, once again. He told me that he thought I was breaking my own bones and hurting myself because I was jealous of him, that I needed attention because I didn’t have a family like he did. He ended up telling everyone at that school that I liked guys. My friends didn’t believe the rumour and I just brushed it off like nothing had happened. 

    I was harassed every single day at that school. Nobody wanted to sleep in the same room as me, the boys wouldn’t let me into the bathrooms to shower. My physical education teacher made me change alone at the other side of the school. He didn’t let me participate in the class for a little while, just making me sit on the sidelines to watch, but then I was transferred into the girls gym class. Students made fun of me, teachers made fun of me, I was sent to counselors to try and “fix my problem”. Eventually it turned physical. I was in my bed one night when a few guys from an upper house came and dragged me out. They brought me outside and beat the crap out of me. All I remember is waking up in a rubbish bin, unable to move. It took a full day for anyone to find me. 

     My brother and I didn’t talk for a long time after that. He went back home and we didn’t become “close” (if you can even call it that) again until we were 16. I was kicked out of my school and ended up going to one in a new country where nobody knew my secret. My friends continued to believe that it was just a rumour. I switched what last name I went by and dyed my hair so nobody would ever find out who I really was. 

     My first actual boyfriend was named Adam. I’m not really sure I even consider it…a relationship? It’s just…embarrassing. He found out what happened to me at my previous school from a friend, since he was originally from that country. He told me that if I had sex with him he wouldn’t tell anyone. I went along with it, and he kept up his side of the bargain. Eventually he started paying me to sleep with him. Oddly enough…and sadly enough…I started to like him. He stopped paying me and we would sneak out just to hook up off school grounds. During the day he would treat me like shit. We got into physical fights and basically abused each other. But during the night he was one of the nicest people I knew. I told him everything, he told me everything. He never admitted he was gay the entire time we were together, and when I moved he didn’t try and reach me again until I was 19. He’s married now, to a guy, and has three kids. 

    Sunny and I would constantly break up, I would go do my thing with guys and he would go do his thing with girls. So it was pretty much just random hook ups all through high school. Nobody really knew, I wouldn’t even tell Ben and I did everything I could to keep it a secret so what happened previously wouldn’t happen again. I was totally ashamed about what happened and that I even liked guys. Since I wasn’t exposed to media or….tv…I just assumed that something was wrong with me, but at that point I would do anything just to make someone like me, so it stopped bothering me.

    After Sunny died I was a complete wreck. I refused to get out of bed; I refused to talk for almost 3 months. I left everything I knew in England because I couldn’t stand to be in the same country that he died in. Every time I saw something that remotely reminded me of him, even a house that looked like his, my mind would shut off and I would literally pass out.

    In therapy I was always told that I’m gay because I don’t have a dad or because of shit that happened to me as a kid. Everyone always makes it out to be something wrong and something that’s supposed to be fixed. I guess I’m not going to ever accept it or feel comfortable with it, but it’s gotten so much better. I hope I’ll eventually be able to come out and tell everyone that I’m gay, because it hasn’t been all bad with the guys, and I’ve met some of the greatest people online that know and still like me despite it. I don’t want to hide forever.