2: Despair
1.3k 14 79
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.
Announcement
IMPORTANT WARNING - This chapter contains relatively intense self-hating language from main character, it might be pretty difficult to read for some, especially in the second half, so please, be mindful of that

You know how the first class of the year is always supposed to be taken up by necessary administrative stuff so it’s sorted and also so that teachers and students can get into the rhythm of the school more easily? Well, that apparently wasn’t the case when it came to P.E.. This guy that was apparently qualified to be a ‘teacher’ made sure of that almost as well as he made sure that every part of my body was in pain. And on top of that, rooms might have not been separated by gender, but P.E. ‘lessons’ sure were, which honestly felt awful. It felt like every single guy my age had at least moderate interest in physical activities, which meant that I was outperformed, failed a lot, and was laughed at and mocked for that.

The response of the teacher was always the same, that I should just try harder, and that I shouldn’t be a… Well, I couldn’t bring myself to even think that word. By the way, aren’t P.E. teachers supposed to be educated about how the human body works? Because, if I pushed myself more, I would have harmed myself, I knew my limits, and since I’m rather weak, it must have been clearly visible that I was putting in the effort. With all that, and the tone this guy was using, I was almost sure I’d have to deal with another borderline sadistic P.E. teacher. They really should look into why that keeps happening; they might even find that it is shockingly connected to the fact they always seem to get away with it…

That ending to the first day of school had really made something clear for me -- this place wasn’t different, they didn’t care. I knew that I was naive in the first place to expect something different, but the fact that even with benefit of all the magic and funding this place had, it was still just a soulless facility designed to keep us busy until we were old enough for it to no longer qualify as child labor if someone were to hire us full time. The being in the basement, regardless of how well intentioned it was, was just used as well -- when I checked the site entry on it on the ‘for parents’ section of the school website, it clearly said that it was assigning people in rooms to “minimize the number of incidents”...

That angry rant inside my head took me just long enough for the locker room to get empty. As happy as I could be to avoid the mess, I finally headed for one of the showers installed there. Yes, I did take my time to get done with this place, I just disliked being in a hurry, so I avoided it when I could. I also took a rather big detour on my way to my still-new living space; I hadn’t really gotten to walk around school the previous day after all.

When I finally reached my room, having enough thought to knock and wait a couple of seconds this time, I was welcomed by sight of my roommates standing in a small circle and hurriedly talking about something in hushed voices. They seemingly really didn’t want me to hear what they were talking about, and they even glanced at me quickly once in a while. I sat on my bed and tried to busy my mind with my phone, so that I didn’t make any ridiculous assumptions, but it was rather hard. The situation was very strange, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Should I leave? Give them time to talk about whatever it was in privacy?

Before I had time to gather enough courage to even try asking, Faye exclaimed more than loud enough for me to hear, “That’s it, I ain’t gonna dance around it for hell knows how long!”  She then turned and looked straight at me. “Say, are you by any chance closeted? Or maybe AFAB?”

I was really confused at this question; without any context, I didn’t have a chance of figuring out what any of it meant, but by the way she asked the question, I figured that if I knew enough to answer it, I’d probably get what she was talking about.

I didn’t have much time to think about it however, since Emma slapped Faye on the back of her head while Lilith facepalmed in the background.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Emma yelled.

“What? It’s not like either of you were actually going to do anything!” Faye snapped back.

I really didn’t know what the hell was happening, but the fact it was escalating like that felt really bad.

I tried to speak with hopes it’d be loud enough to be heard, “Um, I don’t really know what either of these things means, sorry…” It came out really quiet and shy, but from the reaction of my roommates, I seemed to be heard regardless.

Lilith, being seemingly the only level-headed person in the room at that moment, said “Don’t worry about it. Sorry about…” She looked at Faye and Emma. “that.”

I’d thought that what was going on the day before was awkward. This day however, had proved me wrong. Regardless of whatever had happened, regardless of what it was about, it made the atmosphere in the room really uncomfortable. At some point, Faye apologised and admitted she shouldn’t have done what she did even if I knew what she was talking about, but refused to explain what it was, other than promising it was nothing nasty. That exchange was really awkward, but it was still the fullest conversation I got for the rest of the day.

I laid on my bed, and started idly thinking about the whole situation I found myself in. About my roommates, and why were we assigned together. Despite all that mess that had happened so far, it was still better than what I expected; I hadn’t found any signs of hostility, or even negativity, towards me from any of my roommates, and I was looking for those quite hard. I just found that receiving a hit like that was much easier if you braced yourself. And of course, there was also the obvious fact that they were all girls, I knew that it probably sounded awful, and it probably was, but my life experiences had taught me that girls were much less scary than guys.

Don’t get me wrong, girls were scary, but they were scary in a way that cool, impressive people were, where you were afraid to say anything around them, because it’d expose just how mediocre you were compared to them. I knew that putting people on a pedestal like that might lead to harmful stuff, and I had to remember that they were just people, but honestly, that fact just made them even more impressive to me. And of course there was also the fact that I was attracted to girls. Theoretically. I’d never really had a crush on anybody, so that attraction felt just kinda empty…

Then there were guys. Guys, especially men, were terrifying. The concept I found on the Internet called ‘toxic masculinity’ described it really well. The atmosphere around guys was just so aggressive way too often, especially if they were alone or unsupervised. They’d just say and do whatever, without regarding simple rules of respectful communication or sometimes even safety, and they’d just assume you were also okay with this and going to enjoy it like they did for literally no reason. And if you didn’t like being casually insulted, or being ‘patted on the back’ way too strongly for it to be okay, it was suddenly your problem, not theirs. If you said something wrong around girls, you’d just make an embarrassment out of yourself; if you said something wrong around guys, you could get beat up. I never actually got hit, I had at least that much luck, but… the fear was still there.

I caught myself thinking of myself as separate from the ‘guys’ category. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that; I did feel really alienated and hurt by them, after all, but that didn’t excuse me separating myself like I was better than them. I couldn’t just give up being a guy, no matter how much I wanted to; it was a prison and I had a life sentence. I couldn’t just go around thinking I wasn’t just as awful as all the other guys, no matter how much I hated it.

And then it hit me. The reason it all was happening. I was just as bad as all the other guys, but where they were blissfully unaware and could somehow enjoy it, I knew just how bad they were. We were. That’s why I was assigned a room with girls instead of guys. But they were all girls. They saw what I was when they looked at me; they saw a disgusting, huge man. A dangerous one. I wasn’t going to pretend that stuff like sexism or patriarchy didn’t exist. I really didn’t want them to exist, they were living a nightmare that harmed and continued to harm so many people; I couldn’t just pretend they didn’t exist or that I wasn’t a participant in all that, that would be irresponsible. I knew just how badly girls just like my roommates were harmed by men all the time. Men. Like that thing I was.

I flew away to sleep in a lot of pain that day, in my day clothes, without washing myself. I didn’t really have it in me to get myself up from bed after… what had happened.

The next day didn’t really bring anything new. I literally just idly existed through all the classes, but it wasn’t exactly that much different from how I normally functioned. My roommates all but gave up on attempting even the smallest of small talks with me. My fault, obviously; I wasn’t exactly enough of a person to have a fulfilling conversation with. Most of the conversations they had between themselves were carried on in whispers, with great care put in so that I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t really blame them; not only was I used to people talking behind my back like that, but also I had to consider the situation they were in -- if you had a huge piece of garbage in your room, and no way to get rid of it, you’d be concerned too.

That day I managed to maintain basic hygiene, but besides that, I just spent all evening in my bed until I fell asleep.

It really started to sink in the day after that. It wasn’t going to be any different. Sure, the classes were harder, the teachers were harsher, the classmates were meaner, and my living situation was more tense and uncomfortable, but it was all just an extension of what I’d experienced earlier in life. I knew that it was like that. That’s how the world worked. I really shouldn’t have hoped for anything else, but a small part of me still did, and now I was starting to realize just how wrong that part was.

There wasn’t anything that’d just happen and drastically change the direction of my life for the better, show me the piece I was missing that’d make me understand why I was the failure I was, so I could overcome it. It wasn’t one of my fantasies. I was stuck in the endless loop. Just until the end of the classes. Just until the weekend. Just until the closest holiday. Just until whatever arbitrary goal I’d set myself to distract me from the meaninglessness of it all. Just until the end of the school year. Until I graduate and inevitably get the most boring and standard job, because I’m not a real person with hobbies or skills. A job that will slowly kill me on the inside, but I won’t leave, because I’ll need the money to keep my body alive until my misery finally ends and I die. I could spare myself all the suffering, of course, but it was an option I never seriously considered; I was too much of a coward, after all. Because on top of all that, I also really needed to mock people with real depression as well…

I was scared. I knew I had no right to be scared, but I was scared still. I felt small. I rationally knew I wasn’t, and according to everything I was ever told, being big should make me more confident and less scared, but not only did it not, it also made me feel even worse. I wished I could be actually small. I wished how I was on the outside reflected how I was on the inside. Maybe if I was smaller, people would actually act like me being scared was allowed. I knew they wouldn’t, it wasn’t what was expected of men after all…

I spent that evening wishing I could cry, even though I knew that if I could, I wouldn’t let myself when I was surrounded by my roommates. When I was younger, everyone around me made it really clear that nothing but pain would come to me from others if I cried around them. I eventually managed to fall asleep from that nightmare that was life.

79