Here are some things I did:
Early Days
Got born. Visited my first dealer. Lost a potential sibling my
age.
Got dropped on my head. Got a snowball thrown at my head.
Lived through the death of my pet spider at the hands of a
supposed friend. Went to reception. Learned the alphabet and
their associated characters off of little cards (
S was a
spaceman). Planted a garden with my class. Skipped from fleeting
friendship to fleeting friendship. Got told I was moving away across
the country.
Cried because I didn't want to leave, but told the
teacher it was because I didn't think Father Christmas would find me
after I moved.
Two-term childhood
Moved. Made new friends quickly.
Earned the nickname
'mango-face'. Made a girl cry, she would go on to be very hard
bitten and rebellious. Competed with Josh for Bryn's best-friendship.
Had a dream about Josh's death.
Woke up crying. Realised I felt
affection for him.
Friendless
Moved school again after two terms.
Had problems making
friends. Brought something in for show and tell. Got told rather
impatiently
"Steven, show and tell is for the little children. Are
you little?". Said no. Got shouted at that, because my handwriting
was so bad, I had to go back to using pencil rather than pen. Watched
a video about the magic pencil, the magic e,
and flick.
Tempered
Entered year four.
Sat at the bottom of the playground for a few
months. Got taunted by people. Got angrier and angrier. Lashed
out.
Gave people scars. Got told off by the headmaster.
Repeated this process many, many times. Learned that lashing out
never got me anywhere. Developed a very long temper, and combined
this with my tendency to be alone to form a generally calm
demeanour.
Encouraged
Entered year five. Had my favourite teacher ever. Was told by him
that, if I sorted out my spelling and handwriting, I would be set for
life. Was told another story by him about an ex-student of his who
picked up scrap metal for a living, and was a very rich man. Was then
told that all you needed was something you could do, and enough drive
to do it.
Made the teacher a hand-painted mug as a leaving
present.
Woken
Entered secondary school. Said to my mother
"Boys in my year are
very sensitive to gayness", and was responded to with
"Well
you might be. You wouldn't know". Straight after,
went to a
coincidentally very sexually charged sleepover with two male
friends. Avoided participating. Suggested that we all might be
gay, and had it vigorously denied. Had one of them whisper to me at
breakfast the following morning:
"I'm beginning to regret what
happened last night".
Realised
Considered my sexuality.
Looked at some gay porn. Liked some.
Proclaimed to myself that I was gay. Discovered what
bisexuality was. Proclaimed to myself that I was that. Told a
few people about my sexuality. Heard a group of girls in my class
discussing it behind me, and felt
prickling pains all down my back
at the realisation. Got asked out on that day by a different girl.
Got pulled away (and saved) by a 'friend' with the words
"Sorry! He
can't! He's gay!". Re-lived that whole terrible week in a dream on
the Friday night.
Lived through the beatings, the verbal abuse, the
endless questions and mocking laughter, for the next three years.
Became very bitter and angry at the people who outed me. Told my
parents I was bisexual. Heard them say I shouldn't decide yet. Heard
my mother angrily say
"It's not the kind of thing you tell
people" upon finding out I'd told people, and
never spoke of
it to her again. Developed a rather intense crush on a guy, and
wrote about it in my online diary when he gave me some of his food.
Technologized
Got taught a small amount of programming by my father. Gradually
learned more. Began to discover the security holes and flaws in the
diary site I spent rather a lot of time on.
Used this knowledge to
both help and hinder others. Found a lot of interesting diaries
that were very influential in my thoughts. Accumulated a lot of
knowledge on how an online community, as well as real life community,
works. Joined a hackers site called arson-network.
Spent one summer
holiday holed away building an online journaling site. Accumulated
a number of members off of teenopendiary, and formed a small but
tight-knit community.
Became an elitist, due to having a wide
knowledge of computers and other areas, combined with my resentment
of most people I knew in real life due to their homophobia and
ignorance.
Found
Got talking to a girl. Became her boyfriend.
Enjoyed it. Hid
my sexuality from her. Told anyone that asked about it that it was a
joke.
Became angry that people just ate that up. Was
introduced to a place to hang around in school, called the
ArtBloc. Made many friends. Broke up with girlfriend after 10
months, from loss of love and for a boy
with whom it fell through
about a week after.
Supported
Talked a girl to happiness most nights for a year and a half, only to
find her just as unhappy as she was the following day. Talked people
through numerous bouts of
traumatic incest,
emotional
abuse,
school fallout,
psychiatric-health-system
failure,
self-harm discoveries, but most of all
feeling
worthless. Implored friends to eat, without success. Motionlessly
observed self-harm sessions with fingernails and pins, too drained
from helping them resist that urge. Survived many tearful phonecalls.
Realised that all I could do was support,
because change required
freedom and my friends did not have that. Reached a point I could
cope no longer, and coped beyond it.
Cultivated an intense hatred
of the beauty industry and the psychiatric industry. Slept with a
girl who shook and cried every quarter of an hour all night.
Wrote
Journalled my way to good spelling.
Spent a couple of hours in
Arizona writing my first ever short story and being amazed at the
creative energy writing contained. Showed friends. Was encouraged by
their (probably false) enjoyment.
Wrote some more. Spent
another summer holiday coding a writers' community site, and got a
lucky break with some advertising. Formed a small but close
community. Kept writing, honing my skills with the written word to
the inevitable point where I hated my first works.
Experimented. Produced the longest story I've written to date in
about four days, and became encouraged by the complexity and facetry
I could create in longer pieces of work. Made friends almost
exclusively with writers for a long period, out of coincidence.
Radicalised
Read
Evasion.
Finished it a different person to the one
that started it. Read
Off The Map,
Days of Love, Nights
of War.
Resolved to spend my life chasing my dreams and
liberating myself from the clutches of modern capitalism. Studied
sociology for two years, and developed various theories of society.
Became tired with theory, and
resolved that I would live my life
as if there were no difference between my thought and action.
Shared my philosophies with others and thus gained many comrades.
Took advice from the rap community to
never hate the player and
always hate the game. Cast off my ambitions in computing and
applied to a contemporary arts college for a writing course.
Got
accepted. Left school about a month before my leaving day.
Through all this, finally
lifted myself out of the low-level
depression that had plagued me since I was twelve.
Deviated
Graffiti'd Bathroom Stalls.
Claimed to be from the future. Led
a one-man campaign against pepsi. Phoned up the BritishNationalParty
and suggested we
build a giant wall around the UK.
Exhibited my body underage. Sent in my speech to the UN (still
haven't heard back from them).
Caused a bomb scare by dropping
letters in a shopping centre and got phoned up by the police (
and
am still on the run). Ate my sammiches inside out (it's much
better). Wore badges glorifying terrorism (and thus being in breach
of the terrorism act). Made badges with
bad-ass sociologists
on them. Dressed up as a cheerleader, old lady, mobster, little girl,
builder, and fag all in one evening. Completely
lost touch with
time for a week (I suggest you try it, it made me a lot more
productive). Slept in public. Tried out a system of sleeping where
you sleep four hours a day in the form of a number of naps.
Made
it work.
Networked
Met
Bryn. Met
Will. Met
Emily. Met
Dowell. Met
Sold. Met
Izzy. Met
Rosy. Met
Laura. Met
Rosee. Met
Rose. Met
grace. Met
Ornella. Met
Eva. Met
Ambeh. Met
Amy. Met
Alex.
Loved most. Lost some.
Missed. Realised
that you should
never go back. Learned to
fear the
November. Learned that
people are the most beautiful and
intricate things you will ever encounter. Changed for every
person I knew. Discovered that
my language bears the hallmarks of
all the people I've loved.
Loved
Fell in love. Fell in love. Fell in love.
Fell in love. Realised that
this whole monogamy thing
wasn't working out. Considered what relationships gave me that
friendships couldn't. Came up with the answer 'ownership' and
was
not satisfied. Resolved to love people and
not become entwined
in a system of exclusivity. Forsook dating and monogamy in
general.
Never went out with anyone again. Loved who I loved,
and expressed it however I wanted.
Wondered how I ever coped
before.
Kept going.
Send message 
Write a letter 
View All... 
