CONFESSIONS #1: All pain, no gain…

Last week was filled with revelations, a search for quick fixes for permanent problems and temporary solutions for excruciating pain. Allow me to elaborate and enlighten you. A statutory warning is in action for you, my dear strong readers. These word might make you uncomfortable, make you cringe or make you squeal with delight if you happen to be a sadist (which is nowhere near an insult, #sadistsmattertoo) I’m starting this new series, hope you guys like it. This post maybe a little dramatic which should be clear from the extremely clickbaity and cringeworthy, obnoxious instagram caption seeming title. Okay, so without further delay, let’s start.

So to understand my ungodly peril we need to start from the beginning. Get a latte, get comfy and let me take you back to 2007, location: 5th grade english class at a catholic school in a really small, one horse town in the middle of nowhere. A lanky 9 year old boy with round glasses that makes his little face with big eyes look like something straight out of cartoon network (huge fan by the way). The class teacher starts to give her inputs on an essay assignment the students had to submit for evaluation a few days prior. The topic being lenient and something teachers seem to think is the easiest thing to write about for some reason: Write about a life altering incident in your life.

Our nameless subject had been struggling to write even a paragraph. Nothing seemed to work, no matter how hard he tried to write about loving departed pets, him finishing reading his first book a few weeks back (which was the first time in his almost decade long existence that he felt he had truly felt proud and a sense of accomplishment) or him receiving his first certificate of participation for taking part in an inter school math quiz. But deep down he knew what was the incident that had truly turned his life upside down. But he was dreading writing about it. He finally decides to write about it. He decides to write about it, but with a twist: writing about it as a story from a different POV as if that would be a little less traumatizing on his precious young mind (News flash: It worked)

Okay, so back to the present scene of the classroom. The teacher starts to talk about every single paper individually. He sits in his chair trembling with anticipation and excitement as he watches the teacher complimenting every single paper from his classmates. Finally, the teacher calls out his name in a rather somber tone and the realization hits him like a big yellow school bus: she hated it and he was probably in a lot of trouble. He makes his way to the teacher’s desk while his face burned and his hands gets ice cold with every step that he took (which is the opposite of what should actually happen).

His teacher gets up and stands before him, getting out of the desk which she didn’t do for any of the other students. He watches his teacher’s hand rise up and make it’s way up to his face like a vicious snake ready to strike. Everything happened in a micro second, but it felt like ages to the little pale faced boy. The snake finally strikes, the contact with his face so electric and sharp that his loose glasses flies out of the fragile prison of his ears which held them in place. Silence. And then erupting laughs from his mates. He stood there in place as the first wave of shock made it’s way from the soft skin of his face to his brain in a sizzling connectivity of electricity from neuron to neuron.

The color returned to his face and made it light up like a Christmas tree.

What the teacher shouted at him in rage he can barely remember now, after 12 years. But the words which did end up registering in his brain, he didn’t really like. “Vile…dirty…how dare you…who told you about this…parent’s conference…” One thing he’s really grateful for all these years later though is that he hadn’t drank much water that morning and his little bladder was already emptied before class had started. He picked up his paper, the reason for his doom off the floor which the teacher must have dropped accidentally while she spat poison at him, clutching it tight in his hand as if it would slip out of his. He had clutched the paper hard like a person would clutch a burning hot coal in their hand (does that simile even work? I don’t really know, but I’m gonna leave it here)

He made his way back to his chair in his first ever walk of shame and stood up on his chair, now clutching something different in his hands, his ears. A position which was all too familiar to him by now since he got in trouble a little too much as compared to his other troublemaker friends. The teachers never liked him, you see, and he still can’t figure out why. But this really sealed his fate for the rest of the school year and maybe for the rest of his life in this already friendless existence. He just knew it. Tears streamed down his face as the class carried on normally for everyone else but him. His teacher served him a nasty look every now and then…that day would always be burned in his memory, probably forever. The embarrassment, the shame and the disgust he felt for himself left him in a puddle of jello on a dirty bathroom floor (not literally, although it sure felt like it) where he would be trapped for the rest of his teenage years and would haunt him well into his adulthood.

That day, while he was waiting in front of the principal’s office after class with his nonchalant teacher who had her arms crossed beneath her breasts, he would have ask himself his first existential question in his life, a question which carried so much weight that Hercules himself would be crushed beneath it’s deadly power: Why am I like this?

I’ll share with you the gist of the essay someday, and the real story behind it, dear readers. When I’m completely free of this hell that holds me, although I doubt that will ever happen but a guy can dream, right?. But for now, I shall take my leave. Stay awesome, stay safe and try not to lose your sanity through these troubling times.

Your’s truly,

Pradipta