Bleak: It’s Time to Write Again

In high school, I often wrote when I should have been working on school.

When I entered my freshman year at the University of Kansas, I was happy with who I was, I wrote on a regular basis, and I felt sure about who I wanted to be in this world. After a week into my freshman year at the University of Kansas, I had no idea who I was or what I wanted to be, and soon abandoned my habitual immersion into my writing. Stress filled days churned into stress filled weeks, and stress filled weeks degenerated into stress filled months, and soon, I stopped writing altogether

After eight of the most chaotic months of my life, I feel that the standstill in my creative output is nearing a major change. In my senior year of high school, I began to write a novel surrounding the issue of bullying within today’s connected world. The novel, tentatively titled “Bleak,” is centered around an overweight and impoverished high school boy who is beset by constant harassment from his peers. In many ways, this novel’s beginnings can be traced back further than my senior year, perhaps all the way to my fifth grade year in school. I have always been “different,” “goofy,” “weird,”and“out there,” such labels do not bother me, because I realized long ago my personality embodied every single one of these definitions. Moving to a time before I accepted such characterizations, I was once bullied and harassed for the person I was becoming. Among even harsher labels, I was regularly called “gay,” “****ot”, “ugly,” and “stupid” until these definitions were reinforced within my mind. I came to hate myself, and felt my voice drowned in the ocean of judgement around me.

Thanks to my wonderful parents, I was eventually pulled out of that school and found refuge in the accepting environment in what was unofficially known as a “last chance” charter school. Though I was able to move on in my new surroundings, the scars from my past experiences never fully healed, and I never forgot how it felt to have my voice stripped from the air around me. When I returned to a public school my freshman year of high school, I had an incredible group of friends and now embraced the strange individual I aspired to become. While I was much happier in my second public school, not everyone was blessed with my fortunate circumstances, as I witnessed bullying on a somewhat regular basis throughout my time in high school.

There’s one boy that still stands out in my memory, though I will not mention his name, he was known by my peers for his “weirdness,” and his matted hair. I long wished to reach out to him and to perhaps assure him that there were better days to come, however, I never managed much more than a nervous “Hi.” There was a day where I attempted to talk to him, but I realized that I did not possess the faintest clue about who he truly was. All of what I “knew” about him had been malevolently constructed by the people around him. I believe it was at this moment that I knew what I wanted to do with my life, no, whatI needed to do with my life. I wished to create a novel that would be the voice for those who have had theirs taken, a novel that could help anyone see that there’s a life beyond the pseudo-societies we construct within the halls of high school.

Although I saw the pace of my writing trickle to a halt from the stress a collegiate life entails, I saw something last month that rekindled my literary determination. What I witnessed still causes a venom to permeate throughout my extremities, and fills me with a vehemence not felt since my fifth grade year.

When driving home from KU, my friend Maggi and I saw a father strike his son with such force it knocked the child to the ground.

His child could not have been much older than ten, and seemed quite used to this abuse from the defeated gaze upon his expression. There was so much I wished to do at that moment, but what exactly could be done? I had not a clue who the father was or where he was from, and possessed no proof that he had even done anything wrong. I can not convey the shock I felt upon witnessing this action, but even more egregious was the look the father gave me as I sat inside my truck, it was as if he was daring me to say anything, or to cross him in any way. He may not have been crossed on that particular day, but as I guided my truck onto the interstate, I never felt more resolute to give a voice to the child living beneath him.

Upon departing my freshman year at the University of Kansas, I feel I have a long road to travel before I become the person I wish to be, but after all the ups and downs I have experienced throughout the year, I am ready to write again.