Youthful Blossom

CHAPTER 2: Eighth Grade

A new school year had started and I was more nervous for school than ever before. During this time, I believed I had lung cancer, which was used as an excuse to get me out of school when in actuality, I didn't want to go to school because of my social anxiety, but of course, I did not know that I had the disorder because of my lack of knowledge on mental health. This belief goes back to 2012. One night, I wanted to be in the same room as my mother's ex-boyfriend and his friend, whom we lived with, along with my brother to see my mother's ex-boyfriend get tattooed by his friend. The room was filled with cigarettes and possibly marijuana. I did not know what marijuana was when I was young, but I did know cigarettes. Anyway, the room was filled with the smell of smoke. After me and my brother, Jamie, came out of the room after I believe 30 minutes, I started feeling dizzy and then, I had an intense chest pain that felt like a heart-attack even though I never experienced a heart attack. Since then, I started having chest pain that I couldn't understand. I never went to the doctor, but for years, I believed the incident had given me lung cancer. I told my mother about this in 2015, during the first semester of my eight grade school year and she agreed to take me to see a doctor. It turned out that it wasn't cancer, it was just chest pain from puberty. Maybe the chest pain after that incident was coincidental, but that will probably remain an unsolved mystery in my life.
Before I had the chance to go to the doctor to see if I had lung cancer or not, I believed that I did have it despite not having a professional diagnosis. I always had chest pain and I used it as an excuse to skip school. But, I had too many absences. The school counselor of the new middle school that I went to (as the apartments that I lived in changed middle schools) spoke to me and said that I had too many absences, so I explained to her that I had a lot of chest pain because of the incident that occurred in 2012. She didn't believe me and said that she grew up in a household with someone in her family smoking, I believe her it was her father, and said that she turned out just fine. She believed that I was lying and just trying to find excuses to skip school. She was very angry and the anger made me cry. I tried talking to her a bit more, but my crying got in the way of how I talked. The consular told me she couldn't understand me, so she was going to wait for me to stop crying. I was only a confused little boy, who didn't even know the reason why I didn't want to attend school. It was a mental disorder hidden inside my brain that was yet to be diagnosed. I don't remember much of what happened after I cried, but what I do remember is that one of the school staff took me to the cafeteria as I looked really sad in front of all the students that were there. It was lunch time, so of course there would be students and teachers. The man, who was part of the school staff, wanted me to take a seat at one of the lunch tables that the teachers used to have their lunches. The man asked me about my mother's thoughts on my absences and I told him that my mother didn't like my poor school attendance. He then proceeded to tell me that I need to listen to her because she was right. After we had our short conversation, he gave me a pass I believe, which was for the teacher, so that I would be excused for arriving late to class. That day will always be one of the most traumatic experiences of my life because I felt so alone in the world back then.
The school gave me so much doubt, but when my mother took me and my siblings, Jamie and Damian, to the new apartment, I had to attend a new school, so I was lucky to leave that school. I still had anxiety at the new school because of the disorder, but leaving the old school made me so happy. I never liked how some of the school staff mistreated me. It only made my PTSD even worse than it already was, which made me more afraid of people. Humans never looked more evil than a demon. In fact, I would have rather hung out in hell with demons and the devil himself rather than humans because of their extreme cruelty, whether such a place does exist in the physical universe or not.
At the new school, I liked to observe people and their conversations as I could never communicate with anyone in person because of my autism. I had written two journals during this time about my school life and home life that I wanted to publish back then, but couldn't do due to my social anxiety and autism. I also had written a journal back in 2013 at the age of 11, but the book has unfortunately been lost. In my two journals that I had written in the eighth grade, I wrote about my anxiety and what the students talked about from my eavesdropping. I wrote about my "love" for a couple of girls I had a "crush" on, but that was just my closested self, who thought boys were supposed to like girls and not the same-sex. I had so much denial with my sexuality and I even tried to "pray the gay away" when I was a Christian because I believed it was a sin, but I could never let go of my homosexuality, as it is driven by biological factors, according to multiple scientific studies, and not by choice.