Breaking Down Your Walls

Chapter 2

Mike 

Three pages of writing a history essay in three hours made my head hurt, but still felt happy about the results. A little bit of grammar check later and I would get at least a B+.

It was early February, however the weather for the past week was nice, so I decided to take a short walk outside. I hated any sort of moving around while I had gym training, but walking always helped me feel better.

It had been almost four months ever since I talked to the guys and pretty much anyone at school. At least my teachers were behaving nicely to me and my grades, even though they went a bit down before Christmas, were now better than ever. That's the immediate result of having nothing else to do than go to the gym and study.

The guys are the dojo were completely fine with me, but most of them were college students so I didn't want to intrude. They invited me for a birthday party a month ago, we had fun playing stupid online games and singing karaoke. Nothing will ever top Jake, a 200 pound 25 year old muscle monster, singing Britney Spears. Hilarious. Other than that, I didn't accept more invitations to hang out, told them I had too much studying, which was partially true.

The truth is, I was feeling, with every passing day, gradually depressed. Maybe more than I originally considered. For over three months, I still had no clue why my former best friends were exactly that, former.

One day I felt so sorry for myself that I stalked their Instagram profiles with a fake profile I created (yup, sank that low). Almost everyday they had new posts, check-ins etc. Oh, did I mention that they blocked my own account so that I couldn't see their new posts?

They still had me in their friend lists in our messenger, but our group chat was completely silent. I bet they made a new one. Everytime I saw them at school, they barely acknowledged my existence.

And as if this wasn't enough, our maths teacher changed to a horrendous bitch. Seriously, I dropped any studying on maths after two lectures and I felt super bad about it. She simply was so pompous that I consider that even college professors would be baffled with her know-it-all attitude.

Then, my brother Carl decided to break up with his long time girlfriend of 5 years. Have you ever seen a 25 year old man crying for ten days over a cheating slut? I witnessed that, and it was so overwhelmingly sad and unfair. He loved her, was with her for 5 years. I honestly hope I won't ever come across his ex named Jayne, I will give her a piece of my mind.

My dad had a new boss at the wood works shop and the boss was an asshole. Shouting at everyone, even to workers like my dad who was one of the stakeholders with a small percentage of the shop in his name. Seriously, the guy showed no respect for anyone.

My sister was doing fine in London at least, although she could be eating a bit healthier. She is happy though, working and studying for her master's degree while preparing to go see our grandmother in Spain for Easter holidays.

Regarding all of the problems I was going through, I kept them all in; I had no one to discuss my issues and I didn't want to burden my family.

The whole situation reminded me of how I was used to be bullied at elementary school, for my looks, my clothes, my accent. Back then, I had to punch a couple of noses to make it stop, still it hurt me sometimes when I thought about those times, and the current situation brought me some dark, self harming thoughts. Thankfully, the right kind of music made them all go away.

While contemplating all my unfortunate bullcrap while walking, I decided to shop a few groceries to make a small pizza. When I entered the super market, I started looking for dough ingredients. My search was cut short when I noticed that it was Zane and Velma a few feet away. I stood still, counting my options of how to avoid going close to them.

Velma noticed me though. She looked me in the eyes, her beautiful face turning into an atrocious mask of evil. Seriously, it was that bad. Wicked Witch of the West would be proud.

She smiled snidely at me and she mouthed slowly something at him in a whisper. I caught what she said by the movement of her lips.

She called me 'the gay little pervert'.

My calm shock started turning into rage as I stepped once forward. In that moment Zane turned to look at me. His eyes were surprised. Then, after he studied my expression, he huffed and looked away and pulled Velma with him,who was still looking at me with an evil smile.

I stood there. I don't know how long it took for me to move. Or notice that my eyes burnt from unshed tears. Because Zane looked at me as if I was trash and I wasn't prepared for that.

Gay pervert huh? So that was what circulated around for me at school and everyone cut me out? Hell, even if I was gay, how me being gay was bad for any of my friends? Was gay a pervert for them? They never had an issue with gay people.

Maybe that's because they never had to actually deal with a gay person in their social circle before, I reminded myself.

I looked down. I closed my eyes and shook my head. Wow, that bitch trashed me to my best friend and he just agreed with her. Wow. How wrong was I about my friends.

I continued shopping, paid the cashier and left as fast as possible. I didn't care if it was raining outside because it was good for me. Running back home, after watching that disgusted expression on Zane's face, the usual gleam of his green eyes now replaced with contempt. 

The rain hid my tears very well.

When I got back home, I went in my room, changed into warm, dry clothes, and ran down to the kitchen to make the pizza, which turned out fantastic.

Still, a happy belly didn't make my sadness go away. Not even when my dad brought me my favourite kind of chocolate. He asked me if I was ok. He could see through me but he didn't want to push me. So I lied and he reminded me if I needed to talk, he was available. I smiled as he walked away, while my eyes started pouring tears of sadness and happiness.

At least, my family loved me.

Unfortunately, in the following days, hostile glares and hateful murmurs were all I started to get. From my friends, my classmates, even from people I didn't know. When I tried to approach them and ask what was the problem, they ran away as if I was carrying a disease. And what killed me was that they thought I was some sort of a pervert without even having any form of proof. And stereotyping a possibly gay person like that, that was even more disgusting. This hurts me even more since I am straight and I have nothing against LGBT people, I learned how to be open-minded and accepting at a very young age because I hated bullying above all else in human interactions.

And even though I always trying to be accepting, to be bullied like this, to be turned into a social pariah, all because of a sexual orientation that wasn't even a part of me, this thing made me angry and incredibly sad at the same time.

It was as if I had a familiar, long forgotten grasp around the center of my chest and it pulsed whenever I saw a snide stare or heard a bad comment, it would flare and make my breathing hard. Possibly the start of a panic or stress disorder, as if I didn't have enough problems.

I sighed as I sat down on my house's porch. I drank my hot coffee in this very cold day, reminiscing moments like these that I was usually sharing with my friends, realizing how stupid I was for taking them for granted.

I start hating myself and I don't even know why.