Notes from the End of the World

The Diary of a Teenage Survivor

Life was so dull prior to that. You all know well what I'm talking about.

How many of you led an exciting life? Just tell me.

Exactly like me, you would probably wake up early in the morning and get read for day filled with... nothingness.

Waking up, brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, taking the bus to school or driving to work, getting back home, watching TV, getting to bed and the same over, and over and over again until you're old and wasted.

Living a life waiting for death, slowly moving towards the definitive rest, when all of that would finally meet its end.

You have no idea how many times I considered the possibility of killing myself. Seriously. That was an obsession I had. I'd spend hours at night researching the quickest, least painful way to die. I wanted to get rid of all the nonsenselessness, but I did not want to suffer in the process.

My existence totally sucked. And I mean it. I was an untouchable at school, and the bullies were quite fond of picking on me.

"What is the matter, sweetheart?" My mother once asked me when I was about twelve.

I didn't tell her about the teasing, the beatings, the stolen lunch, how many times they shoveled my the head in the toilet, or how everybody hated or made fun of me. No, I didn't say a word about it.

"Don't you want to talk about it?" She asked me.

"Mom, I was thinking about some karate classes..."

"Karate? What for? Are you having problems at school?"

"No, nothing like that. I just want to do some exercise." I said.

"Why don't you try to join the football or the baseball team?"

"Mom..." I mumbled. "Because I don't want to."

And we did not discuss that anymore for some days. Then, one afternoon, my mother handed me a flyer.

"In case you might be interested," she said, blinking an eye to me.

It was a new kung fu academy that had opened two blocks from home.

That was that!

Lots of pushups, abs, running and punching and kicking the air. The instructor also promised that he would soon start to teach me how to strike using the staff and, perhaps, the broadsword. Wow! I said, and I watched every kung fu movie you could name it.

Three months later, when I was pretty confident, the next time the bullies surrounded me on my way back home, a low kick on the kneecap put one of them out of fight and I think I might have broken another one's nose (it was bleeding, at least), and I dashed for other five blocks with the remaining boys on my tail.

I know what you're thinking. After barely three months of training and you did believe you were ready to face those kids?

They could have hurt me really bad that day for fighting them back, but what else I had to lose?

And I kept on training, getting better, getting more confident.

The bullies left me alone. They all left me alone. I became nonexistent, a ghost, a shadow, nobody.

That was the prospect of the rest of my days, an invisible man striding through life until I meet my end. Exactly as most of us do, I guess.

Then people started to die. And when they started to get back to life, I understood the meaning of live and death, and what I was brought into this world for.