The Counselor [OLD VERSION]

Leaving home.

‘But slowly, things started changing at school. It was all my fault, because at school we used to ignore each other and never tell anyone we’re actually siblings. It worked for a while, until one day, when we were talking about gay people in class.

Someone shouted: ‘My mom says I have to stay away from gay people because they have a disease.’

 So I shouted back: ‘Well my dads are gay, but they aren’t sick!’ The whole classroom exploded, everyone was shouting different things and looking at me like I was a fool. From that moment, I got bullied because of my dads. But not my brothers, because nobody knew they were my brothers.

Just a week after those events, some kids from my class were waiting for me at the school gate. I didn’t know why so I just kept walking. Until someone grabbed me and pulled me into the group. They started shouting at me and punching and kicking and pushing. I didn’t know what to do, they were with ten, I was on my own. I tried to fight back, but I was really tiny, I still am, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight against ten others. But then, a very familiar voice screamed over the heads of the ten others.

‘Get your hands of our little sister!’ The attackers were surprised and stopped to look behind them who said that. And there they were, my six brothers. Andy pushed the attackers away and grabbed me by my shoulders.

‘Come we’re going home,’ he said.

The Monday after that when we came to school, everyone, no literally the whole school, was talking about us. Some found us really cool and had respect. But most of them, not so much. 

At home we started talking about changing schools, but before we could even change to another school, something worse happened. Everyone in our neighborhood knew, of course, that we were a family with gay dads and adopted children. But someone, who probably picked it up from our school, painted the walls of our house with graffiti saying things like: ‘Faggots’ ‘Go burn in hell’ and all things like that. The night after that, someone threw toilet paper all over our garden. The police never found the people who did this, but we didn’t feel welcome anymore in LA. So we decided to move, to Amsterdam. Their choice fell on Amsterdam, because Stephen was born and raised in Amsterdam. So we decided to go there and not even a month later we moved. My dads bought a beautiful Canal house in the center of Amsterdam. We had to learn Dutch, had to search for schools and we tried to adapt to the Dutch culture. Stephen was really excited about this, but the rest of us, not so much.  To make things a little better my dads decided to buy us a dog. So when our house was ready, we went to an animal shelter and we came back with a very big, one year old dog named Atlas.’