The fear in me

Jason

The first thing I see is the magazine that a furniture removalist must have left lying in my room. A grinning brunette is looking at me. She looks a fun-loving type. In my life there's nothing to make me laugh. I really do not know if I'm alive or whether I simply exist to torture myself.

Why my foster parents don't see in me a freak I cannot understand. And I am one – quite definitely.

I have no friends and never did have any. And I don't want any, because they wouldn't understand my distance.

Loneliness is my existence. Music, the weight bench, and jogging are my only passions.

Who would be willing to accept a boy like me?

Well, I can only say – the Sommers! They even accept that I don't want to be touched, they leave me in peace and expect nothing of me.

Perhaps they guess deep in their hearts that I'm mad! It's strange that despite that they treat me as their own son.

It's still something I can't understand that eleven years ago the Sommers accepted me and straight away understood how they had to handle me. I know it has nothing to do with the money I have inherited from my dead parents, because they've never asked whether they could take some of it. On the contrary, it's never spoken about.

Todd, my foster father, is rather reserved. He himself had a difficult childhood and probably for that reason he understands my attitude and accepts that I totally avoid bodily contact. He is nice and helpful, but at a distance. I've overheard conversations he's had with his wife Sharon, and they showed me that his opinion is that I was mistreated as a child, and because he had the same fate he takes special care to wake up in me a sort of basic trust. He wants me to have a chance to make something of my life so as to forget the past. But really I haven't the faintest clue exactly what happened. I'm not sure I want to remember anything at all. To judge by my dreams I must have gone through something bad. But maybe I'm just completely mad!

As far back as I can think psychologists have been a part of my life, all of them have squeezed me dry and tried to establish what sort of trauma I have suffered. It's probably something remarkable when a boy all wrapped up like a mummy shows up and feels a crazy panic at the very idea of any bodily contact at all.

The psychologists explain that I have an inexplicable deep-seated trauma ... let them think what they like!

My feelings are at least hypersensitive. Are all mentally ill people so sensitive to other fates before they explode?

At least I have a gigantic antenna to pick up unhappy people. Nobody can fool me! I feel sympathy for those looking for help.

For example, there was the woman in what used to be the house next to ours; who was abandoned by her husband and now has to bring up by herself the four children. Wow, how much I wished she would find a better man ... as quickly as possible! The fellow had always been unfaithful to her and had no appreciation of her.

And then there was the girl in our old school who was always teased because she was so fat ... she had a metabolic disorder and could do nothing about it.

Or the boy who was so aggressive that everybody stayed away from him, but he urgently needed friends because at home he was constantly abused. Unfortunately everyone saw his bruises as a result of his own violence. Nobody would have paid a visit to the father because he was a respected doctor and so could hide behind his own influence.

So many various ways of suffering and no end of them in sight. It's a disgrace! But never would I let myself be dragged into any dramas. No!

Instead I lead my life and torture myself through each individual day.