Our World Is Crazy

Our World Is Crazy (9)

“Phil?”

After they had let us go back to the room (giving us a strict warning to leave the door open at all times), we’d pushed our beds together, making them into one double-bed. We’d been lying on it for the past few minutes, just holding each other in the peaceful silence, but I wanted to ask Phil something that had been bugging me for a while.

“Yeah?” He mumbled from my chest.

“Why are you in here?”

I felt him tense underneath my arms before lifting his head and looking me in the eye.

“Why do you want to know?”

“If we’re going to be open with each other all the time, I think we should at least know each other’s stories.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He lay his head back down on my chest and sighed, tightening his arm around my waist.

“It’s kind of a long story. You know I’m here for depression and suicide attempts, right?” I nodded. “Well that’s because of a lot of reasons that eventually all clumped together and were just really bad all the time. Ok, I’ll start off at the beginning.

I knew I was gay long before I actually admitted it to anyone. I came out to my parents when I was 13 and they accepted my sexuality like it was nothing, which I guess it is. I mean, who even cares if you like guys or girls? Anyway, I was kind of worried about telling any of my friends that I was gay, so I decided to leave it for a while and just avoided the subject of relationships. My best-friend at the time was a guy called Finn and we’d been friends since as long as I can remember so we trusted each other with all our secrets, even though I didn’t tell him my biggest secret. When I was 14, one day we were at his house and he confessed to me that he was gay, but he was scared about telling anyone. I was amazed and I told him I was gay as well. Neither of us had ever been in a relationship, with either a guy or girl, before but for some reason, we kissed.”

I stiffened a bit but managed to relax my body. Even though Phil is mine now, doesn’t mean he was never anyone else’s.

“Eventually we got together but kept our relationship a secret, fearing what others would do if they found out. We lived in a small village near the sea, so the people living there weren’t exactly open-minded to new things. After a few months, we decided we trusted our group of friends enough to come out to them as a couple. He didn’t really want to tell them but I persuaded him too. I’d had enough of keeping it a secret. We planned it out, got everyone to meet up out of school at my house and when everyone was sitting there, we announced it to them. They reacted very differently to my parents. They looked disgusted with us, called us freaks and left. Finn wouldn’t stop crying and I started to cry, but even we didn’t know how bad it would be at school the next day.” Phil’s voice cracked and I rubbed his side comfortingly.

“Hey, it’s ok, you don’t need to tell me the rest if you don’t want to.” I said soothingly.

“No, its fine, I want to tell you.” He said stubbornly, before clearing his voice and carrying on.

“There were posters all over the school of Finn and me holding hands. People had written things like ‘freaks’ and ‘unnatural’ on our lockers and all day people yelled things at us, shoved us, threw things at us. The teachers saw it all, but they kept their mouths closed and looked at us disapprovingly. At lunch, it got too much and we hid outside and comforted each other. Going outside was the worst decision we made that day, because that’s where they found us. The school bullies.” He spat.

“They grabbed us and made me watch as they beat Finn unconscious. Then they did the same to me.” He started to shake in my arms and I held him tighter, turning round so my forehead was resting against his. I pressed our lips together in a short kiss and when I pulled back he had calmed down and was smiling with a grateful look in his eyes.