Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta bullying. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta bullying. Mostrar todas las entradas

viernes, 28 de agosto de 2015

In their minds

   Joanna let her tray fall flat to the ground; make a very loud sound and spilling everything everywhere. Everyone around her stopped right where they were and looked at her, as if she had exploded herself. She had fallen to her knees and was grabbing her head, saying something very fast over and over and over. Some people tried to get close and help her but they would suddenly get a horrible headache. One teacher started bleeding through the nose and young girl fainted. But after a couple of minutes, Joanna fainted and she was taken to a hospital. Everyone in the school talked about it for days and concluded, very fast, that she was just insane. It wasn’t unheard of that students could become crazy and that’s what everyone thought had happened to Joanna.

 But in the hospital, the doctors did not find any anomalies on her brain or anywhere else. Her body was in perfect shape except for the fact that this was the third time she was admitted for a similar event. However, this time seemed to be special as, a full day after the incident, she was still sleeping and the doctors could not do anything to wake her up. Her mother, father and brother came in and tried to help the doctors but it was useless. Joanna would remain sleeping and also mumbling whatever word or words she had thought about just as the incident happened. Her mother stay in the hospital with her a whole week until finally Joanna woke up, as if nothing had happened. She was scared. She had no idea what had happened and the fact that a week had passed her by didn’t help to calm her down.

 The doctors checked her up one last time but couldn’t find anything abnormal. They asked Joanna’s mother to get her to a psychiatrist in order to help them with her problems at school. He had said it as if Joanna had done something awful to one of the students or something but the truth was that every time something happened, Joanna suffered the only real injuries. The nosebleeds and fainting were nothing compared to what she described as a massive headache, where she could hear many voices inside her head. But these voices were not random ones but the voices of her classmates, her teachers, her family… Something was very wrong with her and it was Joanna who first said so in therapy.

 She went to the psychiatrist two times per week and her parents decided to home school her, at least for the remainder of the school year. It was obvious she wasn’t ready to be with other kids and seeing them everyday after what they had seen her go through was clearly not the best idea in the world. And the truth was she didn’t miss anything about school. After the first incident, when she had started screaming in gym class, every single one of her so-called friends stopped talking to her. They only looked at Joanna as if she was a freak and made noises and mocked her. So she was happy to get rid of that.

 Her parents did not know this. Only the psychiatrist knew and she had told Joanna that it was very normal to see fear as a reaction when people didn’t know what was happening. In their sessions, they always talked about the voices in her head and that, once she had realized they were the voices of her classmates, she could choose to hear one of them over the others. And that made her even more nervous. When she let the tray go in the middle of the cafeteria, she had happened to break in the thoughts of a boy she had always found mysterious and handsome. And inside of him, he heard the most awful things, thoughts of suicide and of killing others. He felt guilty and alone. For her, it had been very painful to hear him in her head, so she let the tray go and screamed.

 The psychiatrist thought that Joanna was internalizing a lot of anxiety and had created this “power” in order to get attention. She thought Joanna had channeled a huge amount of feelings into one single event and now she thought she heard people’s thoughts. In the following sessions, the doctor tried to get Joanna to understand that what she heard was just herself. She had created this great power but now she had to let her go in order to get better. Joanna did as the therapist said and followed her every advice. She began doing yoga to relax the mind and started talking to her mother and father in order to have a better connection to them, as a real family should be.

 The truth was they had always been a little bit too private. Her parents were the kind of people that think that their children should be shielded against everything, even the fact that the parents are humans and have feelings and failures too. It was hard for them to tear down that wall they had built around their two kids but day by day, they made progress and Joanna started to get better. She was smiling again and soon she had finished her school chores and exams. She did it sooner that her classmates in the actual school, so her parents and the therapist agreed that the best thing would be for her to get some responsibility.

As summer was beginning, her mother found her a job as a lifeguard in a public pool not very far from home. Joanna was not thrilled about the idea but decided that she could use the money and maybe it could be the beginning of her working life. The first day, it all went perfectly. She helped many children to their parents and even saved one girl that had fallen by accident. Many people praised her and thanked her. She saw many people that she knew from school but decided not to say a word to them. That was the past for her and she did not want to go back to it. That evening, she told everything about her day to her mother and she was happy that her daughter was so much better now.

 But then, it happened again. Joanna was in her post, looking at the kid’s pool when a gorgeous young man came in. He was very handsome and his swimming gear was perfect on him. Joanna smiled to him and he smiled back and then she could hear his thoughts. Only that this time, it wasn’t painful. She didn’t collapse or scream. She had learned to relax so the voice just came in and she heard him think that she had beautiful her. She went a bit red on the cheeks and decided to try it out with other people. She saw a mother with her child and heard her think about the father of his son and how worried she was he may not come back from his next business trip. Apparently, she though he was cheating on her.

 It was the best thing that had ever happened to her because she realized that her gift was not something awful and hurtful but a great way to know what people were thinking in order to make their day happier. She brought balloons for kids that were sad and tried to cheer up many people by doing fun activities like exercising in the water. She was glad to be of help and for people to finally like her as she really was. At night, she would write it all in a journal and even thought of telling herm other but she stopped short because she realized it would be too much of a crazy story for her to believe it. If she said anything maybe her mom would think she needed more help or something more permanent to help her and Joanna did not want to go to any more doctors.

 She did, however, go to her therapist one more time. It was her last appointment and she wanted very thing to go great but she had the feeling she had to tell someone about her powers and how now they were just good and under control. But the therapist was an adult and adults did not take these things as good things, always afraid of everything. She went through the whole session without any reference to her powers until the phone rang and she couldn’t resist knowing what it was about. She realized the therapist was talking to the boy she had heard in school, the one with suicidal thoughts. Joanna had described him to her. He was called Evan. And he was her next appointment.

 Without any hesitation, she asked her therapist if Evan was going to be ok. At first, the woman seemed surprised but then she calmed down. Joanna asked her if she believed in her powers now. She read her man and asked her why she was thinking Joanna was unbalanced. The doctor smiled and told Joanna that Evan had serious problems, because he had already tried to kill himself only a few days ago. Joanna went the rest of the session trying to pretend everything was fine but the truth was she remembered how Evan had felt in school and needed to see him herself. After the session, he was there and, crazy as it sounds, she talked in his mind, asking him to join her in the hall.


 She had no idea if that could work but moments later she heard Evan apologize to his mother and the doctor, saying he really needed to pee. He stepped outside and joined Joanna. They looked at each other. Evan was a little bit scared and shaken and Joanna was too but also hopeful of what her powers could do. Then, she just hugged him tight and he responded the same way. They did not say a word, only Joanna left another message in his mind: "call me soon". She left and he went inside. And they both felt better about themselves because they had realized they were never alone.

martes, 7 de julio de 2015

Ballet

Ballet was tough. It was hard on the dancers, on the choreographers and even on the audience. But Alexei just loved it. He had begun his dancing at a very young age and his parents had always been very supportive. They were the pillars of his happiness because they had enabled him to become one with dancing and had never missed one of his performances. They were very proud of their son and wanted the best for him and that’s why they supported him with everything he did. Alexei was grateful because, talking to other dancers, he realized things could not have gone so smoothly for him. There was even a dancer that claimed he had been left with an aunt at age seven for him liking ballet.

 Of course, the myth says that if a man likes ballet, both as a spectator and a dancer, then he’s a homosexual. The truth was it was that the statement was accurate very often but not always. Alexei was gay but he had met a lot of heterosexual men that loved dancing at that were even really relaxed about their sex lives. Besides, women apparently loved a guy who was bendy and had a nice body and so on. It was funny sometimes to see Evan, the most heterosexual dancer he had ever seen, just flirting with at least three girls at the same time. It looked ridiculous and funny and also was something to admire about him. The man was really handsome and he was very talented too so the girls got all in one or at least that was what he said. The point was, ballet dancers came in all forms or shapes.

 Actually, the company Alexei danced with praised itself for its variety at the moment of choosing their performances and also for their diversity among the dancers. There were black women and men, Asians, Latinos and so on. And people loved that because they had a certain “Benetton syndrome” where they loved to have all races bond and be happy together, which was clearly not the case in real life. But funny enough, they did feel each other as family. Many would often have lunch together and some even shared an apartment. For example, Alexei lived with Katerina who had been in the company three more years than him. She was very experienced and disciplined but when she wanted she could be very liberated.

 Alexei and Katerina had become very good friends and when she was unable to fin a proper place to stay after her former contract expired, Alexei invited her to live with him. They had fun whenever they were not tired and both there at the same time. They would watch movies together and eat some ice cream, which was forbidden but they did not care. It was a fun way to live because they could also talk about work and ballet in general and they would understand and give tips to one another, something that they wouldn’t be able to do with people out of the medium. So their living arrangement was advantageous for both of them and they had become more of a family than just friends.

 But that changed once the production of Swan Lake begun. Of course, that was a classic and every single member of the company wanted desperately to become well known after receiving the dual role for which everyone knew the play. But that wasn’t going to happen. It had been decided that the role would be played by two people instead of putting all the pressure in one of them. And to make matters more interesting, they also announced that gender would not play a part in any decision concerning any of the roles. They would just mask them or put them in certain costumes if the character had to be man or woman but the person playing them could be either. They announced all of this and the dancers stopped being that family and became almost enemies.

Nice little lunches, smiles, parties, walks and so on stopped. It was as if war had suddenly started and anyone could be a spy or your worst enemy. Alexei regretted this because his main dream was not to become the most well known male ballet dancer. He just wanted to keep learning and getting better and better in his art. For him, ballet was one of those things that elevate the soul and make people forget about every single bad thing that is happening to them. It has the ability to make your soul fly away into a beautiful world that doesn’t exist and feel things that maybe you wouldn’t be able to experience in reality.

 What Alexei regretted more was talking to Katerina. She had been one of the main performers in the company since she had started and didn’t want that to go away. She felt people knew her and that the audience needed to see a proper black swan, the role for which she was practicing. The truth was that many guys and girls wanted that role and not so many wanted the others. Alexei practiced for the role of the prince and just practiced a lot to get it perfectly. They had three months until the casting took place and then the audition results became known and production went ahead like a steam train. It was all a bit scary for Alexei but he knew he had his family and friend at his side.

 After rehearsal, he would often meet with Gabrielle and John. Gabby was one of those girls that is really objective and goes to the point very fast. She told Alexei that, although she didn’t know much about ballet, she did know he was a very good dancer and that every time he showed his talent, people rewarded him in many ways. Gabby was an architect and knew some art. And John was a fashion designer and had always wanted to make something for Alexei but the clothes for the plays were always done by the designer of the theater and in normal life he wasn’t a very big guy in fashion. Anyway, John was also very supportive and told him guys would fly of their seats only to check his ass on those tights, which always made Alexei laugh.

 Alexei rehearse every single day. He woke up early, went to a small room he had booked for several days and just did his routine, number by number. He noticed fast all of his mistakes and made himself learn new things or repeat those that didn’t come naturally to him. At the end of it, after several hours, he was tired, hungry as his feet hurt like hell. But it was worth it, he thought. Alexei felt that performing was always the best way to get the audience into the play and hopefully to get more people to know about ballet, which was ultimately what, he wanted. Although his family was supportive, people in life had been less candid about his choices and he could even say he had been bullied. But he didn’t say it because he wasn’t a victim but a strong person and he refused to bow to weakness.

 That was his ballet persona, if you will, that kicked in life and helped him be who he was. It was this strong attitude that attracted, after one of his rehearsals, a guy named Javier. He was a server in one of the restaurants where Alexei often went after being all day in a closed space. There he could eat a nutritious meal, bound to the rules of the academy, and also do one of the things he liked most which was just look at people passing by on the street. But once Javier started talking to him, while serving or while on a break, he had stopped looking at the people outside and had started looking only at Javier.

 They went out on a date just one week before the audition. Alexei said that his daily rehearsals should be enough to pass the audition and that he didn’t believe in overdoing anything. If he wasn’t ready, it wasn’t going to be solved by getting his feet broken on the last week. So after one of his routine rehearsals, he met with Javier who had a day off and just walked to a park and just chatted there for hours. Javier wasn’t the first guy that he met, of course, but it felt like it. He had never really talked to any guy about what he did, they were always too busy asking how bendy he was and praising him for his looks, something that Javier did but in a much more elegant way. They had dinner together and at the end of the night they kissed goodbye.

 The day of the audition, Alexei gave everything of himself. He thought to himself that this prince was going to be the best thing he would have ever done. He gave him energy and power and the jury saw it because their faces couldn’t hide the fact that they had loved what Alexei had done. Once done, he had to wait outside as the announcement of who had won what role was done only a half hour after they auditioned. Every waited in silence, pacing around and just not even thinking about anything else. Finally, they let them all in in the auditorium and announced the roles. Alexei almost jumped when he got the role of the prince and the guy who got to be white swan was ecstatic. But the black swan wasn’t won by Katerina but someone else.


 He felt bad for his friend but also felt awesome because of his role. He called his parents and Gabby and John and they were all very excited. They only had good wishes for him. Then, he grabbed his coat and went straight to Javier’s place and then they celebrated with cheap wine and sex, but it was the best celebration ever. He was happy know, more than ever. Things may never be that good again and that’s why he was living the moment so beautifully.

miércoles, 14 de enero de 2015

Unapologetic

  It wasn’t that he had an urge to be different or something like that. He just like the way the world felt when no clothes were worn. It made him feel alive, as if the pants and shirts he wore for work were just the symbols of a servitude he had never been happy with. He didn’t understood how some people love to wear such clothes but the important thing was that he hated them and, if he had the choice, he would have chosen never to wear them again.

Let’s go back a bit in this story to better understand Nicholas, or Nick, as only his closest friends called him. He didn’t allow anyone he didn’t know to call him Nick; he thought it was just wrong. Two loving parents, which had belonged to the hippie movement back in the sixties and early seventies, raised him like that. He hadn’t been around them at the time, but their choice of living certainly showed some of those things learned in life.

Nowadays they lived in a small farm, taking care of various animals and planting most of their food. They would avoid doctors if they could, and all electronic devices except a cellphone, which made the connection, once every two days, with their son. They would always give him advice on eating healthy and how to be a better human being and Nick took the advice. His friends appreciated his humanity and inherent openness.

Anyway, from his childhood nick had learned to respect all creatures and not to be ashamed of him, both physically and mentally. He was taught the human body is beautiful and that this beauty should always be appreciated and taken care of. And the reinforce this idea, his parents would often take him to the beach to look at people and make him sick that “ugly” rarely meant “hideous”. Most often, it meant, “I don’t like it”; a personal opinion. Respectable but not universal.

Of course, those beaches were nude ones. People would go around without any kind of underwear and, from an early age, he knew that was normal and just played as any other kid on the beach, building castles and bridges and making pits with the salt water. And he enjoyed it thoroughly. For him, his parents were just ideal because they let him do whatever he wanted but just remained him to be responsible. And Nick was smart so it made it a lot easier for them.

Of course, he received a fair share of bullying in school. Because he was so young, he just told everyone about his holidays, like any other little boy or girl did, but when he said he had being in a nudist camp or beach, the kids would laugh at him and the teacher would call his parents, who would explain their views to her, with no success. They would push him and call him names only because he wasn’t ashamed.

That’s when he learned what hypocrisy means. He was a bit older than ten years old when he learned that older men thought often about younger naked women and they were magazines and TV channels showing them, not necessarily being pornographic. And that was ok in general, although not unspoken. But when someone mentioned liking being naked after showering for some minutes, people thought of them was instantly a depraved person and someone to watch out as he or she might become dangerous.

But Nick, now aged thirty-one, knew there was nothing depraved in going to the beach and just not get any tan lines. He was amused that, when a sexual partner asked him how he did to be so evenly tanned and he answered with the truth, such person would get even more aroused. Still, after so many years, it was almost seen as a fetish. For Nick, that wasn’t the case. It was just him being who he was.

If he stayed at home a whole weekend, for example trying to finish up some work or because of the weather, he would always be naked. He showered and took care of himself, so there was nothing really bad about it. If someone visited they would ring before hand to be let into the building so that gave him a couple of minutes to grab some pajama pants and a t-shirt, or something of the sort. And he would be “presentable”.

He did that because he was aware most people were not comfortable with nudity. That’s why, and he said it loudly when drunk, he just loved sex. And it was because he felt free, not only because it felt good or was fun. He just felt more like himself during sex and also when he stayed naked at home alone. He wished it could be like that all the time but, of course, it wasn’t possible.

Nick had learned from his parents, though. When he had time to spare, and only after visiting his parent’s farm, he would go to a nude beach or to a nude camp to fish. He loved fishing too and his father had taught him everything he had learned from his father who was a fisherman, the kind that captures rare crabs or lobsters. The lake was not like the ocean but the teachings were just as effective.

The best about it all was that he had no secrets with his parents. He was absolutely honest with them and they would tell him every problem they would have. He would drive his father to his prostate exams and would laugh with his comments about it afterwards. Same with her mom and her gynecologist appointments, which he loved because of the faces of the other ladies there. Nick, in turn, would tell them about work, love interests and his love for the naked body.

It was obvious they deeply loved each other. Nick’s friends envied this relationship he had with his parents because, as they told him, it wasn’t strange that parents and children became apart with time, as their priorities change and even distances settled in. But most, he knew, had not really being that close with their families when young so, there wasn’t anything to wonder about.

One fun thing about being naked was that some people thought it was fascinating. Some of his best friends knew about it and didn’t mind (as long as he did only in his house) but people he had met randomly or through them would take an interest in it. Nick found that to be kind of awkward but always tried to answer every question as accurately as he could and sometimes even told them to ask a doctor because most questions related to some physical problem, as if you required a special set of physical and mental skills to be naked.

It was Jenna, an older woman who was a teacher of fine arts in a university, who asked him if he could model for her class. At first he said yes but then he recalled the days he had been bullied and pushed around. What if they laughed or stared in an annoying way? He loved being naked but he didn’t like to be the center of attention; one didn’t lead to the other. But he had already said yes so he went and, for once, he did love to be center of attention, even if it was to twenty students trying to draw his body.

Afterwards, he was able to see the pictures the students had painted and he was surprised to see many of them were very talented. He somehow thought students would just try to do something decent but quickly reminded him that artists become artists even before they are aware of it. When he was about the leave, he met another model and talk to him for a while. He was studying architecture and paid his lunches and other expenses with the money he made standing naked in front of the students. He quickly became one new friend.

Nick had known other people that liked nudity before but they would always like it in relation to sex, which he found to be a bit obvious, to easy if you will. Besides, they would vanish fast, after promising to call, to write or to meet again. But with Greg, he had stronger connection: Greg’s mother had been a hippie too and his dad was just the most loving guy one could meet. In his words, his dad loved everyone just because they existed.

So from then on, they would often meet and talk, not necessarily naked. Nick liked to be around someone that understood him and got what he thought of many things. In the holidays they shared a trip to the beach and had a great time. They would even go dancing at night and stay in one of their apartments each time, that was the degree of friendship and trust. Sex? No, it never happened. They were friends. And kept on being friends for a long time after they met, almost all of their lives.

Nick did love being naked but what he liked the most was people. And not any people but the people that made him who he was, who loved him for who he was and who didn’t judged just because for what he liked. Yes, he was a man that loved being naked; he was not ashamed of himself and was unapologetic. But he was also a great friend, a dedicated son, an open mind and one great fisherman.

miércoles, 8 de octubre de 2014

The Need To...

Ali was born when the Soviet union still existed and a wall divided the lives of the citizens of one same city. He was born into a struggling family, a group of people seeking to breakaway from what society had set for them.

But, as he grew up, strange things started happening. When a young kid at school, people teased him for no reason, mocked him for being the new kid or for peeing his pants as he was always afraid of everyone.

His family travelled, from one city to the other and that was fine for him. He didn't liked people very much, only his family, and it was best not to get so involved. In time, he made friends but the relationships were short. It was then when it happened.

His mother felt it first. When he touched her one day, she felt suddenly ill, trembling, feeling her knees caving to the weight of the body. It was strange but no one even thought the possibility of Ali being the problem.

That changed when it happened again and again and finally, with a schoolmate, in class. He touched his hand when handing off a pencil and then the kid collapsed and everyone saw how it happened.

Ali was tested in every way possible. He was only twelve years old, so he was confused and scared. The doctors, at first, didn't found anything. But a foreign specialist took an interest and ran tests himself.

Apparently, Ali had developed some sort of self defense mechanism: his skin would attack anyone touching the boy by inducing sickness. The doctor didn't know if the sickness was inside Ali or was created by his body. He requested further tests.

But Ali's parents said no. They didn't wanted him to become a freak. So they left that city and went back to where he was born. They thought it was the best place for him but, as it turns out, it was one of the worst decisions they could have made.

He went back to the place he dreaded, where he felt under judgement every single day. He grew solitary and isolated by his own will. His grades weren't very good either. He had no will to keep going.

But the family helped as much as they could and he accepted that help. Soon, they became inmune to his powers. But it wasn't the same with others so he kept to himself. In his last year in school he made some friends but he knew it was too late. He had no intention of keeping any memories of that place.

When he left, he went to college and study arts, as he felt his mind needed to open more, to learn more in order to be able to control his powers.

But, in time, he discovered that wasn't possible. He didn't have any control over it and when people got too close, the powers stepped in and drove them away. He made a few friends, real ones, and they learned about his condition and promised to keep distances, remaining friends.

Sometimes his powers rested, as with his family, and then he could be a little closer to friends.

The other issue, which wasn't a problem but a fact, was that Ali liked boys. As he was a boy, this may have added some difficulty to his life but, strangely enough, it never was. No one rejected him for it, maybe because the people he knew were a bit more liberal than most.

The real problem came every time he grew close to someone. His powers would turn off at first, even letting him have sex or kind of a relationship for a few weeks but it always ended up badly and then the guy would end up sick and Ali would run away.

It was worst when the people were actually bad, with awful intentions and using lies to get to him. They thought they were smarter, just brighter and his body knew they weren't. They just lied. And once, he had felt he was taking a life, or at least his powers did.

So when he got out of college, he decided to go away, to another country, by himself. There he would keep studying and be away from any distractions. To be honest, Ali didn't not believe in love anymore. For him, the concept was ridiculous as he had only seen people using others for their own wellbeing and not to give anything back.

Away, he was in peace. Of course there was always someone in the street that caught his attention or a strong need to hold someone. But that wasn't possible as he knew something would eventually go wrong, as his powers could go crazy and kill anyone. It had almost happened once and the feeling had been impossible to forget.

Ali lived alone, always refusing someone that would come too close. He had learned to be tough, to be nasty if needed. He didn't wanted anyone interested in him and viceversa.

He made some money writing, working in supermarkets, moaning lawns, walking dogs and as a waiter. He had found a small flat, with one room and one bathroom.

And that was Ali's life. As people always hurt and never wanted him but something else, he lived and died alone and no one ever knew how much he had wanted, needed, to hold someone else's hand.