[Chyld]

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, and why not now? Its going up on the website first, but you might all want a gander first. There's of course more to come, as I write it.

No one ever truly understands love. It exists as a concept, like human nature, moral law, and common sense, that has no definition, no written directions, but everyone seems to understand anyway.

People find their love in many different ways. Some blunder through life, with no idea what love is, until they find their one and only. Some bounce from failed relationship to failed relationship, leaving a trail of broken hearts, until they find the one that won't ruin them.

Then there's those of us who don't live the life of a character from a Hollywood production. Some are doomed to nothing more than a lifetime of one-night stands. There are even some who shun the longings of the heart, content with the knowledge that their existance isn' justified by someone else's.

Then there's those of us even less lucky than all that.

Why so cynical, you may wonder? Its a question I've pondered over many, many times in my life. Walking alone, with no one but myself to talk to. Hefting bags of newspaper across what may as well be barren deserts in my blank mind. Lying in bed, alone, trying to make sense of a world that may or may not care that I exist. But never have I unravelled the entire sordid tale to anyone.

Now is the time. The names will change, the people shall be as they were, influenced by my memory, for was it not Tennessee Williams who observed that memory is coloured and corrupted by our own feelings and desires? Most likely not, but it is true. The bulk of this story starts in late 2001, but to understand how a tree grows as it does, we must see its roots.[I]

[Icey]

Quite nice and depressing tone you have here. I want you to write more Chyld, now. I'm a very impatient man.

[Chyld]

I'll hop to it, I just wanted to run it through the filters here before I wrote any more/stuck it on the Internet proper.

However, you're very lucky, because I've just written some more. Be critical now...

My life as a child was pretty much as you'd imagine it to be - a blur of bizarre new experiences commonly known to us as life, The fish pond which everyone tried to jump over at least once - and sometimes even fell in. The screaming hoardes chasing me, seeking to kick the hell out of me. My friends, my enemies, and everyone else. There was precious little room in this life for a girlfriend, you might suppose.

Anna Morlie was one of those girls that, I imagine, came from a wrecked home, fell in with a bad crowd, and eventually became corrupted by it. But I speak purely through guesswork - her best friend was the sort of girl who gets the label "town bicycle", and legend has it took my best friends virginity when he was ten. But this is technically a moot point, as it didn't happen to me. This part of the tale concerns Anna, who on reflection must have been drooling for me. At that ancient tradition, the school disco, I was always the boy she dragged out during the slow dances, who I rocked slowly with and wondered "what am I supposed to do?" alongside. It was an innocent time.

Reg was a good friend of mine, not exactly my bestest best friend, and no longer a significant acquaintance, but we walked to and from school together, we idled around together at weekends every now and then, and we went to the same youth clubs. But, like everyone else at that time, he was not above pulling fast ones over me. And so in Year Seven, he somehow set me and Anna up as boyfriend and girlfriend, expecting both of us to see the joke and laugh it up.

We didn't see it as a joke. We fell for each other straight away.

I'd like to pretend it was just a playground romance. Given the things I've done, it was a playground romance. She doesn't recognise me anymore, and I don't see her very often, thinking "Was that... that Anna girl?" when I do. But that relationship was the most "normal" relationship I've possibly ever had. She joined the morning walks to and from school, holding hands all the way, we bought each other little presents (which my mothers purse suffered for), and we even went to see the Titanic when it came out. It would have been a perfect little relationship, if it weren't for two things.

She was fat, and small children are spiteful.

I didn't notice the former, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think she even was, but everyone else did, and did they tell me in so many words. I seem to remember running off to the toilets in tears once, the taunting cries of one boy only stopping when the teacher, Mr Atkinson, dragged him back inside.

Once the masses realised that simple insults weren't doing anything, they decided instead to turn me against her. My mind was seeded with doubts, designed to put me off her, and our relationship alternated between hot and cold on a bi-weekly basis. Eventually, she ended up giving me a note saying that it was over, but goaded by the infantile philistines, I flushed it down the toilet. And with that, it was over, forever.

This post has been edited by Chyld: 18 January 2005 - 09:30 AM

[SimeSublime]

Interesting that your willing to put your life up on the net to be viewed. I know I don't have that courage. I like the writing style though. Makes it seem more...fictional...for some reason. But that may be because of the way I'm reading it.

[Chyld]

Well, I reckon that if I put the whole damned love life up there, I'll either make sense of it all, or be told I'm an idiot. Either way works for me, and I can't see it being a far fling from JM's "One Small Step..." thing.

[SimeSublime]

Thats a good point. Though I still like to keep my personal opinions/experiences with the opposite sex to myself. I've had things used against me enough in the past. That being said, you aren't really in a place to be able to interact with my life. So meyh. I say keep posting, either here or on the space for it on your blog.

Edit: Seeing as you aren't on msn, I'll point out here that your site seems to be working fine now.

This post has been edited by SimeSublime: 18 January 2005 - 09:50 AM

[Icey]

Very touching, and all the same that I said before. There is a certain slowness over this, like a cracked voice or someone with a broken spirit that has still a little lust for life. The little funny moments are something the text could not afford to lose, nor have too much of, you have struck somewhat of a balance, just have to look out not to tip the scales. Something might spill over.

[electricprune]

Very nice, man! So far, it's a really sweet and touching story. I'll look forward to reading more.

[Just your average movie goer]

Sorry I haven't replied earlier, Chyld. But this is a really nice piece of writing. Like Sime said, it's very brave of you to share this stuff. But that might be one of its charms - it's so simple and honest. And I like honest writing*. It's the only type of writing that should be allowed.

Well done, mate. I look forward to reading more.


*Meaning from the heart, not pretenciously trying to sound like something else.

[Chyld]

Thank y'all for the kind responses! I haven't even got to the good stuff yet, so y'know...

The third part is currently in writing, I just need to work out where its going.

[Slade]

Hey, I likes it.

I'd be pressed to write something along these lines, but I dunno what I'd be able to come up with. It often feels like my childhood was just a big blur with no really defining moments, which fades into the present along with the bitter cynicism. It would be the shortest and most dull piece of writing ever, probably.

[Chyld]

I'm not too fond of this chapter, but I fear that if I leave anything out, I'll mess up the narrative too much, and a fair few important characters get introduced, so: this bit then...

Thankfully, Year Eight saw the end of primary school, so Anna slipped from my mind amongst the perils of a new school. I suffered from being frequently compared to my older brother, who had apparently spent many of his years convinced he was one of the Power Rangers. By and large, the morbid devotion this somehow inspired in just about everyone meant that my associations with the older people was relativly easy. This didn't help with the people in my year, however. My own brand of oddity saw me being throttled with chains, having bricks hefted out of windows at me (to be honest, I'd been tap dancing by a wall, and they had just started with food. I found it hilarious, at first), and the usual verbal abuse the different people get.

However, I survived and prospered, and Year Ten came around. I discovered the wonders of heavy metal (sadly, through the wonders of Limp Bizkit and "Rollin", but everyone starts somewhere), and by then, my circle of acquaintences became fairly solid: a gang of about ten of us, holed up in my form room every lunchtime, activly making a mockery of the "No Eating In Classrooms" rule, and alternating between stopping even less popular people leaving the room, and such worthy classroom games as Flick A Penny At Someone Elses Knuckles. Life was hard, life was good, and life was polluted by testosterone.

It was in that year that I met Sheryl, and everything started to change.

She was cute, she was smart, she had more screws loose than I did. It was a fair matching, and it still is. We had known each other in the old school, but I don't remember what terms we were on. And then one day, she decided to walk home with us.

Us at this stage was me and my two best friends in the universe - Tadpole, who characterises the nerd in me, my more regular wargaming opponent, and Mike, who brings out the delinquent and the stoner. Back then, they actually got on, as opposed to mouthing off about each other, and life was good. We walked, we talked, we ridiculed my brother, common ground held by everyone. And, of course, we were all single.

So to find ourselves walking home with an attractive blonde would have been heaven, if "attractive" was followed by "single". Which it wasn't as you may well have guessed. She had a man, a small and rather pathetic specimen whose name I can't recall anymore. This didn't stop seeds sprouting in the infertile soils of my romantic side, and it certainly didn't stop Mike from his usual line on women. Sheryl's bottom ended up being squeezed black and blue over the course of about six months. But ever the gentleman, I wasn't going to sink that far yet.

However, having been single for more than three years, I didn't know how to go about my desires in a more gentlemanly fashion. Not that I could anyway, what with the whole "boyfriend" thing. What we had was plenty, however - we sat next to each other in French, contemplated how to kill the teacher, and played the odd game of Consequences with Mary and Louise, the girls who sat in front of us, who I knew little of at the time.

And one day, Sheryl got dumped.

You can always see how some things are inevitable are in hindsight, as the guy clearly wasn't her type, but it was a huge suprise to everyone at the time. They'd been going out for a year, which was unheard of at the time. Yes, there were tears, yes there was sympathy, but enamoured and amorous were the watchwords of the day. I felt I had a chance.

Of course I didn't. The skills required to maintain a relationship when you're twelve years old simply do not transfer when you're fifteen. You've seen the world, you know it all, the entire wisdom of the world has crossed both your life and hers. Your desires are much less base. Or so you'd like to believe. As a result, I hadn't got a clue how to do it.

The true romantic would not let on his emotions, grow a bond with his chosen flower, then allow it to grow and blossom. While true love is the garden tilled by an attentive gardener, mine was a garden grown by simply hurling seeds on it and swearing. Not a day went by when I didn't ask "Will you go out with me?", and every time the answer was "No." Eventually, I got the message, and left semi broken-hearted.

The time was not wasted, however. Through Sheryl, I met another girl. I didn't fall for her, she was not my type even then. However, through her I met someone else entirely. Someone who ended up controlling my emotions for the best part of four years, one whose influence on my emotional development was so profound, her name remains unchanged in this narrative. She was a girl, she was Katy.

[Slade]

Hey, spiffy still, man. Keep it coming. Really makes me wish I hadn't had to repress all the memories of my childhood so I wouldn't start killing the people who used to torture me for their own amusement once I got over it. Good ole psychological defense mechanisms coupled with a poor memory to begin with... Those guys are lucky.

[Just your average movie goer]

Good work again, Chyld. I'm looking forward to seeing where the rest of it goes... I guess this story will bring us right up to the present, right?

[Chyld]

Its going to run up until about September, because nothing worthy of inclusion has happened since then.

And Slade, if I were to do a story based on all the sadistic abuse I've had in the same time as this story is set, I could easily fill a good 10gb worth, I just can't remember it all. Plus, its probably not such entertaining reading.