I am enjoying it though, massively so. I know that these things aren't read by a lot of people (or my youtube channel watched) and the book I'm writing at the moment probably won't even ever be published (either by myself or others) but I can't switch off and do nothing, you know, like I wanted to. Which is why time is rushing by, because I am so busy and I am having such a good time writing these things and it is just fun....plus caffeine...caffeine is definitely another reason why I can't power down, I'd probably be a good case sample for the study of the toxicological effects of caffeine on the human body.
I won't get another chance to just do nothing though, (well, not for a good few years anyway) if that makes sense...this summer I have nothing to do, nothing foisted on me, I don't have to work, I don't have to retain knowledge, I don't have to practice writing or do anything, I should just be relaxing, doing nothing, playing video games all day (don't get me wrong, I'm playing my fair share, just, after I've done all the other things) and you know, not forcing myself to do extra activities, especially given that it's so damned hot outside (because really, who wants to be doing anything in this weather, let alone be typing away at a computer screen).
In a way, I guess, it's somewhat cathartic...I spent a lot of my life doing nothing when I should have been doing something and look at what that got me. So maybe doing something when I've the chance to do nothing will yield some greater reward, at the least it keeps me from fretting over the metaphysical bleakness of existence and really, at the core of it all, isn't that what everyone wants from a hobby?
Seven weeks though....that's when I move out of my house, bound for the bright lights of the city centre and the first time I'll have moved away from home (at least, the first time I've chosen to leave home and been able to follow through with it). I've never told you all about the time I got kicked out of my house, have I? I think I said I'd tell you about it, at one point, somewhere....well....okay.
So, I killed a guy. Well, no, not quite true, but I came quite close and I would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky police. Okay, so maybe I should back up a bit. Because the people who know me will be like "Terence, violent and losing his shit? C'est impossible!" they would say, French being the language of choice for astonishment...so, maybe some context is required. It was about ten-eleven years ago now, my mum was going out with this guy who was just the most horribly underhanded person I had ever met. He wasn't overtly evil, never did anything big like abuse any of us physically or whatever, but would always have to get the last word in, would always say one thing and do another and who would throw tantrums (literal tantrums) until he got his way. A truly petty weasel of a man. I hated him from the off, saw him exactly as he was but no one ever listened to me, and because I'd spoken up against him he always had it in for me. As I said, not overtly, but in little ways, like giving my siblings little presents, like chocolate bars, dvds, games or cakes, and then telling me that he couldn't find anything for me....or taking them to McDonalds or KFC, you know, just little things like that, that could be brushed away if you didn't know the reasons behind it. Then he started blaming me for things. Like the time he misplaced a bottle of vodka and then raged and bellowed so loud that the whole street could hear his accusations that I'd stolen it from him...then he went up to his room in sulk, found it....and then insisted that I'd somehow sneaked into his room, whilst he was there and put the bottle back without his noticing. The most annoying part about it was that my mother believed him saying I'd taken and replaced the bottle...she always did, whenever I said anything about him it was just "you're mistaken" or "he wouldn't do that, stop being stupid."
The worst part is that he wasn't stupid. He was intelligent and always knew just how to goad me into fights that I couldn't win. I've always had something of a superhero complex, you know, a need to step up and defend what I think is an injustice. Hell, I've fought a literal crowd of teenagers because they were throwing stones at a friend of mine (actually more than a few times....I need to stop hanging around people who get things thrown at them....) and gotten pretty banged up from it, but I've done stuff like that again and again because....well, I'm stupid like that....but yeah, he knew it. So he'd do things like promise to buy my sister a CD as a reward for good behaviour, she goes and does it, didn't get rewarded, I bought the CD for her, I got my tv taken off of me (no video games for me! that monster!). Again, just little incidents that seem silly out of context and on their own, but it builds up you know? One of those a day, a couple of big ones every week....
I can't remember what made me snap, not exactly, he'd done something shitty earlier in the day and my rage was still boiling over. Later that night, when I'd just started to calm down he poked his head into my bedroom and said something, just a snide comment (remember, he always got the last word in?) and I went berserk. Jumped from my seat and started beating the crap out of him. I was about 5'6 at the time, about 130lbs, he was 6'3 and about double my weight, ex-army to boot, and he was scared. The look of fear on his face was comical, he knew he'd finally crossed the line with me. He bolted, ran into the living room and started barricading himself in, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and started stabbing it through the door....I'd stopped before the police arrived, the rage was gone, but remember how I said he was underhanded? He used that incident to kick me out of the house, which to be fair, was entirely reasonable. What wasn't reasonable was who I was farmed off to....see, he didn't press charges but gave the condition that I was to be shipped off to his sisters house and forced to undergo daily psychiatric screenings to find out "what was causing my anger"...the bastard knew full well he was the problem, the cause of it...but he had his psychiatric friends grilling me everyday, trying to root out the "real" cause....It went on for months....Just this torturous routine of leading questions "You've never met your real father, have you?" and sedatives "take this, these will calm you down" and of course, school...where I wasn't allowed to say anything to anyone (I was so tired and worn out I didn't stop to think "....how would they know?" or even "hang on....i should be doubting the legality of their actions.") and of course the oft-repeated "can't you see, we're trying to make you better."
The bad thing is, I can't remember most of it. Some days I was quite lucid and I can remember those with clarity but a lot of the time, I was just a zombie, just shuffling about, not really caring for anything....I didn't mean for this one to be such a downer (that seems to happen a lot for some reason...) anyway, who cares, past is past, the future is there to be had, let's go!
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