Thursday, October 7, 2004

Who Is Solo Tremaine? Part 2

I had my potentially penultimate driving lesson today. The test's in about 17 hours and 41 minutes, heh. Not that I'm worried or anything >.> Seriously though, Instructor Lawrence (I say it like that to differentiate between him and The Other Lawrence, heh) said today I was driving more confidently than ever and that he was confident I should do okay. And I should, if I can keep my nerves about me, heh. I hope I'll be alright. Even if I get flustered I'm generally right, but you never know. It only takes a few seconds of concentration lapse and... whoo. I'm just going relax tonight. I hope, heh. Here's part two of my partial autobiography, heh. Learning to Walk Again When I finally got back to school, which mut have been about... three to four months after I broke my leg, my friends had all but forgotten me. They had a new friend, who they so eagerly said was 'just like me'. Although he was better. He could do things I couldn't, like run and jump and play rough games that everyone else wanted to do. He liked football, but I still wanted to play the games that I'd been playing before I left. Dejected, I left them and drifted between people until probably Year 6, when I thought I'd found the best friends in the world- Ben (who I’d been to nursery school with), and Noddy. We had such a great time together, heh. There'd be the odd day-to-day disagreement, but I didn't think that anything seriously wrong would happen... As the run-up to leaving primary school approached they started hating me. Everyone started hating me. I didn't know what I'd done wrong. Absolutely no-one would tell me why I was the one getting picked on, left out and being made fun of. I just was, and that was all they seemed to care about. Maybe that was where I got my over-apologetic tendencies and paranoia from. Either way, I hated it and started withdrawing into myself for forms of escapism and release. I'd wander around the school playing fields on my own imagining that something huge was going to land on the ground and I was the only one who could outrun it, or that I was some character from one of my favourite series that was just put in the wrong place, waiting to return to the correct reality. The problem was that I actually started to believe it whenever I was at school, and I continued believing that until Year 9, where I met who I'd call my first real friends of my High School era. I met John. I liked John- he was clever, intelligent, liked Drama and there was something about him, an air of confidence that made me just want to be friends with him. The problem was, pretty much everyone else except the snobbish intelligents from the other classes wanted to be friends with him too. It turned out that he'd be my window to the friends I still have today. Through him I joined Drama Club and met Dan- the same Dan I'd known from nursery school. Small world, eh? We became good friends again, and I even got special permission from the Head of Year to change forms to be with him in the last year. We did Drama and History together, and still get together almost every other week. Through Drama Club I also met David, another of my best friends today. I didn't like him at first, though. He was a writer, like me, he joined later and managed to get Dan's attention more quickly than I did. But David had confidence and a motivation to get things done, something I still lack today. He pushed himself into the limelight to get noticed, and he was. I almost quit because of him, actually. But in the end I decided that it was silly to try and rival him, because it'd only drive things apart. I'm glad I decided that. Although I say I had no real friends before that... there was one person. I met her when I sent out a pen-pal thing to N64 Magazine. It said something like '13-year-old boy looking for someone of similar age. Must like Starfox, music and Yoshi. Send to...' I didn't think anything would come of it, really. Until one day... I got a letter. I'd just come back from doing Archery and it was sitting on the chair, waiting for me. And I opened it up... it was unbelievable. We had so much in common it seemed unreal. It was great to meet someone like her. But I was still 13, and had a lot to learn about things like this. I just... cared too much, I guess. That's a bit false, actually. I tried too hard. This is probably where I get my fear of offending anyone, because I probably scared her away by trying to do too much for her. But at the time I'd never known anyone like her before. She understood me completely, and I her. But then again, writing her letters to the effect of "I like you so much you give me withdrawl symptoms" isn't too flattering. Ah, I wish I hadn't done that. But we live and learn. And I have better things to do. Ironically, that pen pal application I sent off opened the doorway to OB: I started writing again, and grew interested in Pokemon, then Digimon, and started writing my Digimon fanfic Worlds Collide. It was crap, but I wanted to show it to everyone anyway (I didn’t know it was crap then, but by my writing standards today I do). When whichever site it was that originally hosted it was closed down I started searching for another site to put it on, whereupon I stumbled upon theOtaku and GinnyLyn's Otakumons. I wanted one so badly I joined OB that same day, heh. I think everyone knows the rest of that bit of the story ^_~ Getting it Together So, having only just found my lovely niche in High School life, it was time to split up. I wanted to go to College with Dan and Nik so badly but Mum refused to let me go because it wasn't as good as the High School. I’m glad she persuaded me, though: the way the A-Level courses are set out in college you'd have such a tough time going through, and I wouldn’t have seen Dan any more than I would normally anyway. Not being in High School seemed odd; I'd never really said goodbye to the place because I spent the last week of term in hospital having an operation on my lower back. I'll go on about being in hospital on a later date though, because that's something that really deserves a post of its own, heh. The only real friend I had left in Sixth Form was David. I didn’t have a problem with David, but… he wasn't Dan. There was some kind of connection that didn't quite fit, almost. And now I know that there are things he tries to hide from me, even when I was always completely honest with him. Perhaps it was that. I don’t know. But despite that he was still my best friend there. He and Ean, of course. Over the progression of the years I became slowly more and more bored with the subjects I'd chosen. The sheer amount of free periods made for rather nice days, but I just wasn't taking anything in during the lessons. And when we had to apply for Universities, I was refused by all but two of the Universities I applied for, and even the ones I was accepted into only gave me conditional offers. But I didn't need them in the end. When the results came through I was elated to find I'd failed to gain entry to my University- it meant I could do the Drama course at Chichester College with Dan, and that was something I was looking forward to so much. Except... ...a month or two before the course was due to start, Dan broke the news to me that he wasn’t going to be there. I had mixed feelings about it: I'd not spent a full year with him since High School and I really wanted to have shared everything with him. But on the other hand I'd always be following in his shadow. It was even his suggestion to do the course in the first place. I don’t regret him telling me, though. I was able to develop myself as a person in my own right rather than simply an attachment to everyone else. And I'm sure this year's going to help even more, with so many prospects opening up for me. The Sum of My Parts. Some people say that it's your parentage that defines who you are. To some extent it's true: you can’t deny what is essentially in your blood and body, and the various traits that come with it. But there's so much more than that. Every experience, both good and bad, adds to who we are. And despite all of the bad memories and regrets that I still carry with me, I don't wish they hadn't happened. It still hurts when you think about how you felt when you made them, and current ones always play on your mind, but I always remain optimistic that it'll work out right. I have a drive that pushes me to keep things going happily. I can't stand unnecessary depression or anger. I'm constantly seeking peace. Not just my own, but that of everyone else. And I put it down to everything I've been through. Otherwise I'd probably only offer advice for convenience’s sake, but I have far too much compassion and too large a guilty conscience to let anything fly past that I know I could offer advice about, however redundant. Because that one thing could have made the difference. Had my friend not decided to phone at that moment I might not have broken my leg. Had Dan not come round to talk to me that day I might not have joined the acting course. It's scary to think that any one of these huge events might not have happened if one word hadn't been uttered, if a normal, seemingly harmless event did or didn't take place. It's not good to think about that constantly, though. Otherwise you're just analysing every single little action you make as if it'll completely revolutionise the world, and that's hardly ever the case. But coincidences do happen. I want to be remembered. Even if it's just in a really small way, it gives me such a buzz seeing something that I've done or been involved with getting a mention. That's not why I'm friends with people (if I was I'd constantly be advertising myself and showing off and I'm really not that kind of person), but everyone likes knowing that they're appreciated and aren't just another anonymous extra. Nobody wants to feel like they're playing a supporting role in their own life, heh. I used to feel a bit like that when things used to happen to everyone around me. In High School, where I was trying to get noticed by the first group of girls I really knew, I almost used to wish for problems so I would have an excuse to talk to people. It was selfish of me, but absolutely nobody wanted to know what I had to say, and it used to annoy me so much when I'd be denied the chance to suggest something that I know would actually be able to help them out. But they were silly girls and I was a silly boy. I've changed, I've matured. But I've not grown up yet. Not all the way. I still want to retain a sense of my youth which I hope to carry with me right up until old age, so that I won't forget who I am. It's almost a Peter Pan syndrome: One day you're Peter and the next you find you're Captain Hook. I was deathly afraid of growing up and having to leave everything I loved behind. But there's no reason why you should. I plan to take all of my memories with me, so that I can remember. And as long as you remember what you did, what have you lost? This is just getting rambly now ^_^; I hope it's been a good read, or at least something to help get you off to sleep, heh. Thank you, and goodnight.

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