Ever since I was a child I have always felt
socially awkward and I never knew why. As a kid I would be the most hyperactive
and mess around in class just to get attention from my classmates I can clearly
remember my jumping on the seats and interrupting story time just to piss the
teacher off and have her focused on me. I grew up that way, not feeling the
barrier that I feel now, just being me without any fear at all, but it all
changed after I started to think too much about what is right and what is
wrong. I was living my days normally and I remember I used to have this huge
crush on one of my classmates, I shall use the name Sydney in order to protect
her identity. Sydney is the girl I had a crush on since I entered my small
private religious school and it was in pre-kindergarten. I still remember the
first day I was brought into that small classroom and the small demon that was
arriving conserved his energy to blow up in class. What I cannot remember is
whether I cried or not when my mother left me there but I am sure I was calm.
After that I attended class with a handful amount of strangers and the smallest
one of all of them, Mike, would become my best friend even to this day and
still hope it will stay like this. My days at my school began and I was
extremely attracted to Sydney but I was extremely shy and just looked at her
from a distance or sometimes even dared to make fun of her or just bothered her
endlessly trying to make her notice me. I had my friends and my days passed as
calm as ever, I had a lot of fun and I was called to the principal’s office a
lot more than I can count but I really enjoyed the present back in the day.
During my time in school we used to go to a nearby church in which we went once
every month, I liked going but you can imagine how I never stayed put when I
was a kid and I made everyone else talk so I would not be bored. Behaving badly
in the church resulted in less points for class and conduct which lowered my
scores but I did not care. When we reached the fourth grade I started to become
more of a loner, not entirely but a part of me just wanted to be alone, it felt
good. The first time I decided to be alone was behind the cafeteria a spot one
of my past classmate used to use a lot when she wanted to be alone. She was a
rather unique person and was an extreme animal lover to the point where she
acted like animals, you can imagine how hard it must have been to fit in with
the other classmates when your personality is so different from others. But
nevertheless I sat there and thought about that for a while but soon after I
was just in a daze imagining how my friends would react when they saw me after
I just skipped lunch and stayed there over all our lunch period. Soon after I
decided it was time to get back to my classroom and I actually find all of the
students just crying with their heads on their school chair it was a rather
weird spectacle and I asked what the hell was going on and as it turns out one
of my classmates were fighting each other verbally while playing baseball but
during the fight one got mad and threw the metal bat to a direction where he
did not know whether there was someone else or not and ended up hitting the
tallest guy in class which then started to bleed a lot assuming what my class
had to say and was taken to the principal’s office to get help. That was the
moment where even I actually started crying it is a little embarrassing to say
but everyone was doing it so I needed to play the role in order to be normal. That
was the only worthwhile event that occurred during my 4th grade in
the years 2007-2008. After I was raised to 5th grade, I realized
something wrong with my classroom and it struck me hard when I realized Sydney
was actually gone and it turns out she changed from this private school to
another one unknown to me. I was pretty depressed and felt bad about her
leaving and all sorts of thoughts based on regret started to invade my mind but
I learned to deal with it and just pass my days trying to forget about her. As
the days kept on going one of my classmates attempted to commit suicide by
hanging himself, I will call him Jack. Jack and I sometimes really just never
got along and there was a time where I just didn’t understand him and I was
messing around with him calling him a lunatic, he got really mad and said not
to say it again but I was an a*s so I said it and a second later we were both
punching the hell out of our faces. I was always picking a fight with my
classmates it seems like yesterday when I used to fight for every little thing
and ended up losing or winning. I fought with my current best friend a lot back
in the day he actually beat me it was rather unexpected because he was the
smallest one in class, the reason for fighting was that I cut line for lunch
and he got pissed. I lost most of the time since I was never really good at
fighting but hey you can’t say I didn’t try. Jack was one of my fighting
contenders but after I heard what had happened to him I felt he needed help so
I went and talked to him about how what he did was a wrong decision he even
shared the exact details of how it happened which I will not reveal here. He
was somehow not regretting what he did but I could tell that all he needed was
just someone to talk to and we just sat and chatted for a long while and it turned
out we had a couple of things in common and he started to respect me as well I
started respecting him. When we were in class the teacher suddenly praised me
in front of all my classmates about how good a thing I did and I sat there and
wondered how good it feels to do the right thing and I had wondered if this is
what a doctor feels. Helping someone when they are in need emotionally or
physically is still treatment to the soul. I never would have thought this
would play key to my desire to become a professional in medicine. But I was not
so serious about it then, I was too young to be serious, it was a small ember
that lit that day. Time passed and I managed to hold on with the friends I had
and soon after came the day where I met Sydney again. I and my brothers were in
a park I don’t exactly remember where we were but I can clearly remember me
seeing Sydney’s brother and my stomach tightened instantly and when I turned
back she was right there only a couple of feet away, but even if she was so
close for the first time I just didn’t have the guts to talk to her or even say
hi. I merely saw her and ran away, she probably never even knew I was there
sadly it is only my memory and I was clearly not going to star in hers. When I
came back to school after that fated reunion I showed off a little in front of
my friends saying I met her, but in reality I did not do anything. This event
made me remember my countless adventures as a kid where I used to play with my
cousins all over the place and actually even told them that she was my girlfriend
and I had her phone number, I even faked the call process as if I was talking
with her. My love story ended before it even began due to my inability to act,
sadly if you do not express how you feel directly it will never work out, at
least it never did for me. We then reached the second semester and I was going
to a party with one of my cousins and my grandparents, during our time at the
party he and I found milk and chocolate and at that moment we just smiled at
each other and just said hell yeah. We started drinking chocolate non-stop I
ended up drinking like ten chocolate cups and when I got back home the first
thing I said was my stomach does not feel good. The pain was very sharp and
extremely painful I was immediately taken to the hospital where they started
treating me, I was afraid of needles so I decided to get a shot on my butt
because they say it would hurt less but I think it hurt more. I was diagnosed
with gastritis and was given medication to treat my stomach pain which also had
a strict diet to be followed. I managed to hang on going from doctor to doctor
because when I got an X-Ray and it seemed to be a false-positive of my heart
being sized bigger than it should have been. After many tests and visiting a
cardiologist my heart was okay and it was an error in the first X-Ray I got. I
missed around three weeks’ worth of school but came back with a half as strong
stomach ready to finish the semester. While I cursed what was left of the year
my grandmother bought a desktop computer and placed it in the living room which
I got addicted to since I turned it on. My brothers and I would just run
towards it whenever we got back from school but since I was the big brother I
had already marked my territory and took over the desktop, I stopped going
outside and entered the gaming world which was filled with dating games, videos
and other online games. When I started the 6th grade some of my
friends started to have girlfriends and I just wanted to be in on it so I
decided to like whichever girl seemed most normal to like, so I decided to go
with one set of twins. Ill identify them as right/left, I decided I would like
right but right started dating one of my other classmates so I just went for
left, they looked the same so I just went for the other one. While I started to
like her I told my mother and I just started leaving letters of love and gifts
for her but I got rejected which is really funny when I look back into it. I
was sad for being rejected but nothing I would not get over from quickly. This
year was 2009 and were graduating on 2010, I had a lot of fun during this year
and on the last day of school something I sort of expected happened. I was
confessed to by a girl which was always quiet and was easy to tell that she
liked me, I could have said yes but she never exactly asked me face to face,
she asked a friend of hers to ask for her and I just said no. Even if she did
ask me face to face I couldn’t have said yes I had already said I liked someone
and it would look bad if I just changed my opinion so fast so I just said no. I
ended up graduating with average grades and average medals gained I never did try
my best during these years. When we all graduated my mother decided to leave me
in the private school for the next year as well but this time the massive group
of students fell down to a small number of seven. Everyone went to different
schools and only a small number stayed at the private school, but at least I
had my two best friends with me to keep me company. The 7th grade
was a rather normal year for me but I had received a gaming console for my
graduation gift, it was a PlayStation 3. I became addicted to this console
along with the games it had to offer such as modern warfare 2 which was a war
game. My life became influenced greatly by these games and I started to be a
lot less socially active taking games to a priority that was bigger than real
life. I started playing games non-stop for about two years and got myself a
computer in which I started to invest an even bigger amount of time. I would
stay awake for three days playing without getting rest and levelling up my
characters, but as I was raining above many inside the game I was destroying my
body in real life. The lack of sleep affected my performance in school all I
did was try to sleep at school so I could later use that energy on my computer.
One of my friends used to call me for homework each day and every time he did I
literally wanted to break his face I was sick of him calling me for school work
I disliked it. Of course he was being a good friend and I just failed to
realize it. All of that pressure along with my family problems I started to go
crazy, I would have crying spells in class and started missing school
constantly due to my embarrassment. The anxiety I created was growing stronger
than me and I sadly let it take over, it started affecting me emotionally and
physically making my mind confuse me into thinking I was sick in order to miss
school and stay playing with my computer. Aside from all of that pressure I
started to have social pressure as well, inside the school the girls my friends
hanged out with spoke behind my back along with them. They told me they criticized
my acne and that I looked ugly and just plain out weird. Out of all of my
memories I never really talked with them, it was just all of them talking and I
was just hearing what they were saying, every day was like that it was normal.
I don’t blame them for saying those things about me since I actually had some
strong acne and I was not very fund of haircuts so my hair was somewhat long.
But that doesn’t change the fact that it made me feel like s**t, when my
friends told me that I just wanted to cry but not because of what they said but
because I was sick of it, I was sick of school and wasting my time here with
these people that don’t understand anything about me. Luckily on my 8th
grade my aunt decided to take me with her on a trip to Disney land and I really
did not want to go without my computer but I was forced to. I went on that trip
and managed to experience what it was like to be in a foreign land and it was a
rather nice experience, but me who was actually really good at English, which
was probably one of the reason they took me, could not speak with the people as
well as I would back home, I was just really nervous. We managed to go to some
of the parks and rode roller coasters and it was rather enjoyable to be there,
ignoring the fact that I was extremely lazy and always had something to say
whenever I saw walking distance was too much for me. A funny thing is that I
used to have a history of sleep-walking so when we were in our hotel room I
started yelling like a complete dumbass at night, it resembled the sound of a
seal and here I thought I was cured of it. I managed to have a good time and
laughed like heck when I heard the seal story, but I was actually sick during
the last days of the trip eating a pretzel which had the most horrible taste,
my stomach hated it and decided to give me pain in return. I got back from the
trip and went back to my addiction instantly and suddenly there I was just
about sick of living my life stuck to a computer all the time that in my 9th
grade I decided to start exercising and managed to get into shape. I then took
up boxing and started to get really focused on it, during my time boxing I
decided to take a haircut and try and fix my acne a little and managed to look
ok. I was actually feeling good for a change my life was taking a turn for the
good until my friend became friends with the sister of one of the students in
our school. That girl stayed at our school after classes had ended in order to
prepare for a talent show with my friend. I also decided to stay to help them
out you know I’m a good sport, but in return I am later told that she also
criticized me saying I looked horrible and I just seemed to be more affected by
what she said than anything else, she was a terrible person, the two faced
type. My 7th, 8th, and 9th grade were not exactly pretty they were really
emotional for me but I somehow managed to hang on. When I graduated I managed
to score some nice grades even though all I did was sleep and fool around I was
never dumb. While I was being called upon to the stage my teacher expressed how
she about me saying I was a rather very talkative person and I was the type
that you would always hear talking even after everyone has already shut up but
I didn’t mind what she said about me, because she said it with a good intention
but I did feel embarrassed in front of my mother because of that. Nevertheless
I began to have an illusion of how high school would be, I imagined myself
being one of the cool kids, this was the chance to change I told myself, to be
in classroom where no one knows me it was an opportunity I said to myself and I
would not ruin it. I prepared myself for what was to come and the day came
where it was time for me to go to high school my first day, my freshman year. I
was assigned to group 10-4 which was the group known as the “estofones”, well “estofon”
is a word used only in Puerto Rico which refers to an intelligent person in
this case an intelligent group. Classes had already started and I was assigned
to the class room as a late student but I still had high hopes about my class.
I still remember the first time the bell rang and I went inside that classroom…
it was horrible. I felt as nauseous as ever due to my anxiety and I just barely
managed to hang on, it was a truly dreadful experience, I failed at
socializing. Days kept on passing and the groups were already set when I got
there, I had no chance to merge in I was one of the quiet ones, but on my first
day I met Sydney there. It was quite a surprise because along with Sydney I had
also ended up with past classmates. As soon as I saw Sydney I thought that this
was fate that maybe I was given this chance to express myself again but as soon
as I meet her we barely talk. She and I start small talking and she suddenly
brings up an event I had completely forgotten, she told me that back in the day
I caught a gongoli and threw it at her lips which she says left her traumatized.
It was a really funny story to hear and I felt a little embarrassed by what I
had done but she took it rather nicely but as time passed by I heard the same
words from her mouth and from all the others that knew me before, how did you
turn out like this? The same question was asked stating that they can’t believe
I turned out to be so calm and quiet. What can I say when you experience
anxiety and addiction what’s there to be surprised about. Days went by without
me socializing I only spoke with one or two of my friends but not much really. My
actual best friend was at school and I spoke to him every now and then but I
was a little embarrassed due to him never shaving his moustache it was too
bushy .I regret not spending my time with him how I should have. During this
time I was desperate I needed someone to be with, I needed someone to rely on
and that someone would turn out to be Cresil, which stands for the god of
impurity. Cresil would call me out and he was also a boxer, we went to the same
gym. I really thought he was a nice guy and decided to go along with him. Don’t
get me wrong he had his reasons to do whatever he did, but I just took the
wrong path it was completely up to me. Cresil hanged out with people that were
in the drug business and had friends who you can compare to trash, I was being
manipulated but I just didn’t want to accept it. I still remember when Cresil
told me if he can trust me with a big secret, and I stupidly said yes you can
trust me with any type of secret. He later told me he smoked weed and cigarettes
literally anything that can be smoked as well as the drug business he was in.
He took me to a guy named Loi which was basically the ring leader back at the
time, I decided to try and fit in the best way possible and became something I
was not. After a month or two Loi was caught by the cops in an unalarmed search
in which he was stupidly caught having drugs in his backpack, he was expelled. I
lived my high school days with this despicable group hearing stories about how
they got high and fucked girls and it was all the more boring for me. I was
always bored with them, I enjoyed being alone rather than spending time with
them. But after smoking became something everyone did I decided I wanted to get
a shot at it, and it was completely out of my own accord no one talked me into
it, in fact some tried to stop me but I just wanted to fit in more forcing
myself even further into a place I didn’t belong in. I first smoked marihuana with
Cresil and I faked the fact that I liked it because in reality it just felt
horrible and I could not find the pleasure that all of these people found in
it. I am a man that prefers to be sober and fully conscious, not someone who
uses the excuse that weed is healthy for you so it is ok to smoke it. I went to
different parties and always seemed to be bored inside of them, it was all just
common, and the people were too common they weren’t anything of what I wanted
next to me or a challenge whatsoever. I remember I attended a party in which
grown men were entering the party and dancing with teenagers it was a
disgusting site to watch it was paedophilia at its finest example. One of those
men was talking with Cresil and I was just quiet along with them when the man
said he wanted to take a piss and placed a gun he had hidden in his underwear
right in front of us, you could tell that his IQ would have been a 70 or 75 at
best. These type of people were just disturbing to be around them so I just
waited it out and acted normal. According to them one of their girlfriends said
I looked like a homeless person and that’s when I stopped giving a s**t about
what other people think. The days kept going and my time to decide was
shortening I knew deep down that I wanted to cut my relationship with all of
these people but I still decided to give them a shot. Then came New Year’s and we
celebrated the start of year 2014 with a joint made just for me. I knew I had
never smoked what I was given before but since I saw them smoking it I thought
it was okay so I breathed in all of that smoke poisoning my lungs. I smoked the
whole joint by myself even the memory of the moment makes me want to vomit
since I never really enjoyed smoking overall be it a cigarette, marihuana or
whatever the hell else I smoked. The quantity I had taken was too much for a
beginner and boy did I feel it, I remember the first ten seconds I was laughing
but then I started to quiet down. My so called friends decided they would go to
the garage and buy cigars and I luckily decided to stay outside with one of
them. After 20 seconds everything changed, my brain suddenly went loop, I was
standing holding onto a poll and talking when suddenly I can’t move nor feel my
arms they just drop down as if I have no control of them at all, the guy who
was in front of me got scared because when my arms dropped my jaw also dropped
along with saliva, I was just extremely drugged. He started calling for the
other two and I was still trying to sort things out in my mind, I started
walking back to try and find a safe spot to fall in but on my way back I lost
control of my legs and fell head first to the ground, I would not move my arms
so you can tell how it went down. They rapidly grabbed my arms and tried to drag
me to a safe spot, right when they grabbed me I heard a honk from one of the
nearby cars, no car stopped to help, but I started to feel a hell lot of pain
when I fell, it is indescribable it was as if every little part of my body
started to have an endless screech of pain, it was mainly focused on my hip
area as if I was dying. The first thing that came to my mind was my family it
all in a second, my mother waiting back home, my brothers playing video games
with our cousins , and the image of me leaving them behind. I regretted leaving
and I still do, the guilt I felt towards my mother had never been so big and I
was taken to a nearby alley and was placed on the wall. I was sitting but I
felt like I was in a prone position, it was a painful and confusing moment for
me, you could tell the drug had affected my mental capabilities to the point I
forgot how to talk and constantly blacked out. I slightly remember them saying I
was like this for more than 3 hours but it felt like an eternity. After I went
through that crazy moment were I cried like a drug addict and made a fool out
of myself, I got my conscience back and decided to go home and take a shower. I
cried in the shower. As soon as I got out he had already told the story to one
of my cousins and laughed about it, and it all just became a joke to them, the
fact that I suffered so much was just a joke. That was when I started to feel
hate towards them, I foolishly took the chance to do such an error but everyone
in the school was told of the incident and I just hated the fact that I was
viewed in such a way. I was emotionally unstable and decided to break all of these
relationships which lead to me being alone for good and being known as a rat at
school but I did not care, cause I felt free from the moment I did not smoke
anymore and was free to hang out with my good cousins and just chill along with
them. I decided to leave everything behind and I left the high school I
attended and went to a home schooling with my best friend Mike. I had set a
goal in which I would become a dedicated student and work towards my dream. That
moment changed my perspective on life and made me realize what is important and
is not, without me realizing the deep s**t I had gotten myself into I would
have stayed there and would have rotten along everyone else. I feel proud that
I decided to make a change in my life and that even to this day I am working
towards my goals, even if everything is not perfect I still am grateful for the
fact that I am alive and that I have a chance to become someone better and
achieve something better with the skills I have been gifted with. Education is
what saved me and it’s what currently moves me because day by day I still
encounter things I don’t expect, but never again will I ever decide to do
something like what I did back in 2014. I am clean of any smoking for the past
two years and I plan to keep myself clean for life, I have already been there
and done that, my curiosity may have weakened me but I knew I would come back
even stronger than how I started.
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