“The
summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain”
- Benjamin Alire Sáenz
If
everyone must endure a form of purgatory to appreciate the ‘good’ happenstances
and qualities of life, then the summertime is my form of purgatory that
multiplies all the instances that cause me disdain. Think of it like Harry
Potter having to stay with the Dursley family after completing a year/term at
Hogwarts School (only there’s no magic). Think of it as you will; the summer
season means different things to different people; and while there are (possibly
many) people who enjoy the sunlight, the beaches, and an ice cream in their
hands, I cannot oblige without disgruntlement. The summer season is a time I
have always regarded with much apprehension, paranoia, and dread.
With
hindsight; I have become more and more comprehensive of my reasons for
disliking the summer, along with understanding myself better. Excuses perhaps?
Could be, it can be interpreted by people reading this post that I hide behind
my reasons and use them to fuel the resent I feel about the season of summer. But
then I am no different to those who also express their disdain about what
alienates them, and everyone has opinions, as well as the freedom to free
speech, so really this is just another person ratifying his ‘truth’ into the
growing cesspool of strange rhetoric juxtapositions of life.
(Record abruptly stopping
sound) Like it or not; the likes of varied opinions and expressions experienced
via digital media forms (like this post or a YouTube video), symbolic
representations (like monuments), written works (i.e. diaries), etc. are no
different than the Bible and other religious documentations, or the likes of
Mein Kampf. All these forms of expression and interpretations are nothing more
than the perceived contextualised notions of the creator which embodies a
‘truth’ that is expressed and shared among other people to interpret. A film
said to be based on a true story is an interpretation of something perceived to
be a correct representation of an historical event of significance, however the
basis of said historical event of significance can be ‘altered’ or romanticised
in such a way to present a view that the creator wants to reveal, and many
people seeing the film would see and regard as ‘truth’, whereas others will
interpret differently based on contradicting information and evidence. Therefore;
what I have to say with regards to the summer season, or anything I ‘like’ or
‘dislike’ is just my interpretation of personal ‘truth’, that may not sit well
with other people or be relevant.
Moving
from seemingly repeating myself about the ethics of opinion and interpretation
in the above paragraphs; my intention in this post is to freely express my
experiences during the summer seasons which accumulate to the explanation to
why I regard this time of the year with disdain. It is no secret that I dislike
the sensation of people being around me, and do not feel comfortable with
people in general. I ESPECIALLY feel antagonised when there are a large number
of people going about their business oblivious to my anxieties caused by their
presence. It feels like I am a desk fan stuttering and short-circuiting under a
downpour of grotesque amassing s*** (a la s*** hitting the fan) as I go about
my objectives and reasons for my presence whilst people are among me seemingly
judging me and scolding my soul with their thoughts, even though its more than
likely that this is a paranoid illusion of mine and nothing of the such is
actually happening.
...But
when you add the summer season attributes of typically sunny weather, warmer
and at times humid temperatures, and the summer holidays, and then that
downpour of grotesque amassing s*** becomes the Victoria Falls (Mosi-oa-Tunya).
When I experience hordes of people in my wake amongst the heated, and dryer
surroundings; I go off inside of myself like a box of active oxygen generators
packaged poorly next to a jumbo jet tyre filled with nitrogen and other cargo
hold items (reference (of poor taste) to the disaster of ValuJet flight 592 on
May 11th 1996). I want to explode like a lv.100 Electrode (using
TM64 Explosion), and eradicate all that stand in my path! But I do not because
making people aware of my presence is all the more paralysing. I therefore have
to do the old fashioned (allegedly) English stereotype thing of keeping a stiff
upper lip and proceed with my objectives in-spite of unpleasant conditions.
Even
this is made harder to pull-off however, due to the increase of temperature. I
am usually resentful of the fact that I am sweating as I go about doing the
mundane and not-difficult activities such as walking across town centres all
the while being in the presence of people who are not sweating. In this process
I truly feel inadequate and the leering of eyes fixed upon my appalling state.
Of course this frequency of sweating is due partly to the fact that I am a fat,
overweight piece of insignificant crap, and I have no one (1) to blame other
than myself and should therefore feel ashamed and embarrassed. It’s also worth
pointing out that I happen to have the condition Gynaecomastia (enlargement of
a man’s breasts) which meant I was subject to the teasing and abuse whilst I
was in school, which had the knock-down effect on my already abysmal
self-esteem, and troubles me still to this day.
...And
let’s not ignore the ‘fact’ of how unpleasant it feels to be wrapped up in a
duvet during a hot night. ...Then times that experience by the number of nights
there are during the summer season that typically are warmer than at any other
time of the year, and the result is dismaying to say the least. Good thing then
that I have access to handheld consoles during these times, as this is my
method of letting the uncomfortable night time pass by since there is no chance
of getting any sleep what with my unrelenting mind being as it is, and the night
atmosphere being warmer.
Anxiety,
resentfulness, and increased temperatures aside; there are more factors that
make me despise the summer season, some more personal and psychological then
those reasons already mentioned. As one (1) might imagine; I prefer to stay
inside and by myself. No offence to the outgoing people, it’s just who I am,
and this is no different during the summer season. I have always found
sustenance with the destruction of sixty plus (60+) ton mechs in MechWarrior 3
(a PC game), sampling the playable demos found in the official PlayStation
magazines, having Yoshi eat Koopa Troopas in Super Mario World, and the time
taken to raise my team of Pokémon during the nights. That was my strategy to
battle the sluggish summer days away from school back when I was younger and
living in Kent, and it has remained the same except now there are different
games to play now, and the fact I am no longer in school and that I live in
Weymouth.
Firing
lasers and LRMs (Long Range Missiles) into opposing forces, and other video
game quirks and lore was much easier to comprehend, control, and adapt to than
learning anything about any person or establishing a bond with people I interacted
with in and out of school. Because of my gravitation to a world I felt more at
home with, I didn’t experience the ‘wonders’ of summer holidays or develop
socialising skills the way my parents would’ve hoped. Typically, I would be
agitated on day trips or family holidays because these moments took me away
from what I knew and liked, and instead placed me in an environment or situations
that I was incompatible with. Maybe that’s the reason why I wondered off as a
toddler away from my family during a day trip to Hastings, because I didn’t
feel I belonged and wanted to be home, but I can hardly assume this accurately
if I don’t remember that far back (I only learnt of this through my Mum’s
recollection). Frankly I wasn’t happy unless I had a Game Boy of some sort, or
I got to see something that caught my attention, like a claw crane arcade
machine for instance. This happened quite a lot during the summertime which
meant there were a few good moments like playing crazy golf and looking in
video game stores after everyone in my family got sun burn, but these moments
were very few and far between, and as I grew older, I became more and more
estranged from society and people who adapted ‘correctly’ whilst I didn’t and
couldn’t comprehend what I should’ve done in given situations. Needless to say
I was an outcast, and since gaming wasn’t as accepted in the 1990s as it is
today, it was very problematic to relate to anyone around my age. I didn’t know
about my autistic attributes until I was in my later teen years which meant I
could not comprehend why I was seemingly the oddball, or explain why I wanted
to be invisible to everyone. As a result, I care little for the ‘great
outdoors’ and I cannot quell the sense of building anxiety or negativity when I
encounter a person, even if it is a family member or a friend. A person or
character on a screen in a fictional world that obeys the commands I input via
a controller however, doesn’t have those barriers and I have no reservations
about understanding what the said video game person or character portrays in
its given situation.
And
if you think about it; this is barely any different from any other form of time
passing activity a person gravitates to. A person could be just as fixated in
the fictional contents of a book, or be devoted to their chosen dedication to
the point they cannot function in the outside world, when so much of their
lives has been consumed in their world of preference. Religious devotees, ‘Star
Trekkies’ ...call these people however you like, everyone gravitates to
something that attracts their attention, which means my preference to video
games over living, breathing people is not unlike the chosen dedications or pastime
activities other people do. ...Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s open
to interpretation.
Now
I could blame myself or be blamed for looking in all the wrong places, but then
that’s hindsight; there was no telling back then whether what I was doing was
‘wrong’ or ‘improper’, and there’s no way of finding out how different I would
be if I did things differently unless someone invents a means of transporting
to a parallel world. It is possible through the Many World’s Interpretation
(MWI) that all the possible alternates histories and futures associated with me
could yield an alternate me that is better off or worse off than how I
currently am. But until such quantum mechanics can be quantified to working and
useable practical use, I won’t dwell on a possibility that there is a me in a
parallel world that is everything positive I have dreamed of and more, because
that would be depressing to know that reality was a possibility and be stuck in
the current existence where things don’t plan out as hoped.
Besides;
a reality where all possible alternates are real and are another world within
an infinite universe, wouldn’t have helped me if an ongoing dream/nightmare
became real. I can recall a time during my primary school years where I had a
personal teaching assistant (TA) that would engage me in short exercise
sessions, because I was overweight then, and probably refused to do physical
education (PE) with my class. Around the summertime of fourth (4th)
year, when the piano teacher wasn’t slamming the keys of the piano because we
weren’t singing a church song known as ‘Brothers and Sisters’ ‘properly’ in
assembles, a female primary student passed away in hospital due to a horrible
illness. I don’t recall her name but I do recall being ignorant to some of the
student’s despair because I didn’t know the person who died at all and couldn’t
relate to the student who was angry at me for not being sad (I guess I
should’ve realised then that something was amiss with me because I couldn’t
recognise emotion). There was one (1) thing I always thought about though, and
that was karma, and I was taught about it and what it means. After that; a
dream would reoccur promptly in that during line-up of the classes outside
after playtime or recess, it would rain. Then a teacher I do not recall the
name of now (I’m sorry!), would excuse me from the rest of the students, and
pull away a section of the playground concrete to reveal a ditch. The teacher
would instruct me that I would have to remain in the ditch and won’t be able to
surface to the ground anymore. I would be essentially repressed underneath the
playground, and would not be able to move around at all due to the cramped
conditions. No one (1) would hear me calling out because of the loudness during
playtime, and the fact that the students would be in class or at home for the
rest of the time. Essentially I would be left to die and rot away, but not
after enduring despair and sadness. My only means of nourishments were the rain
water seeping through the gaps, and a vending machine of some kind where empty
Walkers crisp packets could be inserted, and a fresh bagged packet of that
flavour would emerge for me to eat, which were doubly bad because I didn’t like
either, and such a biased diet would not provide the varied nutrients the human
body requires in order to function effectively.
Ever
since, I expected this to become true, and the thought occurred to me more or
less every time there was a line-up. No more was this process more apparent in
my mind than during the summertime when school term was still on because that was
around the time I first (1st) had the dream/nightmare. I didn’t stop
having this dream/nightmare until after the sixth (6th) year, when I
was moving on to secondary school, though I can recall this to this very day.
Why did this dream/nightmare reoccur in my mind again and again? Aside from an
imagination gone wild; I expected a form of penance or karma for my ignorance
toward the female student who passed away. I knew of back then that dead people
were buried in the back of churches, and ‘bad’ people were buried alive to
learn their lesson and pay for their mistake with their life. I figured because
of my ignorance, my actions would be frowned upon and thus I would be punished
in such a manner.
Of
course nowadays I am wiser, and know that such a scenario is unlikely. But as
daft as this dream/nightmare is/was, I haven’t forgotten it. I still sometimes
think about ‘what if it really happened to me?’. I wonder as well if my
imagination back then was telling me there’s a reason why I don’t seem to fit
in with the rest the people of my age at the time. I recall well enough not
liking primary school due to being picked on, bullied, and put in a school
performance show where each year had to sing and represent an era of music and
culture, which meant my year was performing “Return to Sender” by Elvis
Presley, “Spice Up Your Life” by the Spice Girls, and at the end of the show,
“Imagine” by John Lennon. ...Ugh... I haven’t been the same since, or felt
right in the head, and what was worse, was watching the entire performance show
on a Video Home System (VHS) during class.......
Maybe
imagining a situation where my presence is repressed is due to not wanting to re-experience
those humiliating and mentally scarring happenstances... Perhaps my own
discontent and self-loathing is what I believe everyone around me feels about
me, and they too would prefer if my presence didn’t bother anyone. Alas; such
grand desires are impractically more trouble than their worth, and I can’t
simply ‘Apparate’/teleport, or transform myself from a physical being to an
entity of gas or plasma as a means to ‘vanish’ from existence. And no more is this sensation of consternation
more apparent than in the summertime, when all the happenstances I have abhorrence
for are most apparent.
In
a nutshell then; the summer season is a terrible time for me. The warmer
temperatures, and sunny weather entice people during the summer holidays to
clog up the paths I traverse, making me furious and more uncomfortable. Not
only that, but it brings back woeful memories. ...So imagine the disdain I felt
knowing there would be a celebration/holiday in Hastings for my Dad’s sixtieth
(60) birthday with family relatives and family friends on the twenty-fifth (25th)
of July, 2016 (25/07/2016).
Go
ahead; image it. While to many people, this would be ‘uber fantastic LOL J’ ...I’m afraid I have to
very, ...very strongly disagree, because I am not like the people who would be
delighted. ...I am the ‘World’s Nemesis’ and I feel very coldly and bitter
about such a holiday. If I were "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" casting
the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra) every time I experienced frustration or
resentfulness during this holiday, then the morticians and funeral directors
would perish from exhaustion because there would be so many deceased to contend
with. Combe Haven (the holiday park I went to for the holiday) would be similar
in silence to Pripyat in 1987, families would be left grieving, and the roads
from Wimborne Minister to Dorchester would be littered with wrecked cars, and a
hallowing silence. However, because I am NOT "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named",
I could not escape the annoyances and the notions of wanting to hit someone on
the day where most of the family relatives and friends appeared. I kid you not
I felt THAT close to the mask shattering under the pressure, and I was not the
only one (1) in the family to feel that way. By the end; the twenty-ninth (29th)
of July, 2016 (29/07/2016), all of us were on a short fuse, and it wasn’t
helped by flu being passed on like a volleyball, and the continued greediness
and no logic at all of someone I call the ‘Hindenburg’ because she is as big
and I frankly hate her guts (as do other family members (but they won’t say it
unless she isn’t present)).
Just
to elaborate; while it feels like a broken desk fan being drowned by the
Victoria Falls of s*** thundering down during the summertime in several
situations; this summer (in 2016), in Hastings felt like being dressed as the
Easter Bunny carrying chocolate eggs galore in the middle of the Atacama Desert
with the temperature being set at 30°. I could not have felt more out of place
then in Hasting during the holiday in the summer season. Weymouth during the
summertime is bad enough, but Hastings... I would have preferred skydiving over
the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (I am NOT joking here). Now if this was
during the latter part of Autumn (2016) when the hordes of people would
typically decrease, and the temperatures were cooler, and less relatives and
family friends, and no last minute stop off at Nan and Granddad’s house... then
I might consider doing another planned family holiday of similar scale for my
Mum’s sixtieth (60th) birthday. There is nothing wrong with Hastings itself, it is a
very nice seaside town with plenty of attractions. After the past week (25/07/2016 to
31/07/2016) however, I’m inclined to say “never again”, and I think the entire
family would oblige. It was too crowded, way too expensive (£8+ for a Burger
King meal?!), too hot, too underprepared and rushed, too many frustrations, people
getting drunk, young children running off, tantrums, the car my oldest brother
uses to get back and forth was on the verge of being towed all the way back to Weymouth
due to a brake failure and collapsed rear suspension, and not enough breathing
space.
The
one (1) time I could escape the maddening was when I walked from Combe Haven
holiday park to the town centre, which took on foot an hour to get there and an
hour back. Putting aside the obvious aggravations of the hot weather and hordes
of people about (which did include as expected people darting from place to
place inconveniently with their mobile phones held up playing Pokémon GO); I
rather relished this time away from the maddening and got to visit the parts of
Hastings I remember visiting when I was younger, and taking photos on my phone.
And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t return from Hastings with more items then
what I originally packed, because there were instances where there were bargains
to be had, souvenir opportunities, and presents for oncoming birthdays and
Christmas. But it didn’t last long, and I did get sun burned, my legs wanted to
give way, and when I did get back to Combe Haven; the worst had yet to come. To
flee back to Weymouth did occur to me, and I would have paid up to a hundred
(£100) pounds on a train just so I could escape, but the train services were on
reduced services due to a strike, and I had no clue what buses I had to take
...so I gave up and lined up to take punch after punch from the Devil in Hell,
rather than throwing a few of my own like I wanted to. The holiday was a
torturous game that I do not wish to become a playing piece in ever again. It
would have been fitting not only to catch the flu as a parting souvenir that
nobody wants, but if the two (2) birthday cakes I took photographs of said
“F*** and YOU!!” directly, because then I would know for sure that someone was conspiring
the happenstances to ensure my misery.
