Highschool was one of the worst period of my life.
CONTENT WARNING & DISCLAIMER:
The following will contain heavy topics, discussions of violence and obviously, lots of mentions of bullying. It's much more personal than what I usually write.
The following was originally intended to be an answer for a thread about bullying. It quickly grew way beyond the scopes of what could be contained into comment section and turned into what is to follow. Because of the sheer size of the thing, I never posted it.
If you ever see this, thank you "Elise (aka: xilliah)". Your post gave me an excuse to write this and before that, I had never took the time to properly put any of this into writing and explore the depth of what happened to me. Putting this into words helped me process a lot of it and to better understand my feelings of dissociation, which I'm only now, years later, starting to understand.
ADDITIONNAL DISCLAIMER:
Everything I’m able to talk about happened in the French public education system. I have never been to a private school in my life. This is strictly public and it’s also French, so if something doesn’t make sense to you, it might be a cultural difference.
I don’t have any advice to give, this is just me, sharing my story.
I would like to add a special mention of the song "Wind Tempos", by "Porter Robinson", which I listened during the whole process of going over and properly re-edit what you're about to read. It made reliving those memories once again much more bearable, making them feel like the bad memories that they are and not the nightmares stuck in my head.
The following was written on the 26th of January, 2024.
Answer to Elise’s thread “[SERIOUS] Were any of you ever bullied?”)
Yes. A lot.
My whole life pretty much, but I think high school was the worst, I don’t know if it’s high school because I’m not English/American and the terms are not the same. It’s “Lycée” in French.
Anyway, I have been bullied for many reasons my whole life. I figured out much later that I was trans and a lot of that bullying made sense because I understood that a lot of people understood that I was what I was long before I ever did and used it against me.
But that bullying peaked when I was around 15. Or at least back then I thought it did.
PART 1: First School Change
My school at the time, the one from my hometown, moved me to a different school telling me that they would be more specialized in what I wanted to do. I had this desire to be a graphic designer back then. It never happened.
Judging by how complicated and sometimes shitty that career is, how hard it is to make money in it, to live from it, and how way too many artists are now losing their jobs because executives think AI is cooler than paying artists. Well, I didn’t miss out on anything I’d say.
Me and my parents naively believed it. Because on paper it did have a part of it that was similar to it or at least could branch out in the direction that I wanted. Because the rest of the school was focused on manual work, like repairing roads and shit. Which is something that is not up my alley.
I am not a very strong person or a very manual person. I have a handicap that prevents me from writing by hand, so you can imagine how that would impact for the rest of the manual labor here. It wasn’t something I could do at all. But I had completely given up on school, so it seemed like a way out.
This proved to be a very long year for me. People there were insufferable. Where I came from people were hard with me, but this was on a different level. They were borderline violent sometimes. I was surrounded by people who were older than me, much more assertive than I ever was and made me felt that this was a man’s school, not a girl or whatever I was school. I felt like a sheep among wolves. And the whole school immediately figured me out and somehow people that I’ve never met had already a nickname for me which went through the whole school.
What was the most difficult for me is that I had a cousin with me. This cousin was like a brother to me. And he always had my back, usually. Not this time. I don’t think he ever realized it, and I never really held it against him, but he fell in with the group and basically turned against me.
No matter where I would go in the school, someone would randomly insult me. I got called transphobic shit multiple times. I never dressed like a girl back then. I just had long hair. Back then, I hadn't figured out that I was trans, I didn't have the term for it. I knew deep down that I wasn't a boy and that I desperately wanted to be a girl, but it was deep down. It was a seed which still needed to grow.
Again, people knew way before I did what I was. But I got called all sorts of random things. The most vicious part of that is that this was basically everyone. So if I wanted to have friends, if I wanted to not be alone, I had to endure it. So it was either find a place to hide or deal with it.
But there was this one guy. I will always remember him. He kept pushing it. My cousin was friend with him. It was very amusing for him to watch this, but not for me. He kept pushing it again and again and again. The dude was an idiot. I don’t have any other way to say it. I mean the dude had actual low intelligence. He was dumb as a rock. But he was also an annoying cunt who never knew when to stop. When he was bored instead of fidgeting, he would pick on people, and I became his favorite toy.
Imagine a guy constantly poking you with his finger. That was him. He would do all kinds of shit constantly. Cutting my hair when I had my back turned, throwing stuff at me. Little annoying things. That type of people. You know them. The difference with him is that he never knew when to fucking stop. Because he never did. It was constant. And I do mean constant. He would never stop, every time I was near him, he would pull on my clothes or my hair, repeat the same thing over and over again, throw things at me or whatever. Was it some mental issue? No, when he wasn't with me, he was "normal", he just had it out for me.
I yelled at him in the middle of the class more than once. He was like twice as large as me. I could have never had him in a fight even though I really wanted too. I am not a violent person at all, I never pick fight. I’ve never really gotten into fights in my life at all, but I would have done anything to make him fuck off and I never figured something out. I despised him. I remember wishing he would die on the way there so that I would have peace for once. This feelings are awful to have.
Of course no one had my back in this school. No one… You couldn’t count on anyone. Some of the teacher were nice, but that’s about it. Everything else, asking for help, would be… you know, making waves. So I didn’t. And I just kept on going… quietly.
It was a long year, and by the end of it, I had awful results. If I had not completely given up before, now I definitely did, and all of my wishes to get to other schools, including those who would have made me a graphic designer, all left me hanging. I was left with nothing and nowhere to go.
I have no memories of that summer vacation. All I remember is the final weeks. I went back to that school and saw the person in charge of helping people finding schools and everything and she had a couple of propositions. I took the only one that made sense so that I could get a diploma, a “Baccalauréat”, in French.
And if you think this is where the story ends, it’s actually where it begins. Because here comes high school.
Because of what just happened I arrived two weeks later than everyone else. And this was the beginning of a very long three years, which to this day - I am 26 and this was back when I was like 17 years old - these are still among the worst years of my life.
PART 2 : Second School - Daytime
When I finally arrived, I remember hearing someone say, “Is that [awful nickname from previous school]?” It turns out some of the people who I went to the previous school with also got here. And because of them, the reputation that they gave me on first day when I arrived there followed me here. I thought I had a brand new start. I thought this was the beginning of something else but I immediatly learned that it wasn't.
I finally arrived in my class. This class was made of mostly girls and just a couple of guys. Among those guys was one that we will call Roman. Roman was a piece of shit, but I didn’t know that at the time.
My first days of classes didn’t went well. Once I came in class and I figured out I had a chewing gum in my hair. So I tried to remove it and I got told to fuck off by the teacher because I probably did it to myself because that is such a normal thing to do, apparently.
Classes were pretty basic, pretty nice, and I learned some stuff that I still use these days, so that’s nice. But my classmates were something else. Remember Roman? Well he too, became obsessed with me.
Every joke was at my expense, constantly. And what’s worse is, he would always be followed by the rest of the guys, and he would follow me everywhere I went. I spent three fucking years playing a game of cat and mouse with this guy so that I could have some peace between classes. I would go places where I wasn’t allowed to go just to hide to get my laptop out so that I could write or do whatever I wanted in peace and in total secrecy.
Because when he was there, he would throw stuff at me. He would bother me. He would take his phone out and take photos of me, publish them online, and so on. So I would move, and he would follow with the rest of his small pack. At first I had a few places where I liked to go. But over time, every time I went there, guess who’d show up. With his fucking grin, so proud of himself every time.
It’s gotten to a point that I would hide in the town. It was a small mountain town and in winter It was cold as shit, but I had a few places that I knew I would never see them in. And until I did I would hang around there and move when they found me.
But one day Roman got sick. Roman got sick and the class was very different. It turns out that the class is pretty much like what we imagine a pack of wolf being. There is an alpha and when the alpha isn’t here, the vibe is completely different. He was a poison to this class. Everyone was much more friendly, less hostile. I could find peace. But when he was there, he ran the show and people who didn’t have anything against me particularly would also turn on me because that’s who needed to be respected apparently.
The dude had such influence that I swear to you the teachers were different when he wasn’t there too because some of the teachers would bully me as well. They would say shit to me just to go along with the class laughing at me. I know it sounds like I'm making stuff up but I swear to you that this happened more than once! But the few times where he wasn’t there. God damn, it was almost like a fucking paradise. I loved that school, believe it or not. Most of the teachers were great, some I consider to have had a deep and positive impact on me.
Anyway. This went on for three years. Three years of having to hide from this person who would basically stalk me wherever I went just to try to hurt me mentally and humiliate me. He even managed to convince me that we were friends. And a part of me was dumb enough to believe it. Because I wanted a way out. That’s all I wanted.
Did you ever got to a point of resentment so intense against someone that just seeing their face could ruin your entire day? That was me with him. It would cripple every ounce of joy I could have in my body this day and I’d get depressed. What's worse is, I had someone else who made me feel the same thing at home, so I couldn't escape that feeling, but that's another story.
There had been a period where I gave up, I just accepted it. I did my thing and they'd come in, insult me, do whatever, take photos of me, throw stuff at me and I wouldn’t react. You know, they always say ignore them. They’re going to get away, get bored. That’s bullshit.
And the worst part is, I told you that he was a piece of shit, but I don’t think he was. He definitely acted like one but I don’t think he was such a bad guy. I saw him crack under pressure once, because he had gotten into an argument with a girl in our class and things escalated a lot between them. Teachers got involved, things got serious, and he cracked. He never saw me cry, but I did see him. It didn't feel good to see him like this, at all. I felt sad for him.
I don’t think he was like evil or anything. He acted like a piece of shit but I think it was just his way of acting out against the rest of his life I guess. You know. Only child with a violent dad, from what I remember. I don’t know. He didn’t seem bad to me. Yet he made my life hell for three years. That's the worst part, I could see parts of him that I liked but he always went out of his way to make me feel hatred for him.
Outside of this, there was another aspect of this school that was new for me. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t sleep at home. I stayed there. It was a part of the building which was separated from the main one. It was a cross town and we were sleeping it.
I just said that this guy made my life hell for three years and he did. During those three years it got worse and worse every time. But the worst part of those three years, intensity wise, was definitely the first six months.
PART 3: Second School - The Dorms
I didn’t get to choose my room because I was one of the last people to arrive.
I got placed with two guys which were both older and taller than me. Lots of "dude bro" energy, loud and abrasive. Tough guys. They also clearly, didn’t want to have another roommate. I wanted nothing to do with them either but I was going to suffer from it all the same.
I didn’t knew them, and I never saw them outside of the dorm, because our school was separated into two buildings with two very different branch. So outside of the dorms we would never meet each other.
We get a new character here, which we’re going to call Nicholas. Nicholas was not just an asshole. He was a downright sociopath and I’m scared of him. Still am. I learned to fear him very fast, but I wasn’t aware until a few months on how much I should fear him.
With these two it started friendly enough. I didn't know them, they didn't know me. Neither of us wanted to be with each other, so we had a mutual understand. I would stay in my corner. I would sleep in my bed which was over one of them. And I would be very quiet, very discreet. I would not make eye contact. I would answer when I’m talked to and that’s it. I was very docile. They told me to move, I would do it, without question.
But they too made my life hell. And honestly, out of all the memories I have from this place, these are the worst. And they only lasted six months, because I begged my parents to get me the hell out of here. I would sleep in my own bed every night after that. I had around an hour of bus to get home and to get to school. So it wasn’t that much.
I had no obligation to sleep there. I could have done without it. I was a shy, very discreet kid, we wanted to try something new. My parents hoped that maybe it would get me out of my bubble. It made things worse.
You know, a lot of people talk about the dorms like it’s the best time of their life. It was one of the, if not the worst time of my life, by far. Among the three years, which also were one of the worst period of my life, these six months were something else entirely.
I guess that it started friendly enough, but very soon confrontation would start to happen over nothing. One day I was downstairs. I was actually under the stairs. It was a good spot. I I had my laptop, no one would bother me here and it was dim and quiet. But Nicholas and a bunch of friends happened to pass by here and saw me. He said something to me that I didn’t like. I don’t remember what it was, but I pretty much told him to fuck off at which point he came to me, pinned me to the wall and pretty much threatened me to break my arms or some shit. Okay, message received. Loud and clear. I won’t do that again, especially if you’re with your friends.
Soon after, when we were in the room, all three of us, my other roommate, let’s call him Gabriel, and Nicholas would yell at me for nothing. He would kick me out of the dorm even though he couldn’t, which made it so that a supervisor (this is the best translation I could find for the French word I had in mind) had to bring me back in. Telling Nicholas that he couldn’t kick me out and Nicholas would yell some more at me saying that I basically ratted on him which I didn’t, and he knew it. I could tell he knew it. It wasn’t some twisted logic or whatever, no he knew it, he just liked fucking with me.
Writing this, I’m realizing that Roman and Nicholas have a lot in common. For example, Gabriel, when Nicholas wasn’t here, was pretty nice and chill. He wasn’t the massive asshole he would turn into when Nicholas was here to influence him. In some jobs I had, the absence of some employees changed how everyone else behaved as well. I guess bullies have that influence on people.
I remember both of them would constantly do shit like talk to each other in the middle of the night, joke around, ask me questions and if I ever answered they would get mad at me because I talked in the middle of the night and they’re trying to sleep. And if I didn't give an answer they would get mad at me because I didn’t answer. They would do shit like this constantly.
Back then, I was piecing together that maybe I was a girl which, now that I write it I realize that in this period of my life, I was actually understanding it. It was making sense, it was starting to become a thing, but because of what was happening, I got scared so I shoved it back in the closet as far as I could. Exploring my feminine side in this place would be the worst thing I could possibly do, so, back in the closet it went. It would take me years for me to finally get it out and accept who I was (a transgender girl), which was last year.
I think they could sense that something was going on. Because they would play on it. I got insulted for being too feminine. Even though I wasn’t. I never dressed up like a girl. Like I said, I was wearing jogging pants and hoodies. Nothing very masculine but nothing very feminine either. I was very neutral in my clothing. I didn’t really have a sense of style. I wasn't really gendered back then. Clothes were thing I would put on without much thought, it was purely practical. I was told I was a boy, so I would wear "boy clothes", but it was mostly whatever was comfortable to wear.
Note, 26th May 2024: Looking back, I've been treated as a girl my whole life. I've always had a more feminine face and body shape than most, apparently. My whole life, lots of people would look at me and assume that I was a girl, then a woman. So it's not surprising that they assumed this. I don't know what it was and I wasn't really trying, it was actually kind of frustrating at some point but it was just how I was perceived despite myself.
Anyway. They would tell me that I was weak, that I was too feminine, and that I would get basically eaten up in this world because of that. And for some reason I trusted them. Because they were bullying me, and it seemed like they were on top of everything, so maybe they were doing something right. I don’t know what was going in my mind. This was getting mixed up with lots of things in my life. Perhaps it was the fact that what they were saying, I had heard my whole life and it was taking roots in me, I don't know.
I remember one night Nicholas was on the phone with his girlfriend. She was on speaker, and for some reason, they were talking about me. How lucky for me. And she... was bullying me. Me, a person she never met in her entire fucking life.
Among figuring out that I was trans, which I eventually pushed back for many years, I also was figuring out that I was bisexual and I had a strong attraction to some parts of the, shall we say, masculine anatomy. I was a naive kid, but I wasn’t dumb enough to share that with them. They probably figured this out on their own. I’ve been called a "fag" my whole life so it’s not surprising that they were making fun of me for this.
So I had two people in the room, and a third party on the phone which never even saw my face, talking and mocking me because they were discussing me sucking dick and getting fucked. And at some point too, things took a turn and they started talking about them doing it to me. This is burned into my mind. Having people in a room which you barely know and one of them on the phone which you don’t know at all, talking about gangbanging you - with it going from you loving it or you hating it but being powerless to do anything - even though they are all straight and are talking with obvious disgust, just to get a reaction out of you tends to do that I guess.
I remember her hurting me the most. She was basically mocking me for assuming that I was submissive sexually I guess. But also for being feminine in many ways and coming from someone who obviously was feminine. I don’t know, it was especially violent because I was trans, playing around with my femininity in a social way, as well as in a sexual way, was something that I desperately needed back then, especially at this point in my life. But I wasn’t in a safe place to accept it or explore it.
Of all that happened to me, it's both the most vivid and blurriest of things. I learned years and years later about what dissociation is, and this is what I was experiencing during that moment.
It’s burned in my mind because it was vicious. It was awful and I felt terrible about it. And also because it made me kind of “horny” and I didn’t want to. I was figuring things out about myself back then, things were falling into place for me, I was way too vulnerable on that front. Some things were said that got past my defenses and made me feel something positive to the humiliation, it made me blush, which in turn, made me want to throw up. I was disgusted at myself and I was disgusted at everything that was happening. It was one of the weirdest combination of feelings I’ve ever had in my life. It felt like they had gotten into my mind and just played around with it and tortured me with it. I felt violated.
Things turned differently when all of a sudden, continuing in that direction, Nicholas asked me if I would want to fuck his girlfriend. He insisted on it, and I knew that it was bait. Because the whole night he was like, “You’re gay, you suck cock, you’re disgusting” whatever. But then all of a sudden he was describing to me how beautiful his girlfriend was and the size of her breast and everything. And he was basically trying to make me lust after her. Trying to make me say something that would justify him being violent towards me. Because I knew his type, a guy looks at his girlfriend - which he sees as property - the wrong way and he gets violent.
Most of my memories are now blurry, you know? It’s a bit of a mixed bags of various things that come up here and there, but it’s pretty much a blur. I have some distinct things, like the ones I told you that are stuck in my mind, but I have one last one, which was perhaps the worst night of my entire life.
Oh actually, there was that time where I woke up drenched in sweat and wanted to stuck a knife in my skull to end the sudden pain I was feeling from my teeths before we figured out a couple of days later that I had somehow developed scurvy... I'm not joking, this actually happened. Take your vitamin C kids, it’s important. But that’s a story for another day. So it’s one of the worst night in my life.
PART 4: One Of The Worst Nights Of My Life
I don’t remember how it started. I just remember what started happening in the middle of the night. I assume it started like every other with some bullying, the usual crap, whatever. But in the middle of night, I feel my bed moving. And mind you, this bed is suspended over Gabriel’s, the other roommate, not Nicholas. I think in English it’s called a bunk bed. And all of a sudden, I fell. I felt it lifted up and then it suddenly gave up underneath me. I fell on the ground and when I looked up again, the bed was on Gabriel, who was beneath me. It fell on him.
I was half naked on the floor. I was still half asleep, in panic and apologizing. And both of them were standing in front of me. Getting half mad at me. And I say half because they were trying to suppress their laughter because they clearly organized the thing this way. They ordered me to keep quiet because they didn’t want anyone else outside the room to hear. They told me to not move, and to stay quiet for a while. I stayed on the ground, almost afraid for my life not knowing what the fuck was going on. I was in deep sleep when that happened. But no one came, so no one heard my fall.
After that they talked down to me, pretending that this was my fault as if they didn’t organize the whole thing, I blamed them for it and they almost got violent because of it. So I backed down. I got docile, again. I was laying on the floor half naked in front of these two guys. It was humiliating. Shutting up and hoping things wouldn't escalate was the only reasonable thing to do. No one was coming to help. And I had learned years ago that asking for help from the school itself was just a shit idea, so I was on my own.
I fixed the bed. Gabriel also helped me. I mean, his comfort depended on it. And I went back to sleep. That would have been a bad night but that’s it.
But the night wasn’t over yet.
Did you ever woke up suddenly, panicked with what could only be described as a giant alarm yelling “you are about to die” in your mind?
I don’t know the hour. I don’t remember this. I remember just waking up suddenly panicked. I had a strong smell in my nose. It smelled like pepper. Like it just took over every thing in my nose. That’s all I could smell, nothing else. And all of the sudden blood started coming out of my nose. And not just a drop, no, I had blood all over my face.
I have no idea what they did to me. I went down my bunk trying to figure out what was happening. I rushed into the bathroom, turned the light on in panic. They both yelled at me because I turned the light on and I asked them for help. And they yelled at me some more, also while laughing, which confirmed to me that they were responsible for what was happening to me.
The bleeding stopped on its own eventually. I just locked myself into the bathroom for the rest of the night and I slept there, on the floor. I spent a good part of that night trying to get rid of that smell in my nose. I tried to sleep but I mostly cried all night, I was completely freaked out, I felt delusionaly afraid of them. Because again, I woke up, and the first thing that came in my mind was, “You have to do something, you are about to die”, which I wasn’t, but that’s just what my brain told me. Adrenaline, I imagine.
But the door had a lock so they couldn’t get me there. I was safe. When morning came and the supervisor came into the room to wake us up she asked where I was and I put on my brightest voice and told her that I was up early and already in the bathroom.
To this day, I still have no fucking clue what is it that they did to me that night. What was that strong smell of pepper and why the hell did it burn everything up my nose and started to make me bleed like that. I have no idea what happened.
But morning came and contrary to what my brain told me, I didn't die. I thought it was over, but it wasn't. There was one more thing to come. Most people cleared out off the floor and I was left in the room with just Nicholas and me, which accused me of being responsible for his poor sleep, and me being stressed the hell out and having close to no sleep… I told him that he could only blame himself for what he did to me.
We started to argue and I wouldn't back down, so he got violent. Nicholas went to his locker, which we had in our room, opened it, pulled out a massive knife, put it at my throat, pushed me on the desk, which was near an opened window, pushed me over the desk to that window. He had much more strength than I could ever had and he was either going to open my throat or throw me down five floors. I don’t really remember what I did in defense of that. I’m pretty sure I just got real quiet and once again, got really docile.
He let me go but made a point to threaten me again. Of course.
You know what’s weird? I think I had a pretty normal day after that. Which is really weird now that I think about it. After all the shit that happened, I had a pretty average day. Nothing special. It took days until I actually processed what happened to me and I'd say that a part of me still is.
At that point I had gotten used to having regular panic attacks. At night when I knew I had to go back up there. It’s only gotten worse after this because now they didn’t just threaten to beat me, to rape me, to do whatever. Nicholas threatened to kill me, and it wasn’t just words. I had a knife put on my throat and I was held close to a window ready to be thrown out. Things had just escalated massively.
I never told anyone. I finally talked about it to my family recently. That was years and years after but I kept my mouth shut during the whole thing.
And what was I supposed to do? Talk to the principal about it? They would have searched his locker, found the knife, expelled him forever from the school, and he would have come found me and gutted me somewhere in the street. At least, that’s how I saw things back then. Nowadays, I don’t know if it would have been that extreme, but I still think ratting him would’ve been a pretty fucking terrible idea.
One of the worst things that happened to me in that school was something that happened completely outside of it. It was in my home.
One day I opened up about the shit that was happening to me, to my father, which I never got good relationship with. I don’t know why I opened up to him. It was a bad idea. I remained vague about what was happening because I just didn’t want to tell him in details the things that happened to me. I was afraid he would do something violent against the school or whatever. I didn’t want it to make things worse for me. But his response is one of the worst memories I have of this place.
He basically told me that if I was bullied everywhere I went, that maybe I ought to take a good look at myself and that maybe I was provoking it. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I deserved it. That I asked for it. That was after that night, too.
I have never felt so alone that in that moment. But also, even though I didn’t have a good relationship with him, he was someone I still trusted. So I kind of got it into my head that all of those things that were happening to me, well, maybe I deserved them…
I didn’t. Of course. But I didn’t know that back then.
Anyway, there is plenty of other stuff that happened to me in that school. And I wasn’t the only time I was bullied, of course. I also got bullied later in life in the wonderful world of employment. But this is already long enough. So, you know, I am going to end this by a very short story. The story of my last night in that god forsaken dorm.
BONUS STORY [Bullying Free]: My Last Night in The Dorm
The last night I spent in that dorm is one that I would probably remember my entire life. It was one of the worst nights of my life, but not in the same way as before. I am not talking in a traumatic sense. I am talking in a quality of sleep sense. This was a ridiculous night through and through.
So the day before, it started to rain a lot but it was nothing unusual. So I did my thing, did my classes, went back to the dorm, spent some time here and there where I could and where I would be left alone. I did my thing, I ignored the jackasses in my dorm and I also spent a good part of that time locked in the bathroom taking a long shower without a care in the world because I knew that it was over.
I also took great care of not telling them that it was my last day here, because I didn't want them to set up a parting gift.
I went to bed and I couldn’t get much sleep. No particular reason why, not that I can remember of. It’s just the way it was. But in the middle of the night I could hear that the rain outside had picked up dramatically. It was raining like hell outside. And there was thunder in the distance, which was getting closer. And that, I loved. It was soothing. I love the sound of thunder. Especially at night
But what had put me to sleep was also the thing that quickly woke me up. Because the thunder that I heard in the distance was getting closer and closer. And it was getting absurdly loud. It went from distant thunder, to what sounded like explosions in the sky sometimes. Until at some point in the night, I heard something so loud I could have swore something blew up in the building.
I never got confirmation but I’m pretty sure that lightning actually hit our building directly. Shortly after that, like immediately after in fact, the fire alarms went off. But there was no fire. They just went off. It was 4am and there was fire alarms screaming in the whole building and we all waited and waited for someone to come and shut them the hell up. But it never happened. I don’t know if something malfunctioned, if was incompetence or what, but it was 4am when they went off, and when I left the building at 7am they were still screaming.
In the morning, the courtyard was so flooded it basically became a tiny lake and I could still hear the alarm from outside.
This building was absolute hell and it spit me back out like the monster that it was. That was my last day in that dorm. It felt like the building itself was telling me to fuck off and to never come back.
Anyway, that was a fun trip down memory lane… this took me far too long to write on my phone. Thank God for dictation. I’m putting it here. I am plugging the FUTO Voice Input app without which this thing wouldn’t have been possible.
Thank you for reading.
I don’t know if this did me any good to finally get that shit out, but… I don’t regret doing it for now. So I guess that was worth it.
Note, 25th of May 2024: It did you some good. It was worth it.