So...

Well yeah, I kinda gave up on this blog for a bit. had a lot of things on my mind and so on. But the writing helps, I know that for a fact. People say I ramble when I talk to them in person, I guess I just want to tell my story. Here I can ramble all I want.

The End Days Part 1

So it's been a while since I’ve written on here. Guess it doesn’t matter, I doubt anyone reads this. This is just my escape. I can tell the stories without fear of retribution. I can let out all that I wish to tell without worrying that my name will be attached to it.

 I’m just another storyteller, and this is just another story.

So I’m going to talking about the last few months of my enrollment at that school. Those months were nothing but pure turmoil. With the pressures of senior year, it was easy to become lost.

I had another dream about lions at the door; they weren't half as frightening as they were before. But I’m thinking about eternity, some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me.

Term 4, Senior Year

A new principal, hellbent on the eradication of students such as myself. An influx of newfolk, oblivious to tradition. Tempers soaring, making mistakes more likely. Rash decisions. Allegations, stories, truth? A camping trip, a fistfight. A change of scenery... day student? “A risk”.

Term summary: Disaster.

It all began with The Skull. He came upon a wave of mystery. Set to reign over us with an iron fist. Nothing stood in his way. No tradition left unmolested, no student left unharassed, why? The school had gotten a reputation, and not a good one at that. Needless to say, the previous regime had become lax, and the long fingers of anarchy came curling around the college. But that was all about to change.

Let me put forward two scenarios.

This is scenario A: I was downtown one afternoon with my good friend The Islander. Whilst stopping for our preferred beverage of Cookies & Cream MegaShake from Wendy’s, I received a phone call. On the other end, a voice. “Uh, hey man. Um... I was just wondering uh... if you could uh help me get some... stuff? You know...”. Needless to say he was talking about a certain psychoactive plant. Being the good friend that I am, I agreed to help him, and after a long day of no success, I finally found a source for him. I gave it to him, and we went on our merry ways.

This is scenario B: I was downtown one afternoon with my good friend The Islander. Whilst stopping for our preferred beverage of Cookies & Cream MegaShake from Wendy’s, I received a phone call. On the other end, a voice. “Uh, hey man. Um... I was just wondering uh... if you could uh help me get some... stuff? You know...”. Needless to say he was talking about a certain psychoactive plant. However, I had learnt through harsh experience never to do this. No matter who, as soon a network is formed and you’re caught in the middle of it. Every instinct I had warned me from this, and trusting my gut I replied in the negative. “Nah mate, I can’t do it. You’ll have to find someone else.”. And so I enjoyed my MegaShake, and the day was merry.

Flash forward 24 hours, the same person who had called me have been caught consuming cannabis during the night. At some point the day before, they must have gotten it from an individual. At some point, my name had been mentioned. I was public enemy number one, allegedly supplying minors with illegal substances. Suddenly, all contact with either of those individuals was cut. I didn’t know the story, I didn’t know how to deal with the situation.

Snitches get stitches.

Soon , an investigation begun, and I was the prime suspect. The new principal, striving to make a name for himself, needed a scapegoat. I was easy. “Past incidents with this sort of thing” was a line I heard a lot. But I couldn’t change the past, I had been lazy and gotten caught.

I was faced with a dilemma. A lose-lose situation. A game of Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver. Option 1: I accepted that I couldn’t win against the system and resigned to my fate as a scapegoat for The Skull, leave boarding and complete senior year. Or Option 2: I could fight for my name to be cleared, but in the process be suspended from the college and not graduate that year. I had to make a choice, and I chose Option 1. I had waited for too long to finish, and I was going to graduate no matter what.

And so I left the dormitory. I said my goodbyes, and did what I needed to do.

I don’t know what I was feeling. It was a soul-crushing hollowness, and I almost had the sensation of falling that whole time. Where was I falling? A black dog had begun to follow me, and I would find in time that it would on grow bigger, and come closer. Bad times were coming.

A brief trip to normality.

Now, I'm going to take a quick break from my usual subject matter to talk about something important.
When you're in a place like a boarding school, it's very easy to feel isolated, even when you're surrounded by people. Sure, your mates will always be there for you, but there's a constant feeling of loneliness. A desire for... companionship. I began to feel this towards the end of grade 11, and it was all brought about by one very special girl, who I would grow to love more than anything in the world.

It all began with a friendship. When I first met this girl, I immediately knew she was different. The moment I set eyes upon her, I knew that she was like nobody else I'd ever met before.

So we began as just friends, talking mainly through texting and the internet, and meeting occasionally. eventually, I began to develop feelings for her, but being the big mach man that I was, I tried not to let them get the better of me. Over time, these feelings grew until I just had to be with her. Little did I know she felt the same way, but was also afraid to show it. Eventually though, through "an arrangement" and a few not-so-subtle meetings, we learnt of each other's true feelings. And so it began.

A relationship is sometimes a tricky thing to understand. Your partner can make you sad, angry, confused, every emotion under the sun. But at the same time, they can make you the happiest person alive. How does that work? I dunno, but I love it.

So really, I was the happiest I'd ever been. Until I fucked it up. A stupid mistake very nearly cost me what had made me the happiest guy alive, cost me a lot of trust, and destroyed in seconds what i had built over months. But I resolved to never let what I love slip away from me. No matter the fights, the pain, the hurt, the anger, the sadness, it was worth it. Just to be able to call her mine, and know that she loved me and I loved her - it was worth it.

I don't know what really kept me going sometimes. To know that I had ruined what had kept me going, ripped me apart inside.


And to this day, we have our problems. We have our fights. We have the late night arguments that leave us going to sleep pissed off and waking up pissed off. We have those days where we just want to give up. We disagree and say things we don't really mean. But in the end, it's worth it. It's worth the fights, worth the tears, worth the worry, just to know that I'm fighting to keep what I love, and doing my best to keep it right. And although there are fuckups and disagreements, trust issues and arguments, it doesn't change how I feel.

Fight for that which you love, because to know that you tried and failed will always feel better than letting it go and thinking "what if...?".

Tripping, of the bad variety.

Psilocybe Cubensis. A psychoactive mushroom, oftentimes found growing out of cow manure. Contains the chemicals Psilocybin, which metabolises to Psilocin in the body and loves to act on the serotonin receptors in the brain. Often called "magic mushrooms". Now, of all places to locate a large paddock of cows, with opportune growing potential for these fungi, why the hell did they put it at the back of a large all-boys boarding school? I don't know, but me and my mates sure were appreciative. Maybe at times a bit too appreciative.

Let's talk about my bad trip.

Now, it was the first or second night back in boarding. Grade 10 I think. I had returned from holidays with my first psychoactive experience fresh in memory. As far as I knew, these mushrooms brought only boundless joy and euphoria to an individual, and no bad could come from their repeated and frequent use.

Boy, was I about to learn the lesson of a lifetime.

My friend "The Bird" had been harvesting mushrooms that day, and as the afternoon came he approached me with five or six large golden-top mushrooms. I was eager to begin tripping, and downed them as fast as I could. You see, I was yet to learn the golden rule of psychoactives: set & setting.
Set refers to your mindset. With psychoactives being a mood enhancer, one quickly learns the right mindset for tripping. If one is in a good mood, they will be in a better one, if one is in a bad mood, then will be in a worse one. Easy to understand, yeah?
Anyways, setting refers to where you actually are. Usually to trip you want a nice relaxed atmosphere, with not too many people around and nothing to stress you out. Therefore, a person can have a fun or relaxing trip.
Well uh, my set and setting wasn't the best. My set: just gotten to school, slightly homesick, worried that I was going to get caught on mushrooms. Setting: in a dormitory, with supervisors and rules ever-present.

Uh-Oh.


Within half an hour of eating the mushrooms, I was tripping balls. Sitting in the dining hall, all I could see was my spaghetti twirling around on my plate, like a bunch of worms fighting for territory in the earth. Drinking green cordial made me imagine of slime, dripping down my throat like the sloppy excrement of a Steven Spielberg creation. Pudding, chocolate mousse. Need I say what that reminded me of?
Once I finished dinner, I practically ran to our smoking spot, with the ground swaying beneath me like some sort of nightmarish roller coaster. Upon lighting a cigarette, I could imagine every individual molecule of poison and tar making it's way into my lungs and bloodstream, coagulating and forming pits of cancerous cells in my body.

This wasn't going well.


When I returned to the dorm, I realised I had a roll call. Jesus Christ, I thought to myself, this was fucking brutal. A mindfuck on a scale that I couldn't even comprehend anymore. Sitting down in the common room, the floor rushed up to meet my face. An eerie orange hue appeared to coat everyone around me, like a bad fake tan, reminiscent of the Jersey Shore cast. But I was still my normal colour, what was happening to me?

The worst was yet to come.


Sitting in my room during the allocated study period, I pulled myself together. A bit. I decided to do my homework, where I had to write a detailed description of what a ritual is. Let's just say, I found my schoolbook outside my window the next day with the words "A ritual is a certain set of practice-fuuuuuuuck this brooo, I'm tripping balls fuck this." with several "sad faces" and weird Escher-esque drawings underneath. Last time I try homework on shrooms.

After study, I raced out again for another cigarette. By this point in time I was convinced that I was the last sane person on the planet after a semi-apocalyptic situation where evil spirits had found their way into people's heads and turned them into zombies. Everyone was my enemy, so I had to move in the shadows to avoid detection. Once I got back to my bed I hid underneath the covers for about 3 hours in order to protect my brain.

If you've never had a bad trip, it's impossible to imagine what it's like. It's like every bad feeling you've ever experienced, any amount of grief, anger or loss, comes back and is concentrated into a few hours in your brain. The terror is indescribable. While trying to hide myself under the covers of my bed from the evil spirits flying around my room, this was going on in my brain. Eventually, I decided I needed another cigarette.
Walking through the dorm with just the eerie glow of the emergency exit lights showing you the way is a very strange experience while you're tripping. The whole time I was walking, I was calm and in control. But suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as if I could sense someone or something watching me. I turned around and looked along the corridor, and saw a... thing, a shadow, a spirit, whatever you want to cal it - racing towards me. I stood there in shock while it just raced into me, and as it hit me all I could feel was cold. And with the cold came sadness, a wave of emotions racing over me like the shadowy blackness of whatever it was I had seen. So I continued on out to the verandah and rolled a cigarette.

And while I smoked, I cried. I cried and I cried, for everything and anything I'd ever done wrong. For the people I'd hurt, deliberately or not, I cried. Until there was not a tear left, I cried.
It's an odd experience, crying on a whim like that. But the next morning when I woke up, I knew I wasn't the same, but I definitely felt better. I felt like I had acquired some form of greater knowledge, maybe not in academic terms, but in life terms. After that night, I knew more about myself than I had ever imagined.

The nights

The nights are prime-time. At night, the fun happens.

At a boarding school, you are under constant supervision. However at night, most people tend to fall asleep right? And thus, the night becomes your biggest friend.

There's the sex, drugs and drinking that make up the reasons for you to stay up, sneak out and turn into a menace to society. But also, there's something else. You're in control, you're doing what you want, nobody is telling you what to do! And so that's why you go out, you go to the parties, drink rum with the boys on the oval, smoke pot at the shack, get laid in the school hall, and cause havoc in other dorms. You're in control.

So story time. There was this one night, a Tuesday if I remember correctly. I had gone to bed, head pleasantly buzzing due to certain chemicals stimulating the CB1 and CB2 receptors in my brain, and I had pleasingly embraced the tender arms of slumber. 

That was until about midnight, when a mate (we'll call him G), came and roused me, tempting my sleepy brain with pilfered rum, beer, vodka and leafy greens. Of course, being the level-headed fellow I was, I promptly jumped out of bed in order to sate my curiosity regarding the whereabouts of more.

Soon enough, the source was revealed. A group of my good friends had pilfered several cartons of alcoholic beverages from somewhere (the location shall remain nameless), and had promptly decided that a half built house on the cross country track, located immediately adjacent to the school grounds, was the place best suited to consume these. In addition, another friend had made a trip in order to pick up some "leafy greens" (if you know what I mean).

And so eventually, a semi-large cohort of friends were there. These included: "G", "Yeah Man", "The Bird", "Eli", "Andy", "Jaw" and myself. In time, "The Chaser" joined us, upon returning to the dormitory after a late night sex session and finding me absent from my room. If memory serves me correctly, the night consisted of us getting catastrophically intoxicated, notoriously weird and just generally rowdy. With the group consuming well over 6 cartons of alcohol and fifty dollars worth of high-grade leafy greens, a complication must be imminent, right?

You betcha.

Around four o'clock in the morning, G was overcome by intoxication. On the newly laid carpet in a half-built house, his body decided it was time to reject the contents of his stomach (which had a pretty, fluorescent red tint to it, the aftermath of one to many red Vodka Cruisers. Obviously he needed a good night's sleep if he was to be awake and ready to go to school in four hours, so The Chaser and Andy were commissioned to take him to bed, while the rest of us went our separate ways, our night quietly drawn to an end.

Overall, much fun was had, and the week after was spent completing a rigorous community service program, getting rid of the leftover alcohol in the most efficient manner, if you know what I mean. 

What this is really about.

I don’t really know why I started this blog, or what it’s about...  I guess I want to tell my story. To be honest, I’m kind of a bit confused where to start. I mean, the most logical place to start would be to be at the beginning, right? Maybe when I first stepped foot in boarding school, and walked in to the double room and laid my eyes in the raised bed and desk underneath, coupled with a cupboard? It’s hard to explain that feeling when you first walk in. It’s like... a sudden realisation. A sudden realisation that wow, this is your new home. Your parents weren’t bullshitting – they really would send you to boarding school if you fucked up again. Then they leave, and give you your goodbyes. You can hear your dad talking to you, trying to give you some advice on living away from home, but you aren’t listening because you can see your mum crying behind her sunglasses. You know she’s trying to stay strong so that you’re not embarrassed, but all you want to do is hug her and tell her you’re going to straighten yourself out. Because despite everything that’s happened, you’re not going to let her down again. But of course, in time you do. You fuck up again. You have to make those phone calls again and just accept the fact that you’re a fuck up. A grand fuck up, maybe, but a fuck up none the less.

So yeah, that’s what this blog is about. A fuck up. A fuck up who called a bluff and realised too soon that they sure as hell weren’t bluffing. A fuck up’s stories about fucking up. Occasionally you fuck up and get caught, but hey, live and learn.

Just try not to fuck up.

Life is a storm my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, and be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man, is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout,"Do your worst, for I shall do mine."