Exerpts from Epitaph of A Madman...
“Never Surrender” took me down a road I haven’t been down in a very long time. I remember that I wanted to have some input into our high school prom, because as far as I was concerned, this was a monumental occasion.
If you would have asked me three years earlier if I was going to make it across the stage to accept my high school diploma I most likely would have said “no way”. At that point in my life, I wasn’t sure of anything. I wasn’t sure of who I was, what I stood for, if I was smart or a raging idiot, or if I would even make it that far.
My moods were already playing havoc with my life.. I can remember not being able to sleep night after night because my head just would not stop. I didn’t know what it was, and I just sort of learned to live with it. My attendance at school was marginal for the whole four years I was at Sackville High, and there didn’t seem to be anyone who could sympathize with my situation, so I just learned to live with it.
So when the graduation committee was formed, I joined with the hope that someone would at least recognize the absolute fight that I had faught over the years leading up to graduation, and would take my side in choosing my then anthom of courage and persistence. But nobody did. It was voted down by a landslide. And with that vote, I decided that nobody, not my friends, my peers, my family, nobody, understood the hellfire that I had been subjected to for the last four years.
I left the committee to their song.. .some kind of nonsense that I can’t even remember anymore. But, very recently, it dawned on me. How could I expect them to know about anything that I was going through. For a very long time, I thought that what went on in my household went on everywhere. Massive drinking, near drug overdoses, days of virtually no food, no support from parents or siblings; how could these people understand why I thought that high school was about a fight for your life?
The fact that most of the students and friends that I hung with had relatively normal families, with parents who were capable of caring openly about their children just wasn’t resident in my mind until very recently. I guess it just made me feel better thinking that everyone was in the same boat as myself. I had an audience on graduation day. My mother and my sister were in the audience and made a fuss went I went across the stage to get my diploma.
I knew that I was given that piece of paper not based on what I did while I was in high school, but on the potential that my teachers saw in me. I didn’t know it then, but I know now that all of my teachers were well aware of my home situation. Files travel from one school to the other, and my sometimes over the top behavior was probably accredited to my obvious lack of parental influence in my life. I would miss days at a time, miss important tests, miss just about anything that was “mandatory”, but I never had to push anyone for a rewrite, extra time on assignment, and I was never questioned as to my whereabouts during days missed.
It’s like all of my teachers were in the know. I was never disrespectful to anyone unless they were disrespectful to me. That’s just how it played out. Graduation came with a great sense of accomplishment for me. My life was volatile, and though I’m sure I was given a much longer rope to choke myself with, I never did. I stayed afloat, and for that, I am proud.
Exerpts from Epitaph of A Madman...
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