Finding Your True North E-Book

Thomas A. Russell

• Herausgeber: RWG Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

One in four students is bullied every day. Fourteen-year-old Charlie has suffered repeatedly from other kids making fun of him. Add to that the fact that he lives in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father who constantly berates him, and it makes for a life of low self-worth. So he decides to escape his misery by running away. Thinking that it will solve all of his problems, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery in the small town of Tanner, while learning life-changing, soul-searching lessons from the residents.
 

Leseprobe

FINDING YOUR TRUE NORTH

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A Bullied Teen’s Journey of Hope

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Thomas A. Russell

Finding Your True North

Copyright © 2014, Thomas A. Russell

Contact Thomas A. Russell at:

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Afterword

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all who are oppressed, especially young adults, who feel they have no place to go when they are bullied. To combat the paralyzing fear of this needless humiliation is to empower yourself, and never permit anyone to take your dignity from you. That’s the message I hope this book conveys.

Acknowledgements

The genesis of this book came from several people who have and continue to inspire me. Seth, thank you for providing me with the opportunity to impact so many students over the years. You have shown me by example how we can lead young adults to become champions of their own destinies.

Bryant, thank you for leading me in the right direction with your indomitable spirit and unbridled enthusiasm. The moment anyone meets you they realize they have met someone special.

Justin, you are a true mentor to me, always pushing me to be better than I am; reminding me with passionate unfiltered advice that mediocrity is the enemy of excellence.

Lastly, in this group of incredible people, I acknowledge you, Tiffani. You embody everything we teach. You’ve managed to overcome your struggles courageously over the years to find your way in the world. You have become a true model of success. I am anxious to see all you will accomplish in the future.

In addition, thank you Aunt Margie. You always encouraged me to pursue my dreams, even when I felt I wasn’t good enough to accomplish them. You never gave up on me. That goes for my family and friends as well. Most notably is my cousin, Zach, who is an aspiring singer/songwriter.

Zach, you of all people know the obstacles one encounters when pursuing a dream. Despite naysayers who suggested you weren’t good enough for the big time, you have forged ahead with fierce determination to succeed. I have watched your journey become a reality. Your unwavering conviction has shown me I can accomplish great things as well, if I didn’t give up.

When I was younger, I was touted as the next great novelist, but I never believed that. Even after several years as an editor of a national publication, though my family and friends did, I never saw myself as anything special.

Karren my dear wife, thank you! You deserve the most credit for any success I will ever achieve. You are my staunchest supporter. Many times I've asked you to read what I have written, which I thought were literary masterpieces. You have an uncanny ability to see the forest for the trees, and make what I've written much better. Thank you so much for keeping my feet on the ground, allowing me to become a better writer, and more importantly, a better husband. Mere words cannot express my love for you.

Chapter One

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Bam! Bam!

Charlie knew that sound very well. From his basement bedroom, he knew that sound meant nothing but trouble. With every violent slam of the kitchen cabinet door sent chills through his body and made him wince with fear. What it meant was his father, in a fit of unbridled rage, was unleashing his anger on yet another inanimate object.  

“What’s wrong with that kid? “ Charlie heard his father screaming at his mother. “How many times do I have to get a call from the school telling me how another kid bullied him? I didn’t raise him to be a coward.”

“You need to keep your voice lower, Jim,” Charlie heard his mother meekly saying to his father. “Charlie doesn’t need to hear you screaming about him.”

“I don’t care what he hears.” By now Charlie ventured a guess that his father had consumed his share of liquid courage. “When I was his age, I had no problem taking care of myself. If anybody thought they were going to bully me, the only thing they were going to see was the business end of my fist.”

Charlie slipped uneasily off his bed and sat at the bottom of the stairs.  He clenched his hands together and bent his head down in shame. He focused on the bottom step where a small hole had developed. All he could think about was how badly he wanted to make himself small enough to crawl into it and get lost in his own world. It was days like these any world would do.

But as it was most days, he had to suffer the consequences of his father’s wrath. His only refuge was his bedroom, such that it was.

As bedrooms go, it would have been perfect for a bachelor in a low-rent apartment. But Charlie wasn’t renting; it was his home. His bedroom was a banishment of sorts. He had to sleep on a hand-me-down bed that his older brother finally gave up, with a mattress that would have had better use in a fire pit.  In the corner was an old oak chair, with the stuffing coming out of the turquoise seat. The desk his father gave him was one that he brought home from work at the lumber yard. It would have been appreciated if weren’t for the fact that the desk was the original one the owner had 55 years ago. Knife marks scattered across the desk with unwinnable tic-tac-toe games made it difficult for Charlie to do any homework.

The lamp his father found at a Goodwill store would have been a great light for him, had the lampshade not been pockmarked with cigarette burns, and the cord not looked like it had been chewed by some ravenous rat.

The black and white television his father so generously gave him would have been just fine, but he refused to set up cable downstairs, so Charlie was relegated to watching old “I Love Lucy,” and “Andy Griffith Show,” reruns on the local channels.

The bathroom was a little cubby hole his father slapped together. Half the time, the toilet clogged up, where every toilet flush brought a new challenge. The sink his father put in was rust-stained. That wasn’t so bad, Charlie accepted, but it left a pungent odor that was hard to deal with. The bathtub, devoid of a functioning shower, was so small the best way for him to clean himself was to bend his knees and lie on his back. Harry Potter had some dire living quarters, but his digs would have been a definite step up to Charlie’s bedroom.

Sleeping soundly was impossible most nights, because when the furnace kicked in, it sounded as if a pack of squirrels was trying to scratch and claw their way out. 

His older brother, Jimmy Jr., always seemed to get the nicer things from his father. When he needed a bed, his father bought a brand new one. When he needed shoes, his father gave him the money to get the newest Air Jordans, expensive enough to feed a third world family of four for a week. In essence, Junior was a chip off the old block, which included soaking down the suds on a regular basis, just like his father. Oddly enough, Junior was equally afraid of his father during his drunken rampages, but somehow he escaped his father's wrath.

Charlie felt so desperately despondent. Every time he opened the door to go downstairs, it felt like he was entering a black hole. He felt so disconnected from his family. His self-worth meant nothing to his father. All the other kids were able to use their bedrooms as a sanctuary from their parents. His was like a prison of inconvenience and despair.

With his hands shoveling through his hair, he kept waiting for the imminent response from his father violently swinging open the basement door and screaming vehemently with his usual slurred drunken speech. The hostile lecture would always start with, “Boy, when are you going to learn to stand up for yourself. You know when I was your age...(fill in the blank).”

“What’s he going to do when he gets into high school,” he yelled once more. “If he thinks he has it rough in middle school, it’s going to be twice as worse. They’re going to make him a laughing stock. He’ll come home all the time with bruises on his body from bullies shoving him against the lockers. He’ll come home with torn underwear from all the wedgies he’ll get. The physical toll will be bad enough but he’s going to have to endure all the verbal abuse like he is in middle school. I swear, Evelyn, Junior never had to deal with that.”

Charlie railed in quiet anger. Junior was the epitome of the gene pool gone wrong. His DNA was structured to show that someone could achieve moderate success by being the consummate charmer. His self-proclaimed mantra was to fool people into thinking that his level of mediocrity was something to be admired. Do as little as possible, but gain notoriety while doing it. Best of both worlds. And Charlie resented him so much for it.

“That’s because he has always been involved in sports, Jim,” Evelyn countered. “Charlie has never been the kind of kid who was interested in sports. That’s fine with me. At least he has found something important, like being involved with the Boy Scouts. Why can’t you celebrate that? Why can’t you accept the fact that Charlie is different from Jimmy?”

“And look where that has gotten him,” Jim said. “He’s still being bullied by his classmates. When I was a kid....”

“James Evan Davis, I am so tired of you bringing up how you were the king of the hill in school,” she screamed. “All you do is talk about all the great things that have happened to you in the past. Yes, I know you were the star quarterback in high school, homecoming king, and Big Man on Campus. But never mind the fact that throughout all your fame, you immersed yourself in alcohol so much you were considered the school drunk. You think nobody talked behind your back?”

Charlie beamed, feeling vindicated that his mother was on his side. That’s not unusual, because she was always the person he turned to for support. He was definitely a Mama’s boy, almost by default. But he also knew that to call his father the family drunk was cause for severe consequences. She was fighting a losing battle.

“Don’t you dare talk to me about my drinking,” Jim yelled back. “So what if I like to have a beer every now and then. I work hard for this family. Who do you think is responsible for putting the roof over our heads? Who is responsible for putting food on the table? Or the clothes on our backs? Do you ever take that under consideration? I know our kids don’t appreciate what I do for them. And to make matters worse, I have to deal with picking up the pieces by having to deal with that sniveling little kid.”

“That kid you’re cutting to shreds is your son, Jim,” she said, beginning to cry. “You don’t think they’re afraid of you when you get drunk? Why do you think they rarely come out of their bedrooms when you’re drinking? They’re scared of you. I’ve never seen you lay a hand on them, but let me tell you, verbal abuse is just as bad, if not worse. I watch when you go on one of your tirades. Charlie retreats. He just wants to crawl into a hole and never come out. How do you think that makes him feel?”

“If he had any guts, he’d stand up to me,” his father said, his anger barely subsiding.

Bam!

Charlie wondered how long it was going to take before the cabinet door was going to fall off its hinges. It actually was a little bit comical, Charlie thought. He knew that if his father ever saw a videotape of one of his rants, the family would get a reprieve every once in a while. But since that was not going to happen any time soon, the family would have to continue to suffer from his drunken rage over and over again.

How much more could he take? It was bad enough for him, but he felt sorry for his mother, because she allowed herself to be the buffer between the kids. His father always seemed to have a knack of coming an inch within physically abusing everybody in the family. He would raise his fist as if he was going to slap a face, but at the last moment his hand would go down to his side. He at least had the wherewithal to reign in his anger. The problem was he made up for it with his mouth. You just never knew what vile things would slip through his mouth.

Charlie’s only salvation was his local library. Locust Grove, Georgia was your typical small town, with a population of over 5,000. There was enough to do there for kids to get in trouble, but Charlie always chose the library to retreat to. Every chance he got he would spend as much time as he could away from home.

He wanted to understand why his father was so enamored with drinking all the time. He researched the effects of how alcohol breaks the family down to its core. From what he read on the internet about alcoholism, the family’s dynamic is one of divergent dysfunction. Some handled it differently, but ultimately the burden lands on the family members who do not drink.

The more someone drinks, Charlie read, the more the tolerance level increases. The problem is the alcoholic doesn’t recognize that he or she is drinking more. He remembers when he was younger that what started as a couple six packs of beer turned in a couple cases per week. And they all seemed to disappear in about the same amount of time.

He also read that 43% of US adult citizens have been exposed to alcoholism. 28 million are children of alcoholics, while 11 million of those are children under 18 years of age.

Even with all that knowledge, it didn’t make the hurt go away for Charlie. He was just another statistic mired in misery. Most of the memories of his father are of him with a 12-ounce can of pure evil, a seemingly natural extension of his hand.

Yet, there was always cause for hope. On rare occasions of sobriety, his father had shown compassion and love for his family. When he was five, Charlie remembered fondly how his father taught him how to ride his bike without the training wheels for the first time. Wobbling back and forth aimlessly, he negotiated around the block in his neighborhood, while his father encouraged him all along the way, inspiring him to keep pedaling until he couldn’t pedal anymore.

He recalled how his father once saw an elderly woman struggling mightily with her walker down a sidewalk. He proceeded to grasp her hand tightly, as he held on to her walker until they reached the house.

He remembered watching him grab his mother’s hand tenderly while walking into the grocery store, and smiling when they would swing their arms back and forth like little kids.

Where was that man, Charlie wondered? How could someone so caring revert into someone whose rage reverberated almost daily? What did they do to deserve it? He had to wonder if there was a correlation to him not standing up for himself to the bullies and his father’s increased consumption of alcohol. He had to think hard to remember a day when he was sober. Something, particularly in the past month, must have triggered him to drink like there was no tomorrow. As it stood, however, any thoughts of cracking the inebriated veneer of his father of today was seemingly a lost cause.

Crash! This was new.

“Jim,” his mother screamed, jarring him from his daydream of mostly fond recollections. “It’s bad enough you slam the doors, but now you’re breaking our plates. Don’t you think you’re going a bit too far?”

No answer. Just complete silence. That really scared Charlie. His father generally would counter with an immediate diatribe about whatever was on his mind. His goal in any confrontation was to win the battle first and then conquer and obliterate his opponent enough to have them kneel in total submission. For him, winning the war of any argument was tantamount over anything else. He reveled in it.

Charlie leapt from his sitting position, thinking his father was about to do some physical harm to his mother. But as he was doing that, his foot slipped precariously inside the hole of the last step. Trying to catch himself by grasping the bannister with his right hand, he failed to successfully catch himself before he fell backwards.

Like a B-movie scene where the camera pans in slow motion from the point of view of the victim, he saw the ceiling of the basement pass by. He noticed a pencil embedded in the pock-marked tiles as his head snapped back. With his arms flailing wildly, he attempted to scream, but nothing escaped his lips. His last thought before his head collided with his bed frame was of his father doing real harm to his mother, and he could do absolutely nothing about it.

As he was fading into blackness, he could hear Celine Dion singing goodbye to her mother on the radio.

Chapter Two

A hot white vision unfolded as Charlie slowly opened his eyes. Blinking rapidly, he tried to focus on that imbedded pencil in the ceiling. All he could think of was how that pencil got up there in the first place. He remembered the night when, in frustration because of being accosted by a student earlier in the day, he came to a boiling point. Looking at the pencil he was grasping at the time, he flung it upward in anger.

A searing pain began to overcome his senses, as blood trickled down the back of his head. He reached behind him to see how much damage he had done to himself.  He then rubbed his forehead with his bloody hand, creating a streaking mask that trickled down his cheek. Sitting there shaking his head, trying to clear the cobwebs that enveloped his brain, he looked around to see if anything was amiss. He wondered if his parents would pull themselves away from their “discussion” and investigate the sound of him falling.

“How stupid was that?” Charlie mumbled under his breath, almost embarrassed at his clumsiness.

Rubbing the back of his head, he felt a disturbing knot developing. “It’s not a tumah,” he mused, remembering the movie he saw the night before when Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to an obnoxious student in “Kindergarten Cop.”

He tried to listen for any commotion upstairs in the kitchen, but he heard nothing. He guessed he must have been out for a while. Could they not hear the tumble and the resulting collision? Were they so involved with their argument that they didn’t even care if he hurt himself?

He hesitated going upstairs again, mainly because he would have to explain the knot on his head and the blood dripping down his face. But he had to overlook his trepidation because he was concerned about his mother’s welfare.

Bypassing the step that swallowed him up the first time, he tentatively followed his way upstairs. Each step created a squeaking sound. “Crud,” he said, “Dad will know I’m coming up now.”

After climbing the stairs, he opened the basement door, causing an intrusive creaking noise.  He winced again, knowing his father was bound to hear that. Fear overcame him once more. He imagined any second the door would fling open and his father would be there staring at him with his drunken bloodshot eyes.  It had gotten to the point that one wrong look, one stuttering comment from his lips, would incite more rage from his father. It just didn’t make any sense.

Fortune was on his side, however, as he looked around and saw nobody in the kitchen. There were still shards of plate shrapnel on the floor. He hadn’t imagined that. He grabbed the broom and dust pan, and as quietly as he could, he shoveled the remaining pieces inside. He had to wonder why his mother didn’t even bother to sweep up the mess.

“Mom?” he whispered, hoping that she had decided to stay up while his father collapsed in a drunken stupor. There was nobody there. It was probably a good thing, since his bloody head looked like someone had attacked him with a machete.

He was grateful for being alone. Pulling the kitchen table chair out carefully, he sat down and rubbed his head once again gingerly. “Man, dad would kill me if I damaged the stairs,” he said, smiling woefully.  It was pretty sad, he thought, that his father would be more concerned about the stairs than his own personal welfare.

He sat there recollecting how his parents began their argument in the first place. Charlie knew his father didn’t seem to care that he was the school punching bag. Every day he walked through the doors, he knew his day was going to include a barrage of hazing. He always wondered what it would have been like as a normal student, being able to concentrate on academics and enjoy some healthy social interaction with other students.  

As it was, the sick feeling he had climbing the steps to Woodrow Wilson Middle School was of complete dread. Though he somehow managed to get decent grades, it still affected how he interacted in the classroom. He usually found himself withdrawing in all his classes, trying not to draw attention to himself. The more that happened, the more he was ridiculed. That day was no different than any other day.

Approaching his locker that morning, he noticed in his periphery his biggest antagonist, Freddie Parsons, skulking ominously towards him. Championing his self-proclaimed status as “The Enforcer,” Freddie stood head and shoulders over most of the other students. Weighing in at a robust 200 pounds and topping out at a giant-like six-feet, he ambled about with his rotund frame as if he was the king of the school, and his classmates were his minions. He sported a razor thin crew cut that made him look all the more foreboding. Rarely did a smile escape his lips, mainly because his teeth were embarrassingly askew. Most of the time, he wore tattered clothes that smelled as if his family’s wash cycle was set on a monthly and not daily schedule.

“Looky, looky,” Freddie said, “If it isn’t the little weasel.”

Thud!

Charlie felt a bruising forearm slamming his shoulder, causing him to slam his chest into his locker. Though the crash against the lockers created a searing pain to his chest, he made no attempt to show Freddie any evidence of the obvious discomfort. That’s what Freddie always looked for in his victims—complete and total submission. He wanted to make every person he accosted bow down to his will.

A rare crooked smile formed on Freddie’s face.

“Why do you even come to school, loser,” Freddie chided, folding his arms mockingly. “You know every day you’re going to get blasted. Yet here you are again allowing me to pound you. You’re either a glutton for punishment or just plain stupid. Frankly, I think you’re both.”

Charlie refused to answer because he knew based on past experience that whenever he tried to fight back, another fist would find its way on his body. Freddie, being the crafty bully, made it a point not to hit anybody in the face because that would show the teachers evidence. The best way, it seemed, was to inflict a brutal body shot that would show no signs of attack.

Charlie’s gaze averted wisely from Freddie’s glare.

“You know what, you’re a pathetic loser,” Freddie said, raising his hand, feigning another winding blow. “You’re just a worthless piece of trash.” And then the verbal barrage, just like clockwork. Charlie knew that after the physical abuse subsided, Freddie would conclude by finding a way to make Charlie feel like an actual worthless piece of trash. Usually, it worked.

Admittedly, he understood the way he looked and dressed made him fodder for folly. Where many of his classmates took great delight in wearing the latest fashions of the day, Charlie made it a point to stand out by his non-description. Baggy jeans, worn out t-shirts and shredded Keds were the norm for him. But the one thing he had going against him that he had absolutely no control over was his unusually large nose. The standard fare of jokes invariably followed like this from his other tormentors:

“You give Pinocchio competition.”

“When is the swelling going to go down?”

“Your nose is so big, it needs its own zip code.”

And the coup de grace. “Isn’t it funny how your nose comes into the room five minutes before you do?”

Outwardly, Charlie would occasionally join in with the chorus of laughter, but inwardly it ripped him to shreds. He often wondered if the tables were turned, and all the other kids had to suffer the indignities of being blasted nearly every day, how they would react. But as it was, he felt like he was on an island by himself, with no means of friendly or family support. He even resorted to putting a sheet of parchment paper on the bathroom medicine cabinet just so he wouldn’t have to look at his “hideous” face.

Even though he felt justified with his self-pity, he couldn’t possibly imagine what one of his classmates, Melissa Benes, had to go through.

The mere thought of her name brought sadness to Charlie. He had always had a little school boy crush on her all the way back to elementary school. But he could never get the nerve to strike up a conversation of any substance with her. A passing “hello” or “nice weather we’re having,” (even during a torrential downpour) was all he could muster.

Nonetheless, Melissa was attractive in her own simple way. She usually put her platinum blonde hair in pigtails, allowing the strands to bounce back and forth as she walked. Her entrancing blue eyes caused Charlie’s heart to beat faster whenever she walked by him. She never dressed like a fashionista like her fellow classmates, but no matter what she wore she always seemed to carry herself with an assured confidence.

Much like Charlie’s deceiving demeanor, however, it turned out Melissa carried her own secret disabling baggage. He could never understand why, even during the squelching heat of late spring, she always wore long sleeve shirts. That was never lost on her antagonists, as they peppered her with unflattering jibes.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been easy for Charlie to befriend Melissa, especially since they were card-carrying members of “The Bullied Brigade.” But Charlie was so ensconced in his own personal predicament, he couldn’t muster up the courage to give her any single word of encouragement. It turned out any amount of conversation with her could have changed the outcome of her destiny.

On one particular fateful day several months before, one of the female students whispered to another that she saw Melissa undressing in the locker room before gym class. She said she saw long red slicing marks on both of her arms. Charlie was well versed enough in childhood problems to know that she was a cutter. Cutters, Charlie once read at the library when he researched the subject, obsess about slicing up their body to mask the outward pain they feel. Once they mark their body, it temporarily relieves the anxiety they feel. The problem is, the solution doesn’t last, and they continue to do it over and over. It pained him deeply to know that Melissa had to resort to self-mutilation to cope with her problems.

Yet, he never said anything. Not one single encouraging word. It turned out that maybe if he had followed up a feeble, “hello” with a “how are you doing today, Melissa?” she might still be walking the halls of the school.

Instead, he had to languish in the news of her untimely death the past winter. During one of her many episodes of cutting herself, whether she did it accidentally or on purpose, she viscously sliced up both of her wrists. Her parents found her in a pool of blood next to a laptop in her room.

What he heard through the grapevine was that apparently her parents viewed Melissa’s Facebook page and discovered several disparaging posts about her. He fully understood the ramifications of cyber bullying, but to actually see the results of those actions made his blood boil. She had so much potential. He couldn’t quite figure out how someone who excelled in the classroom could throw it all away.  

But appearances proved to be deceiving.

In his grief, he got his answer. He remembered a story he once heard that put everything in perspective.

He heard about a kid who was walking home from school one day. Stumbling on the sidewalk, he dropped his books and began to cry. Another kid across the street witnessed it and came over to help him pick his books up and wondered why a kid would cry dropping his books. Both of them recognized each other, since they were in the same grade together, but neither of them had ever talked. So, instead of parting ways, they both struck up a conversation until they reached his house. From that day forward they were inseparable, developing a lasting friendship through middle school and then all the way through high school.

Years later, during graduation ceremonies, the kid who dropped his books way back in middle school stood on the podium, celebrating the distinct honor of being the valedictorian of the school. Instead of imparting the usual, “The-world-is-your-oyster, what-are-you-going-to-do-to-grab-it?” speech, he revealed his shocking story to the crowd.

“I’m going to be completely honest with all of you,” the student said, being very solemn. “I shouldn’t be standing here today talking with you. It’s not because I didn’t earn my way up here; I did. I worked hard for this day. I’m here because of one certain individual who decided to help me pick up my books after I dropped them on the ground way back in my middle school days. That may seem like some inconsequential thing to most of you. But you see, that day I had decided to commit suicide when I got home. That day, I was fed up with life, because I wasn’t doing well in school, and my classmates made fun of me all the time. That day, I had absolutely no will to live. In general, my life sucked.