Bring Me To 1D (One Direction fan fiction)

From Chubster To Freak

FROM CHUBSTER TO FREAK

ANNA - AUSTRALIA

As I walked down the corridor connecting the two main school buildings, I put my head down, held tightly to the strap of the school bag on my shoulder and braced myself. I already knew what was coming, I’d seen Lizzie Taylor and her cronies coming towards me and I knew they’d spotted me.

“Freak.”

Then came the heavy thud of a hard punch in my stomach. As I doubled over, totally winded, pain shooting up my side, I heard the laughter that always accompanied each attack trailing off into the distance.

Holding my side and forcing myself upright I limped to the toilet doors. Pushing them open, I stumbled into the first cubicle, bolted the door and sat on the toilet seat hugging my arms around my waist and rocking back and forth until the pain started to ease. This place was my one haven. Funny to think that a stinky school toilet could turn out to be one of your favourite places on earth, but it was. It was one of the only places I could hide in School and I did so several times a day.

I guess anyone else would probably cry right at that moment, but not me. The tears had stopped flowing long ago, probably about a year after the bullying started. I was hardened. Now I was just an empty shell and empty shells don’t feel pain, physical or mental.

The first time I was bullied was in Primary School. I still had a fair bit of puppy fat and if there’s one thing that gets you noticed in a bad way, it’s being chubby. Lizzie Taylor used to corner me against a wall at every opportunity. She’d shout, “She must have a pillow under there! She can’t really be that fat.” She would keep up the chants until a decent crowd had formed, then she’d pull up my school shirt and everyone would cheer and laugh at my little pot belly. That’s when the punching started, she would aim her hardest blow right at my stomach leaving me struggling to catch my breath.

When I found out that Lizzie was due to go to the same High School as me, I begged my Mum to let me audition for Queensland’s Academy of Music and the Arts. It was one of the best performing arts schools in the whole of Australia and I felt pretty confident I would get in because I could already play the guitar and the piano really well, I wrote my own songs and I had a really good singing voice. At that stage I still had the confidence to perform and sing in public and I was told by everyone who heard me that I was a special talent.

Two days before my audition, I was out shopping with my Mum. She went to get some money from the cashpoint and the machine swallowed up her card. We tried to call Dad on his cell phone but the line was dead. He never came home. We didn’t ever found out exactly why but the fact that he’d taken a lot of his clothes and cleaned out their joint bank account left us to assume that he didn’t want to be with us anymore. Maybe he had taken off with another woman to start a new life somewhere else. Well, who cares about the reason, it doesn’t matter really, the fact is he had totally abandoned us.

From that day onwards Mum was broken. She spiralled into a massive depression, so bad that it was as much as she could do to get up out of bed each morning and get her four kids fed and out to school. Some days she didn’t even manage that. Sometimes she would stay in bed for days on end. Whenever her door was closed we knew she was in a bad way and we quickly learned how to get ourselves ready and arrange to get a lift from parents of other kids at our school. I realised then that there was no way I could have asked her to drive an extra hour each day just to take me to a separate school, it wasn’t fair. So that day I ripped up my audition letter and prepared myself for another few years of hell at high school. And hell it was from the minute I enrolled.

Within a few months, Lizzie Taylor had turned the whole of my school year against me. I only went to a couple of classes, the rest of my time was spent either hiding out in the toilets or down at the beach in a little cove that was hidden from view from the other beach goers and the surfers. I’d write songs down there, The Gold Coast was a beautiful place. The sea, the horizon stretching out in the distance and the quiet of the beautiful inlet nestled into the rocks gave me amazing inspiration for song writing. I wrote the lyrics on paper and created the tune in my head. I never practised out loud until I was in the safety of my bedroom. I hadn’t sung a note in public since I started at high school. I didn’t see that I ever would again, my confidence had abandoned me well and truly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a weak person, in fact I’m very strong. It takes someone tough to ride out that amount of abuse and not cave in. my mental strength was such that after I started at high school, I began to control every single morsel of food I ate. After a few months, I’d not only lost the puppy fat, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on my entire body. Clothes hung off me and as I grew taller, my skinny frame became more and more noticeable.

With the extra weight gone, you’d think that all my problems would be over wouldn’t you? But if here’s one thing about bullies, they’re very adaptable. As soon as I lost a substantial amount of weight, they called me “skeleton features.” I started wearing long black jumpers, I’d wear black clothes in general to hide my figure, so then they shouted “Goth freak!” as I passed them. It was a battle I could never win and I’d given up trying. I started wearing black eyeliner and DM boots. If I was destined to be different, I thought I might as well do it properly!

I guess you could say my only escape in the world was through music. I had a bottle of pills in my hand once. I’d gotten to the point where I felt like there was nothing left to live for. I was going to wait until everyone had gone to sleep and then I was going to take them. While I was sat on my bed waiting, I wrote a song. It was called ‘Stay Gold’.

Seize upon that moment long ago
One breath away and there you will be
So young and carefree
Again you will see
That place in time...stay gold..

I sang it over and over that night, tears streaming down my face. The more I sang, the more the lyrics touched me and I actually started to feel like I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. I woke up the next morning, the unopened pills on my bedside table, my guitar across my chest. Music is a powerful thing.

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