Born Different (21 page)

“Oh pull the
other one Gabe. She, out of all of them, is
nothing
like
us,” said Frank with such an evil tone in his voice.

Gabe didn’t
even know why he was down here. The love had flipped to hatred.
What Gabe felt for his friends now was more like disgust than
compassion. The feeling he had being here with them, was making him
feel sick to the pit of his stomach.

They could say
all they liked about Grace but something about that night had told
him that there was something there, something special. But perhaps
that was just wishful thinking on Gabe’s part. Was he just acting
like some obsessive who believed that the object of his desire
liked him back? Like one of those crazy stalkers that you hear
about that stalk the beautiful and famous women thinking,
preposterously, that they loved them back. That’s probably more
what he had, some sort of warped vision of the whole thing.

Gabe felt like
his barriers were coming up against her again now. He didn’t want
to be seen as some sort of head case. He didn’t want to be anymore
humiliated. One huge personal rejection was just about all he could
take this month.

Gabe tried to
refocus. He just had to finish up his sculpture, show his work at
The Exhibition, pray that someone noticed him, maybe sell some
paintings online, maybe do a part time degree, get a job, earn some
money for him and his mum. Get out into the real world and grow up
a bit. Maybe go travelling in a couple of years and get away from
it all. Get away from all this, all this that was just bullshit. Go
to that place he had always imagined existed.

Gabe thought
about his mum. Would she be ok, when and if, he left? Would she
miss him, would she cope? Gabe, for the first time, started seeing
things in a new light. His mother had never had any relationships
as far as he was aware, no one in her life, and was that because of
him? If he left and was responsible and gave her some of her
freedom back then maybe she would find someone; when she didn’t
have to care or worry about him anymore. He was holding her back
from living her life to the full. She needed someone to love apart
from him. He had to grow up. He had to get on with things, maybe
ask another girl out, stay out of the house. Show his mum that he
was independent now. Everything was changing. If one door closes
another one opens. If Grace never spoke to him again, he had to get
on with it. Live his life, move forward, head towards a better
future. Pull himself together. What were the other choices? Turn
into a sad little man, all twisted and deformed, drinking to get
through life, isolated forever? Or what? Kill himself now and have
done with it? Gabe had to concentrate on his art. It was his only
possible road out to freedom.

“Fuck the lot
of you!” Gabe swiped a bottle of vodka out of the plastic bag that
was lying sideways on the ground. He left them sat there and he
didn’t turn back, not even when he got to the exit to see if he
could picture them all as strangers because Gabe realised that they
already were.

Gabe was
already half way home when he accepted that they weren’t following
him. They didn’t care. They would have only run after him if he’d
taken all the booze. They didn’t give a fuck. Gabe felt the relief
wash over him like someone had pushed a stress release button. His
body and limbs felt lighter and his chest, which had been puffed
out high, released the static air and Gabe felt weak. He had cut
the stings of the puppeteers and now he just felt like a boneless
rag doll. They were gone now and now he had no one.

“Might as well
kill yourself now and have done with it,” a voice said in his head,
so crystal clear and compellingly that Gabe heard the voice from
outside of himself and turned to look who had said it. But of
course there was no one there. But that thought, the thought of it
all coming to an abrupt end, sent another wave of relief and
release through him and if anything, made him feel much more
stronger.

There was
always a way out. Frank knew it, Dave knew it; they all knew it.
There was drink and there were drugs and they made you feel better,
if only for a little bit. Then there was cutting yourself...that
was a relief. But the ultimate relief from all this pain was so
simple it was classic and hadn’t many of the heroes gone the same
way? Suicide! Gabe had always thought of suicide as somewhat gory,
sad and tragic. Selfish even. But from that split second
revelation, he now realised that sometimes, it was the only
way.

Life could get
too difficult, too hard. There was sometimes no way out, when all
the doors had been slammed and locked shut. When the burning desire
was sometimes too small and too far away, to ever think that you
could make it. And sometimes, that light was just extinguished.

Gabe felt that
the light burning inside him was extinguished now. Off. Dark.
Something within him had died.

When Gabe got
home the signs were not good. All the lights were off and the TV
was on but with the volume turned down low. Gabe’s heart sank even
further as he stepped through into the lounge. He knew before he
had even seen what was there, he knew what he would find and he
braced himself on instinct. But he was still not prepared.

It had been a
while, longer than usual. She had been doing so well for a few
years now but it had obviously struck again and he hadn’t even seen
it coming this time. He’d been so wrapped up in his own life, his
own problems.

Gabe sat down
on the sofa next to his mum, who was still in her dressing gown.
Not dressed, not in her office, not in the kitchen cooking or
reading. Not out pottering in the garden or even looking out the
kitchen window towards the horizon like Gabe noticed she usually
did quite a lot.

“You ok
mum?”

“Yeah, I’m
alright darling.” His mum tried half-heartedly to raise a
smile.

“Is it
back?”

“Hmm…yes…I
think so. The old black dog...the cloud. More like a bloody great,
big black, storm cloud. I’m so sorry Gabe.”

“Don’t be sorry
mum. It’s not your fault.”

“But I feel
like it is. And why now, right now. What with your exhibition and
all that stuff with Grace and also your father. We haven’t talked
in such a long time Gabe.”

‘”It’s ok mum
really. Let’s just get you well eh? It’s just an exhibition and
that’s all finished as much as it’s ever going to be finished. If I
carry on painting now I’ll probably just ruin it, so best just
leave it. I just need to get it all down to school. I don’t even
have to go mum, really. Is there anything I can get you?” Gabe
realised that there was no way now of getting it all down to the
school if he didn’t have any friends to help him, it wouldn’t fit
in his mum’s car... He’d have to hire a van, he still had some
money left. It was achievable.

“No Gabe,
thanks, I don’t need anything, except perhaps a magic wand?”

“Yes, I think I
could do with one of them too, I’ve seen the odd one or two lying
around over the years. Shall I go and have a look? Cup of tea?”
Gabe laid a hand on his mum’s knee. He stood up and disappeared
into the kitchen.

“Thanks Gabe,
you’re a good boy you know.” Despite her mood, Gina brightened a
little at her son’s humour.

Gabe didn’t
feel like a good boy, he felt like he was, must be, kind of bad.
That everything that happened to him was some kind of punishment
for something.

Gabe tried to
think things through but the more he thought, the more confused he
got.

“People just
want to be listened to and feel loved, respected and appreciated,”
Gina rambled a bit from the sofa and Gabe wondered if he had been
thinking out loud.

“That sounds
simple,” Gabe replied and then couldn’t help adding and then
regretting, “If that’s the case, why isn’t everyone happy?”

“Human nature,”
his mother said sounding defeated. “The heart, the mind. It is all
human nature. We can’t help it, my darling. Ah, the complexity of
human emotions and relationships. It is the rich tapestry of
life.”

Gabe thought
about it all and realised that if everyone was happy all the time,
would it just get on his nerves? If people were happy, would a
depth of passion be lost? Passion is love and loss, pleasure and
pain. Passion is the full spectrum from one end to the other.
Passion is the extreme.

The human
instinct of wanting more and the ingrained dissatisfaction with
what was received might just be one of the propellers of invention,
of advancement, of evolution.

Did Gabe not
use his own suffering as a platform for the art he painted? How
would anyone know happiness if they didn’t know sorrow? How would
you know delicious if you didn’t know bland?

People lived
their lives in the pursuit of an ever alluding and completely
unattainable state of constant happiness and fulfilment. In hope.
Maybe peace and happiness were allusive for that very reason; for
the strive, for the continuation, for the survival. Suffering for
not achieving the desired level of goals set, might be one of the
fundamental basic facts of human evolution. Create and evolve or be
extinguished.

Gabe wondered
how the human species would evolve next. All have wings perhaps?
And he involuntary laughed out loud, he was clearly going insane
with all the stress.

Gabe thought
that there was enough in life to be sorrowful about, to grieve over
without all the added stress of people being horrible to each
other, with being hostile and unfriendly. It could be a lot better
world in so many ways, if people just lived with nature rather than
against it for a start.

Gabe felt a bit
stupid now for taking the vodka, he didn’t even want it. He
unscrewed the lid and took a sniff of it, foul stuff and he poured
the whole bottle down the sink and as the clear liquid ran out Gabe
thought it was like a washing away, a symbolic gesture of cutting
his friends out of his life for good. Like a little funeral. With
an inch of vodka left in the bottle Gabe downed the rest and would
have liked to have thrown the bottle across the kitchen in a final
flamboyant gesture, but he just put it in the recycling like a good
boy. Gabe read the headline of the newspaper on the kitchen top as
he waited for the tea to brew. One in every three women on anti
depressants. His mum wasn’t the only one, everyone was depressed it
seemed. For all they had, for all the information, for all the
consumer choices, for all the people that could be having
meaningful interactions with each other; everyone just wanted to
clock out of the experience that was their life.

And why didn’t
they
change? If they were depressed, then why didn’t they
move, change job, change relationship, change whatever it was that
was getting to them. Why didn’t he? Because of fear. The fear of
taking the leap of faith that a dream might come true was more than
the fear of now. Weighing up the pros and cons, it was better to be
grateful for what you had, to suffer, to wait and secretly hope
that it got painful enough to force you, or that some knight in
shining armour would hand it to you. That it would just happen like
a miracle. Than to just go out there and try and grab your dreams
and live by your own ideals like your heart yearned for.

But Gabe had
had enough. It had got painful enough. It had got unbearable.

One way or
other, Gabe was going to have to jump.

Looking across
to his mum, she looked so sad, devastated and heart broken and he
would have given anything just to see her better again. He needed
to ring the doctor. The modern world was making her ill but he
needed the modern world to get her better again. He was as
brainwashed as the next person, Gabe knew that. brainwashing was
everywhere and it was completely impossible not to get caught in
its spin cycle.

Gabe sat down
next to Gina on the sofa and gave her a cup of tea.

“I don’t know
mum, I really don’t know.”

“No, me neither
Gabe. Sometimes I think I’ve really got something, grasped it. That
I have reached an understanding, only for it to slip through
again.”

Gina didn’t
know if she believed in herself or anything anymore.

As Gabe stroked
his mum’s hair, he thought that the world seemed to have gone mad.
Overloaded with greed, with consumerism, with stuff to eat, wear,
drink, watch, buy, do and know. It was making some people somewhere
very rich but it was making the masses ill. Gabe wondered if they
would ever wake up to it. And if they didn’t? There was nothing he
could do about that. It had to be enough for him to know, to act in
accordance to this knowledge. For him to look for answers and seek
truths. To go and live with nature and be healthy and be surrounded
by loving friends. But, at the same time, Gabe couldn’t think of
any way of going about this other than by being really rich. Being
rich seemed like the only way out of the misery. The only way out
would be to have lots of money and to buy yourself out of it. Gabe
could only buy a tropical island to live on if he was the richest
man in the world.
This
was the trap and a huge one at that.
It seemed to cost a huge amount of money to be free.

Gabe drank his
sweet tea and he thought of Grace. He thought that Grace was the
only perfect thing and he imagined that her mum didn’t suffer. They
had money. They had everything that they wanted. They had a perfect
daughter and they had holidays and new cars and designer clothes.
They could afford anything they wanted so that they never needed
for anything, they could afford to go and be with nature and do
nothing for a few weeks, do nothing for the rest of their lives if
they wanted to no doubt. They could afford freedoms. Gabe couldn’t
give his mum any of that.

Gina didn’t
want any of that.