Going back to my dorm always gave me the chills, because I never knew what was going to happen on the 27 and a half minute walk between the Chem lab and the dorm. Normally nothing ever happens I can take my time and go home. But it’s been getting worse and they’re starting to get my schedule down to where I have to look 360 degrees at all times and start to pick up my pace. Every day I walk faster and faster, the time has cut from 27 and a half to 16 minutes and 23 seconds. Sometimes I start to run, just because I never know how far behind me they are.

I plowed through the front door panting; my roommate comes to my aid and asks me what happened. “They were so close, they were yelling at me, COME BACK YOU PU**Y!!!” My roommate, Kyle, tells me it will be ok and goes back to watching TV. After drinking almost a gallon of water, I went over to the TV and ask Kyle if I could change the channel. Flipping through the channels I ask Kyle, “You cool with The Incredibles, it’s the only good thing on?”
“Yeah that’s fine; I’m about ready to go to bed anyways.”


As I watched the movie, I really started to try and think about how each character is important to the movie. Also I was looking for how each character improved upon themselves for the better. The movie went on and the one character that really stood out to me was Violet, the lonely girl that wanted to be noticed by that “guy”. I constantly kept asking myself, what did she do to get him to notice her? Then BAM!! It hit me; she became a badass and fought against evil and changed her look afterwards because she had the confidence to do so. I wonder what would happen if I were to do that, what could I do that would get me noticed, how do I stop the bad from happening?

I spent hours trying to think of other ways to get them to stop – I knew that fighting back could work but I don’t think I want to go through all that pain just to get noticed— I needed more time. After pulling an all-nighter pacing my room thinking and thinking, nothing other than fighting back sounded like a good idea.

It was January 26th and it finally happened, I’m being followed by the same people that have been all year. They catch up and talk smack to me. “Hey nerd, how you doing today huh? Aww are you scared? You better be because if you’re not, I’ll break your face off”
“Shut the f*** up! You adolescent piece of s***.”
“Who do you think you are nerd? You must have grown a big pair of balls to say that to me.”
I’ve never been so mad in my life, I felt it burning inside me, I felt like I was about to explode. “AAAAHHHHH F YOUU!!” I punched him right in mouth; he plopped right to the ground. I didn’t think I punched him that hard because I didn’t really feel it, but I didn’t care I wanted to do it again. I jumped on him and kept going, left, right, left, right. With each punch I still couldn’t feel anything.

He yells at his buddies to help him and get me off of him. So full of rage I went off on them too. BOOM, I get nailed in the stomach, but again I didn’t feel anything. Once all three of them are all on their feet they charged. Two of them grabbed me and kept me still the other stood in front of me with smirk on his face. “You thought this would work didn’t you? Well guess what, now you’re gonna get. You know what to do guys, break it, break his f*ing arm!”
I hear my arm snap, but I don’t do anything. I stand there and smirked at him, I couldn’t feel it. My arm was broken and I couldn’t feel it, not a single ounce of pain was going through my body. All three of them start to back away. “Your crazy man, how are you not in pain right not?”
“I don’t know, but what I do know is that you guys should be on your way before someone shows up.”

After the night in the hospital I decided to do some research on what it is when you don’t feel pain, assuming that’s what I had. It’s called congenital analgesia, and apparently I’ve had it all my life, I just never was in a situation where I would have felt pain.

When I was at my classes people started to come up to me and ask me what happened, and I gave them some B.S story about how I feel off my bike because I didn’t want them to know I got in a fight, not yet anyways. After my arm healed I felt this urge to do it again, it made me feel so alive and it also got people to notice me.

I started to become more aggressive, mean, rude, assertive, and all those other bad adjectives to describe someone. I started to fight a different guy every weekend, but it wasn’t enough, not as many people like me as much as I thought were going to. I needed more; I went around campus asking everyone if they knew someone who would want to fight me? There were so many guys that wanted a go at me. But I didn’t care; I had a fight every other day and didn’t care. I couldn’t feel the beating and people started to come see me fight because they were amazed as too how much of a beating I could take, and still end up winning.

My life completely changed, I had a posy and they thought I was the coolest person. We walked around like we were top s***, because we were. No one wanted to mess with us because they knew who I was and they knew they couldn’t beat me.

It was getting towards the end of the year and I wanted to go out big. I wanted the fight that the people would love to watch, the fight that would make me the most feared badass on campus. Days go by as I try to figure out who that final person is going to be. “Who in this school is going to be the one? I’m thinking someone on the hockey team, but who? Kevin Mathews! He’s perfect, he’s a total psycho, and is the senior caption of the team.”

My posy and I start to go to the hockey practices right as there about to end and wait for Kevin. He knows that we’re fallowing him but thinks that we’re just a bunch of stupid juniors that don’t know what they’re doing. He stops, turns around and asks us “What do you guys think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean? Were just walking home, just like you.”
“No you’re not, I’m not that stupid. What do you want from me?”
“Nothing”
“Okay, well go away before you really start to creep me out.” We left him alone, but continued to bug him for the next week. He eventually got to the point where he wanted to rip our faces off, but he knew he couldn’t because he didn’t want to ruin things for his graduation.

I was so close to getting the fight that I’ve yearning for. Just a couple more notches and Kevin was going to snap. I kept at it, fallowing him, being a pest, knowing it wouldn’t be much longer. “Will you f*ing stop your annoying the s*** out of me!”
“I don’t know what you mean Kev; I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“Well go be friendly somewhere else, your pissing me off!”
“No I’m good.” That did it that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He dropped his book and sprinted at me, full of rage.

We go back and forward, I punch, he punches, we keep going and neither of us want to go down. He starts to get an edge on me because I start to run out of stamina. With no energy I go down, he does what I did in my first fight. Get on me and pounds my head, right, left, lifts up my head and slams it on to the concrete. Blood rushes out of my skull, I try to fight back by kneeing him in quad, the punch him in the kidney. I’m not sure how much he’s done to me because I can’t feel anything. I don’t know when to stop. He regains his composure and brings his right fist high in the air, tightens his face and the rest of the muscles in his body to deliver his blow.

I wake up in the hospital, with my family around me and can only hear the beeping of the heart rate monitor. My mom sees that I woke up and calls for a nurse right away. “How long have I been here?”
“It’s been about 16 hours Hun.”
“What happened?”
“You were fighting this kid named Kevin and he made you blackout.” I had no recollection of this happening. The nurse brings my doctor in with her, “Hey there Josh, how are you feeling?” “Okay, I guess.”
“Alright well we ran some tests on you while you were asleep and we have some bad news.”
“What! Whats wrong with me?”
“Well from all the blows to the head you have had some memory loss from the last couple of days. And it seems that you might have some slight mental disabilities as well.”
“Mental disabilities? What do you mean?”
“I mean that you might not be able to learn as well as you used too.”
“I still get to go to school right? I only have one year left.”
“I’m going to have to say no to school, your brain damage is just too severe for you to risk going back to school.”
“Son I think it’s the best decision okay. You should do what the doctor tells you.”
“Listen Josh I am really sorry but you’re going to have to drop out of school not matter what. And you’re going to most likely have to live with your parents for a while.”
“I can’t do that! I can’t go back to that life again.”
“Josh you’re going to live with me end of discussion.”