Running for Home - 39. December 26, 2021

December 26 2021

I seem to be developing a knack for catching students up late and alone whenever I have insomnia. I know I’ve only written about Daniel with regards to this, but there have been others. Mostly Daniel, though. I’m worried about him, but not worried at the same time. It’s hard to explain. The others? It’s harder to say. None of them were students in my classes so I didn’t have much to go on, and they didn’t really want to talk. I tried to show them an honest sympathy and let them know I was there if they needed me, but I also tried my best to leave them alone and not make them feel pressured to talk to someone if they’d rather not. I wouldn’t have appreciated being approached like that at their age, so I wasn’t about to force it. I probably should have been a little firmer in sending them upstairs to bed, but to be honest I didn’t really care whether they did or not. Sometimes being out of their room, away from their roommate or whatever other problems they have associated with the space is enough in and of itself. I’ve told Emma about each of them, so at least I’ve done that. Tonight, however, it was Connor that I found. After everything that’s happened with Daniel, he wasn’t just someone I could ignore or pass off onto someone else’s plate.

I had gone down to the kitchen to grab a snack and warm up some milk, hoping it would help me drift off – especially once I added some brandy and chocolate shavings to it. Connor was there, slouched on a stool at the island. I was a touch surprised for a moment - I’d forgotten he was another of the kids that had nowhere to go over the break. He’d kept out of sight pretty well the last few days but now that I thought about it, he was downstairs for a while during the gift exchange and I did see him around at dinner. Sitting by himself, actually. Huh.

I greeted Connor and received almost no response. He wasn’t eating anything, just staring off into space, as if he was only liminally conscious of the fact that I was there. Why was Connor in the kitchen if he wasn’t hungry, then? There are lots of better places to go on campus to be alone. Even Bottomless Pit Bobby didn’t hang out in the kitchen by himself unless he was stress eating. I didn’t voice that thought to Connor, however, because my eyes wandered over to the counter he’d been facing with that unchanged stare. My gaze fell upon the knife block sitting there. That realization, it chilled me to the bone.

I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve never thought of committing suicide. I have, on a number of different occasions. The first time was before I left here when I was having a particularly despondent reaction to some stupid shit with Bobby and Marie. The last time was only a few months ago, not too long after Dom left. I’ve never made an attempt, though. I always felt, always knew that suicide was cowardly. No, it’s only cowardly if you are not mentally ill. If you are suffering from depression or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, PTSD or whatever, your judgement is impaired and your emotions can be too powerful to handle. Fuck, I know that well enough. You want to commit suicide because in that moment you can’t see any other way out of the pain. You want a radical change in your life. Death is just the most extreme kind of radical change you can do, the only surefire solution to your problems. It’s hard to see beyond that when you are overwhelmed by despair.

I pulled Connor up and told him we were going for a drive. He was confused why I’d want to do that since it was already 1:30 in the morning at that point, but I insisted. He didn’t have much in him to resist, anyway. When we got to my car, he hesitated at the passenger door until I shot him a look that I have no other way of describing but to say it’s my teacher’s authoritative ‘your shit does not fly unless I say so.’ I drove around somewhat aimlessly for a while. I could tell Connor was getting more agitated as the minutes dragged on with no music, no conversation, just the endless road.

Eventually, he broke and asked me what the fuck we were doing and a bunch of other shit. I just smirked. He said that if I was fucking kidnapping him I was a dead man. I laughed at that and told him I had much better things to do with my time than kidnap the same bratty teens that I was already stuck with every day at work, a place where the boss lady was one of the world’s most powerful telepaths no less. He huffed and crossed his arms, returning to staring out the window. After a few minutes, I pulled into the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store. I told him to stay in the car and ran in to get some junk food. Fuck, that shit is expensive when you aren’t buying it at a grocery store! As if the bastards don’t already make enough money off their gas profits, they have to add an exorbitant premium to their other stuff as well. Fuck capitalism, so annoying.

When I got back to the car Connor was looking at me like I’m crazy. Which I am, I guess, but that’s neither here nor there. I shoved a couple sodas into the console drink holders and tossed a bag of sour gummies and some chips at him. I started driving again, this time heading to a spot I knew where I would try to get him to talk. It was a scenic lookout with a small area to park. Thankfully you could see what there was to see without getting out of the car because it was a pretty cold night. Connor hadn’t touched any of the junk food yet. I opened my Coke, took a swig of its sugary, acidic glory and sighed.

“Kid, let me give you some advice. If you are going to do it with knives, make sure it’s down the road not across the tracks. Also, the knives in that block totally suck. Find some sharper ones. Makes things easier if you really want it to be over.”

“What the fuck?!” he exclaimed, trying to make it look like he had no idea what I was talking about. “You’re fucking crazy, Mr. Allerdyce!”

I rolled my eyes. “So I’m Mr. Allerdyce now? Not piece of Brotherhood trash, terrorist pigfucker, or, ahem, what was that one from three weeks ago? Magneto’s faggoty fairy cunt?”

Connor winced. “Is that what this is about? Stupid names?”

I looked at him for a second and then laughed out loud.

“As if I give a fuck what you call me. No, this is about you being suicidal.”

“I’m not suicidal. You’ve got it wrong.”

I snorted. “Bullshit. No one stares at a knife block with a look like the one you had on your face without contemplating what it would feel like to have that blade slicing through your own flesh. I know enough to know that you aren’t the type that would just become a cutter.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Yeah? Well, sometimes that’s an advantage when you need someone to talk to.”

“As if I’d talk to some pervert that probably has Daniel bent over his desk twice a week.”

I clenched my jaw. It took all my willpower to not dump the can of Coke all over this shithead and then shove him out of my car to leave him there. Instead, I turned the car off, pulled my keys from the ignition and got out. I stomped over to the edge of the drop down to the valley below and sat down on one of the benches there. I pulled a bit of flame off my lighter and drew a small swirl of flame around me to keep warm because it was frigid and I’ll be damned if I’m going to freeze on account of some stupid punk pissing me off.

Jesus fucking Christ was I ever angry! Here I am trying to help this arrogant closeted piece of shit and he’s throwing this kind of bullshit around?! I was seeing red, and I needed to calm down. I needed to stay sane right now. Fuck, I hope he’s just being an asshole and this is not a rumour going around the school. Neither I nor Daniel need to deal with something as damaging as that. I’m not out to the students yet, but it’s not like I’m purposely keeping it that way. I just don’t see the point of bringing it up casually. Furthermore, once Emma and Sean decided I was running the Big Gay Talk with Bobby, I figure that I might as well do the whole community come-out right then and there: ‘Hey kids the bad-ass, smoking hot new teacher is a fudge-packer. What do you think of that, you little shits?’ But one thing I’m not, nor will ever be, is a fucking pedophile.

“Mr. Allerdyce?!”

Huh? I came back to reality and noticed that the small swirl of flames that I’d been using to keep myself warm had spread into a widening brush fire along the slope below me. Fuck! It winked out in an instant as I brought my hands to my face and wiped down. I whirled around to face him. Connor looked scared as shit. He started stammering out an apology. It took everything in my power to relax and just let him stumble through it because I wanted nothing more than to beat his ass - something that probably would have been a bad idea, given he had super strength and the fact that my powers were too dangerous to use against him unless I wanted him grievously wounded or dead.

So I clenched and unclenched my fists and listened. Connor said didn’t know what he was doing anymore, didn’t know what to say, what to think, not about anything. He said he’d seen Daniel coming to talk to me alone a number of times after the fight. He saw a rapport growing between the two of us whereas Connor had no one to look up to as a mentor, no one who gave a fuck about him. He saw Daniel starting to make new friends, new connections with people who accepted him for who he was while Connor was left behind, and it was all his own fault. Connor started to choke up a bit, his eyes glistening, but he refused to cry. He hated himself, felt so empty and worthless and he had no one to turn to for help. He had surrounded himself with a circle of ‘friends’ whose perspective was skewed and whose attitudes he’d helped poison with his own self-hating vitriol. Not a single one of them would have his back if the truth comes to light. If anything, he’d be treated even worse than Daniel for having lied to them, for hiding among them in shame.

“I’m a fucking faggot, Mr. Allerdyce, and the worst kind. The kind that wrecks other people’s lives because they can’t handle their own secret. I don’t deserve to live.”

And Connor broke down, right there in front of me. I held him, bawling into my shoulder until there were no tears left but the shudders of shame and guilt and overwhelming grief. Eventually, I got him up and back into the car. Once it had warmed up a bit I pulled out and started driving again. I talked to him about how rough coming out can be, and to try to be forgiving of himself for struggling with it. I told him about how much being scared and in the closet fucked me up when I was his age. I told him about how it contributed to me leaving the School and joining the Brotherhood after the Alkali Lake incident. I told him there were a lot of things in my past that I wish I could have handled differently, but I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t been true to myself in that way. Connor snorted at that, saying that was entirely the problem - he didn’t want to be who he was.

I asked him if he didn’t want to be gay, or if he didn’t want to be a fake. He swallowed hard. He didn’t want to be either. I asked him which of those he believed he could change. A few tears started to slide down his cheeks, but he didn’t respond. I asked him if he’d rather have love in its truest form or if he’d settle for something unfulfilling with a close friend of the opposite sex who would love him more strongly than he could ever love her back. I asked him if he could settle for having sex with someone he wasn’t attracted to, someone he had to pretend was someone else every time they fucked. I asked him what he would really gain by spending the rest of his life lying, hiding, pretending. I asked him if he had the strength to build a family and be faithful to a woman for years on end and not have lapses when he’d falter and try to cheat anonymously or have a clandestine relationship with another man. Or men. I asked him how he would deal with being caught. I asked him who would he be hurting the most by pretending. Would it just be him?

I told him he couldn’t change being gay. He couldn’t eliminate his attraction to the male body, couldn’t eliminate his desire, couldn’t help but fall in love with other men. But he could stop pretending now because the longer you pretend the harder it becomes to stop until you are forced out. Because at that point, he would lose everything - even more than the things he had given up on and lost for the sake of catering to his fears with his deception.

Connor nodded. He admitted that he’d already lost more than he could bear. He’d lost Daniel, and that hurt more than anything else. He’d do anything to turn back time, to have not freaked out about the kiss. Or, at the very least, not have been so scared that he outed Daniel so cruelly. I asked him if he was Christian and he snorted and said no. It was the influence of his asshole homophobic father - former father, anyway. Connor had been disowned, publically. What a nightmare. Anyway, his father also didn't give a shit about church. He was one of those 'Christians' that don't even really know what the Bible says and are too lazy and impatient to bother with going to a service. Connor was a jaded agnostic at best. I told Connor that it was his choice what to believe in, but that I was glad he wasn't particularly attached to any church because it would make things easier if he wasn’t fucked up by some homophobic organized religion on top of the bullshit society in general has heaped onto the LGBTQ community. I told him I was glad that he hadn’t run to a religion to help deal with his fears because that could make things worse, much worse if he chose poorly. But even without the pursuit of religion, the concept of pursuing atonement for one's wrongdoings is still useful.

I asked him if he understood what it means to seek atonement. He said he thought it meant apologizing to the person you hurt. I told him that an apology was only one possible part of an atonement, but that is usually not enough. I told him how in atonement actions speak more strongly than words. I also told him that atonement doesn’t guarantee forgiveness and it doesn’t necessarily ever have an end.

I told him how my professional writing, my opinion and perspective articles in the newspapers and magazines and blogs, about how they were part of my own process of atonement for the damage I’d done as part of the Brotherhood. I told him about how my teaching was starting to become part of that atonement as well. I told him about how it was a messy process for me because there is still a part of me that isn’t entirely convinced that my old convictions held at least some level of truth. But at the same time, the lives I’d ruined and destroyed by my actions would never come back. Their families would never be the same. The damage and setbacks I’d caused to mutant-human relations could not be healed easily, and the mess would always remain as scars on the face of humanity’s history.

But I can seek atonement, and I do. Every day, bit by bit. I don’t know if I will ever feel that I’ve finished, that I’ve done enough. It’s hard enough to atone for a sin against one individual. It’s another thing entirely to try to make atonement with the entire world. And it’s another thing entirely to try to change the world, and this time do it the right way as one small voice among many. But I have to stay strong and keep on trying. I don’t know if I will ever truly be able to bring myself to apologize to the world for what I have done, but I will atone for it until the day I die.

I don’t need forgiveness. I just want change.