Year 13 Bayfield High School
I have lived in this home for many years.
It is not a physical home, so to speak, instead a place where reality is limitless. Where no ideas are considered stupid. Where someone’s voice — my voice — speaks loudest.
For years, I have lived in a home held up by walls of words and cornerstones of possibilities. For years, I have lived in writing.
It should be obvious I mean creative writing. Most people can write words, but people often underestimate how powerful a few words can be. They have the power to destroy people, to end someone.
They are the reason someone hurts themselves and takes those steps towards death, embracing it until they are death.
But they also have the power to move people, to make them understand.
Through them, people are left stunned, realising how lucky they are upon seeing the awareness raised about certain things that aren’t talked about enough — such as men’s mental health.
Through them, people raise awareness of their own.
That’s power, for writing is powerful. It probably drew me in that way, sugar-coating itself to a young child before taking off that mask years later and revealing a beautiful thing fueled by strength.
Over the years, that thing has kept firm in its belief that when you can’t express yourself enough, or at all, through spoken words, let written words do the job for you. Let it take over the world. Show these people what you can do. Prove to them that they’ve underestimated the power tied to your fingers like puppet strings woven from blood.
It’s a good type of power, I suppose.
It gives me the chance to control something, to lead in a way I can’t, and am not given the chance to, in real life.
I may be part of the blended background in the waking world, but here? In this home? I am the conductor, and the orchestra are characters playing instruments constructed from the finest sins and tragedies.
The pieces played may not require all of them at once, but each musician in that circle has a story hidden behind their expressionless faces, and they count on me to tell the world.
They count
on me.
It’s been a hard place to reside, to pay rent for — mainly due to the challenges this home keeps presenting me. But there is no better place for me to be, in both metaphorical and literal contexts.
When you are passionate about something, nothing tears apart your passion that easily. Even if this home grows to have issues over the years, which is only to be expected when homes age, I will keep my head under its roof.
It doesn’t matter how many masked people pound on its doors and windows; it doesn’t matter how many voices dripping with contempt and hatred scream and crash into this home in the form of wind, waiting for the chance to collapse something, anything; it doesn’t matter how many snide comments rain on to this roof and cause the pipes to cry — I will repair the damage with even more works of writing.
Sure, it might be a pain to deal with in the meantime, but I push on. I push on and on and on, working my bones to dust.
Those people know what they’re doing, yet still they choose to do it. So it’s on them, not me.
They’ll be the ones hanging their heads in shame. They’ll be the ones karma chooses to consume. Head high and continue, this home pleads. We’ll show them one day.
I have lived in this home for many years, and it
belongs
to me.
