The Opposite of Normal, Andrew Boggan [brene brown rising strong .TXT] 📗

Sydney that we both decided to form a relationship. Even tho I had relationships in the past, this felt different, probably because of his age and life experience. I knew that I was making a good decision and that I had to follow through with that.

By April of 2002; me, Bruce, Shane, Terry, Tasha and Kelly had formed a weekly tradition. We headed off to the Sportsman’s Hotel every Wednesday night for karaoke. Even tho none of us would actually sing, we just simply enjoyed each other’s company and watching a bunch of people who thought they had real talent get up and sing.

On one of our many nights at karaoke I made another friend named Glen. Meeting new people and forming new relationships began to evolve quite naturally even tho I didn’t think about how to form new friendships. Glen, who was one year older than me was always the life of the party. He always had a blast with his friends by having a few drinks and playing pool, nights in front of the TV pigging out on pizza and trips to the beach. This part of my life was having such a profound positive impact on my life that for such a long period, I had forgotten how I used to see the world in a negative light.

In my social circles; I had Bruce as a loving and dearing partner, Glen had become my close friend who I did everything with and of course there was Shane, Terry, Tasha and Kelly. By this time I had developed enough friendships with people that I didn’t need to look anymore for a new friend. If ever things went wrong in my life or I got incredibly upset I always had somebody that I could turn too. It’s never too late in anybody’s life to develop these sorts of close relationships but my only wish was that I had these people as my friends back in the dark dismal days of high school. None the less I was truly grateful for what I had at this point in my life.

My parents seemed to have had a special place in their hearts for Bruce and Glen. Probably because they filled my life happiness and pure enjoyment. Me, Mum, Glen and Bruce all headed off to the Booval Bowls Club for a game of Bingo one Friday night. How amazing it was to have my mother, partner and close friend all sitting at one table playing bingo, joking and enjoying one another’s company. During my days at high school I never could have imagined that I would have relationships to this level of intensity. My friends and partner knew that I displayed odd and peculiar traits of behavior but they didn’t seem to care.

After the game of Bingo, we dropped my mother off at home and I, Bruce and Glen headed into the sportsman’s hotel to drink and dance. Around the corner from our watering hole was a cute little night club called “Options”. It never really attracted a large crowd but we always headed over there for $2 pots of beer. For us with limited cash it was always a cheap way to party and get drunk. Heading to Options night club became another of our many traditions and eventually we felt that we ended up owning the dance floor. Glen had always been such a heavy drinker; he brought me what was called a “shot”. I trusted Glen so I knew that he wouldn’t have been giving me anything I couldn’t handle so I drank it. After the first shot then came another, then another, and another. There many times when me and Glen sat around to blatantly get drunk. During the entire time I shared valuable friendships with these people, never once did I ever feel out of place or uncomfortable in a bar or club, probably because I had too many people around me to not even notice.

Bruce was always a very good listener. Whenever I came home from uni stressed about assignments or stressed from work I could sit down and tell him everything that had happened. He seemed to be able to connect into my world and understand the issues that caused me grief. Bruce knew in great depth about my fear of vomiting. He was well aware that I was absolutely petrified of being sick and he did whatever it toke to help me stay calm when I came into contact with people who were ill. Because the fear seemed to rule part of my life, Bruce had come up with a secret plan to help me get over my fear.

Without my knowledge, he kept a bottle of expired orange juice in the fridge. During breakfast of one morning I served him a glass, not knowing the juice was several weeks past its use by date. Luckily for me I didn’t drink orange juice, just coffee first thing in the morning. Bruce had drunk the orange juice and made himself violently ill for most of the morning, he had been vomiting for several hours. During this time I’ll never forget the pins and needles that jabbed into my skin from the fear of what was happening. Bruce tried several times to hold me down and make me watch him be sick in order to force me get over my fear. Little did he know that he was just fueling the fire and this was no way for me to get help in getting over my fear

I was so angry with him for what he did to me. In such a high level state of emotion I yelled at him explaining that you just simply couldn’t do that. No matter what I tried Bruce wouldn’t budge and he firmly believed he was doing the right thing.

From that moment on I had to tell Bruce something about myself that he never knew. I informed him about Asperger’s Syndrome, and whilst he had no knowledge on the subject he was willing to learn as much about as he could. We both decided it would be of great benefit for both of us, and our relationship to go and see a professional at the Queensland Autism Society. There he would be able to gain professional advice about my condition and learn how to handle certain situations. I truly believed I was doing the right thing by letting him know what I had. If he acquired an in depth knowledge of my condition then we would be able to work together on issues that affected our relationship.

Whilst Bruce did gain a good understanding of Asperger’s Syndrome, I don’t think he fully knew the extent as to how it affected my life. Either that, our perceptions as to how we both saw the condition was completely different.

Although there were a number of issues in our relationship that needed questioning and discussion, we seemed to have shared something that was rather special and unique, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. 6 months in to our relationship there seemed to be much routine and structure within both of our lives. Bruce’s training business had really taken off and he had been busy 6 days a week delivering training whilst I was studying at University, working 2 jobs plus assisting Bruce where I could in doing the bookkeeping for the business. It was at this point that things became very settled and I turned somewhat complacent into the relationship, as did he.

In mid August of 2002 Bruce delivered a 2 day first aid course within the house we were living in. 6 people were attending the training which was to take place over a Saturday and Sunday. The night before the course was to commence at home I had been feeling extremely unwell. Every joint in my body was aching severely and I came down with a shocking fever. Around 11pm I had jumped into the shower prior to getting into bed. Although I had the warm water running, it wasn’t enough to put a stop to the awful bone chilling cold snap that I could I feel in my body. It even got to the point where I had nothing running in the shower but the hot tap. When the illness first started I couldn’t talk to Bruce that night because he had been getting things ready for the training. I jumped out of the hot steamy shower and went straight to bed.

I woke up on the Saturday morning and as I got out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen, Bruce was on a 10 minute break from delivering his training. He was looking at me bewildered by the terrible purple rash that covered my body from head to toe. I had no appetite that morning and I asked him if he could cancel the training or reschedule it so that he could run me to the doctor. He just simply said no and walked away.

I made myself a cup of coffee and reverted back to the bedroom so that I could just relax and focus on trying to feel better within a few hours. 3 hours had passed and I seemed to have gotten worse. A terrible headache was splitting my head in two and the rash across my body was getting deeper in color. I could feel my body sinking lower by the minute and I think I had to be rushed to the hospital for urgent medical attention.

“Bruce” I whispered from the back corner of the training room. He looked up and saw me standing at the end of the room and knew that I needed his attention for a few short minutes. He came running over and questioned what I was doing by interrupting his training. “I really need to get to the hospital, can you take me please” I muttered whilst I held my arms across my stomach. Instantly he declined and told me to just go and rest, and then he headed back to his training. I couldn’t help but feel that I might have been coming down with meningococcal given the onset of the rash and stiff neck.

I stood in the middle of his living room beginning to cry. I couldn’t call my parents because they lived too far on the other side of town and my sister who lived near by didn’t drive. I was left with no other choice but to call an ambulance. Eventually the ambulance came rushing into the driveway, prepared me with the oxygen machine and drove me to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Whilst the paramedic’s had been attending to me, Bruce kept on delivering his training even tho he knew his boyfriend was getting urgent medical attention.

I was taken straight through to emergency once I arrived at the hospital and a doctor had quickly seen me. Thankfully I did not have meningococcal, I had been diagnosed with German measles. Once the rash had appeared the worst of the illness had passed and I was advised to go home and rest for at least a week. Once I had finished in the emergency I was free to go and although I wasn’t able to contact Bruce to see if he could come and get me from the hospital, I hailed for a taxi to get me home.

The training had eventually finished up at 5.30pm on that cold winter Saturday afternoon and Bruce had came into the bedroom where I was recovering to check on my progress. I told him I had measles and that I just had to stay in bed. He didn’t seem that fussed when I told him what I had. He went on about his business as usual. I perceived this as if he