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

flat in Surry Hills and found a stable job working as a Customer Service Officer for a training college in Broadway. It didn’t take me too long to get somewhat stable in a new life in Sydney. All that had been missing was the circle of friends that I shared in Brisbane. None the less I was sure that would eventually come in good time.

Living with Robbie and Christian appeared to be somewhat interesting. Robbie suffered from Dyslexia and had great difficulty in reading and writing and Christian had been very sick living with HIV. I was always careful when living with them due to Christian’s illness.

(Alec and the ACON circle of friend’s part to go here)

Christian, like me had been a very heavy smoker, yet his reason for smoking was not because of addiction but more because it reduced the pain of his illness, or so he claimed. And to make matters worse, Christian’s addiction to smoking grass I thought was highly disturbing, and offensive. Although this had not been my choice to smoke grass, there was no possible way I could tell him what he was doing was wrong.

Living with Robbie and Christian started out as a place I could call home. Although it was very cramped, the 3 of us shared a one bedroom unit in the middle of Surrey Hills south of Sydney. Due to the high cost of living in Sydney I was forced to sleep on the couch in the living room.

Being flat mates, there were certain things we all did together. We made sure that every Thursday night after work we drove to the Marrickville Metro to do our grocery shopping and every Saturday afternoon we sat out on the balcony enjoying the afternoon summer breeze over a bottle of white wine. As hard as it was to move to Sydney, things were beginning to turn around for the better. I had a stable job with a training company, I had a circle of friends and great flat mates. There really wasn’t anything else that I could ask for in terms of moving to another city. All that was left for me to do was find the right person to live with as I could stay with Robbie and Christian forever. Their place was just way too cramped.

After a month of being settled in their home, Christian began to become very distant with me. The unit was small and he began to treat me as if I didn’t exist. I didn’t quite know what was going on. I figured that we had been living in each other’s pocket for too long and perhaps I was started to wear out my welcome. If that was the case he certainly didn’t tell me and I was no mind reader to be able to pick that up either.

One morning when I was getting ready for work, Robbie was out in the kitchen making coffee and I asked him what had gone wrong with me and Christian and I tried to obtain some sort of reason why he began distancing himself from me. “Christian reckons you’re a freeloader” I was pretty shocked but couldn’t work out why. I was paying my share of the rent on a weekly basis; I was contributing to the weekly food bill and paid part of the electricity bill so I certainly had contributed my share of living with the guys.

Christian’s actions spoke louder than words when his true colors began to shine through. I guess having Asperger’s Syndrome is that when people’s actions do speak louder than words, you tend to miss the real message and you carry on as if nothing is wrong. The Asperger might say “well I’m not a mind reader” but the Non-Asperger in this case is probably thinking your dumb as well as stupid.

One late Friday afternoon when I finished work, I headed straight for home. I had plans to get home, shower, get changed and head to Oxford Street to meet some colleagues of mine for dinner and drinks. As I went to pull my clothes out, several pairs of my jeans had massive burn marks in them and some of clothes had been scattered all across the balcony. At first I wasn’t quite sure what to think, until Robbie walked in the door and told me what happened. Robbie had tried to hold Christian back his temper apparently had flared out of control like wild fire and he went around burning my clothes and throwing some of them off the balcony into the park next to the apartment block.

Standing there like a dumb mullet trying to process “why”, Robbie mentioned that Christian was very angry and upset with me because of being a freeloader. I still couldn’t fathom why or how he got the opinion I was a freeloader. I always made certain I did what I could to contribute to the “so-called” happy living arrangement. Robbie knew where I was coming from and he said to me that he thought Christian was more jealous of the friendship Robbie and I shared, not really being a freeloader.

His sudden change behavior had completely taken me by surprise. I didn’t understand that if Christian had issues with anything, why he didn’t raise them with me rather than damaging my personal property. I knew something had to be done and that I had to get out of the unit sooner or later otherwise there would have been hell to pay.

When I came back from dinner that night, I checked my mobile phone which I put on charge prior to going out. I looked at the phone and found it wasn’t working, so I opened it up to check the sim card, it turned out Christian had gotten a pen and scribbled all over my sim card so that it would damage the phone, now I was without the ability to call home the old panic attacks began to set it. I didn’t know what I could now or where I could go. All of a sudden the outlook of my life in Sydney began to look extremely grim. As usual, sweats and a terrible heart race began to kick in and the only option I could think of to get out of emergency situation was to move back home.

The next day I ran down to the local phone box to call home. I couldn’t in touch with my parents so I called my ex, Bruce. Of all people in the world I have no idea why I called him. He was the first person that came to mind for me to call someone back home and ask for help. After all that had happened between me and Bruce I couldn’t work out why I called him in an emergency and not one of my other friends or even my sister. None the less Bruce was more than happy to help out and he booked me a ticket on the next train back to Brisbane. Once I got confirmation from him that the ticket had been purchased and I was heading home, my new life that I started to make for myself in Sydney had come to an end and I was heading back home to the place where the dark violent memories of high school and endless beatings were once again.

I didn’t tell Robbie and Christian what I had planned to do. When I called Bruce that afternoon they had gone out and weren’t expected to be back for a few days. That was my opportunity to get things ready to leave. I quickly packed up my bags, ran around the unit to make sure I got everything and had one final sleepless night on the couch. The train wasn’t due to depart from Sydney Central until 5pm that Monday afternoon but I wanted to make sure that I got to the station in time before Robbie and Christian had walked in the front door. It was an overnight trip from Sydney back to Brisbane, and although the chairs on the train were extremely uncomfortable for the entire journey, I managed to sleep like a baby the entire way. I guess it was because I knew I was safe and I was going back home.

As sunrise began to break over South East Queensland a new day was setting upon me and this encouraged my brain to do some valuable thinking. I learnt one lesson from packing up and moving interstate. Home isn’t just where you eat and sleep or the character and life that exists within the city, home truly is where the heart is and for me, my home was in Brisbane where my family and friends were. I think in all honesty that if everyone I loved packed up and moved to some rural country town I would have to follow. Not because I’m dependent upon them but because they are apart of my “home” and my heart is with them, therefore I would have to follow.

The train began to travel through the southern suburbs of Brisbane. My grandparents used to own a turf farm at Algester and I would remember as a child hearing the Sydney XPT service go racing through, well I was on the train going past a home where some of my most fondest memories of my childhood were lived. Some of the landmarks began to look familiar as the train headed into the city and once I got accustomed to the feeling of seeing of everything that was so familiar I was finally glad to be home.

The train had pulled into Roma Street station after a grueling and tiresome 16 hours on the train and as I stepped off the train and headed to baggage collection my parents and Bruce seemed to have appeared out of nowhere from the crowd. My life paused and the 3 main people who had an impact on my life were there, my mother, father and Bruce.

Through Bruce’s actions of him just being there, it showed to me that he was worried about what I had gone through and he wanted to make sure that I arrived home safely. With my parents of course, well I just knew they would want to meet me at the station. Even though me and Bruce had gone through some incredibly violent episodes, his actions of just being at the station to meet me was highly uplifting and I felt wanted again.

So many questions kept on going through my head about how my new life Sydney had quickly disintegrated right before my eyes. Perhaps if I was being a freeloader at Robbie and Christians then how come they never sat me down and explained to me the situation. It could have been because they didn’t know how to communicate properly, or it could have been just because of Christian’s violent nature or it simply could have been because he really was jealous of the relationship that I did share with Robbie. I didn’t get why it all happened and so fast yet it was completely out of my control. So much for a test of strength on my character and trying to be self reliant. In a way I felt guilty to myself for having to come home and not battle it out properly and try to fix the situation on my own. At the time when I came home I wasn’t sure if I had made a good decision or a bad decision. So far the only lesson learnt was the true meaning of the word called home. Perhaps I wasn’t so self reliant and independent as first thought or that the experience of living in Sydney was just simply out