LIFE AMONG HUMANS

A life of fear and selfloathing transformed by the power of a classic film, Brokeback Mountain.

It’s late 2013, I’m sitting in a pub, having a beer and chatting with a friend. For most people this is pretty normal but for me it’s a monumental achievement. As I write these words, the gravity of my previous social isolation hits me. I caught myself referring to other people as “humans”. If they were human, what did that make me?

Okay, let me back up. My childhood was pretty average. A typical, happy suburban life. I knew I was gay when I was seven. Correction, I knew the sky was blue, grass was green and boys were cute but I didn’t have a word for it yet. I didn’t even know it was something people could hate you for. Until 1995 when I started high school. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want to get AIDS,” a classmate sneered at me. Of course, not all of my bulling was homophobic in nature, but whatever the reason, it was unrelenting and horrible. Then things got even worse when a teacher started singling me out for humiliation.

I’d come home from school every day and cry my pillow damp. Mornings were terrifying. I’d just want to stay in the warm security of my bed and pretend school didn’t exist. I was depressed and turned to junk food for comfort. Perversely, I hated myself for being overweight. I started avoiding school as much as possible. I missed a few days, a week turned into a month. Eventually, after only one term, I left mainstream school to begin home schooling.

By 1997 I had no friends and would only leave the house for day outings with my parents. Increasingly, I’d feel anxious around people, painfully conscious of my overweight body. I vividly remember one warm summer day when I wore a raincoat to a shopping centre. The only goal in my mind was to hide my fat from the world because I feared being judged and humiliated. It never crossed my mind that my attire would attract more attention than def lect it.

In 1999 my family and I spent Christmas and New Year in Bendigo, a country town north of Melbourne. By this time I was already facing extreme anxiety about leaving my house. It had been about a month since I had last gone out.

The holiday was awful. Whenever I was among people I felt compelled to hide myself, run from the cruel gaze I felt on me. Every single man on the street seemed like an Adonis compared to me. I’d assume any laughter from passing cars would be about me. The whole world was laughing at how ugly and worthless I was.

After we got home I simply stopped going out. I stayed in the confines of my house, at once a hellish prison and comforting abode, trying to find an elusive happiness in all the food I ate.

By 2011 I started having serious health problems. I was dizzy and nauseous all the time. One time I experienced continuous heart palpitations for two days. By the second night

“I stayed in the confines of my house, at once a

hellish prison and comforting abode, trying to find an elusive happiness in all the food I ate.”

I was terrified my heart was about to fail. I considered calling an ambulance but my anxiety wouldn’t let me. I just couldn’t face people. I attempted to go to sleep but lying down only accentuated the thudding in my chest. A level of distress unknown to me took over my body and I began convulsing. I had reached my breaking point. I asked my mother to call an ambulance.

The paramedics were certain I wasn’t having a heart attack but, just to be safe, they decided to take me to hospital. The ride in the ambulance was lovely. Watching the lamp-lit midnight streets pass by was just beautiful. I hadn’t been for a night drive in many years. The delightful paramedic, with his English accent, made silly jokes amid the medical jargon he was speaking, successfully putting me at ease.

All up I was in the hospital for six hours. They performed a number of tests and couldn’t find anything wrong with me. My weight was not brought up as a possibility. At dawn I travelled home in a taxi, having to hold my seatbelt the whole way because I was too fat for it to buckle.

When I woke in the afternoon a heavy sense of loneliness crushed me. I collapsed to the f loor of the toilet and quietly sobbed. I considered calling Lifeline, not because I felt suicidal but because I craved more human contact, even by phone. Despite staying at the hospital only brief ly I felt a deep sense of loss and separation from the people there.

Weeks went by and my health problems continued. Out of frustration I decided to get a second opinion from a doctor. The waiting room was extremely crowded. I felt every eyeball on me, judging every f labby inch of me. This time it didn’t feel like it was just in my head, people really were staring at me.

When I got home I undressed and took a photo of myself. I wanted to see what they were seeing. I knew I was overweight, sure, but I wasn’t that bad, was I? When I looked at my photo I was shell-shocked. I literally gasped and my whole world fell apart. What I saw was incomprehensible. I wasn’t just overweight, I was the poster boy for morbid obesity.

Days of self-loathing followed. Everything was much worse than I had thought. I felt completely hopeless. In the middle of that week I was watching a movie and eating chips. The y were horrible and yet I continued to put them in my mouth. It was easy to deceive myself that my comfort eating was okay because the food made me happy, but these chips were terrible and yet I couldn’t stop eating them. That was it. This is crazy, I thought.

I decided I had to eat healthier and start to exercise. I wanted to change my life and only I could do it. I was energised, motivated and unstoppable! For all of a month. Then I just went back to how things were. Until January 2012. I was browsing an online DVD store and saw they had Brokeback Mountain on sale for $6. What a bargain! I felt guilty that I hadn’t seen it, like I was somehow letting down my team, sort of like a Jewish person who hadn’t seen Schindler’s List or something. So I bought it on a whim.

I honestly never expected a film to affect me so utterly. I love movies. Over the years I’ve had a lot of free time to watch them. And I am quite sentimental, so a film making me cry is not unusual but a movie had never devastated me

before. I would break into tears every day, more than a week after my first viewing. Sometimes I could get lost in my tears for over an hour. Ennis and Jack’s budding friendship, blossoming into passionate love, was the experience most out of reach to me and the one I craved the most intensely. But the element that hit home the strongest was the palpable fear of living with regret. Powerfully and painfully, I realised that if I didn’t change my life I would die having not lived the life I wanted to lead.

The film was the final kick up the bottom I needed to truly motivate me. I changed my diet completely. Out went the chips and pizzas and in came fruits and vegetables. I started doing aerobics videos I found on YouTube. At first I could only manage a 15-minute workout designed for elderly people but I kept at it and didn’t stop. As I got fitter I found harder workouts.

I started exercising because I had to but I continued because I wanted to. I discovered I actually enjoying exercise! I steadily dropped a kilo a week and by July 2013 I had lost 80 kilos.

Earlier that year, in February, I dipped under 100kg for the first time in many years, just in time for my 30th birthday. I was so pumped! In a rush of confidence I proudly declared that I wanted to take a family holiday to Bendigo. My parents were shocked. My aunty’s birthday was in August – a visit would be perfect. It also felt right considering Bendigo was the last place I went out all those years ago.

But as the months ticked on I still wasn’t leaving my house. Even though the weight loss had given me so much confidence, old habits were hard to break. August arrived and I was fretting. Honestly, I didn’t want to go. But the train tickets had been purchased, the accommodation booked. My family were so proud of me, I didn’t want to cause any trouble for them or let them down. I decided to try to endure it as best as I could.

The train journey was nice, until more people got on. Rather stupidly I thought a train that left at 6am would be almost empty; I hadn’t considered all the working commuters and school kids that would eventually get aboard. Quickly the train got packed. My heart started racing. I knew it was only a matter of time before people would occupy the empty seats surrounding me. When two guys sat down across and beside me I internally panicked. But then I stopped and thought, “If they’re sitting next to me maybe I’m not so terrible.” I began to relax. I could smell the toothpaste on the breath of the guy sitting across from me. This level of intimacy to another human being was exhilarating for me. The wallpaper on my phone was a picture of the Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard, a long-time crush of mine. I immediately became self-conscious of this and changed the wallpaper to an innocuous landscape. For the first time, I was consciously aware of being a homosexual around strangers.

The following two days in Bendigo were amazing. I became increasingly comfortable around people. Of course it wasn’t as simple as that. Once home I started work with a psychologist and progressed slowly but surely. I realised that every time I stepped out of my comfort zone, as hard as it was, I got stronger from the experience.

My enjoyment of exercise has lead me to joining a touch Aussie Rules team. I just completed a 15km fun run. I’m going out to clubs, bars, movies, galleries. Soon I’ll begin a remedial massage course. Everything that once was unimaginable to me is now in reach. Well, almost everything. Dating is the next adventure that awaits me. But until then, Frank has taken pride of place on my phone again.

For the first time in many years I can say without reservation that I love myself, that I am proud of myself and that I am happy to be alive. I’m just having a ball living among the humans.