After that, I became clearer and focused. The consequences were really bad but there was no stopping me. I couldn't go on hearing those voices so I had to do something about it. I had to punish them all. They were all sick, crazy, or just plain evil so they needed to stop, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was special and was given this gift for a reason. I had to get myself together first, prove to Mum I could go back to school, and not freak out. I started eating better again and I even exercised in the mornings. I did sit-ups and push-ups, right outside Mum's bedroom, so she could hear of course. After a few weeks, I was improving and on my way to starting my grand plan.
Mum even told me, 'Wow, you are looking much healthier, I'm so proud of you for taking care of yourself!'
I just nodded and continued my self-improvement act, just to get permission back to school.
Later she told me, 'Now, we can't have something like that happeni
I woke up to find a stack of books on my bedside. They were all about meditation so I opened one up to find sticky notes stuck in between chapters. I had been writing about meditation too, there was a notebook filled with notes on Buddhism and meditation but I couldn't remember writing it.So I started reading and couldn't stop. I read about spiritual, mindfulness and transendental meditation. I opened up my laptop and found that my YouTube account was filled with meditation videos and Buddhist stuff. So I started watching them. I watched them all day and continued this the following day. I read the books on my bedside and started meditation in on my bed. Soon I was writing more notes and taking less medication.I went on like this for months, meditating and studying Buddhism. I started to feel more relaxed and stopped taking my medication. I meditated every day and soon Mum was smiling at me when I ate dinner.She said, 'Wow, I'm really please
Chapter 1: Masks in the darknessBeing a mute used to be simple before all the craziness started. I just can’t talk and that’s who I am.Everyone at school and my parents knew the deal. Yes, I had my fourth assistant teacher, struggling her way next to me, trying to assist me with every thing, every step of the way. I had my Mum, constantly checking on me at home, encouraging me to do homework. I had a pretty good support in Shanghai, considering how people that are different are usually treated like dirt here. Mum was pretty much the best she could be. Shehad given up on me ever speaking long ago and we had figured every out, so things were normal. I had finally made it to year twelve, or to the American students, senior year, so being a mute in a Shanghai international school, wasn’t really that bad. Things were definitelynot perfect but I would give anything to go back to that, like it was before. I heard my first voice that year, right at the be
I stayed inside for a few days after all that happened with Sun Li. I managed to block out her voice and I hid in my room. Mum was getting really worried, I couldn’t tell her about the voices and I didn’t want her to go crazy too, so I ended up lying and told her everything was fine and kind of forced myself to go back to school. I saw Sun Li a few times and she was smiling away, headphones on blasting away in the hallway. I decided, I needed to just focus on someone else, maybe even help them and listen to them, in order to get Sun Li out of my head.A younger kid got my attention and I honed in on his mind. Straight away I heard his thoughts: I hate school. I hate every teacher and every single subject they try to teach. It’s so boring. How am I meant to concentrate for so long.? They expect me to sit there for hours listening to them talk? No way, that's totally impossible. At least it is impossible for me, I can't concentrate in class l
Chapter 3 I’ll never eat apples againAfter hearing that deep voice I switched off for a while. I took a few days off and focused on keeping all of them out of my head. I didn’t know at the time, who belonged to the voice that answered me and despite feeling excited that I could actually communicate with people directly for the first time in my life, I was too freaked out to try it again for a while. I listened to my favourite old Wu-tang albums. The strong confidence of Method-Man and the rest of them distracted me for a while and after a few days I plucked up the courage to go back to school. I had to go anyway because I had a math exam. I was given special permission to do my math test alone. I guess everyone could tell something was up. I decided to take my test to the junior area for a change of scenery. I liked the plants that hung from outside the classroom windows in the primary area of the school. It felt easy seeing all the kids paintings o
Chapter 3 Hoop Dreams I knew my ability to hear the thoughts of other people was growing when I heard that next voice. One morning, it just came to me and it was like I was inside his head, seeing what he saw and feeling what he felt. It went on for so long, I couldn’t stop it, so I stayed in bed and made an excuse with Mum. You see, Alisa had still been recovering from her facial injuries and her boyfriend, Terry just happened to be one of the best basketball players in Chinese high school history, I only knew that because his so-called best friend was also on the team. This what I heard: I hear him moan and cry so much more recently. It has been so long but for some weird reason he has started up again. Nothing is going to change, I've come way too far to tell everyone the truth now. I've fulfilled so many goals and I am just beginning. When he gets worse and starts banging his head against the wall I just turn on th
How To Destroy a New TeacherBeing at an international school I used to think that there was such a variety of perspectives because of all the students from around the world. We had many students who were Japanese, Taiwanese and American. When I listened to their thoughts, however, I found that they were mostly the same. They were all jealous, ambitious and driven to satisfy their own needs. The teachers, I found were struggling to contain this but the next voice I heard made their lives even more difficult. You see, some of these kids were basically trying to get them fired or worse. One kid had basically written a guidebook on how to do it all. He called it: How to destroy a new teacher and I hooked onto his thoughts while he was finishing his sick manifesto. These are his thoughts:Now some kids might think it’s easy to make a new teacher burst into tears on their first week. Most of them come in quite nervous, a
Listening to Wu-tang clan seemed fitting, both for an escape and to reflect the growing number of voices in my head. The Wu-tang clan were the first 8 or 9 member rap group to make it big. I always wished I could be a rapper but how could that ever be possible, seeing as I can’t actually talk at all. But I do have a voice, a channel of communication and I learned how to use it in my final year of high school. Just when I was in the middle of a Wu-tang classic on my headphones, a girl passed me.Her arm slightly brushed my shoulder and she said, ‘Sorry, my bad, Jimmy.’I knew her face, but I had forgotten her name. She had beautiful long hair and big brown eyes. She looked full of life as she smiled at me. She was short, cute and I think one of those girls in the A class group that everyone talked about. I couldn’t forget her eyes all day at school and that brought her voice to me. I was so disappointed when I found out what she was thinking. The
I had been into hip-hop music for a while. Nobody knew it, but I noticed other students talking about rappers and sometimes they would try to rap too. I heard there was this rapper at school and I quickly found his voice, drifting into mine. At first I was entertained by his efforts to prove everyone that he was a real MC, but when I heard what he did, I was terrified.Our teachers always told us we could be anything we wanted to be. We could fulfil whatever desire we wanted,so I guess they were right about that. They had no idea about anything else but at least they realised one thing. We could be anything we wanted and I showed everyone that you could go from nothing to the most popular kid in the school.Before I changed, my school was really lame. I mean everyone was moping around listening to depressing grunge rock. The boys had long unshampooed hair and the girls didn't even bother to brushtheirs. It was like stepping into t