It’s a bit weird to be looking back, perusing through my blogs (which I have maintained since junior high), trying to remember my high school days. I’ve been away from the environment for six years now, and I never, ever want to return again. What made me return to the days of my mental torture was Sandy Hook Incident, and how the shooter was a quiet bright man who was almost a complete recluse in high school.

I was a recluse in high school. Maybe it doesn’t qualify as bullying, but it sure felt like I was ostracised; there was a glass panel between “me” and “everyone else”, and no matter how much I rammed on the panel, nobody could hear me, and I felt as if the world was going by while I was in a glass box. I hated almost the entire school, and I actually had a few murderous thoughts throughout my career. Academically, I was a star; socially, I did not exist. I spent most of my afternoons and evenings studying or prepping for my various extracurriculars, of which I rarely took any joy in. My life was work, work, and more work, with almost no friends and no play. It did not help that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, then unknown, and was unable to read the minutiae of the nonverbal cues people give off. I did not take jokes well; unless its meaning was obvious, I took it rather literally. I was Asian in an almost completely Caucasian school. I didn’t join the fashion cliques. I was different on almost every aspect, I thought differently, I had different priorities. And for that, I was punished, because for all the freedom and diversity the social system advertises, the society does not. Mean Girls isn’t just a film, it is a fairly accurate portrayal of many high schools across North America, where if are different in one way, shape or form, be it race, the way you think, or the way you dress, you are ostracised. And if you are not part of a group, you are, in fact, not one of them, and therefore you are an easy target. (I’ve also lived in Japan and England, and for some reason, I’ve observed this tendency far less often in those two countries.)

In the end, my mind was going through torment overload. A teenager is fragile, unsure of any direction like a new butterfly emerging; the wings are wrinkled and still unstable, and they are vulnerable and unable to take flight. Even the slightest jostling can ruin the beautiful wings. And we are jostled all the time; we don’t finish drying the wings all at the same time, and some take flight far earlier than others, causing turbulence and wind that disturbs the drying butterflies. I dried very slowly.

I almost didn’t at all.

I’m not vouching for all teenagers – some seem to have happy high school lives – but I didn’t. Each day was a slow agony. I was eccentric, and that meant laughter was in order, and even if they had not meant it, I took it as a ridicule. But I knew that murdering others wasn’t an option – if I survived through the ordeal, there’d still be repercussions – and so the murderous energy, the fury and rage, turned in on itself.

On me.

I did not pull the trigger in my mouth. We do not keep guns in the house, probably a good thing. But I started starving myself, under the pretext of getting in control of my life, because I felt my life was spiralling out of control. University applications were a chore, and even with that I was going down a different road; I was applying  to British universities, which was the very first in my school. I was on a strictly regimented diet that would barely sustain a newborn let alone a 5’9” 17 year old. I began to visibly lose weight. I was borderline overweight when I started, and when I graduated, I was a measly size 000. When I bent down, my vertebrae stuck out. It was a mental suicide, if not a physical one, because in a way, it was either them or me; we could not coexist in the same world, so one of us had to go.

This is not only my story. This is my friend’s story. This is my student’s story. I hear this story everywhere, and people ignore them, because the good majority are in groups and those who are not in groups are invisible. We are the invisible walkers in the hallways, until our minds cannot take it any more; invisible people cannot coexist with visible ones, so one of us has to go. Very often it’s yourself, and while you may not kill yourself completely, you do go through some sort of a mental, ritual transformation to leave that chrysalis behind and emerge to the sky as a butterfly. A differently winged one from the vast majority; we were not counted as butterflies because our chrysalis had different patterns, so it is only natural that when we fly, our wings look different from the rest. The Ugly Duckling is a surprisingly accurate allegory that tells us this phenomenon has existed for centuries.

What I am not trying to say is that I am Adam Lanza. But what I am trying to say is that this is not just a problem about guns, or violence. It is also about the mentally unstable son of Liza Long and Liza Long herself, and that invisible teenager who is getting mocked and teased every day in English class because he is a social recluse. I am not defending Lanza – what he did is heinous, despicable, and should not be forgotten or forgiven – but what I am saying is that, sometimes, it is a thin line that divides you or me from the shooters at Columbine High School.

We all need saviours. A gentle word from a teacher, a caring smile from a classmate might be all one needs. But in order for that to happen, someone has to notice you, and if you are invisible, then that’s impossible.

Sometimes, we are banging on the glass wall, never to be heard by the passers-by. But it takes one person to notice and shatter the glass wall down.