Stop Complaining

As a child, he was beaten and bullied. When he complained to his teachers and parents, he was told to stop moaning and grow up. The bullies were allowed to continue, so eventually he realised he would have to take things into his own hands, and a punch and a bully's broken nose was the action he took.

Immediately, he was hauled up and called a troublemaker, and when he explained that he had been bullied and beaten, they said that was no excuse for what he had done.

Bullies must be allowed to bully, cheats must be allowed to cheat, and no one should say anything, because that might rock the boat, and they can't have that happening.

He couldn't wait to leave school. When he got out of there, people would treat him with respect, and he would get a fair crack of the whip. That's what he was sure of.

The problem was the bullies, cheats, and their enablers and equivalents left school too, and graduated into workplaces, politics and social environments. Life became anything but perfect for him.

He toed the line, followed the rules, and it grated when he saw others getting away with bullying and cheating. If he saw someone bullying someone else, he would step in to try to stop it, but he was always deemed the troublemaker.

When he pointed out what the miscreants were doing, it was always excused with:

"Well, you know what they are like"

"Let it go, everyone will forget about it"

"Don't complain, it will be all right"

Those excuses did not sit well with him, and he wondered if others were in the same position as him, but were just keeping quiet and saying nothing. After his interventions, the victims denied that anything had happened and carried on smiling and doing what they were told. When he questioned them about it, they said he was delusional or had misinterpreted what had happened.

He knew he hadn't, but when people did nothing but tell him to keep quiet and not rock the boat because it would make it bad for others, he knew he had to be wary.

Each day got harder, and he did contemplate just taking off somewhere off the grid, so to speak, but he did not have the skills to grow things and build a place to live, and he knew that if anyone found him, he would effectively have a target on his back and no protection.

So he stayed.

He started recording things in a book. He did not know if it would do any good, but he had a record of everything that he knew was going wrong, while everyone gave the impression that everything was perfect.

Although everything seemed to be perfect, society was decaying from the inside, and not one person, apart from him, could see it.

Was he really delusional? He asked himself that every day.

If he could find one person who experienced things as he had, then he would have some hope, but everyone told him things were fine.

He saw the bullies and cheats getting away with the bad things they did, and they were never called out, except by him.

Misogyny, racism and homophobia were things he saw daily, and when he called them out, he was branded as the one causing trouble.

He did not know how long he could go on.

Every wrong he saw, he had to let go.

He could see no answer, no way out.

Each day, the only answer he saw was that one day, for him, there would be no tomorrow.