Lose your youth
Posted: 23/06/2026
There was a boy in my boarding house in high school who was incessantly bullied and made to be the target of. It was through no fault of his own; his demeanour and appearance and the way other people took it set him up for failure in their eyes.
He tried to be friends with me, but my naïvety at the time led me to not associate with people that didn't fly with the rest of the groups. And so he floundered, always being led on by people to do bad things just to feel "cool". If being the butt of a joke was considered it, then that was him.
I've been wondering what I could have done for him if I realised at the time. He was just looking for a friend; he tried so hard. That had to be worth something. But I never thought that at the time. He was taken out of the school in Year 11 because he kept getting into trouble. By the time I left, his younger brother was at the school and doing (marginally) better. But he told me that his elder brother was addicted to vapes and on medication for being unable to focus nor participate, I think psychologists and counsellors were involved. Whilst my interactions with him became more minimal as the years went on at school, I feel responsible for not being his friend, being the bystander that didn't do anything whilst he was led astray. To some degree he was looking for what I have been looking for a while now. I was lucky that I was, well, tolerated; he never had been given the right.
Maybe I'll ask his brother how he is now, and pay him a visit this year.
Photos taken in Tasman this year, and Melbourne last year.
P.S. I never edit my poems, I just write them and immediately post them. Imperfection is fine.