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Message: <blockquote data-quote="yangnome" data-source="post: 3068395" data-attributes="member: 7413">To whom it may concern:By the time you see this, I imagine everything has already happened.  I doubt you will ever understand why I did what I did, but hopefully this letter will give you some insight into my reasoning.Others have always treated me like an outsider.  Growing up, other kids used to laugh at me and tease me because I looked different.  I tried doing everything I could to fit in.  I bought the right clothes, tried to listen to the right music, watch the right movies and TV shows, but it did no good.  My Mother always told me that this happened because kids were mean.  She said that once people grow up and start moving on with their lives, people would accept me for who I am rather that what I look like.   That was bullcrap.The fact of the matter is, unless you fit in, people will treat you like crap because they can.  It makes them feel better about themselves.  If a group of people agree that you ok bad, they must be normal.  I’ve dealt with it all my life.  Frankly I’m sick of putting up with it.All my life people have pointed and laughed at me-- people have made jokes about the way I look. I’ve had little kids on the bus cry when they see me.  The fact that they cry doesn’t get to me so much, but when their parents try to shield them from me...When I was in grade school, kids used to call me Alien.  The name stuck with me through junior high and high school, but the teasing got worse.  Anal probes, cattle mutilation, abductions they teased me constantly.  As if I’d think it was funny that I was born with a defect.  I learned to stop fighting against it though, that only made it worse.  I used to break down in tears, but that only made it worse.  They’d attack me harder.  Later, I learned to laugh along with them.  It didn’t stop the jokes, but they weren’t as nasty about what they’d say.   Of course, to them it was funny that I laughed and joked along with them—like the retarded kid who laughs when people call him stupid.  I filled a niche as the butt of their jokes.  Like the time the Homecoming Queen, Tina Richards, pretended she had a crush on me.  It started with notes left in my locker.  From the start, I knew it wasn’t true.  I knew that she’d never see anything of worth in a beast like me.  Over time though, I did start to believe—or at least I wanted to.  She kept sending me notes. I’d rush to my locker between each period to see if another one had come.  I’d read them during class, picturing her walking down the hallway with me—that’d show those other bastards.  I sat behind her in my math class.  She didn’t talk to me much, before the notes, but after she started sending them, she’d occasionally say ‘hi’, and give me that coy smile.  That mocking smile as I later found out.  I loved the sweet smell of her perfume.  Its scent also wafted from the notes she left for me.  ‘Did others know how she felt about me’ I used to wonder.  Of course they did—they were all in on the joke I found out later.  One day, before I found out it was all a cruel hoax, I was sitting behind her in class and I noticed a hair had fallen from her head onto my desktop.  I took it between my fingers and twirled it around.  At the end of class I carefully tucked it between the pages of my book.  I began to look for her hairs every day.  I had a small collection inside my algebra book.  I digress though.  This whore had me convinced that she truly saw through my exterior and was able to see who I was on the inside.  It wasn’t to be though.  In one of her notes to me, Tina invited me to the Winter Formal with her.  I was nervous about going, but excited nonetheless.  My mother took me to have a suit made—I’ve never really been able to buy clothes off the rack with my physique.  I bought a corsage for her, a nice one with five white roses.  I even rented a limo to pick her up—I used money I had been saving since Elementary school.  Anyway, I show up at her house and Brad is there with a bunch of their friends—you know, the cool kids; the ones who’ve teased me all my life.  I was surprised to see them all there, but foolish me, I thought here was my chance to show them—I had a date with the most beautiful girl in the school.  That’s when they tossed their punch line at me.  They all got a good laugh from it.  I had been fool enough to believe that a girl—the girl—could be attracted to me.  She of course went to the dance with Brad.  I’m sure they laughed about it all night.  Meanwhile, I couldn’t bear to bring myself to school for the next week.  I always allowed myself to find comfort in my mother’s advice.  ‘They were only doing it because they were insecure teenagers’.  “When I get older”, I’d tell myself, “they’ll appreciate me for who I am.”  It didn’t happen.I anxiously looked forward to high school graduation—my chance to escape.  It didn’t really lead anywhere though.  My folks didn’t have much money, so I wasn’t able to escape off to college—not that it would have done me any good.  I went to the local community college with the same losers that had teased me through high school.  New campus, same bullcrap.I started off trying to get an English major.  The problem with that is that English professors at the junior college level really suck—at leas the ones I had did.  I had my fill of it when we studied the elephant Man.  The pretentious bastard had the nerve to tell me I couldn’t understand the meaning behind Merrick’s struggle. The class did open up new gateways for me.  The bastards that shared the class with me had a new nickname for me, and a few new lines they could use to jeer me.  With that, I decided to give up on college. Instead, I tried to focus on learning skills I could use to make money.  Why try to study to gain a deeper understanding of human society when it was all so foul on the surface?I began learning how to work on aircraft.  I spent the next six months learning the skills I needed to become a crewman at the local airport.  Union wages would provide enough for me to get by and enough security that I wouldn’t have to worry about finding another job in the future.Even with this new turn of events, I wasn’t able to escape my past though.  Some of the same dimwits who followed me through school attended my technical school and eventually worked along side me.  My mother was wrong.  The teasing never really stopped.  It may not have been as frequent, but it still persisted nonetheless.     They even tried rehashing the old joke that Tina played on me.  A girl at work, Pam, began expressing interest in me, but by then, I was too jaded to fall for it all—not to mention, she wasn’t anywhere near as convincing as Tina.  She had asked me out on a date following work, but I knew better this time.  I turned her down.  Of course, she blew it off and confessed she hadn’t been serious all along.  She told others about it, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=25899" target="_blank"> and even teased me on a daily basis about it.</a>I told myself that I refused to open myself up to them again.  I’d just do my work and not let their taunting bother me.  By now, you’ve got to be asking how things wound up as they did.  I’m getting there.  I realize this is probably longer than you’d expect, but it does help explain my decision, please be patient. Well, Pam was upset that she wasn’t getting a reaction out of me.  Instead of dropping it, she decided to take things personal.  Today, she went to the boss and told him I had been coming on to her, and despite her frequent requests to stop, I kept asking bothering her.  Of course, I denied all of this to my boss.  He wrote me up though and threatened to fire me.  He didn’t believe me that the bitch was making this crap up.  I told him to stick his job up his ass if he didn’t believe me.  I couldn’t believe the bastards would cost me my job just because I look different from them.  As I left work, only one solution seemed available to me.  I came home here and gave it thought.  I stood in my bathroom, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=25900" target="_blank">looking at myself in the mirror.</a>  I tried to squint my eyes, I even tried to look through the cracks between my fingers.  None of it could make me look beautiful.  They were right, I looked like an alien.  There was no way I could fit in with them, ever.  They were right, I looked like an alien.  There was no way they, or you could understand the pain this caused me. It was a pain that could not, would not heal.  The solution was clear.  I have to try to make them understand—make you understand.  I know how to do this.  I am committed to helping you understand.  When I finish this letter—bear with me, I am close to the end, I am going to get dressed and head down town.  Today happens to be homecoming.  The school is having a parade down Main Street this afternoon.  Today, I will show you my pain.  If you are reading this, it is because I have shared it with you.  I hope that you can feel it.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=25898" target="_blank">If you are reading this, you already know that when the float with the Homecoming court passed today, I shot the Homecoming Queen.  It was nothing personal. I did not know her </a>.  I just hoped that it would make me feel better.  I wanted to share this pain with you.  I am sure that you and others in this town will not be able to understand why I did this.  Have comfort in the fact that I too now am gone.  If I was successful, I took my own life as well.  If I didn’t succeed in that, I’m sure I’ll get the chair.  If anyone learns anything from the events that transpired today, I hope they learn to look beyond a person’s exterior and try to find the beauty within.Respectfully Yours,Jonathan Grey</blockquote>

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