01 Melbourne High School

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a starfighter pilot. Let me try and paint a picture of my childhood. I had two droids. R2-D2 and C-3PO were put to work in the Moister-Farm that was the Restaurant that my parents owned. This lower-middle class dry and desolate desert world was Tatooine. By R2-D2 I mean mum. And by C-3PO I mean dad. Mum was short, a little plump, resourceful, and always emotionally repairing things. Dad was tall, prone to incessant worry and anxiety; plus had a golden vanity. C-3PO would get animated about many things, but mostly the conditions on Tatooine. He would sometimes whack R2-D2 on the dome. But this I mean that my mum and dad frequently argued. Just like Luke, caught in a somber moment of reflection as he took in the binary sunset [00], I pondered my own fate in universe, and also felt my dreams of escaping the lower-middle class to a better life quashed by negative circumstance. Why do I call my parents droids? Well, because in my mind they had been programmed by the culture that they grew up in. C-3PO was adamant to push me up the social ladder. R2-D2 projected on me the idea of marrying a nice, homely Sinhalese girl. Both of them were certain that I could achieve this through the tools of a grand Education. And eons before I had even finished grade 2 of primary school it had become their ambitious project that I get admitted into Melbourne High School, or MHS. ‘Gedera’ was the name of my parent’s Sri Lankan restaurant located in East Caulfield, just near the railway station and the precincts of the Monash University campus. The name meant ‘home’ in Sinhalese, and was selected by my parent’s to describe the authentic, homestyle nature of the cuisine they dished up. I had a room at the back with a desk and a bed. The room doubled as a storage room. By storage room, I mean it was also where they kept the bags of onions, drums of cooking oil, buckets of salt and containers of ghee. The ochre, worn out carpet was splattered with stains, and the windows were reinforced with metal security bars. Apart from my desk there was a bed and a small TV. This was to be the cell that spiraled me into madness. But more on that later. In 2001 I was in year 8 at Salesian College in Chadstone. My first two years of high school had been positive in that I was fitting in, reaping good marks and doing a bunch of extra-curricular activities. But this all changed one afternoon after school. I remember sitting in the back of the restaurant, munching on some Red Rooster, when my father, smiling exuberantly; which was rare; waltzed in with an envelope. I fiddled with it, noticing that it had been addressed to me, but was already opened. Inside it contained a letter of congratulations for being accepted into Melbourne High School. On my first day at MHS I distinctly remember getting of the train at South Yarra and walking up the wrong direction up the platform. When I did eventually find my way to the ‘Castle on the Hill’ I huddled with everyone else at the front doors. Four years later in November 2005, after completing my VCE, it was through the same doors that I exited. But what exactly do I remember of my time there? I remember going on the AIRTC camps in year 9. I remember vomiting in the toilets out of anxiety just before my very first exam. I remember walking past the homeless man outside St Yarra station playing the ukulele every morning before school. I remember the assemblies with the distinguished guests and all the singing. I remember feeling quite jaded and jealous at all the honors bestowed upon fellow students in the form on academic awards and school colors. I remember playing Tetris on my TI-83 calculator. I remember getting detention for failing a Japanese SAC one time.  I remember my Units 3/4 Media final-assessment multimedia project being accepted into VCE Top Designs. I remember getting 98.00 for my ENTER Score at the end of it all [01]. But mostly. I remember wanting to be a pilot. In year 12 I even applied for a pilot scholarship granted my the company Mobile. I got to the final interview stage; I even had a test flight in a light commercial Cessna with an instructor as part of the application process. It was my first time at the hands of a real aircraft, and I even managed to land the aircraft at one of the runway strips at Moorabbin Airport via the instructions of the instructor. VCE was a pressure cooker. Everyone told me that was  good thing. It would sharpen my focus, they said. But what no one recognized the very real emotional cost of being put under intense pressure to study under the backdrop of a dysfunctional family life. I was very much troubled inside, and in 2010, in circumstance that I will detail a later point, I tried to kill myself by swallowing 80 Seroquel tablets. I woke in a hospital ICU. The thing that hurt the most was hearing C-3PO completely deny to a doctor that he had placed any pressure on me. And as R2-D2 sat by my ICU bed working away at repairing by feeding me a packet of Pad Thai she had brought from my favorite Thai restaurant in an effort to cheer me up. I felt like singing the school motto ‘Honor the Work’ [02]. It felt like it was a very twisted joke. In this blog I aim to describe my recovery or ascension from the dark pit, or cave of ignorance I had been born a prisoner; one that pertained the idea of receiving an education simply for the purposes of ladder climbing, and attaining honor, rank and fame.