"Rising Phoenix – Rock This Country!"
Summery:
I guess you can say I was morbidly depressed growing up. No friends, no one to talk to but your crazy family. Being a rock star was what I wanted to be growing up as a kid, but then I realized that was not what I wanted at the early age.
I had to grow up first.
Disclaimer – The following is a non-profit fan-based fiction, Beyblade is owned by Nelvana and Takao Aoki. Please support the official release
To my mother in music, Shania Twain; without you, I wouldn't be where I am today.
Prologue – "My Life As A Kid"
There was nothing that I've hated more than being the only kid in my class who was different and obsolete. Some people actually called me the freak of the class. I was in grade 7 when this whole thing started. Middle school was so bad for me at the first year because some kid kept on bullying me because I was fat, and because I dressed like an emo all the time. All in black like I had just came from a funeral.
This was where my life would start; the journey of me becoming the rock star that everyone knew so much. Tyson Granger, the lead singer and guitarist of my band "Rising Phoenix."
So sure no one in my class knew I was musically inclined, they thought I was just some geeky-ass fuck they could bully around a lot. I was so depressed a lot since I was in grade 4, after my grandmother passed away. Grandpa Granger hadn't been the same since her passing. I was ten years old when she died. And it was a challenge. A painful one.
You see, many families would stick together and hold hands after a crisis or a death, I experienced the opposite. The rest of my aunts and uncles would back stab me, my older brother Hiro, my dad Bruce and even make Grandpa Granger's blood pressure rise to heights so unbelievable that it wasn't funny.
So we were alone after that. 2005 was a dark year for me. And here I am, in 2009, I'm in grade 8.
Now let's start on January 31st, 2009. The Bay Hockey Arena would always have this winter gathering where they would bring in a headliner from anywhere, whether it was a tribute act or an actual live famous person. So when I was at the age of three growing up, I was always a huge Shania Twain fan growing up. But since in grade 2, I tried singing in front of my class, and kids being kids, they ridiculed me until I became the quiet kid in the class. I was a singer, but I was shot down a lot.
My dad, Hiro and I went to the Winter Gathering to watch a tribute act, and I had no idea who the headliner was for the day, but when the lights went down and the intro music played, I was surprised to see that it was a "Shania Twin" concert. I did say "twin" because this woman looked and sounded like Shania Twain.
This was the day where I started getting my confidence back in music and was where I started to sing again.
February 24th, 2009
I was sitting in the computer lab at Bay High school watching a Shania Twain video live from her 1999 dallas special when this kid in my class unplugged my ear buds, pushing my onto the floor screaming at me, "Look at the faggot listening to fag songs!"
My head hit the floor hard, making me dizzy and disoriented; laughter had erupted from the surrounding kids in the computer lab. Humiliated, I ran out, exiting my browser and hiding out to my lockers. This was where I would begin having depression spikes hit me the most. Immediately I had this empty plastic bag I had my lunch in, and I was saving it for a rainy day, excluding the fact that it was legit raining outside. I waited for the kid, Christophe, to come around the corner where I threw the plastic bag over his head, tried getting my little revenge.
It felt good to be honest, but that was also the bad time I chose to do that because I had just hit puberty that very second. And having that plastic bag over Christophe's head had aroused me in the scariest most of ways.
I should tell you now that this was where I began feeling the side of what it was like to be gay, but I couldn't accept it myself. This would be one of the standing points as to my later falls.
It has been two years since I been gay, and I still wasn't accepting it. I tried to bring myself to fall in love with a girl from my class, Chelsea, but I never had the guts to do so, or even ask her out for that matter.
It was 2011 and it was a week before my birthday, November 23.
This was where I met my first best friend Kenny "The Chief." I forgot his last name but then again it was hard to even spell or pronounce. Kenny was this nerdy little guy who was a shorter than me, but were the same age. He had long brown shaggy hair and glasses that were on top of his head.
There was this kid, Frank showing him around the school, introducing him to kids, but Frank was one of those kids who thought their shit don't stink. He was also the popular guys who were hockey players who were a bunch of tough guys. Imagine that, huh? A tough guy showing around a nerd? I had to laugh at how the irony was, concerning that most of the nerdy kids got their pants pulled down or wedgies given to them, but I guess there was something Frank saw that made this little nerdy guy stand out. Man I wished I could stand out like that.
So Frank came up to me with Kenny by his side, and said, "Hey Tyler, this is Kennard."
"It's Kenny!" the nerdy kid said.
I looked at Kenny as I chuckled, "I'm Tyson."
Kenny fixed his glasses and nodded, "Hey."
Frank, being the douche-bag he is, dragged Kenny around some more as he was introduced to more kids that weren't his crowd.
Later on in math class, our math teacher Karine was a loud mouth wench who constantly bitched at you if you got the answers wrong. She would even make this girl, Miyuki, in my class cry just because she couldn't do simple multiplication and division. She was a bitch alright, and everyone in school hated her and her crap.
I wasn't much of a math person, obviously math to me was like a foreign language. Nah, fuck that. It was Chinese to me. It was like trying to calculate what angle the slide is and how big the kid is when the actual answer was; the surface area of the fucking sun… unbelievable right?
Being the loner I was, I pretended that I was participating in math, but really I was writing in a notebook that was part of a short story I was writing since I was in grade 7. Sadly just because I was one percent missing in math, I was forced to restart grade 8… twice… so I was stuck there for two years, and now I'm in grade 9.
It was then the new kid Kenny had arrived in our new class. So he recognized me and took the seat right next to me and where we slowly both engaged in a small conversation.
During out conversation, I could help this feeling telling me that he seemed familiar. So I just simply asked him, "You look familiar."
"How so?" he asked.
And then it hit me, "Did you go to Bay City Kindergarten?"
He looked at me with a surprised look and said, "Yeah," as though the question were right.
I smiled, I knew where he had seemed familiar before. "We used to go to kindergarten together a long time ago, you don't remember me?" I asked with a slight chuckle.
Kenny smiled and nodded, "Yeah, I do remember!" he said.
"The little kid who was obsessed with dinosaurs?" I asked giggling.
A huge smile shot across his face as he nodded, "Yep, that's me!" he said, "And you were the kid who was a big Beyblade fanatic, right?"
I smiled at my childhood memory of me and him beyblading once, and I nodded, "Yep," I said chuckling.
"Good to see you man!" he said. The way Kenny was talking had surprised me, he talked like he was one of the cool kids, or one of them badass kids. Little did I know, I was right. Kenny was a badass.
Kenny would later be my only best friend for the rest of the week before my birthday, and I had asked him if he wanted to come over to my birthday party, but sadly that would be the day he would be leaving to Seattle. So I was feeling lost and broken, and Kenny was the reason why I would actually be excited to go to school for, because he was like the best friend I never had, and so that would be the last time I would ever see him again. We've exchanged our Facebook information, and cellphone numbers, then that was it.
I went on for the rest of my year, which would ultimately be my last, with no one to talk to. I kept on writing my short story, but later I had the idea to write as long as I could and see how far I would go with it. The story was about vampires and werewolves, which was one of the popular genres of the year. So I kept on writing and writing, and later I was writing more than three pages per chapter till I was writing eight pages to ten or twelve per chapter. I was getting good with myself.
I know I'm veering off topic, but what can I say? I'm also a writer too!
Once I had gotten home, it was the summer of 2012 and the exams were closing in on me. Dad was making pasta for supper when the school called for me to go in due to my failing grades. It wasn't my fault the math teacher was complaining about her love life instead of teaching us Chinese- I mean- math!
When we finally got there to discuss the fate of my life in school, Ann, the principal, sat down with me, dad and Hiro at my side. Hiro was the older brother who was more protective of me. So judging by the look of things, they weren't going so good.
"Mr. Granger, I have brought you in because your son's grades have taken a turn for the worse, and I would like to discuss about the special needs program he would be attending to for the next-"
"Whoa whoa whoa, wait back the fuck up, what?" said my dad. Ann, being the old crone she was, looked deliberately displeased towards my dad's use of language. "You're putting my son in a special needs program?"
Ann nodded, "Yes, I have said that correctly," she said, fixing the glasses on her thin nose.
I was fueling with anger and I said, "Listen, if you want to say it to me, don't just be all professional and dire about it, just say it like it is Annie, hey loser, you're going with the retard class next year for being retarded! You could at least say it like that! It's not my fault Karine has to constantly piss and moan about her fucking sex life because she didn't get fucked the night before, and just one fucking percent I'm missing, fuck that I ain't going-"
"Tyson Granger, wait outside in the halls!" Ann snapped.
My fists were already curled up in balls, and I was ready to know that old bat into her next life. I could tell right now Hiro was getting pissed, because I had never seen him so aggravated before. I knew the shit was going to fly.
I know now I'm saying a lot of words like "fuck," "bitch," and other shit like that, well I was told a lot by the English teacher, "That's poor use of words and grammer, they shouldn't be existing!" so I had to explain that; when a character dies or gets murdered, the antagonist isn't going to say; "you ferocious blubber-nugget!" no, it sounds more better when it's not sugar coated like; "you god damn son-of-a-bitch!" because I like things to sound more real than fake. Anyway, where was I landed? Oh yeah.
I later heard a scuffling going on inside the office, and Bruce and Hiro came walking out perfused. Not to mention still shouting at Ann. So I got up, about to defend myself when the old bitch pointed at me and shouted, "You're going to be nothing but another drunken dope pusher!"
Yes, that hurt… a lot!
So while on our way home, dad said, "Fuck that old bitch, you're not going back there!"
I didn't care that I was going back there, I was free from school, and official high school drop-out, but that's when Hiro asked me, "It's your choice Tyson, do you want to keep going there? Do you want to quit? Or do you want to go to my old school, Garden River School?"
I wasn't too keen on going to school anymore.
I had the book I was writing, but really, I had my guitar, and my voice. I wanted to quit so I could make the music and write the book, but creating melodies and lyrics were unbelievably hard. I wanted to write chart-topping hits about sex, drugs and rock and roll. And be the next Hunter Hayes before he was Hunter Hayes. Or some shit like that.
So it was decided. Not by the great gods in the sky, or Hiro and dad, but by me, myself and I. we packed up, sold the house, and moved all the way to Maniwaki, Quebec which was where I was born.
Where mom was born.
My mother didn't die at a young age, she one day left us and walked out of my life. I wasn't too keen on seeing her again, so in a way she was actually dead to me.
Before we left the city, we stopped by the graveyard. I laid a penny down on the tombstone. Grandma Granger, 1914 – 2005 and Grandpa Granger… 1924 – 2010…
Losing Grandpa Granger was a sudden shock to me at that age. I was fifteen when he died. He passed away from Pneumonia and kidney failure. It was also the same year I tried to hang myself by tying a scarf around my neck and tying a ball on the other end, and shoved the ball between my basement window and shutting it, and letting my back slide down where my ass was inches from touching the ground.
I passed out and woke up on the floor. The scarf had unknotted from behind me neck and let me free. So then I tried taking my life again with plastic bags.
My depression was hard; of course it was never easy. So I still never bothered telling Hiro or dad about it. I just kept it to myself and it never met the ears of innocence.
When we finally got to Maniwaki, Quebec, we crossed the border from New York State to Canadian soil.
My life was going to begin to take a change for the better.
But little did I know, this was the beginning.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Whooo! I'm home fanfiction!
I told you I would come back!
Boy I have lots to tell you about since my hiatus, I've been up, I've been down, I've had such an incredible journey and I just want to take a second to tell it to you guys in this format of this story. As you can tell, this is my own personal autobiography. Yes, I am a huge Shania Twain fan, as you can tell. So to clarify some things. I am telling this as a Beyblade fanfiction, but the elements and plot are based entirely on my life.
Honestly guys, I have depression, I was suicidal at that age, and I am a musician and a singer AND an author as well. However I wasn't born in the states, I just thought it would make a great element to the story, and I did have problems with the school I was at, and with me being a Native American (First Nation's Algonquin), the principal of my former school told me "You're going to be nothing but another drunken Indian!" (Indian is the word the non-aboriginal people here use for us) and that did hurt me.
So other than that, I did have a lot of self-confidence issues involving my singing, and my sexuality, I am gay, and I'm proud of it. Sadly, my family doesn't approve it, so I will come out to them eventually.
Now, I did get the wonderful chance to see Shania Twain in concert in Ottawa, June 27, 2015. Best night of my life. I didn't get to meet her in person but I will one day.
Shania, if you ever are reading this (and I highly doubt you will because this is a fanfiction site) … you have changed my life so much that I honestly wouldn't be the person that I am today. A singer, a musician, a writer and also an author. If it wasn't for you, I would honestly be another juvenile delinquent… even when I was feeling down, your music has saved my life a couple times, believe it or not, so to say. I guess you can say I owe my life to you, and I am grateful for being such a loyal fan over the years. I am 20 years old and I've been your fan since I was 3 years old… so thank you so much, my mother in music, kitchi migwetch.
Thank you guys for reading, there's still more to come!