Carmel student Megan lands regional story writing prize

And so it came as a massive surprise to the Carmel College student when she found out that she had been named the 13th winner of the regional contest.

After initially entering the competition, Megan was one of 10 finalists shortlisted to write an original story about a lost ticket.

Her story centres around a teenager who comes out as gay and then his parents mysteriously lose a ticket, meaning he cannot join the rest of the family at a Christmas carol concert.

The entries were judged by a panel including Athenaeum founder and chairman Frank Moran, Ian Cubbins and journalist and broadcasters from the region.

“It was just a shock really, it’s one of the first times I’ve sat down properly to write,” said former De La Salle pupil Megan, who is the niece of Saints star Paul.

“My teacher asked the class if anyone wanted to enter. I’ve always loved English literature have always enjoyed reading and looking at how to write.”

Megan received the £1,000 top prize as well as a year’s honorary membership of the Athenaeum.

Fellow Carmel student Meg Morgan, 17, also reached the final as well as De La Salle pupil Ryan Bromilow.

THE LOST TICKET BY MEGAN WELLENS

Individuality. What distinguishes us from others, the key to who we are.

A sportsman has his athleticism, his power, his strength. A ballerina is light on her feet, dainty, has control over her entire body. Then there’s me. I wasn’t blessed with traits so conspicuous as to be able to be known by them. I can make great pizza. I’m almost obsessive with my box set of “Grey’s Anatomy”, but beneath all that, beneath all the things that make me who I am, is one final constant. One which I have always known.

I’m gay.

It was confirmed to me in my first year at high school when, after my first kiss with a girl, I felt nothing but indifference. Those around me, my closest friends, were terrified for me - not because of their own feelings towards me. No, but what others would do, the reaction of society. Each week I would have a gentle reminder that according to a gossip magazine another gay man has been beaten up for being too feminine. Me being me, never letting those crazy ramblings get to me, I would swiftly have to remind them that this same magazine also reported that a woman had just given birth to a “mutant” baby because she ate to many burgers, so we can’t believe everything we read can we?

“And anyway” I would smugly reply, “I’ve got my family.”

That is what they couldn’t understand. Yes, you hear of all the pain and grief that can follow “coming out” to parents, as they are only too happy to warn me about on a regular basis. But I knew I would never have to experience that. Not me. Not with my family. They’re supporting, loving: all I could ever wish for. For some reason I just got lucky.

So really it was just left to me to decide when to tell them, when to finally “come out”. I was never scared of their reaction, no - but the anticipation of it all. Letting those words be spoken. My mum sees such atrocities as a social worker - and, well, my dad, his open-mindedness has got him where he is today. He’s a plastic surgeon. I knew for them, if they could cope with that, it wouldn’t be an issue.

I’d had my odd moments before, when this grinding feeling in my stomach would start, when the silence between us needed filling. But then my dad would let out a grizzly cough or my mum would give the most contented of sighs. Comedy timing, I suppose? So I would choose just to savour the moments instead, until one day.

We just sat there like on any other day, and everything seemed right. No grizzly cough was heard and from my mum the slightest murmur of sigh never came. I decided I would have to break the silence myself. I had no reason to be silent anyway. For they love me.

So, I told them.

Screaming, shouting, crying, yelling, the reactions you’d most expect. But no. I didn’t get that. Not one bit, I didn’t get that. Just like I expected I got … nothing. Not one single word.. Suddenly, I began to wonder if this was how, I imagined for so many years it would go. To an outsider it would have seemed the most peaceful, innocuous of reactions, but to me this was not how it was supposed to feel. An explosion of paranoia immersed in guilt consumed every inch of me. For, how could they not think of anything to say? They’d known me all my life. Then the nothingness was broken by one word, one syllable causing an eruption in the pit of my stomach; disorienting me, weighing me down in the deepest depths of despair.

“Oh,” my mother said. “Oh.”

It contained no hint of tenderness, no surprise even - just an intangible sense of indifference and regret. Regret that the words had been spoken, failing to be hidden by the smallest of false smiles. I could see her eyes.

The tears welling there were like charges waiting to be detonated, enough force contained within them to ignite a wretched pain through my bones, though my veins, into my soul. She has known me. She should still know me. My father then smiles too - an unforgettable smile, one filled with such hidden emotion it’s almost impossible to explain. He hid every emotion he was really feeling behind that façade, trying to give me what I thought I wanted, a symbol of acceptance.

I was used to being unashamed around my family. But on the way out of my home that day, I felt this new sensation, the compulsion to hide how I really felt. Did that just really happen? Have I missed things? Those words of encouragement from my mother, “You’ll always be our son”. I should have been hearing them as a declaration of unconditional love, so why was I now hearing them as a lament? I was convinced I was wrong, until it was proven to me on the way out of the door. He shook my hand, the confirmation of all my fears. I was no longer worthy of a hug; but a hand-shake, it appears, would suffice. His hands strong with defiance, mine limp with exhaustion, for my parents’ reaction had defeated me. A reaction many in my position would be envious of - nevertheless, a reaction I despised. For, how could the people who sat and built sandcastles for me, who get rid of the monsters from my bed, manage only that. How could he just shake my hand?

We returned to normal. At least a new version of normal. We would talk, but no-one would really say anything. Words without substance. We would laugh but never with the intensity, with the heartiness, that we had before. I would see only vacancy in their eyes. The loss of emotion towards me was palpable, though it still strained to bury itself under their smiles. I moved out during this time in an attempt to give everybody the space they clearly needed. I would still always visit them. We still spent time together just like before, except I became increasingly aware of the mechanical feeling to it all. We were people sharing rooms, not emotions or experiences. I would still go out with them too.

One event in particular, an annual family tradition, loomed on the horizon. For the first time ever I dreaded it. I knew that this could open the wound. Every December we booked a box in the Philharmonic Hall to go and listen to the carols. A beautiful, mesmerising event, filled with an almost Dickensian sense of Christmas spirit and wonder. This couldn’t fail to unify us as an entity once more. The tickets booked weeks in advance, I visited my parents to agree on arrangements. Perhaps, if I agreed to drive, they’d feel more relaxed and they’d remember the fun we used to have.

Only my mother was at home. It turned out that my plans to ferry them were in vain. “The tickets hadn’t arrived,” she told me. “Lost in the post”, apparently.

“If we’d inquired sooner they might’ve been able to send out replacement, but at this short notice, there was nothing anybody could do.”

Dejectedly, I sat on my own in what used to be the living room - the space where I grew up - trying to think of some way of rectifying the situation. Then, I spotted it. The gold envelope which was just as recognisable as the tickets themselves. Hidden behind the school photo of me on the mantelpiece. On further examination, three tickets were inside. Enough for my parents and my younger brother. No fourth, I was no longer a true part of their lives. They were editing my involvement, cutting me out, so they wouldn’t have to endure the shame of my being there, pasting me into unimportant moments, every day occurrences they could control.

To think I feared being kicked out. At least then, I’d have been able to remain me, intact. What I had to come to terms with was that, in their eyes, their son was in a photo frame on their mantelpiece, not standing in front of them.