Fight Club

Part one

At the age of twenty, I had a physical fight with a team of bouncers.

All five foot one, seven stone me, barely dressed in the snow, with circulation issues, against three bouncers, two male, one female.

It doesn’t sound like much of a fight, does it?

Which is why I can assure you, I didn’t start it. I am reckless. I am impulsive. I am not stupid.

If somebody had predicted earlier that night that I would have a fight with three bouncers and come out on top, never mind alive, or just not hospitalised, I’d have obviously thought they were joking, but that is what happened.

It is, I suppose, a testament to how bizarre my life has been overall, as well as how chaotic and awful this particular time in my life was for me, that I rarely remember it. For fifteen years, the memory of this event only came occasionally, specifically when recalling my sexual assault trial, and even then not always.

It was a couple of months ago when I first recalled it outside of those circumstances. I was DMing with a girl who also has BPD, sharing war stories, when our conversation sparked my memory of the event, and I suddenly understood that I only came out on top because I have BPD.

Before I was diagnosed with BPD, I used to joke that Bruce Banner wouldn’t like me when I was angry. After my diagnosis, I still do, because I realised, whether intentional or unintentional Bruce Banner is the human personification of BPD itself. When people lift cars off their children or partners, that’s a great example of how a BPD episode, caused by the belief that you are in immediate physical danger can affect you. You gain this superhuman strength and physical resilience. The guy on the battlefield who won’t stop fighting in movies, even though he has literally been hacked apart: the final girl who has been thrown down a flight of stairs, stabbed ten times, then shot, but still gets back up and defeats the murderer; they are BPD.

Borderline personality disorder can work that way emotionally too. While chaos reigns, I am the God it fears. When chaos dies and I have time and space to reflect back on it, that is often when I fall apart emotionally and mentally.

I’ve agonised for a while over where the best place to begin my stories about the group from the first floor is, and I have decided this story is the best place.

There are so many reasons why.

Not only does my physical, emotional, and mental survival, during and after the incident in today’s story mirror the struggles I had to come, this incident might have played apart in beginning the one to come. It certainly gave me the false impression I could trust Laura and Mel. It also may have given my stalker the knowledge that I was both a vulnerable and an unbelievable, or at least just an unlikable, victim.

Additionally, this night mirrors my first suicide attempt in some ways too, which is where I personally consider this chapter of my life to have ended. On this occasion, I was worried I might lose my fingers to frost bite. After my suicide attempt, I was informed by the doctors that they were shocked I hadn’t lost both of my hands and feet to it.

When the fire alarm started ringing, around half an hour before the school uniform event was due to finish, I was coincidentally, but unsurprisingly, in the toilet, mid pee.

Laura and Mel were in the function hall.

The toilets were located in the entrance of the building, near the cloak room.

As I exited the toilets into that entrance, a student member of staff, who was waiting outside the toilets, ordered me to leave the building.

Looking back, I appreciate it might be odd that a member of staff would be ready to direct those of us coming out of the toilets as soon as the alarm went off, what’s weird to me about this is that she didn’t come inside to tell us to leave immediately, rather waited patiently for us to finish whatever we were doing in there. I’ll happily admit that in the confusion, as half the people around me panicked their way outside, and the other half left calmly, it never occurred to me that this might be strange. If it should have, but didn’t, I still don’t blame myself.

Personally, I feel, I took the responsible action for me, the other people attending the event, the staff, and any rescue workers, by leaving the building calmly and immediately. Therefore, not contributing to the mayhem that followed, as confused, scared, panicking, heavily intoxicated, students all tried to push through a single door into the entrance, fighting each other to get outside alive.

Every business is supposed to have a fire evacuation plan in place, that their staff are both aware of and trained in. I know some don’t, but they are supposed to.

That cloak room was just a few steps away from the toilets.

Even if I had requested my coat before leaving the building, explaining nicely and reasonably about my circulation issues, I wouldn’t have gotten my coat, because that’s what I eventually did, and despite my obvious evidence I wasn’t lying, meaning my blue hands, they refused to give me it.

Laura and Mel, who later informed me of the mayhem that had erupted inside, had purposely held back, making the decision that fire or not, that was the safest option.

Apparently not a single person attempted to use a fire door, including them. When I enquired as to why this was, they shrugged and confessed it never crossed either of their minds to do so. In their defence though, neither had the possibility they might be in danger, as they never believed there was fire to begin with.

Even at twenty, the idea of a school uniform night felt off to me, so I hadn’t attended the two previous ones. Whereas, Laura and Mel had attend both.

By the time they found me in the crowd, the best part of an hour had passed.

Some students had already gone home.

The majority were still there, a small amount waiting to collect their belongings from inside, many searching for friends they’d been separated from, most waiting to see what drama unfolded next.

I’m not a fire expert, but I think its safe to assume that after almost an hour, if there had been a fire, all the staff would also have been evacuated, the fire brigade would have been both alerted and arrived, and there would be visible flames, smoke, and property damage. None of this had happened.

Laura informed me that one of the girls on her course worked on the bar at the Enfield campus student union. The same thing, meaning the fire alarm going off had happened at the second school uniform event. When Laura questioned her as to what had caused it the next day, the girl bragged that the staff deliberately set it off to clear the bar, as they’d had problems getting people to leave the first school uniform event once it was over.

She told me this because her and Mel were concerned about the condition of my hands when they found me. They were already blue, and numb. I was having difficulty moving my fingers, and despite the numbness they burned. Yet, I was reluctant to ask for my coat, due to what I assumed to be the seriousness of the situation, being that I believed there was a real fire.

The situation was serious, but not because there was a real fire, quite the opposite.

Laura was right, the staff had deliberately pulled the fire alarm to empty the venue, which I imagine is serious enough. What they didn’t do, which made the situation even more dangerous, was follow their evacuation plan.

Unlike the first time they set off the fire alarm, they decided as they knew there wasn’t a real fire they didn’t have to properly follow their evacuation training. Probably not emptying the toilets as soon as the alarm was pulled was one way they failed in their duty to keep us safe. Another way they failed was that they didn’t direct people to use their nearest fire door.

The main double door was only big enough for three people, maximum, to fit through at once.

It’s a miracle nobody was killed.

I knew none of this at the time.

As we walked across the large grass field, through the crowds, back towards the entrance, it was obvious that a lot of people were still frightened, shocked, and confused.

It was me who approached the female bouncer, showed her my hands, and explained I had circulation issues. It was freezing outside, and small flakes of snow were blowing in the wind. If she had been honest and informed us they had no intention of letting anybody back inside to retrieve their belongings that night, I might have given up straight away and called a taxi to go home. It is very likely I would have ended up using that taxi to take me to hospital if that was what I had done. Instead, what she said was that at that moment it wasn’t safe enough for us to re enter the building.

This gave me the impression it was me re entering the building that was the issue. As I could see passed her into the cloakroom and my jacket, one of less than ten, was on the nearest hook, I asked her to please get it for me. The cloak room staff where still inside the building, behind the table, so they could have easily passed it to her.

No, she answered, hostilely If she gave me my coat, other people would want their own.

“Other people don’t have circulation issues,” Mel pointed out.

“You could just give them their coats too,” Laura suggested. “How longs it going to take you to hand out six coats?”

“Not very long,” Mel responded.

Glaring at me, the female bouncer accused me of being a problem earlier in the night, warning me that if I was going to continue to be a problem now as well, I wouldn’t be allowed back to the venue.

“How was she a problem earlier?” Mel questioned her.

“Please, I just need my coat so I can go home,” I begged.

That’s when the two male bouncers started making disgusting sexual comments about us.

Though I know they were saying things about the way we were dressed, the only comment I even partly remember is that the bouncer who attacked me just moments later made a comment about me not needing hands when I had such a big mouth.

I’ll assume I don’t need to list all the reasons this was an inappropriate and vile comment to say to any women, but especially one who is genuinely afraid she is going to lose her fingers.

Regardless of the fact that I found their comments upsetting, I ignored the two men and continued to beg the female bouncer for my coat, while Laura, Mel, and the two male bouncers argued.

It was when Laura declared loudly that we all knew there wasn’t a real fire and that if anything happened to me she would make sure they all lost their jobs, that the bouncer nearest me lost his temper, grabbed me by both shoulders, and launched me into the air.