The Chamber of Secrets

Hi. I know you may have been thinking this was going to be some sort of Harry Potter themed Something or Other. But it’s not. It’s basically my life story. 
 If you’re interested, go ahead and read. 
If you’re not, well, as they say, Turn Back Now.

Name: Sam Bergman
Age: 19
Birthdate: April 3
House: Slytherin

Rating: Totally Awesome

Personality Type: INTJ
Wand: Redwood, Phoenix Feather, 12 and 1/2 inches. Brittle.

I’m nineteen. But I wasn’t always. In fact, when I was born, I was barely a few minutes old! But let’s fast-forward through the boringly normal childhood. I have a father who’s a Theatre Teacher, a Mother who used To be  an actress, who’s now a Professional make-Up Artist, and a Younger brother, who is a pest. 

Nothing really Happened in my life until I hit age Nine. I mean, sure, I had friends, As children are wont to do. I had people I liked, I had some people I Hung Out with. 
I had a best friend. Sort of. 

But everything changed. My world crumbled.

When I was nine, One of my Best friends Was murdered. Her and her dad. Killed. Brutally, actually. In a Random Robbery by a guy with the IQ of a Sack full of sand. 
I found out about it shortly before school started again. 
See, I had been in Florida. In Disney World. And my Parents had decided that rather than uproot me and fly me out to the Funeral (Back in Virginia), they’d let me have one last Fun summer. 
So I missed that. 

All my friends were a mess. I mean, I’d known one of ‘em since we were a year old. Our fathers worked together. But they were… I don’t know. We Really didn’t know what To do. They needed Someone to stay Strong for them. So I took On the role Of the Adult. And shed every last bit of emotion I had. In order to Keep it together. 

Good thing I was an actor, and heavily involved in Theatre. Otherwise, people might have noticed Something was Wrong.
That’s when I turned to atheism. I couldn’t comprehend a god that would do that to children. 

I started Not Sleeping. Even now, there’ll be Times once every couple of months where I won’t Be able to sleep for Six or Seven days at a time.
 And I dove into Harry Potter. Headfirst. Because it was my only escape from a world that didn’t make sense. It was about a boy who had to be strong. Who faced all odds, and came out on top.
 And I needed that. 
I needed to be him.
 To stay together. To dissolve into a world where the good guy always won, where I could escape. 

 From that time, Back when I was nine, to now, I got sick. My whole family was staying in a Motel down in Florida on the way to Disney (and here I am, noticing a trend), and we got Legionnaires’ Disease. 
They got better, I really didn’t. 

 From that, I developed Reflex Neurovascular Dystrophy. That means that my brain was telling a certain part of my body (In this Case, my leg), that it was in the most pain it could possibly be in, even though there wasn’t anything medically wrong. It’s like throwing the breaker switch on the pain nerves. 

So I walked with a cane for two years, because my leg couldn’t support me on its own. 

The stress of that (we think) caused me to get Occipital Neuralgia. Which is when the Occipital nerves (located conveniently in the back of your head) become inflamed, causing a migraine that feels like an electric shock. That doesn’t stop. In this time, however, my leg gets better. Apparently Converse All-Stars are magic. 
Or I just had Radiation in my Shoe.

So I had a constant, unending migraine for six months. At this point, I am fifteen. Very near to sixteen. 
A month before my birthday, they stick eight-inch needles INTO my Occipital Nerves, and inject steroids. Which stop the inflammation. 

Thank the gods, I’m better now. 
But I missed a year of school in the process. 

I hit sixteen. I started seeing a girl. She brought back my emotion. 
It didn’t last.
She broke me. I felt angered, I felt sad. 
I got over it.

For the past two years, I’ve been seeing someone wonderful. She makes me smile even when all I’m doing is thinking about her. And I love her quite a bit. As in, more than anything.

 I’ve done some professional theatre work, I’ve done tech for two productions in the DC Fringe Festival, and I hope to do more in the future. 
Right now I’m President (High Grand Inquisitor) of a nonprofit organization called “Almost Wild Educators”. We’re just starting out, but we are training animals to become education animals. This means we’d make them sociable, bring them into schools, to camps, et cetera, and teach people about them. It’s remarkably fantastic. 
Other than that… Well, life isn’t really that bad. 

Thanks for reading.