Walking the Knife’s Edge and Rarkin were rare things for me as a writer; a fully developed character who struts onto the page and shows the author who they are, and a story that writes itself. That’s because Rarkin was born of the story of the formative years of my life, a story interrupted by loss and grief. Rarkin’s tendency to keep feelings in and people out grew from my own response to grief. And many lessons he learns are lessons I learnt too. These are the stories behind his story.
Content warnings: grief, depression, references to physical child abuse and neglect -not of me.
School on ‘The Wrong Side of Town’
Rarkin is resident of Brock Heights, ‘the wrong side of town.’ Its a poor, rundown neighbourhood. I grew up in a town divided by a set of train tracks, with a ‘wrong side’ of the tracks. I went to school on the’ wrong side’, with hundreds of other students.
My school had an oval which slopped steeply downwards, with grass long enough for kids to hide in. The yard duty teacher could only see the out of bounds slope when they stood on the back of the oval -so most of the time it was out of their sight. All sorts misadventures happened. Yes, I was in a few. I also enjoyed playing kiss chasey, because it was the best game for making use of out of bounds areas.
‘Law of the Jungle’
But even in areas of school grounds supposedly supervised by yard duty teachers, there were too few teachers, too many students, and the yard duty teacher’s line of sight was often blocked. I assume that’s why so many kids got away with punching other kids for pretty much no reason. Or being verbally abusive.
I saw a lot of angry boys in those days. Sometimes, if you bumped into them, they would flinch, as if bruises or welts lay under their school uniforms. Those weren’t from fighting. I realised, at a very young age, that they came from abusive fathers or stepfathers.
You had two choices in that playground; be scared, or be brave, aggressive and hit back harder. Unlike Rarkin, it wasn’t standing up to an abusive parent that made me tough; it was standing up to bullies at school. Especially when they hit smaller kids. That really pissed me off.
Holding It All In
When you’re a female presenting child who hits bullies back, in the nineties, its a bit of an issue. Boys weren’t supposed to hit girls. But I learnt to punch as hard as a boy. And I learnt how to death glare from the best of them. But I didn’t look like a boy. So the idea they might need to hit me did not appeal to some of them.
I suspect it made things more comfortable for a few tough boys when I was adopted by a group of tough boys. Was it my reputation for hitting bullies back harder, or fear that if bullies hit small kids in front of me, I hit the bullies, then the bullies hit me; that my new male friends would be after the bullies blood? I’m not sure, but either way I only recall getting into one punch up after that. And it was in that friendship group that I came to learn Rarkin’s approach to feelings.
Officially, the only emotion tough boys at that school displayed freely was anger. And perhaps frustration, but that normally boiled over into anger. Tears weren’t a done thing. Tough boys didn’t cry. Except on rare occasions, when they did.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but now, I think they only showed anger and expressed themselves through violence aggression, because they didn’t know any other way. Because that’s the only role modelling they ever had at home. Because they feared their own anger, and didn’t want to hurt people, so they held it in. Until it boiled over and out. (Yes, is suspect their abusive fathers were the same.)
That’s where Rarkin’s story begins. Betrayed, via abuse, over and over by someone whose supposed to love and protect him, who frequently abuses him instead. Heart broken. Angry. On the brink of boiling over.
Loss of Friends
In Rarkin’s case, its lack of trust that prompts him to keep everyone at arm’s length. He’s used to being seen as a thug because he looks the wrong way, and lives in the wrong place. But my experience was different. It was the 90’s. There was ‘no such thing as nonbinary.’ But having proven I could be as brave as a boy, hit as hard a boy, given, effectively given boy status, I had both a boy friendship group and a girl one. As many male and female friends as I wanted. I was accepted on both sides of the gender divide. I felt whole, and my life was balanced.
But the way I remember it, some of my friends were expelled. And they ran away. I never saw them again. Two friendship groups became one. I lost the group Rarkin values so much. The group that’s been through shit. The group where you could speak bluntly about life, and you didn’t upset people, or make them uncomfortable. You called shit what it was, you connected and you understood each other. I lost the only friends I have ever felt truly and completely understood me. The ones I told all my secrets too.
Loss of Self & Gender Challenges
I lost people I trusted. Being understood. Truly belonging. And then a new school opened up, on the ‘right side of town.’ In hindsight, the reason I chose to change schools wasn’t just because my girl friendship group was moving. It was because I feared for my mental health if I stayed. I felt my male friends’ absence acutely, and I was too aware of how the tough boys were suffering. Of neglect, abuse, and cops and foster homes only kicking in when one boy was severely beaten. Otherwise; grown ups seemed to do fuck all about child abuse. Teachers didn’t seem to realise it was happening. I couldn’t see the point of the cops, as they seemed to do nothing to protect vulnerable kids from abusive or neglectful parents.
So I changed schools and lost the tough crowd altogether. I lost my people and my boy status. And I lost a giant chunk of who I was and my sense of being a whole person. Only now, on the eve of my fortieth birthday, do I truly understand why that grief effected me so profoundly. I didn’t merely lose my found family; part of me died with them.
Other Losses
But the worst part of it was there were other losses. My parents got divorced. Our cat died. My Nan, the only adult I tended to confide in, died. Pop noticed I was sad, and took to calling me every now and then and telling me jokes to cheer me up. He died too. Mum got a new partner. I think he noticed I was sad too. He would try, in small ways, like noting my love of cereal or making sure I had a say in what the family group were doing, to perhaps cheer me up. It didn’t work. But I saw that he cared. And that helped. And he died.
Then there was a PE teacher at my new school. I was rubbish at sport. Poorly co-ordinated, and I moved too fast because ADHD (utterly unknown to me then). I didn’t see the point of PE. But he encouraged me. He encouraged me so much that I didn’t just try at sport. He made me start to believe in myself. And yes, he died too.
Hating Yourself
One friendship group was left now; girls. I was perceived as a girl. I was expected to behave like a girl. In having lost my male friendship group, I lost the person I was with them. All the courage, spirit, intolerance for bullshit and feistiness, the very spirit of formative years of my life; they weren’t there anymore. It was like they’d died.
In hindsight; it was probably clinical depression. I didn’t even cry when Pop died. I lost too many people, even my childhood home, a one acre block with lots of trees to climb and a big backyard for playing imaginary games in. After all that, I couldn’t grieve everything and everyone. There was too much grief. So I sank into depression, and that catatonically numbed everything I admired and respected and perhaps even liked about myself.
I missed my old friends. Missed my old self. I struggled to see what there was left that made life worth living, because the gaping hole in my life was so big that it was hard to notice anything that still existed outside it. I struggled to see what was left of me that was of value, because I felt like only the barest, tinniest scraps of the person I had been remained.
Hating Everything Being Off Kilter
All this was made worse, because these were my final years of primary school and my first years of high school. Friendship groups had become rigidly boys or girls. Everything was out of balance with only girls as friends, and people only expected me to behave like a girl. It was like I was cut in half. And the worst time for me as a nonbinary person.
I barely had the spirit and feistiness to be my masculine self anymore. Exhaustion and world weariness meant I had nothing left to figure out how to be nonbinary. I’d never heard the word, didn’t know what it was. Had no idea how much of me was missing, or cut off, or why, or what to do about it.
So I didn’t think much of myself. But my story was of loss of friends, found family, and self. It was how an ignorant society gave me no opportunity to be my nonbinary self, and how I was too depressed to attempt it properly. Very different to Rarkin having no self esteem, because his own father frequently treated him like shit. But very similar feelings.
Isolation
Rarkin is lucky. I granted him the male friendship group I lost. He has them from the age six of six onwards. His tendency to shut everyone out is partly because he expects discrimination from everyone outside Brock Heights. But its also because he has a lot of insecurities, fears and pains as result of his upbringing, and he trusts no one outside Brock Heights with any of it.
Again, my experience differed. The female friendship group I had through my second primary school? There were fractures in it, while we were at school. I could clash horribly with one of my friends. So much so the teachers put three of us in different grades for our last two years of school, all but forcing us to make new friends. But the deathnell for those friendships was us all going to different high schools.
So it was that I rocked up at my high school, without a single friend from my primary school, with only one other kid I knew by name in my year level. Depressed, and feeling like a fragment of my former self. Yet to grieve everyone I’d lost properly.
Part of me hungered for friendship, but my emotional maturity was at least four, if not five or six years ahead of my peers. I felt like I was surrounded by five year olds. Or sheep. They were shallow, superficial, conformist. I hated everything they stood for. But mostly, I think I hated that I saw nothing of myself in my peers and couldn’t connect with them at all.
‘Safe Friendships’
That’s when, having got a mere ‘C’ grade for a rambling story with no structure in year 7, I wrote down some ideas in year 8. A daydream about a prince’s parents being abducted. Idle day dreams of myself, and my friends Fiona and Laura, and a boy who annoyed my friend Laura, called Troy, and for good measure, Troy’s friends Andrew and Michael, getting out of school and stumbling into a fantasy world.
Six kids in another world was too many, so I reduced it to four. And one got re-named. That was the origins of Linh, Fiona, Troy and Michael of Ruarnon Trilogy. The prince became the ‘different type of masculine’ they’d always been; nonbinary Heir Ruarnon. And I wrote myself the friends I wished I had, right through high school, on into my twenties, editing and publishing them in my thirties.
A fictional friendship group could be as queer and neurodivergent as I at the time had no labels to describe myself with, or known identities to associate with myself. Better; they could never and would never be taken away from me.
Keeping Everyone At Arm’s Length
But what of real friends? Lone wolf though I’d very much become, I could see that I wouldn’t be happy without friends. But I had so little in common with so many kids around me. I didn’t really feel accepted until year 9; by anyone. And I never truly fit. But I got on well with a bunch of misfits, nerds and immigrant kids. It was a blessed relief to have male friends again. My spirit was recovering, my feistiness, temper and aggression were coming back and I was starting to feel like me again.
I was aware of meeting people I quite liked and connected with, and of not telling them too much. Of not letting them in properly. Not allowing them to get too close, lest I lose people again. I’d lost too many people. I wouldn’t risk losing anyone else.
But now I realise it was more than that. There was no chance in hell I was going to risk losing so much of myself again. So I didn’t talk too much, or too personally. Hugging friends was a trend then, but I was NOT into it, and lukewarm when people enthusiastically tried to hug me, even if people I quite liked.
Meeting of Minds
That’s the other thing; like Rarkin; I’m autistic. And I’m the kind of autistic person who mostly wants to meet your mind. If we’re two spirits cut from the same cloth; I’m thrilled to meet your spirit. But rarely do I wish to touch anyone, even in an affectionate manner. Sure, I might hug family in greeting or goodbye, especially now, as with chronic illness I’m inclined to travel to see them less often. But as a teen I did not want people touching me, or to let them in. Didn’t want to chance forming the found family I’d once had, lest I lose it and myself again.
And so by a different route; Rarkin and I both tended to shut people around us out, as teens.
Knowing Your Own Worth
My spirit, the fight that made me hit back bullies, look out for younger kids, insist on hugging tough boy friends because I don’t give a fuck if they don’t cry because they ARE crying and I will hug them and I will even make them hug each other! The feisty kid who stormed into the kitchen at 1am and screamed at my parents to shut up, sit down and talk it out like adults! That was always the core of kid me. So what was there to like, without it? How could I believe in a me who was a pale shadow of my former self?
And despite my fighting spirit, I’ve always tended to doubt I can do new things. Maybe its physical things due to my lack of co-ordination (which I now swear borderline presented as dyspraxia in childhood -it was serious unco for mere unco!) Perhaps the logical, autistic part of my brain had to see me doing a thing to believe I could, because it knew I was shit at things like remembering things, didn’t posses organisational skills, got lost easily, lost possessions all the time -the usual ADHD stuff!
Reconnecting
Feeling cut off from or like chunks of myself had died; I had a lot to rediscover wasn’t dead, was still there, could be revived. And some things did change, and I reconciled who I was before, who I was while healing, and the person I was becoming, and knew I wasn’t quite the same as before. I had to learn to appreciate, like and value myself again, and prove to myself that I was still capable.
For different reasons -namely having everything he’s ever ‘done wrong’ shoved in his face by an abusive father, and prejudiced people who expect little of him, Rarkin has the same need to prove himself to himself. To convince himself of himself.
Gender; Mine’s Nonbinary
I’ve talked about the challenges of growing up as a nonbinary person in a world oblivious to the existence of my gender, with little choice but to adopt a friendship group that only meets half my friend, and gender identity needs. So you may be wondering; why is Rarkin a cis gender male?
I began writing Rarkin at I think the age of eighteen. The first draft of Sythe Series was completed during my Uni years, in which I loved writing a blunt, straight spoken character, in contrast to the waffling, blathering readings I had to do for Uni. Or my super well spoken professors who almost sounded British (I’m Aussie.) But the thing I most loved about writing Rarkin was having a space to exist as my masculine self.
I appeared to be a tall, thin, pretty blonde girl. I was smothered in positive reinforcement to adhere to binary gender norms, in the form of compliments and endless smiles when I presented in a feminine manner. And I did like dresses and pretty things. In those days, I even liked dresses on my body, as opposed to saying ‘that’s pretty and moving on’ -my default now. I lived feminine in those days, partly. I also had some more gender neutral outfits, and could be aggressive towards annoying boys at times. But my masculine self didn’t have the space it needed to exist.
Gender; Why Rarkin’s Cis Male
Rarkin was where I poured my bluntness, my impatience, aggression, my temper, my ‘masculine’ traits. He was the space in which the masculine side of me lived, the other half of the balance that childhood me found in having a masculine and feminine friendship group both. Rarkin could have blunt conversations with friends he trusted, who understood him. He could spar with them. No one pressured him, positively or negatively, to smile or be sociable. So in writing him, I could embrace all the parts of me that didn’t fit into my life in reality, and those parts could stretch out, and breathe, and feel comfortable.
This wasn’t something I fully experienced in reality until I identified as nonbinary in my thirties, and dressed and behaved a bit more ‘masculine’ since then.
Healing
Rarkin has a massive character arc, both in healing from trauma and learning to trust and let others in, and in learning to love himself and see his own worth. It spans Sythe Series books 1 and 2. I said at the start that he walked onto the page fully formed, and his story wrote itself. That’s because even as I wrote the first draft in my late teens and early twenties; I’d done A LOT of self reflection.
Unlike Rarkin; I did not see a therapist. I wrote poems to get out all the feelings that were too ugly, and raw or unpleasant for any other form of expression, mostly my grief, out and off my chest. Listened to music and wrote Ruarnon Trilogy (which deals with grief and loss), and Sythe Series. I gave myself the friends of my dreams in fiction.
But by my time at Uni, despite still having not found my queer or neurodivergent labels, or properly understood any of those identities; I was making queer and neurodivergent friends. I was finding my people, living on campus my first year of Uni. Bought a car and mum insisted that I drive her to my campus to prove that I could (it was a two hour drive -ample room for me to get lost!)
I’d written an autobiography (no I am not promising that will ever see the light of day!) as well, to help me process my past, get my feelings out, and had reflected a lot on how I was, and why, and how I’d become and was still intentionally becoming a happier, healthier person. In a way, I didn’t need to do any planning for the arc of Rarkin’s emotional and social development. Because I’d lived it. It was a good chunk of the story of the formative years of my life.
A Note on Rarkin’s Growth
Rarkin’s healing and attempts to let people in span a good chunk of book 2 of Sythe Series, as well as book 1. Everything he does internally in both of those will situate him uniquely in a struggle in the wider world of Umarinaris in books 3 and 4; at the centre of a revolution. I suspect writing such a personally significant character, and having his development and lived experience key to the central conflict in his world, may make this the most rewarding series I’ve ever written. Not least the very things that made him struggle, and his ability to overcome them, position him as just the person Sythe needs as Umarinaris’ status quo is shaken to its foundations. I can’t wait to write books 3 and 4 of this series!
You can find Rarkin’s story; Walking the Knife’s Edge, at many stores in my Sythe Series page.
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