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Since a few people have asked me about what I mean when I say Erik, The Phantom Of The Opera, saved my life I figured I’d write it out. This is a true story of a big change for me at least in part of my life so please even if you think I’m ludicrous don’t make fun of me, thank you.

When I say Erik, The Phantom of The Opera saved my life he really did. You see when I was younger all the way up till today I’ve been made fun of and treated like an outcast by most people, even my family, I sometimes wondered if it would be better if I never existed and even at a young age, I’m assuming 9/10 is young, I thought of suicide. The worst time for me was school; everyone would make fun of me for just about everything, how I looked, how I acted, they laughed when I spoke even if all I said was “Hi” they basically made fun of me any and every way they could. My parents were no help I remember once my father telling me I deserved it that I was exactly what they said just a pathetic freak, yes he called me that, that could never have friends or know what it meant to be cared for. So my school years were basically a horror for me and I just tried to get used to it and understand that they had ever right to make fun of me I was shunned, superfluous, and unloved and would always be that way.


At least that’s what I thought until one day my English teacher, I forget for which grade I think 7th-9th, told us we were going to read and listen to “The Phantom of the Opera.” He started by asking if anyone had heard of the story or the music, I raised my hand because as soon as he said the name I recognized it, my mother loved ALW’s Phantom so I had basically grown up on the music. I remember as a child listening to it and being a kid thinking it was the normal fairytale type story, a boy was in love with a girl and some bad person wanted to keep them apart. However I always noticed something that bothered me even as a child, when I heard Erik sing I thought it sounded sad and I didn’t understand why. I also didn’t under why, if he was the bad person, did he let the boy and girl be together at the end. My parents didn’t tell me much about him though just that the Phantom was some lonely person that was burned in a fire/with acid and was angry at the world since because of it he couldn’t play the violin anymore which he loved, I found out the real story behind him that year.


My teacher told us we were starting with the play also that there were differences between the book and play, we would compare the two later, he said one of the biggest differences was the way Erik the Phantom looked. He passed around a picture of Michael Crawford as Erik he had I was near the end and I watched the faces of some of the people. Some looked like they were going to laugh, a few did, others mainly girls looked disgusted and quickly passed in along, a few people however looked at it intently for a moment then passed it on. As it was coming closer to me I wasn’t sure what to expect and when I finally got it I was entranced by it. Yes he had his mask off in it but that didn’t matter what drew me to it was his eyes and his expression, he looked sad to me like he was asking for someone to accept him but knew they wouldn’t, exactly the way I felt. I was so caught up in looking at the picture someone had to tap me to get me to pass it on.

For how Erik looked in the book he read the first chapter of the book, I’ll never forget what he said “He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears." I heard some of the people say things like “Ew! Gross!” and “Yuck!” a few people laughed as some pretended to shiver or gag but I was quiet. I wasn’t disgusted by his description at all I was once again entranced, curious. I hoped there was a picture to see if how I imagined him to look was correct but there wasn’t; so for the rest of the class time that day while I listened to the teacher talk in the back of my mind I kept wondering bout Erik. “How does he really look? Why does he look that way? Do people treat him differently because of it? If so why? Does he have any friends? Would he want to be mine?”


We listened to most of ALW’s play as our teacher described what was happening, letting me finally understand what was really going on, and read a few sections of the book making me all the more curious about it since we skipped around for sections to compare to the play. I saw the obvious differences right away aside from how the characters looked there was how things happened and how a few characters like Nadir were left out. I wanted to read the book so badly and find out what really happened but it was hard to get my parents to take me anywhere to find it.


About a year later I was able to convince my mother who had gotten a Barnes and Noble gift card to go use it thus letting me look for Phantom. When we got there my mother and sister went in different directions and I started looking around for it, I wasn’t sure what section Phantom would be in but luckly I noticed a display of older books like Shakespeare, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” and the like. Sure enough I found soft cover book of “The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux” sitting beside “Frankenstein” and immediately grabbed it. I stared at the cover for awhile there was a picture of Erik on the cover, mask less, and he look so much like the way I had pictured him I couldn’t believe it and ended up smiling about it. When I brought it, along with a few of the other books that were there, my mother was surprised and asked me “You know the story? Well you have a lot of good classics if you’re sure we don’t already have them then it doesn’t seem right not to have them in the house.” That was probably one of the few times my mother actually agreed with me.


When we got home I didn’t get a chance to read it right away cause I had to work and soon after that there were family tragedies, my grandmother, Grandpa, and Aunt all died within a 3-5 month period so I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. When I did manage to read it it was probably 1 ½ years to 2 years since I first heard/read parts of it in class. As soon as I opened the book I read a sentence that made my heart go into my throat slightly and had me hooked all at the same time, “The Opera ghost really existed.”


After that I couldn’t put it down I read it in about 2-3 days, while I was reading it I began to realize just how interesting a person Erik was and how hard his life must have been. I cried for him more then once while I read “The Phantom of the Opera” I understood, if only in some small way, what it was like for him. Though I hadn’t been through things to the extent he had I had still be through much of the same things and knowing that, for once in my life I didn’t feel so alone.


As I said I had seriously thought about suicide for awhile thought I knew I never would go through with it, I was too chicken to do something like that and after reading about Erik something in me changed and I decided it was best to stop thinking about it, I didn’t need to it wasn’t the answer. I, of course, still have the book and I carry it with me in my purse as my inspiration to be better. I feel that if Erik could go through all of that and still be such an amazing person and do all the things he did then I shouldn’t complain about what I’ve been through cause while I can never measure up to him there’s nothing saying I can’t try to do some of the things he did. I can always enjoy music and sing, I can travel the world if I want, I just have to believe and keep trying.


I know I can never meet him and tell him how much it meant and still means to me to find someone else that could understand what it meant to be shunned by basically everyone based on something as foolish as how one looks without even knowing about the person on the inside. If I was ever able to met him I know I’d want to say to him, “Thank you for helping me feel like I wasn’t alone in this world, for letting me know someone else existed that had been through much of the same things as I had it meant and still means so much to me. Thank you for just being who you are. Thank you for just existing.”