I didn’t go to nursery, when I was very little I remember an argument down stairs while I was in my room, I threw my teddy with anger like I was acting out the argument and then felt bad and cuddled it. I remember an argument about money while I was in bed, I came down and offered to give them my piggybank money. I remember being told not to cry on a train because everybody was looking at me. My dad started to be very successful, I started school at Lisvane, I screamed and cried and pulled all the way to the classroom on the first day. My parents bought a very big house, we had a gardener, a cleaner, an au pair and at one point a driver. At some point the au pair left ‘because she could not stay and see the damage the arguments were having on the children’. They spent a lot of money on doing the house up and fixtures and fittings, taking out credit, buying designer furniture having one of pieces made for the house. My mum made friends with a seamstress in Pickering and was buying pillows from her for £100 each in the 80’s. My mums voice had become very posh, she had a collection of friends who were parents from Lisvane called the ‘Scalby crowed’, they were all very wealthy. My dad was working extremely hard, I remember seeing him but I don’t remember playing with him, he used to have a severe migraines on the weekend after finishing the week, my mum thought he was doing it to get out of spending time with us but he wasn’t. The financial crash happened in 1989 the same year my sister was born, the job that my dad was being paid for overran by a year and he wasn’t paid for that second year, due to the financial crash there wasn’t any job offers for the year after that as well. My dad had told my mum that there was no money coming in, that we would have to leave private school and sell the house or massively cut back on the spending, she said ‘you fucked this up you fucking fix it’. My mum wanted to go skiing with the Scalby crowed but my dad thought my sister was to little so he stayed at home with her. I remember screaming arguments, I woke up one night to hearing them arguing down stairs smashing things in the kitchen. Things around the house had been smashed, the book shelf in my dads office had been broken off the wall, ornaments from my dads exhibitions where smashed. The house started to become a bit dishevelled, the fence in the garden blew down and wasn’t put back up. Work on the house was left unfinished. I remember being in a car on the way home from somewhere, they were having an argument. Mum was driving, she screeched to the side of the road in the middle of no where and told him to get out. He got home a few hours later. One Christmas in the morning they had an argument, mum just started hoovering and doing house work saying it was just any other day while dad pleaded with her to come back in with the kids to open the presents. Another one mum had happily brought dad a jokey present, a chocolate penis, we had had a lot fun buying it I think, I remember watching it burning on Christmas day after she threw on during an argument. There was screaming arguments in the house, the garden and on the street. My dad said my sister just used to walk around with her fingers in her ears, my teacher at school one break time said my dad was a bastard. I remember me and my brother hugging my dad one night in the hall way while my mum rammed the gate with the car over and over again screeching metal, she got through it and drove over it screeching the tyres on the road. Mum lost the friend in Pickering because she could no longer afford the pillows. I had a sexual encounter which a boy at school which I did not want to do but was coaxed into. The boy came over to my house and we did more stuff. I did more stuff with two girls, another boy and tried to coax two other boys. I had a big crush on a girl and a boy at school. Soon after the first instance I had a panic attack thinking about a voice I was making in my head telling me to kill myself, I went downstairs to mum but she told me to go back to bed, my brother came down from his bedroom and told her there was really something wrong and then she listened to me but I made up a story about a teacher at school being mean to me. We moved out and dad stayed in the house. We lived in a half finished house in thornton dale for about four months, then we moved back in. Stuff was uncomfortable and it felt like mum had just moved in to get the house. There was more screaming arguments. Mum asked dad for a divorce with us sat next to them crying. Dad moved out. Mum had a huge go at my brother, I found him alone in his bedroom in the dark his voice was shaky and upset. When we came back from seeing dad on a weekend mum would viscously shout at us and tell us how horrible he was. She would keep us from going on some weekends as a way of barging. She started being horrible to his secretary who lived in the village. There was no heating in the house, an older cousin came to stay for a while and wore her coat the whole time. I remember sitting in fright looking at my brother in the back of the car while two friends from the village that we were taking out for the day were play fighting, I remember thinking they don’t know what they are doing and then my mum turning round and destroying them. The house was falling to bits, most of the books from the small library had gone, every where was cold. There was a hole in the roof that me and my brother climbed up through the loft to fix. The grass in the garden was growing long. I had forgotten that I had a rabbit, I remembered one winter morning and went out to find it completely emaciated, just alive but half frozen. I remember not getting a bath for two weeks at a time, my hair grew quite long. I used to dig at the plaster in my wall at night. My room was a complete mess I had spilt a big thing of pva glue on it, I had brought up stuff from my dads office, I was spray painting things, cutting up stuff with the scalpel blades, I painted my name on the floor in big black door paint with a big brush and then my black hand print underneath. I used to torture insects. Kids remembered me at school for swearing a lot, I didn’t do much oy my homework I was bad at spelling, I used to fake my mums signature to say in my prep book to say that I had done some of it. I used to wet the bed a lot, my mum used to put bin bags under the sheets. My brother used to do a lot of sleep walking. I used to wonder off during the day around the village and into the farmers field next door, my brother used to climb out of the velux window in attic room and sit on the roof, he remembers cars along the road slowing down. I wasn’t sleeping in my bedroom any more but in my mums’ room on the window ledge seat. I remember once when I was younger being in bed with her and wondering what would happen if I touched my leg to hers, she pulled hers away. I was terrified of ghosts, I had a panic attack while it was just me and my sister in the bedroom and mum downstairs working, I remember the panicked feeling and breathing fast. I shouted to my mum but she did not come up. (With art I was a child prodigy, at five my teacher said I could draw like a 16 year old. My comprehensive secondary school teacher told my mum in 15 years teaching he not seen a child with more talent, my later secondary school teacher truly though I was getting my mum an, art teacher, to do my work) at age 10 I found a lovely photo of her blowing a kiss, it filled me with warmth and love and remembering maybe how she was when I was little. I copied the picture, I brought the drawing to her really happily but she wasn’t interested or warm, maybe she was busy. I had another panic attack in loft of a friends house where I thought I saw something under the floor boards, I couldn’t talk, I didn’t feel like I could breath I just pointed, my friends calmed me down. Sleeping over at friends houses I was scared of ghosts, I left lights on etc, the parents were very kind and everything was ok. I slept over at a friends house, his house was next to a grave yard. In the middle of the night a horrendous noise started, it sounded like a jet engine I didn’t understand why my friend did wake up but I didn’t dare move even to wake him up, I stayed terrified, very still, breathing very fast in my bed massively sweating, I don’t know what the noise was. My dad had got a girlfriend who may mum hated, we went around most weekends for a while, she was younger than my dad, I didn’t like her but she was probably very nice she always made us Sunday lunch. I had a lovely time going over there. I was really worried my mum would go around and kill her or dad or both, the police came round to our house to warned her one day. I remember her putting on this fake loveliness, they warmed to her and left. The grass had grown almost as tall as me in the back garden, mum took us out there for a picnic on a summers day, its one of only a few nice memories I have of her. We moved house when I was eleven, some of the Scalby crowed had paid for my last year, Tom was 14 he was really sad to be leaving Scarborough college. I had a panic attack when we went over to see the new house, I didn’t know where my mum and brother were and I panicked and started screaming for them. I fitted in well to the comprehensive but my brother did not, he was bullied. My dad left his girlfriend for another woman, she moved out, but he took us round to her house quite a few times for Sunday lunch. One day we were all meant to go round, we didn’t and she committed suicide, I think she was about 34. Dad found her holding a picture of us. I had a good year and a half of happiness at the school. Mum had a car crash and was wonderfully sweet and loving while she was poorly and then suddenly became colder again when she was better. She would get randomly cross with people, we went into a haberdashery shop in Beverly and she thought the woman was looking at us funny, she shouted at her about taking us not being clean enough to be in her shop. That kind of thing just made us feel small and awkward. My mum started seeing a married guy from the Scalby crowed who she didn’t particularly like but he used to hit on her. She got with him for the money, she later told me about it, that you can learn to love someone. He left his family and kids, she lost nearly all of her friends from the Scalby crowed. Chris recalled how surprised he was to see when we where all in town that we wouldn’t leave her side, even my older brother would go off. She started to shout at Tom a lot, I think he went to some sort of counselling or therapy where he was taught to just walk away from her (I tried that a lot later when I was 18 she just shouted ‘run away you little boy’), he was intensely into his design work and school work and liked everything he did to be prefect and was upset when it was not. He got into exercising a lot and started suffering from bulimia. It was pointed out to mum that Tom was suffering from bulimia by a teacher, mum had not spotted it. I remember at about 11 or 12 going to a doctor with a swelling in my gum which I still have, my back tooth was completely rotted out, I remember the look of disgust the doctor had for my mum. I was still fancying boys and girls, I came out of the shower at my dads at about 12 years old and suddenly everything seemed completely unreal for a few minutes, scary and weird. I had a lot of nightmares and was still terrified of ghosts. Things started to go wrong for me, a friend of mine sort off hit on me a couple of girls wanted to go out with me but I started to lag in maturity my confidence started to slip, I started being shy (an emotion I had never felt before) and started to feel slightly shameful about myself, I began to be frightened that I might be gay, I obsessed over it none stop. I remember the last morning I woke up not thinking about it, very happy and then I remembered it. I thought about then without a single break from when I woke up to when I went to bed for about a two years, I was very concerned about where my hands were, I felt that I was moving them and placing them wrong. I carried on lagging in maturity, getting more shy and more scared. Outwardly I went from being a happy out going boy to being upset quiet and lonely. I couldn’t reply to my best friend from primary school who had been a pen pal. l moved house, we moved in with mums new partner and I went to Scarborough college private school. By now I had full blown severe social anxiety, I couldn’t talk, people scarred me, I blushed when they did and I felt intense fear and shame. I felt exactly the same with my family. I was still obsessed with the thought that I might be gay. The boy that I had first done things with at primary school was there and he passed around a rumour that I was gay, which obviously didn’t help. Some friends, a couple of girls and a boy from my previous school tried writing to me but I couldn’t reply. All my friends from primary school who were now at Scarborough college tried to be friends with me, some tried really really hard for a long time but eventually they all gave up including my best friend who had been my penpal, and the girl I had had a crush on at primary school who had given my a small love letter before I started Scarborough college. I lost everyone. Stuff started to be difficult with mum, her voice had got posh again as soon as we moved. She started to correct the way I spoke and that I was shouting when I wasn’t and then a while later she started to treat me like she had done my brother a year or so before, constantly being told off or being seen as bad for some reason and quite often being slapped. Her partner Chris who was a nothingness would always get me to say sorry even when I knew it wasn’t me or I had no idea what had just happened or what I had been told off for. Then mum would say ‘sorry doesn’t mean anything’ she would go on being cross for days and as I had said sorry and was always at fault I would just have to absorb being bad and try and somehow make amends with her. She would always be at her worst when no one was around, I wished I knew when it was coming so I could record her and prove how horrible she was, I wished someone was there, my brother, Chris even, because I knew she would not be as bad or if she was my brother would stick up for me. She would just get in a mood, she was at her worst when it was just me and her. (I look a lot like my dad, I had heard that her mum, my grandma had been the same with one of my aunts, the black sheep of their family). I spent the whole of the summer holiday when I was fourteen sitting in an armchair watching tv, so much so that there was a greasy hair patch on the material, I was not taking to personal care of myself. Mum and Chris did invite me out but I never wanted to go. Mum has a habit of being kind and open to get information but will then uses it against you or obsesses over it. (My sister was treated differently from how I had been taught to be, for instance she didn’t have to turn of lights when she left a room.) I was angry with my little sister for lying about something and I pushed her over, mum got angry, they then all went out I held kitchen knife to my throat wanting to cut but I didn’t, when I am depressed I wish I had done it that day. I was on holiday with them, I had a very old friend who I had seen and he had shown me some cannabis leaf’s he had, very nervously trying to make conversation with mum and Chris sitting in a restaurant, I told them that something interesting had happened when I went over to my friends, mum piped up ‘you had sex with him’, they both looked at me with blank expressions, I felt crap. That added to the obsession about being gay. Eventually I decided I didn’t care if I was or wasn’t and was very happy for about a day until it dawned on me that I was still terrified of people and couldn’t talk, I thought it was just part of the fear of being gay but it was still present when that fear had left. I thought I had broken myself. I started obsessing about it like I had obsessed about being gay. Every social interaction I would ruminate on for hours, good ones I would get a sort of sick happiness from because I would quickly pick holes in them, most were just bad and I would torment my self with them, morning to night. I was not taking good personal care of myself, I didn’t wash much, whenever possible my room was a tip. I got mum to take me to the doctors on the pretence of hurting my ankle. I told the doctor that I was finding it really difficult to talk to people, he said I should just try something more difficult every day. Mum was still acting the same way, things were horrible at home. Quite often I really didn’t understand what I had done, concerned once I asked her ‘do you think your angry maybe because of the menopause?’ and she instantly gave me a huge slap. She would just get in a mood and I knew I was going to be told off. I hardly talked to anyone at school, I didn’t talk to the friend of my brothers who gave me a lift to school, I hardly talked at home. It seemed like I didn’t talk to people for months, I always walked with my head down. Chris was still getting me to say sorry even when I explained to him that mum had never said a single sorry it can’t be me all the time. None of the sorry’s were excepted. One time he joined in with her, for some reason I had used their bath in their room, I think the other bathroom was being renovated. My mum said that I had left I filthy, I hadn’t but I went and double checked and gave it another rinse in was spotless. She sent Chris to check and he said it was still filthy, but it wasn’t, I had cleaned it twice now and the first time it was clean. They were telling me off a lot about it and I was protesting so much that my little sister went up and checked and came back down to say it was totally clean. I went with my oldest friend to a festival, I managed meet my first girlfriend there. A while later I watched a horror film with her, I started to worry that it was possible that I could hurt people, that became the new obsession that I terrified my self with. I went on holiday and was staying in a room with my sister, she was a sleep and I had a panic attack about the possibility that I might harm her. I went into to mum and Chris’s room while having the panic attack, my mum says random stuff sometimes but accidentally hit the nail on the head this time and said ‘do you want to hurt your sister’. We had a big talk about it and I calmed down and felt a lot better, Chris went to go and sleep in my sisters room. A while later my mum got up, told me she was scared of me and couldn’t stay with me. I started to have a panic attack again, Chris came in and went to sleep, I laid in bed breathing very fast for a long time. Mum was crying the next day, concerned but feeling crap I asked her what was wrong she gave me a horrible look and said ‘you know’. When we got home she put a lock on her door and then always locked her door at night. I was using wax pastels while doing a drawing on the dinning room table, I got some on the table, mum went mad I started moving don’t know why I went up stairs but she hit me going up the stairs, while upstairs and tried push me going down the stairs, I almost let go of the rail, to fall and go to hospital. My sister did a similar thing a on the table few years later and nothing happened. I gradually mostly got over the fear of hurting people. The social anxiety was still severe, I had a sort of friend who I had a couple of nights out with and smoked some weed with, this guy hit on me as well on the bus after everyone got off, the friendship wasn’t great and it sort of petered out. I did average in my exams, apart from art I got an A. Mum was an Art teacher, she loved art history and had a lot of books on artists. Mum was telling me off for something in the car she said ‘your mad, no wonder you don’t have any friends’. I took up the word mad, combined it with the feeling of unreality and created a terrifying fear that the world was unreal, gradually I began to believe it was bit by bit until I fully believed it was and it was truly horrific and terrifying. I didn’t dream, again I obsessed about it from morning to night not stop. When I closed my eyes at night it was as if I had gone completely insane, I entirely lost myself in what felt like a schizophrenic mess. This happens when I get bad, I cant go to sleep with my eyes closed, I have to keep them open and just count. I would wake up every night with a panic attack being petrified and then have a hard time getting back to sleep. I was scarred to move, to do anything. Scarred to have a shower anything that wasn’t just sitting. I know I looked terrified I don’t know how it wasn’t noticed. An addiction to porn and gaming were the only things that gave me slight relief from it but it was still there. I had started drinking every day before it started but the fear put that to an end. I remember once when I was about 17, I had a break from mental illness, I had a window of about a minuite when I though about something else and forgot the obsessions. It was glorious, it was the first time that I had stopped the constant intense rumination since the very beginning when I was 12. But then it was gone. The fear was terrible, all the while the social anxiety had stayed severe. Still being told of regularly by mum and now I had to eat separately from mum, Chris a katie. They ate in the dinning room and I ate in the kitchen. Related or unrelated at this time I started to hear a strange heavy breathing at night, it wasn’t me and wasn’t coming from anyone else, it was like it was in the room, I tried not to think about it, I heard it 5 or 6 times and when we moved house a bit later I heard it there to. I felt zero confidence to be on my own, zero confidence about looking after myself and was immature in many ways, I still felt like a 12 year old, I was also terrified about the world being unreal. It would have been good to move out at 16 but it wasn’t possible. The fear came with a nasty sensation of being tranquillized which I think was the stress and only added to the unrealness. My dad took me on a trip to wales, I had a panic attack in the car on the way, otherwise it was lovely. Although I was mostly ok about being bi I was still ashamed of it and it was secret. My brother had a problem with alcohol which had developed at home and I think he became a fully fledged alcoholic while he was at uni. My brother had been to ‘time to talk’ a sort of counselling service, I was barely able to look after myself but I asked mum if I could go, she seemed a bit bemused as to why? but took me. They were not trained councillor’s, really just there to listen. The first session I panicked as I talked about the unreality, the room seamed to move I panicked, she got me to do some painting on the floor I felt patronised, I opened up about the unsolicited sexual encounter I had had as a child she seamed a bit shocked and uneasy, she asked a really awkard question about it, it made me feel demeaned. She said I should have a day off school, I fought for this when I got home, I did and I felt a bit better but then terrible the next night and had a panic attack, I was collapsed at the bottom of the stairs pleading for help. My mum and Chris stood and looked at me, they didn’t come over and comfort me, they left the room. My little sister was very concerned I think she kind of stayed with me. In
Submitted March 24, 2019 at 11:35PM by Dylankempton https://ift.tt/2TqUYfz
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