This'll be my only post in this blog, and likely one of the few/the only blog(s) I'll ever write. I've decided to set it out like a story with certain chapters to give it a story-esque feel to it, and I won't fully publish this until I'm completely happy with it.
Chapter 1: Early Summer is the best time of year.
I was born on the 2nd of June 1998, either into Hammersmith Hospital or St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington (don't remember which and I can't be bothered to ask which in all honesty![:p]()
) My mother was single and 19 at the time of birth, which gave plenty of ammunition for Daily Fail readers to judge her, but to be honest I don't really mind when people give birth, everyone is ready for a child at different ages in their life, a general age can't be given (except for law). As a child growing up without a father figure effected me to an unknown degree, I've never had one in my life; but it was only until my later years in life I would yearn for one. As an early toddler it was noted that I didn't misbehave much and was generally quiet, not really doing much out of the ordinary. To this day I'm still attempting to find out the identity of my father, but if I was to ever find I don't know what I'd do with this info.
Chapter 2: A Golden cloud with a sour lining.
It would only be until the age of 11 months that I would have no sibling, and on the 6th May 1999 my brother Oliver was born. His birth was rather uhm... extraordinary, with him "refusing to be born" Some form of extravagant machine was used to pull/suck him out, which disturbs me to no end. Obviously I was far too young to have any notable memories of him as a toddler, but that's more than can be said for my mother. She's told me that not long after birth (about 3-4 weeks) she noticed that I behaved completely differently to him, while I was still a bit quiet, my brother was completely un-social and hated people, and showed many abnormal behaviours for a child. My mother initially panicked thinking that something was wrong with him, and her worst fears were confirmed when he was roughly the age of 1, when doctors indeed confirmed that he was born with Autism. My mum's never discussed what she felt at this time, and I think that it's too much for her to bleed this out to me without turning into a bit of a mess, so I've avoided it so far. We were told that as my brother aged, he'd become radically more different to other children, eventually sticking out like a sore thumb with his behaviour by about the age of 7, but I'll discuss this later on.
Chapter 3: Yeah, he's my brother.
As an early chld I did relatively well at school, it was noted that I was one of the few children who were happy to go into school, finding the idea of being stuck in a home for the day incredibly boring, and savouring my chance at education, which sadly not all can. I spent my Primary School years up until Year 5 in St. Mary of The Angels R.C. Primary School, I exceeded greatly with my grades and general attitude in school from the ages of 5 and over, being noted as having one of the most matured reading and writing skill in the area, reading 11 year old books at the age of 6 and 7. While I excelled greatly (and enjoyed) a mainstream school, the same cannot be said for my Autistic brother. The all knowing (snigger) Tony Blair, at the time, thought it'd be a great idea to have disabled children be forced into mainstream schools, in some sort of pathetic attempt at trying to normalise their experience (this man irritates me to no end). While my brother was in school, he recieved the incorrect care, would occasionally be bullied and assaulted by children in the school (to which the Council refused as good enough grounds to have him in a specialist school). At one time he was so frustrated and confused he threw a chair at a teacher, and his carer at the time (bless her she was amazing- if you're out their Miss Murphy, thank you) knew that we were powerless to do anything, so we had to sit there and pretty much just watch. Though his disability matured me far earlier than I should've, I still of course didn't understand the full extent of a learning disability; I remember rather well that I even resorted to attempting to teach him myself, trying to sit him down and teach him how to read and write correctly for his age group, and even attempting basic spelling- which of course failed to no end, and shows just how desperate and deep hitting I found his disability. One thing I do remember from early childhood, is that nearly every time I made a wish with anything, be it a shooting star or blowing out my candles at a birthday, I longed for my brother to be "normal".
Chapter 4: My full realisation, and the beginning of the sweat and tears.
By the age of about 7 or 8, I clearly had the jist of what was going on, government didn't want to help us, social services couldn't help us, and the council didn't want to help us. We were pretty much on our own, and around this time is when my brother became a serious thought of mine, particularly what I would do when my mother passes away. I did have something to take my mind off of this though, the arrival of my sister Poppy, on the 28th September 2005. Thankfully, she initially showed no abnormal behaviour, and no doctor ever diagnosed her with anything. We were happy, and I had begged for a sister for no end for the past year, likely out of sheer desperation for an ordinary sibling I could relate to. The happiest moment of my life came in late 2008, when we were finally handed the paperwork to swap council houses with someone in Hertfordshire. My mum had fought as much as she could since her birth to get us out of London, more specifically because my area (Queen's Park) was known as a poor place to live, with cramped houses and staggeringly rising knife and gun crime. At this point the neighbour across our street was a drug abuser who literally used her child as a weapon to fight off a Met Police Sergeant (of which I will rant about another time) and the police were seen less and less in the area. When we moved we all kinda cried a bit in joy, I had never experienced fresh air or lush green grass, and I stood open mouthed and in awe when I was passed by someone riding a horse in full riding gear, I was in heaven! This is when I moved to my final Primary School for Year's 5&6 called Warren Dell, which lacked severely behind in it's student grade, with a severe lack of teaching for high grade students, resulting in me losing out on a lot of key education that would bite me in the backside for many a year to come; the school handled children greatly though, except for when our Head mistress legged it with all the school funds. It was around late Year 5/Early Year 6 that I had my first traumatic experience, the alcohol related fits of my current stepfather (whom I hate to no end and won't name). I was tucked up asleep on a Thursday night when I was awoken by a large crashing and banging coming from the landing (we lived in a flat) and got up to see what all the fuss was about. I awoke to my mother being in complete shock, telling me that my step father had experienced a fit, and had loss complete memory of who we were and where he was; going so far as to attempt to assault her with a kitchen chair. We dialled 999 three times in the space of an hour, and no ambulance ever came, nor did anyone ring us back or even enquire about this. This was when he came back.
Luckily he had regained his memory of where he was and who we were, and managed to stagger back to the house. Despite my thorough hatred for him, I helped my mum set out a chair for him and asked him how he was, as he was obviously still dazed and needed to sit down. He told us that he'd loss complete memory of who we were for a while, and was requesting that we get help. It was this time again he fell into another fit, collapsing from the chair and beginning to convulse on the ground. I was on the far side of the kitchen, trapped by him and his flailing arms, apparently him battling the fit, my mother screamed at me to jump over him as she couldn't reach me. I panicked to say the least, and noticed that he was beginning to give me a 1000 yard stare, and he was slowly starting to try and hit me, so I managed to jump over him and proceeded to barricade myself in my bedroom, me protecting my disabled brother while my mum locked herself in with my sister, as my step-dad had stood up and proceeded to drag a kitchen chair outside, initially trying to force entry into my mother/sister's room. He left again, now topless and only wearing a pair of trackies. I was completely mortified, and I was shacking like a stray dog in the cold. I couldn't control the flow of tears that were coming from my eyes, and rather disgustingly the mucus from my nose. After an hour of us still barricading our bedroom doors, me and my mum got out, checked he wasn't anywhere near the house and we finally locked the place down. I went into the kitchen and what I saw disturbed me greatly, with blood splashed all over the floor and once bright white cupboards, I had to fight the urge to vomit and panick again, reverting to staring at a field outside of the kitchen window for the next 15 minutes. About an hour later the clock struck 3 o'clock, and it was certain I wouldn't be in tomorrow. I couldn't sleep the entire night, haunted by what I saw. For the next 2 years after this event, I was plagued with nightmares and voices of him trying to form twisted words in my head- the voices I only seeked help about when I had a complete nervous breakdown in an R.E. class, seeing one of the school counsellors for help. The voices did still plague me every one in while until 13, when luckily they just went away. From that day, any nightmare I have involves me meeting a grizzly end, something which I awake from in a cold sweat the instant I kick the bucket.
Chapter 5: These events need a good carpet to be swept under.
Life continued on greatly after this, and so far the ages of 12-14 have been the happiest and care-free in my life so far, a stage of happiness I long to return to. I haven't had a traumatic experience such as this since, but I've got plenty more things to disturb me. I again exceeded greatly with grades, with a very bright outlook for every subject but French and P.E., two things I am dreadfully bad at. I was quit the social outcast at this time, as I had no access to the internet, and this was a point in my generation where the internet is where everything happened there, something which oddly has less effect on a person's popularity now than it used to. Luckily, I didn't care for popularity at the time, something which I regret now- as believe you me it's been hard work to obtain a decent popularity. I had my specific set of friends I got on well with, I had good grades and I was happy. But again, like many things in life, this didn't last long. About mid-way through being 14, I realised friends might actually be a good thing, and set about working on... well getting more. This had no impact on me really, and benefited me if anything, it just resulted in me being a little less confident. It's also at this time I set my eyes on a specific employment, politics. I had witnessed so many outrages to people like me and families like mine, I wanted a say, and boy was I ambitious. I ran for school council twice in Secondary School, but at such a young age we all voted for our mates anyway, and I wasn't too fussed surprisingly. This trend of happiness and slowly rising social status carried on until mid-way through Year 10, when we had to watch a few citizenship videos, all of them about mental health issues, specifically the disabled. For the first episode I laughed, and it took a lot fo downplaying to get people to realise I wasn't laughing at them, I was laughing with them, because I knew so much about what they had to do, it was uplifting and put a smile on my face that I knew exactly what there problems were, and had experienced them first hand. The second episode disturbed me greatly though, focusing heavily on a young boy with a disability that rendered him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he attended rest-bite just like my brother does, and the family discussed the same problems we had with getting help for him. This brought it all home for me a bit too much, and every time an episode featuring him was on I buried my face into my school jumper and sobbed silently, leaving class with suspiciously red and puffy eyes. I didn't mention this to anyone, and still haven't except for what I'm writing here.
Chapter 6: It's happening again.
All things considered, I faired rather well with what was going on. My brother's conditions worsened, but he had mellowed to the point where he didn't effect me too much anymore, but the thoughts of his later life began to plague me, and still do. This is where it starts coming to where I am now. Eventually, not long after turning 15, I developed a fascination for police vehicles, and liked them to no end. There was a free to play video game that let you play as essentially a fully customisable private police force, and joined one of the many British Police themed clans. Politics had begun to bore me at this age, and I was seriously considering a job in the police, but the pay and judgement from my small and very inter-linked family troubled me, and I decided not too say anything up until a month or two ago. Luckily my mum wanted to join the police, and supports me fully in my ventures, but my grandmother doesn't want me to join whatsoever, fearing my body will be found in a dark urban alleyway (what a positive outlook on life eh?) I have no problem with this, as her objections are small and won't effect me joining, it just troubles me that she won't be happy if I ever reach turning out day in a crisp tunic and tall and proud custodian. My brother still worries me greatly, and I do worry considerably whenever I begin to think about what will happen once my mum passes away. It's going to happen, and I don't know what condition he'll be in at that point. He's already been further diagnosed with Tourettes and Schizophrenia, which again a labour set of doctors didn't seem to want to pass. He's happy enough now, and he can be a real laugh. But his future concerns me greatly, and to add onto that it's now suspected my sister has minor autism, which I managed to bare the brunt of in peace. Whenever I watch anything to do with mental health I break down and just generally attempt to reach a happy place in my mind, I write about this now with misty eyes and a lump in my throat. I have great worry for what will come of my brother and sister, and I'm greatly troubled with the realisation that I'll never be at peace with anyone with mental health issues. It makes me sound like a complete nutter, and I hate myself for it. I can tell you now, my worst nightmare would be to attend a mental health call as a police man. I'd rather lay my life on the line and die then be forced to confront this, and I don't know if I will ever manage to mature out of this. I'm sure it'll pass once I know what the available options are, but I feel that there's a broken wire that sparks a bit in the back of my head to do with this, and writing this blog/story is helping me to come to peace with this all.
Don't mistake this for some stressed cry for help please, I really am just ranting and writing here for my own sake, so I know there's something I can put my name down on and say "That's mine there, I wrote this and got it off my chest".
If you've read this far, I have much appreciation for you doing so,
Connor out.
Chapter 1: Early Summer is the best time of year.
I was born on the 2nd of June 1998, either into Hammersmith Hospital or St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington (don't remember which and I can't be bothered to ask which in all honesty
) My mother was single and 19 at the time of birth, which gave plenty of ammunition for Daily Fail readers to judge her, but to be honest I don't really mind when people give birth, everyone is ready for a child at different ages in their life, a general age can't be given (except for law). As a child growing up without a father figure effected me to an unknown degree, I've never had one in my life; but it was only until my later years in life I would yearn for one. As an early toddler it was noted that I didn't misbehave much and was generally quiet, not really doing much out of the ordinary. To this day I'm still attempting to find out the identity of my father, but if I was to ever find I don't know what I'd do with this info.Chapter 2: A Golden cloud with a sour lining.
It would only be until the age of 11 months that I would have no sibling, and on the 6th May 1999 my brother Oliver was born. His birth was rather uhm... extraordinary, with him "refusing to be born" Some form of extravagant machine was used to pull/suck him out, which disturbs me to no end. Obviously I was far too young to have any notable memories of him as a toddler, but that's more than can be said for my mother. She's told me that not long after birth (about 3-4 weeks) she noticed that I behaved completely differently to him, while I was still a bit quiet, my brother was completely un-social and hated people, and showed many abnormal behaviours for a child. My mother initially panicked thinking that something was wrong with him, and her worst fears were confirmed when he was roughly the age of 1, when doctors indeed confirmed that he was born with Autism. My mum's never discussed what she felt at this time, and I think that it's too much for her to bleed this out to me without turning into a bit of a mess, so I've avoided it so far. We were told that as my brother aged, he'd become radically more different to other children, eventually sticking out like a sore thumb with his behaviour by about the age of 7, but I'll discuss this later on.
Chapter 3: Yeah, he's my brother.
As an early chld I did relatively well at school, it was noted that I was one of the few children who were happy to go into school, finding the idea of being stuck in a home for the day incredibly boring, and savouring my chance at education, which sadly not all can. I spent my Primary School years up until Year 5 in St. Mary of The Angels R.C. Primary School, I exceeded greatly with my grades and general attitude in school from the ages of 5 and over, being noted as having one of the most matured reading and writing skill in the area, reading 11 year old books at the age of 6 and 7. While I excelled greatly (and enjoyed) a mainstream school, the same cannot be said for my Autistic brother. The all knowing (snigger) Tony Blair, at the time, thought it'd be a great idea to have disabled children be forced into mainstream schools, in some sort of pathetic attempt at trying to normalise their experience (this man irritates me to no end). While my brother was in school, he recieved the incorrect care, would occasionally be bullied and assaulted by children in the school (to which the Council refused as good enough grounds to have him in a specialist school). At one time he was so frustrated and confused he threw a chair at a teacher, and his carer at the time (bless her she was amazing- if you're out their Miss Murphy, thank you) knew that we were powerless to do anything, so we had to sit there and pretty much just watch. Though his disability matured me far earlier than I should've, I still of course didn't understand the full extent of a learning disability; I remember rather well that I even resorted to attempting to teach him myself, trying to sit him down and teach him how to read and write correctly for his age group, and even attempting basic spelling- which of course failed to no end, and shows just how desperate and deep hitting I found his disability. One thing I do remember from early childhood, is that nearly every time I made a wish with anything, be it a shooting star or blowing out my candles at a birthday, I longed for my brother to be "normal".
Chapter 4: My full realisation, and the beginning of the sweat and tears.
By the age of about 7 or 8, I clearly had the jist of what was going on, government didn't want to help us, social services couldn't help us, and the council didn't want to help us. We were pretty much on our own, and around this time is when my brother became a serious thought of mine, particularly what I would do when my mother passes away. I did have something to take my mind off of this though, the arrival of my sister Poppy, on the 28th September 2005. Thankfully, she initially showed no abnormal behaviour, and no doctor ever diagnosed her with anything. We were happy, and I had begged for a sister for no end for the past year, likely out of sheer desperation for an ordinary sibling I could relate to. The happiest moment of my life came in late 2008, when we were finally handed the paperwork to swap council houses with someone in Hertfordshire. My mum had fought as much as she could since her birth to get us out of London, more specifically because my area (Queen's Park) was known as a poor place to live, with cramped houses and staggeringly rising knife and gun crime. At this point the neighbour across our street was a drug abuser who literally used her child as a weapon to fight off a Met Police Sergeant (of which I will rant about another time) and the police were seen less and less in the area. When we moved we all kinda cried a bit in joy, I had never experienced fresh air or lush green grass, and I stood open mouthed and in awe when I was passed by someone riding a horse in full riding gear, I was in heaven! This is when I moved to my final Primary School for Year's 5&6 called Warren Dell, which lacked severely behind in it's student grade, with a severe lack of teaching for high grade students, resulting in me losing out on a lot of key education that would bite me in the backside for many a year to come; the school handled children greatly though, except for when our Head mistress legged it with all the school funds. It was around late Year 5/Early Year 6 that I had my first traumatic experience, the alcohol related fits of my current stepfather (whom I hate to no end and won't name). I was tucked up asleep on a Thursday night when I was awoken by a large crashing and banging coming from the landing (we lived in a flat) and got up to see what all the fuss was about. I awoke to my mother being in complete shock, telling me that my step father had experienced a fit, and had loss complete memory of who we were and where he was; going so far as to attempt to assault her with a kitchen chair. We dialled 999 three times in the space of an hour, and no ambulance ever came, nor did anyone ring us back or even enquire about this. This was when he came back.
Luckily he had regained his memory of where he was and who we were, and managed to stagger back to the house. Despite my thorough hatred for him, I helped my mum set out a chair for him and asked him how he was, as he was obviously still dazed and needed to sit down. He told us that he'd loss complete memory of who we were for a while, and was requesting that we get help. It was this time again he fell into another fit, collapsing from the chair and beginning to convulse on the ground. I was on the far side of the kitchen, trapped by him and his flailing arms, apparently him battling the fit, my mother screamed at me to jump over him as she couldn't reach me. I panicked to say the least, and noticed that he was beginning to give me a 1000 yard stare, and he was slowly starting to try and hit me, so I managed to jump over him and proceeded to barricade myself in my bedroom, me protecting my disabled brother while my mum locked herself in with my sister, as my step-dad had stood up and proceeded to drag a kitchen chair outside, initially trying to force entry into my mother/sister's room. He left again, now topless and only wearing a pair of trackies. I was completely mortified, and I was shacking like a stray dog in the cold. I couldn't control the flow of tears that were coming from my eyes, and rather disgustingly the mucus from my nose. After an hour of us still barricading our bedroom doors, me and my mum got out, checked he wasn't anywhere near the house and we finally locked the place down. I went into the kitchen and what I saw disturbed me greatly, with blood splashed all over the floor and once bright white cupboards, I had to fight the urge to vomit and panick again, reverting to staring at a field outside of the kitchen window for the next 15 minutes. About an hour later the clock struck 3 o'clock, and it was certain I wouldn't be in tomorrow. I couldn't sleep the entire night, haunted by what I saw. For the next 2 years after this event, I was plagued with nightmares and voices of him trying to form twisted words in my head- the voices I only seeked help about when I had a complete nervous breakdown in an R.E. class, seeing one of the school counsellors for help. The voices did still plague me every one in while until 13, when luckily they just went away. From that day, any nightmare I have involves me meeting a grizzly end, something which I awake from in a cold sweat the instant I kick the bucket.
Chapter 5: These events need a good carpet to be swept under.
Life continued on greatly after this, and so far the ages of 12-14 have been the happiest and care-free in my life so far, a stage of happiness I long to return to. I haven't had a traumatic experience such as this since, but I've got plenty more things to disturb me. I again exceeded greatly with grades, with a very bright outlook for every subject but French and P.E., two things I am dreadfully bad at. I was quit the social outcast at this time, as I had no access to the internet, and this was a point in my generation where the internet is where everything happened there, something which oddly has less effect on a person's popularity now than it used to. Luckily, I didn't care for popularity at the time, something which I regret now- as believe you me it's been hard work to obtain a decent popularity. I had my specific set of friends I got on well with, I had good grades and I was happy. But again, like many things in life, this didn't last long. About mid-way through being 14, I realised friends might actually be a good thing, and set about working on... well getting more. This had no impact on me really, and benefited me if anything, it just resulted in me being a little less confident. It's also at this time I set my eyes on a specific employment, politics. I had witnessed so many outrages to people like me and families like mine, I wanted a say, and boy was I ambitious. I ran for school council twice in Secondary School, but at such a young age we all voted for our mates anyway, and I wasn't too fussed surprisingly. This trend of happiness and slowly rising social status carried on until mid-way through Year 10, when we had to watch a few citizenship videos, all of them about mental health issues, specifically the disabled. For the first episode I laughed, and it took a lot fo downplaying to get people to realise I wasn't laughing at them, I was laughing with them, because I knew so much about what they had to do, it was uplifting and put a smile on my face that I knew exactly what there problems were, and had experienced them first hand. The second episode disturbed me greatly though, focusing heavily on a young boy with a disability that rendered him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he attended rest-bite just like my brother does, and the family discussed the same problems we had with getting help for him. This brought it all home for me a bit too much, and every time an episode featuring him was on I buried my face into my school jumper and sobbed silently, leaving class with suspiciously red and puffy eyes. I didn't mention this to anyone, and still haven't except for what I'm writing here.
Chapter 6: It's happening again.
All things considered, I faired rather well with what was going on. My brother's conditions worsened, but he had mellowed to the point where he didn't effect me too much anymore, but the thoughts of his later life began to plague me, and still do. This is where it starts coming to where I am now. Eventually, not long after turning 15, I developed a fascination for police vehicles, and liked them to no end. There was a free to play video game that let you play as essentially a fully customisable private police force, and joined one of the many British Police themed clans. Politics had begun to bore me at this age, and I was seriously considering a job in the police, but the pay and judgement from my small and very inter-linked family troubled me, and I decided not too say anything up until a month or two ago. Luckily my mum wanted to join the police, and supports me fully in my ventures, but my grandmother doesn't want me to join whatsoever, fearing my body will be found in a dark urban alleyway (what a positive outlook on life eh?) I have no problem with this, as her objections are small and won't effect me joining, it just troubles me that she won't be happy if I ever reach turning out day in a crisp tunic and tall and proud custodian. My brother still worries me greatly, and I do worry considerably whenever I begin to think about what will happen once my mum passes away. It's going to happen, and I don't know what condition he'll be in at that point. He's already been further diagnosed with Tourettes and Schizophrenia, which again a labour set of doctors didn't seem to want to pass. He's happy enough now, and he can be a real laugh. But his future concerns me greatly, and to add onto that it's now suspected my sister has minor autism, which I managed to bare the brunt of in peace. Whenever I watch anything to do with mental health I break down and just generally attempt to reach a happy place in my mind, I write about this now with misty eyes and a lump in my throat. I have great worry for what will come of my brother and sister, and I'm greatly troubled with the realisation that I'll never be at peace with anyone with mental health issues. It makes me sound like a complete nutter, and I hate myself for it. I can tell you now, my worst nightmare would be to attend a mental health call as a police man. I'd rather lay my life on the line and die then be forced to confront this, and I don't know if I will ever manage to mature out of this. I'm sure it'll pass once I know what the available options are, but I feel that there's a broken wire that sparks a bit in the back of my head to do with this, and writing this blog/story is helping me to come to peace with this all.
Don't mistake this for some stressed cry for help please, I really am just ranting and writing here for my own sake, so I know there's something I can put my name down on and say "That's mine there, I wrote this and got it off my chest".
If you've read this far, I have much appreciation for you doing so,
Connor out.