The Long Way Round - Why I Am Who I Am and Why I Feel Hopeless

Starting from the top and working down. Make your own conclusions but what I write here is the definitive history of why I am the way I am. I think we’re all sick of this by now, me for living through it, you for seeing it and putting up with it. I’ll add subheadings so you can kind of navigate to where you want but at least by the end of this people will understand why I feel hopeless.

Childhood

I was generally a happy child. A sensitive one who was always keen to work hard and do the right thing. I did well at school, I had a lot of friends, I was well-liked, and I got on with my family. Kinda.

I was always in the shadow of my younger brother. He was an exceptionally good footballer, so he got a lot of attention. He played for Chelsea, QPR, Tottenham and Watford, while he turned down Arsenal on several occasions. Meanwhile, my dad said he wasn’t going to pay for me to play Sunday league. This rubbed off to me as favouritism.

That’s the view I held until I was well into my teens. At family-dos I was always the butt of the joke, never him. You know in sitcoms where characters get into really awkward situations where you feel sorry for them but it’s so cringe? That was a lot of my childhood with my family. I’ll give you an example. Once, when I was camping with the extended family, one of their kids, some 7-year-old, was known as being like Scrappy Doo, went around being a little pikey and punching peoples shins and whatnot. I was with him during an evening game of Manhunt once on a climbing frame, and out of nowhere he punched me in the bollocks, winding me, and pushed me from about ten feet onto the tarmac. People come around and wonder how I had been beaten up by a kid, essentially. No one believed my side of the story, that I was on the end of a cheap shot and then pushed off a fucking climbing frame while cradling my sore bollocks. No one ever believed my side of the story.

It was around this time my dad tried to kill himself. I was about 13 at the time. I remember being with my cousins going to Black Park, and my aunt passed me the phone asking to plead with my dad about something, I think it was medication. That’ll always stick with me, and I’m fully aware of what it’s like for the loved ones of people who feel this way, but I know the other side too.

Secondary School

This is where it got rough. Primary school was a delight, but secondary school was horrible. I was consistently bullied for my small size in year 7 and 8. In year 9, I started making good friends, people I’m still close with today. It was the only year where I didn’t feel the pressure to succeed academically because I was enjoying myself. Every other year I’d set the bar so high for myself and it was hard reaching that standard. Year 10 is where things got truly bleak.

I had a crush on a girl in my drama class, Tiffany. We only ever spoke in that class or the odd-time on BBM, I didn’t expect anything to ever happen, she was way out of my league (if I think I’m ugly now then I was a mutant back then). But the longer the crush went on the more I was a) worried that it wouldn’t go and b) slowly convincing myself that there was a shot.

Sometime in June of that year, I was off school for a day with an illness. On that day off, one of my friends let slip about the crush, and that’s when everything collapsed on me. You’d think 14 and 15-year-olds wouldn’t care that much about gossip like that, right? That’s what I thought at least.

When I went back to school the next day, it was suddenly like I was in an American high school film. I opened my locker, which I scarcely used, and there were screwed up pieces of paper with her name on. Wherever I went people were shouting her name at me. It got to a point where she was getting stuff like this too, so she started telling people that she hated me and that I “was an enormous cunt.” I had never warranted that. My friends were of no help, and sometimes even joined in on this stuff. There was one kid in particular, Peter Raymond, who would send me texts and Facebook messages on end about it until I blocked him.

This kind of treatment went on for months and months, spanning from one side of the summer holidays to the other. It affected my grades, it affected my confidence, it made me dread drama. I felt I had been let down by my friends, the school, my parents for not following up on this as they knew it was going on. That summer, I got beaten up outside West Drayton station and chased home by a gang – both unprovoked, both unrelated. It felt like the world was out to spite me.

At the start of year 11, I recognised that all this had deeply affected my mood enough to think it was bordering on mental illness. I was upset a lot, I was often crying at home (and tried to hide it at school and not give people another reason to get at me) and I asked the school to refer me to a counsellor, which was the only thing they did right.

In October 2012, I had my first ever meeting with a counsellor, Juan Carlos, and it was a bad one. He thought I was not unwell, but simply was stressed from school, with bullying the problem. I strongly disagreed with him, but my parents only listened to him. That December was the first time I tried to commit suicide.

Love and War

I’m going to spare the details and colouring from that as that’s not the purpose of this piece. I was taken to hospital, kept in for a few days, and released back home with a proper therapist booked in regularly, Holly. She helped me through the first half of 2013, and made me feel like I was happy again. With depression though, I’ve always felt like once you’ve had your lowest point, it won’t take a lot to feel that way again, even in your happiest moments.

I enjoyed the back end of year 11 through to year 12, with summer 2013 being one of my favourites. I felt content if not happy again, and that was enough. I also now had a group of close friends I could finally depend on.

In early 2014, I started talking to a girl, and she ended up being my first girlfriend, Meg. Some of you may already have your thoughts set in stone about this part, but I’ll address it. It was a long-distance relationship between two people who didn’t have jobs because of their focus on getting into a mutual university – Portsmouth. Money was tight, so we were only able to see each other for a few days every month. At first, this wasn’t an issue and I enjoyed spending time with her, but this deteriorated once my final year of sixth form started up.

She quickly became paranoid and manipulative, accusing me of having a fling with my best friend’s sister (who was 14 at the time). At first I let it slide because it was easier to do that than to argue with her, but it annoyed me greatly when she kept going on about it. By January 2015, I was fed up of just being her emotional punch bag, and after she accused me of lying and then going behind my back to my friend about it, I decided enough was enough. I wanted to break up with her. “No,” was her response. What do you mean “no”? You can’t just stop it like that. She insisted that if I tried to break up with her she would either spend all her money and come right to my house, or she would kill herself.

Mentally, this is where I checked out. That’s when I knew I didn’t want to be with her. She knew about my past and she didn’t even have mental illness, she was just trying to back me into a corner. If I gave in, we’re still together and she got what she wanted. If I didn’t give in, she would come crawling back saying how horrible I was for not caring about her. I tried both choices once each.

Up until May that year, where I finally ended it just before my exams, my mind was a mess. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and couldn’t get out. When I finally put my foot down to end it, it was under the condition that she could tell my friends how much of a dick I was and that I had to still follow her on social media (for some weird reason).

So I was able to end it, but I was mentally frazzled, spent. I was thankful my exams ended soon and I could spend June, July and August with myself building up to university.

University

It was hard adjusting to uni life at first. I was homesick almost immediately and had trouble socialising. I was very quiet and was a rare drinker. Oskar was the first real friend I had.

And then I met Tharsa.

Again, not here for colour, just for context. We hit it off instantly, like no one I had ever met in my life, romantic or otherwise. I was crazy about her, and she was about me. Never had I had this intangible connection with anyone. After ending it with Meg, I was adamant I wouldn’t date for ages because of how burned out I was, how I told myself I wouldn’t get involved with anyone unless I was 100% certain she was right for me. I knew within three days of meeting Tharsa this is who I wanted to be with.

I felt comfortable with telling her about my past, even before we became a couple. I was usually quite closed about that, but… I trusted her.

Just after we first started dating, I had that three-week long illness that saw me nearly drop out of uni altogether. I was still homesick and Tharsa was the only thing that made me want to go back to Portsmouth. After keeping this from her in fear that she would freak out about the idea of me leaving, I told her and she was so supportive. Ultimately, it was through a long discussion with her about it that made me carry on at Portsmouth.

Then came the mature aspects of the relationship. She’d never kissed anyone before and I was her first, so I felt special in that regard, before we had a lengthy talk about sex; she wanted to wait until marriage, and me being the horny 18-year-old I was, couldn’t fathom that at first. After a few days, I realised that it was vitally important to her, and I came on board with the idea. To this day, I’m adamant I would’ve waited. I didn’t want anything to come between us. Yes, I know I’m using came/come a lot.

So we were finally at the point where whatever issues we had, albeit small and never really strenuous, were sorted. It seemed like we were planning a long future together.

Then her mum said dump the white guy or be exiled from the family.

And that’s when it kicked back in, the potential for things to slip back to how they were in my darkest days. I woke up the morning after and I felt hollow. It was like the blood had been drained from my body and I was just the cold carcass that remained. In the days after, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and vomiting because I could feel it coming back, it was setting in again. I had finally reached the happiest point of a hard-fought life and it was stripped from me because of my race.

I had to nip it in the bud, but first I had to fix how I was immediately feeling. I deduced that being awake was torture, so I explored two avenues: making my time awake more carefree through heavy usage of painkillers, and spending more time asleep with heavy usage of sleeping tablets. This lasted for a couple of months while I remained friends with Tharsa, but when she told me that she had found someone else, I knew I couldn’t run from my problems anymore. I fessed up and told people what I was doing in search of help, and I think that’s when I realised I could depend on my friends at uni.

I had people I could rely on, I was using the uni’s chaplaincy services, and I saw a doctor about getting anti-depressants. Yet I felt suicidal months later as first year ended. It wasn’t working. I couldn’t move on. Waking up every day was hellish, and until I saw a friend, whoever it may be, I felt isolated. I was trapped in my dorm room, but I grew comfortable with that. The thing with depression is that it’s addicting, you find solace in feeling like shit.

This carried on through second year, ultimately leading to another suicide attempt in December 2016. Whenever I saw Tharsa, it would sour my mood, my face would hot up, I would just go home and try to induce sleep again. Counselling and medication were again proving useless. My worst memories of uni come in second year, but not just because of how I felt on my own.

Strained Relations

I was twice thrown out by my parents for trying to explain why I was having a hard time. It’s like they never wanted to listen, or were choosing to hear things and offer their own stupid suggestions. One time, they got so angry at me for explaining how I felt that my dad pinned me down by my throat while my mum watched on, later saying afterwards that I was deserving of that treatment for not being transparent. It was at this point where they had permanently failed me as parents, as guardians of their child. It doesn’t matter if they testify this, what matters is how I, the subject, feels about how they’ve done. They failed. They won’t ever win me back in that sense. That’s why I ask you not to contact them when things are rough for me. They are not my guardians. I happen to live with them and go to football with them. That’s it.

Third Year and 2018

I only have good memories of my final year of uni. I saw friends a lot, both at home and in Portsmouth, and I felt like I was finally on the road to recovery, ironically this being the only extended period of my recent life where I wasn’t seeing a therapist or on medication.

I was still struggling to move on, but it didn’t bother me as much. I felt content again. At the end of third year, I was confident I had made friends for life (no matter how short that is), and had a job at ESPN to look forward to. Everything was looking rosy again, and the madness of the World Cup that summer made it one if not the best of my life.

In October, I moved out into a house with a friend from home and I had my own living space again. And then it came back.

A month later, I had a cancer scare, but it turned out to be nothing. After days of fretting about it, I thought I’d be relieved about being healthy. I felt no rush, not even a sigh of relief. I had to evaluate what I was feeling.

It emerged soon after that someone in my home friendship group, who was horribly racist about Tharsa in the past and I’ve never forgiven for it, would be moving in. I decided to save the trouble and move back home. I realised though that my way of living was unsustainable. I was riding the wave of ecstasy from third year and had run out of fuel. I was growing tired of ESPN rather quickly too. For the first time since 2016, I conquered my fears and talked to Tharsa to see if that would help.

Since she told me she had moved on (I have no idea if she’s with that guy still), I feared talking to her. One of my therapists told me that it was likely because my dread outweighed my coping mechanisms. I told her how I’ve found it so hard to move on, how I should’ve talked to her sooner about it, how I was hoping doing this would help bring me some closure. I irrationally had this idea in my head that she hated me (maybe because of what happened at school), but she said that was never the case. She heard about my suicidal episodes and found it hard to digest, she wanted to talk to me sooner but was scared I would flat out reject her the way I feared the same. She still cares for me and I still have her support.

It was a painful but uplifting conversation. The first time we had talked in nearly three years and it went better than I ever would have imagined. I felt assured that I could move on with my life.

A month and a half later and I’m back in hospital feeling suicidal.

Life

I had a good end to 2018, but I still felt melancholic. I didn’t feel complete, or like I had benefitted in the long run from talking to her. It was insightful, but I didn’t feel like I was moving on.

After a few days of not talking to anyone, I decided that it was the right time to end my life. Nothing was bringing me prolonged feelings of content, let alone happiness.

So in the last few months, I’ve been back on medication and seeking a private therapist, though being unemployed has delayed that part after several assessments. I don’t feel like anything has ever worked for me. Since first succumbing to depression, there’s only one thing that’s brought me happiness.

People have suggested to me before about dating apps and all the rest, and although I’ve never been successful with them (case study 1: why I’m ugly), I don’t feel like it would be the cure. It’s also unfair to seek someone out just to get over something or someone.

Like I said, this piece isn’t about proving colour to what I feel – I’m sure by now most of you realise I feel like shit every day and getting through it all is a struggle – but to provide context as to why I don’t think I’ll ever get better.

I’ve talked about this to death in the last few years. I go round and round in circles trying to explain where I’m at and why. Talking hasn’t helped, medication hasn’t helped, I don’t have a family. I think this is me. Life isn’t meant for everyone.