This is probably one of the lowest points in my life and I have no one to share it with. So i'm just going to type. No fancy headers. No consideration for correct grammar, sentence breaks or flow. This is just the story of who I am and how I came to be.
One of my earliest memories is of my father sitting on stairs in our house in Co. Mayo, Ireland. I was maybe 2 years old but I remember it vividly. He was crying and my mother was drunk. She told me to spit on him, and I did. This set the tone for the next 12 years of my life. I just didn't know it yet.
I should tell you I have two brothers and a sister. Roy, Aiden and Sinead with me being the youngest. From Mayo we moved back to Cork, a little place in Glasheen. I think we lived their for 4 years. It was a reasonably nice area. Just another council estate I guess. We had a dog named Bud, he was a golden lab. Disappeared for a year and suddenly came back. I used to love riding my little yellow BMX. But one day when I woke up it got stolen. It took me a year to figure out my mother had hidden it in the garage for fear of me hurting myself. Behind our estate was a busy motorway, me being the kid I was, got hit by a car at the age of 6. Luckily the largest hospital in cork was only 100yards away. I lost both my front teeth that accident.
Not too long after that we moved again. This time to Mahon in Cork. This is where things got really bad or maybe when I stopped being too young to easily repress the bad memories. I was 7 at this stage, Sinead 9, Aiden 11 and Roy 12. I don't think things instantly turned to crap. Thinking now about my mother's friend "Tom" or some shit inbetween when things were not too bad and when they were very bad means they did at least try to hide all the fights or maybe I was just too young to understand. All I have is a foggy recognition that he existed and brought us to Aqualand one day in the "Batmobile". I don't ever remember my dad being gone.
Mahon was not a nice place to live. Realistically speaking at the time it was one of the worst. 200yards from our estate was quite a large "Haunting site". A place where Irish Travelers would live. Their must have been 100 young Travelers who would make all of our lives living hell. I know your thinking so what...we all got bullied as a kid. That's true. Does not make it any less shit.
By now my front teeth had started growing back but one the fuckers just didn't want to come back straight. I ended up with a long crooked tooth pointing out the top of my lip. It was not until years later that I realized I had stopped eating carrots because people used to call me Bugs Bunny. The rest of my siblings were not fairing any better. They fell into a "bad crowd" and starting doing what all kids do when your family has nothing but unemployed parents who are not happy with how their life has turned out, drink and drugs.
Yep that would make my brother Roy 13, Aiden 12 and Sinead 10. Pretty young to get started on smoking weed and taking xtc. I don't think Sinead started following suit until she was maybe 12. We used to be very close. I would joke, calling her and her friends the cow patrol. Mean I guess but we were just kids. My mother and father were fighting now with a very predictable pattern. My mother would follow the same routine every Friday. Start getting ready to go out at 5pm, drink one can of Budweiser or whatever was cheap, one naggin of vodka and off she goes. My Dad would never go with her. He didn't drink. At around 2am my mother would arrive home, plastered drunk. Her and my dad would fight over anything she could think off. You must understand at this point, I did not know how much of a problem my mother had. I did not know you could manipulate children into thinking that their father is hitting there mother when he was not. I would be asleep upstairs and be woken to shouts of "Gavin he's hurting me" ... "Let go of my hand" ... How could I understand he was holding her arm to stop her hitting him. So for a while I would go down and shout and fight and console my mother. Tell her everything is going to be ok. I understood even though I was the youngest, I was the only who had any sense.
10 years old. The feeling of Friday night approaching weighs on my heart. The routine has changed. It has gotten worse. My Father spends all of his time in the kitchen reading while my Mother the front room watching Soap Operas. The tension during the week can be felt by us all. My sister had escaped into drugs, following the example of my older brothers. They have all started drinking very heavily. Doing all the drugs they can. I was introduced to smoking weed and I was already smoking cigarettes. We were really a dirty poor family now. Money was very tight. Someone along the line would always drink it or steal it. Second hand cloths are all we got to wear. I still remember the shame of having to go into the second hand store across from my school with my mother. Friday night comes. My Mother and Father stop fighting rather quick as my Father goe's on his weekly stroll for the next 6 hours. Now with no one to fight with, my mother takes a fistful of pills. My brother's and sister are out doing there own thing. They had learned to not be home on a Friday night. I have to deal with it myself. I get the ambulance. Go to the hospital with my mother. Stay until I am forced to leave. Not having enough money to get a taxi home, the woman at reception called the Guards to drop me back. This was not the first or even close to last time I had to repeat the same routine.
The years wen't on. The terror I now felt was daily, not only from my mother, but now my siblings as well. They had really gone off the rails. Stealing and fighting. Pretty much all the things you should not be doing. Their friends were dangerous people. People who would hurt you for fun. My brothers were full blown alcoholics and my sister was borderline to say the least. My dad could not take it anymore. He had to get out and I don't blame. I didnt even blame him them. I did blame him for leaving me though. I should have mentioned that my dad is not my siblings biological father. He did raise them as best he could all the same. I was left in this house where we had to put 1 pound into the tv if we wanted to watch it. What a great idea to take advantage of the poor. Well it backfired. All thatmoney in the back of the tv became a target for my brothers friends. They broke in and stole it. My brother Roy was attacked not long later. The person who attacked him poured white spirits all over his body and set him alight. It was pure dumb luck a passing guarda spotted him and and used her jacket to put out the flames. The damage was severe. His face was swollen beyond recognition and he had 3rd degree burns over 70% of his body. He got better all the same. Physically at least.
From here my brothers and sister got in more and more fights, had more parties at my house and did whatever they pleased without repercussion. My mother was simply not equipped to handle the monsters they had become. Neither was I.
At Age 13 I decided to move up with my dad in Kerry and leave all the trouble and pain from Mahon behind. My dad was living in a trailer in Ballyheigue right next to the beach. Although it was a little run down, it was peaceful. We were very poor. This is why my dad did not bring me in the first place. He could barely survive on his own, nevermind with me. We survived all the same. I was a troubled kid with a lot of repressed anger. I lashed out in school regularly. The fact that I considered myself smarter than my teachers did not help. I had closed myself off from people. People always do he wrong thing. I just lost faith. Life was still magnitudes more pleasant living with my father. Aside from a small little blip where my mother moved up for a month, got drunk and told me she aborted my sister and nearly aborted me. Pretty heavy stuff. I was a kid who didnt know how to deal with it. I felt like I was worth less than the people around me. I talked a pretty good game while feeling worthless about myself. So I never really resisted what is about to come.
16 years old. I met the love of my life Aileen. 11 years and one day ago to be exact. She was beautiful and I talked and talked and talked until she would meet up with me one night after work. From that point we were inseparable. Spent all of our free time together. I would skip school all the time. I was rarely going anyways. Her brother Joe was in my class. Aileen is 6 years older than me but I never cared. I have always been more mature than other people. well pretended to be at least. It was the natural conclusion that her parents would flip out if she was going out with a 16 year old. Her being 23 and all. So we kept it a secret. Sure what difference does it make. I love her and she loves me. Obviously secrets never last. Someone told her brother Joe, who told her parents.
Me being some poor little city boy lost in the country, I was obviously not good enough for their daughter. They are fairly large farmers after all. Gotta protect the millions in land and marry Aileen off to a good farmin' lad. We never broke up and they continued to hate me without ever even meeting me. Remember I did not get on so well in school so my reputation would not have been the best. We got over the paternal strife and decided to ignore it. It will work itself out. We spent many happy years together. Inside me the resentment continued to build. We would fight over it constantly for a while then just stop for a while. I knew it was going to ruin us so tried to end the relationship a few times. But love prevailed. That song Rude came out which gave me an extra boost. When I was down about it I would just listen to that song and feel ok.
My brother Aiden has died from a Methodrone overdose. My brother Roy spends more time in prison than out. My sister Sinead a heroin addict. I distance myself from the going's on of my family as much as possible. If I don't hear it then it cant be happening. The constant storys of what horrible thing Roy or Sinead has done now. Me being unable to change any of them!
We were together 9 years now. Had a holiday planned for Tenerife when Aileen got pregnant. We decided to still go and enjoy one last holiday before she told her parents. The stress about doing it was eating at her. She feared they might even disown her for getting pregnant. We fought about her telling them a few times and eventually it took me breaking up with her "until" she told her parents to get her to do it. Only took an hour once that happened. Her father was not great about it but could of been worse. As it goe's with most grandparents, when Nathan was born they fell in love with him.
Aileen move's in with me. We are fighting occasionally but overall happy. Still I have not yet met Aileen's parents and feel like they are still saying horrible things about me. We rarely broach the subject for fear of the fight that would ensue. As a form of compromise Aileen goe's back to her parents house once a week with Nathan and stays the night. Me being excluded from that part of Aileen and Nathan's life was tough. It made me feel like I was not worth standing up for. All I wanted was a grand gesture to say we accept you Gavin. For them to apologize for getting it wrong. Wehave been together 10 years. Surely by now they can accept I am a half decent human being. Nope.
Nathans Christening was especially hard. It was the first time me and Aileens family had met. First time I had seen Joe since I left school. Not one word was spoken between me and her family. I admit it is me being stubborn aswel and not knowing what to say. But what can I say? Tell them that I feel I have been wronged? Tell them what they did was ok? Silence was the only option. The moment the ceremony was over we left the church as quickly as possible. No time for pictures really. Just so we could avoid all the awkwardness that we created. I came to the realization that this will affect Nathan's upbringing. Being thorn between family. Me and Aileen have were fighting more now. Recenly in front of Nathan who is two. Yesterday was the second time. My wardrobe door is smashed and broken. We screamed at eachother and we cried. Now nothing else was left but for Aileen to leave. The alternative being me putting Nathan through a similar childhood to mine. Where his parents are filled with resentment. I refuse to do it. But in doing so I lose my son. It is very clear to me how this all plays outs. It will end with Nathan calling someone else Daddie. Me just being that cool guy he hangs out with every weekend. Slowly over the years he will become posioned to believe I am that shitty person everyone keeps telling him I am. It is still better than Nathan dealing with what I did as a kid.
Today I am in this empty house. I have no one to call and talk to.
I don't even know why I am still typing.
Don't know why I shared this.
