My story

where to start...

I don’t want this to sound like such a depressive “I feel bad” for you story, but you asked for authenticity and real, so here it goes.

My beginning was great, growing up I had a mum and dad together, I basically got what I wanted (no not a spoilt brat although a lot would see it that way), three holidays a year and very much happy.

Like anyone else I went to school, spent time with family and friends. It was as I got older in high school that things started to, well, let’s say “go pear shaped”.

It was the start of year 8, I went to school, like every other day, thinking things would be the same as they always were; then I got home, my dad stood in the kitchen with a very solemn look on his face, then I caught a glimpse of my mum, she was looking out of the window, a tear glistened as it rolled down her cheek, a fear suddenly washed over me, a dread fizzled down my spine. I looked back to my dad who said “I think we should go and have a sit down in the room”, I dropped my bags on the floor and slumped behind my dad towards the living room.

All I remember were the words “me and your mum are getting a divorce” I cried for weeks. In fact, I haven’t cried like that since, or at all for that matter.

Life seemed to lose its 'greatness'... It was when reality seemed to hit in a sense. All the good had gone, my nana had passed away (It was the first death I had ever experienced), I found out that Santa wasn't real (a while before this event in high school with my dad leaving) which significantly affected me as "the make believe" seemed to resonate with me, I was getting bullied in school; everything seemed to happen all at once, one by one everything kept adding to me fall apart for years. Through school, at home, in college, university, into my work life.

Years passed, I know what your thinking, these things seemed so miniscule why did they cause me so much grief? People go through worse everyday right? Even though I haven't mentioned half the tragedies, we can all agree that we deal with things differently. I took every event hard, it affected me so badly that I hit rock bottom more than once, each time feeling worse than the last, I thought that was it, my time was done ever been happy.

I got directed towards therapy, which yeah it helped but I really did struggle as I know many who have not experienced it at all which made me feel more alienated, but I was working through not only anxiety and depression but something called disassociation, where your body basically copes in a way that it would if you were in a fight or flight situation, it basically stems back from the whole ‘cave man’ ordeal, you know, when we’d live in caves etc and live off the land and then here comes a saber tooth tiger, we are then faced with the fight or flight; do we stay here and confront the situation? Or do we run? When your body can’t really cope, I guess it goes somewhere in between, it copes by disassociating you with the world and everything seems sort of dream like, I guess it’s a hard one unless you’ve really experienced it. But anyways, life really was just becoming a struggle for me…

Then there was him…