As I’ve started this blog nearly 16 months after my initial contact with the mental health teams, I’ll have to track back a bit. I’ll do this over the next few days.
I had a fairly typical upbringing. Parents separated when I was 5 and my Mum brought me up, with regular visits to my very loving father, who I took after in many things. Things were all going very well until I hit high school. Before that, I had played football non-stop, gone to Cub Scouts every week and behaved very well, both at school and at home.
I tend to pinpoint the start of my problems about 3 months into my first year at high school, after taking an IQ test. I’ve always thought it was a massive error on the schools’ part to tell me my results. I soon started losing the motivation to do things. I’d mess around in class, get bored very easily and then the playing truant started. This was in the mid-nineties, where mental health issues weren’t really well known, especially in young children.
This meant my parents, teachers and education officials missed all the signs I was showing. It was thought I was just being lazy. This label would be attached to me for many years to come. Looking back, the signs that it was something different than laziness are now evident, but that’s the benefit of hindsight. I’d be quite happy to go on bike rides, watch the rugby and even resort to playing football by myself in our extension room, throwing the ball against the wall and practising my goalkeeping skills as the ball rebounded.
But when it came to school, or education of any sort, I just wasn’t interested. I loved learning new things, I still do to this day, but when I woke up every morning, I just couldn’t get my brain to engage my feet to get out of bed. I’d make excuses as to why I couldn’t go to school. If those didn’t work, I’d walk out the front door, saying I was going to school, then bugger off somewhere else for the rest of the day.
I was even allowed to move schools. It meant travelling across Warrington every day, but this I didn’t mind. I moved around the Easter holidays of year 9 and had a good 3 months left until the end of the school year. I remember the turning point. It was 6 weeks in and I got into a fight at lunchtime. Now I won the fight, but fearing ramifications, I legged it out of school and ended up in St Helens, using my Day Rover bus ticket, with the then North Western (now Arriva). This was during the bus wars era, so there were plenty of buses to get all over the place. Aslong as the bus went through Warrington, I could get on it. All this for the low, low cost of £1.25 a day.
There was a holiday to Cyprus in the middle of all of it, the only time I’ve been on holiday abroad. Even there I didn’t have the best of times. I spent more time in the indoor play room than outside in the sun. From that day I ran out of school, I didn’t set foot in to the place until the start of year 10. I was on the buses most of the time. A trip to Widnes, then to Liverpool, just in time to see Fred the Weatherman on his floating island at the Albert dock. Then it’d be back to Warrington and a trip to either Altrincham or Runcorn, before heading back home about the same time I would be had I gone to school
Through year 10, I didn’t even bother going on the buses. If I was wagging it, I’d stay at home. I’d been appointed an education worker. She was supposed to find out why I wasn’t going to school. Obviously, had she done her job properly, it’s unlikely I’d be writing this blog now, I’d probably be at work, bringing in lots of dosh. It didn’t work and after being forced to do my work experience in the office of the school (punishment for wagging school for 2 weeks), I walked out of school the same day the 1998 world cup kicked off. I even left early to go home and watch Scotland play Brazil.
It was decided that instead of going back to school for my final year, I’d go to college instead and do a year long course in Business and IT. It started quite well, but then I fell into the old routines. Sitting in the smoking room instead of going to lessons, going home early or not leaving home at all. When I did do the work, I did it very well, but not enough to cover for all the hours I had missed and I didn’t finish the full year there either.
After turning 16 and spending most of my time out of work, or going to Leeds to watch the football, my mother had had enough and after a day out with my Dad, who had come up for the day to see me, she told him he would have to take me back to Northampton with him. This came as a massive shock to me, but no so to my brother, who she had discussed the situation with in great detail, weeks before saying anything to me. That would be a turn of events that would repeat itself many times over the next decade or so.
What my brother didn’t count on though, was me slapping him in the face by telling him I was moving into his flat with him. My Dad was all up for that, so he didn’t have a choice.
Next up will be the following 5 years that I spent in Northampton and I’ll get that posted up tomorrow. I hope you’ll come back and read it
My State Of Mind 