Bridge over Shallow Water (1981)
TRIGGER WARNING:
This blog post is about childhood mental health, depression and suicidal thoughts.
It was a warm, sunny day in June and I was walking home from school with a couple of my friends. Back in 1981 kids could walk home on their own - I didn't know anybody who got picked up by parents, we all just streamed out of the school and down one of two paths. We didn't have any roads to cross on the way home - just The Burn.
That day, I was in tears. And I couldn't actually believe what had just happened. I was in the first year Juniors (they call it Year 3 nowadays) and we'd been given our end of year exam results. I'd only gotten the SIXTH best marks in the class.
Out of thirty-one kids, I was SIXTH.
And that's why I couldn't face going home. In my family, there was a lot of competition about who was the 'brightest' and the 'best'.
There were kids in my family who ALWAYS came top of the class, kids who could recite their eight times table by the time they were 3, kids who got glowing reports from teachers...
So there must have been something terribly wrong with me. I'd let everybody down.
And I knew what would happen - I'd be called 'lazy' and told that I had to 'stick in'. Somehow that was worse than being called stupid. I always tried my best at school but any shortcomings were seen as a sign of laziness. Nobody ever thought that maybe I wasn't the brightest kid in my class - to them it was obvious that I should be first and it was just my laziness holding me back. I'd get frustrated with myself; I'd sit in lessons, desperately trying to listen and understand but too scared to ask questions in case people thought I was stupid.
So I couldn't go home and I tried to throw myself in The Burn. My friends laughed. They thought I was joking. I stood on the bridge, tears streaming down my face; I think I knew it was ridiculous, I think I knew that the bridge wasn't high enough and the water wasn't deep enough, but I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't face going home ever again. And it wasn't the first time I'd had those feelings.
When I was even younger I'd lie in bed listening to my folks arguing and I'd pull the blankets up over my head. I used to hope that I wouldn't wake up the next morning.
There wasn't always a clear reason why I did it, but I'd often try to suffocate myself with a pillow. I didn't want to be alive.
I used to wonder if I could kill myself by jumping out of an upstairs window. I couldn't tell anybody about it because I knew they'd just laugh at me - and nobody ever noticed how unhappy I was.
Where do those feelings start? Why couldn't I control those thoughts when they crept into my mind? Why would such a young kid think about death and dying so much? What the hell was that all about?
One of my Secondary School Science Teachers did seem to notice that something wasn't quite right. In one of my end-of-year reports she said she 'still didn't know what to make of this pupil despite teaching him for three years. Sometimes his work is very good and at other times it's like he's forgotten how to use a pen. Chaotic'. At home it was all just put down to laziness. Again.
Those feelings followed me into my teenage years and beyond. When I was at University two friends had to make me vomit up some paracetamol and then took me to the local A&E after I told them I'd taken too many tablets. We didn't talk about it afterwards. It was written off as a stupid drunken mistake. I could've asked for help at that point - I could've asked my friends for (more) help. Why didn't I?
Things finally came to a head when some blokes chased me off a railway line. I was in my mid twenties by this point - and I was deliberately walking on the tracks close to Darlington Railway Station. I was keeping my head down because I didn't want to know when a train was coming, I thought if I saw it coming I'd jump out of the way. And then the railway workers saw me. They called me a 'stupid bastard' and a 'soft sod' - they told me I could cause an accident if a driver had to stop suddenly.
I ended up getting help when my behaviour started causing problems for other people.
My folks were ashamed because I had to spend time on a Psychiatric ward. They didn't want the neighbours or any relatives finding out about where I was. I genuinely thought they wouldn't care if I was dead. Even as a kid I'd imagine them all at my funeral - and they'd still be calling me 'lazy' for lying down.
Most of my family refused to believe there was anything wrong with me. I was just having 'tantrums' or looking for a way out because I was 'idle'. For some people I never stopped being 7.
I didn't throw myself off that bridge in June 1981. I was too scared. If I'd landed in The Burn I would have just soaked my shoes and my clothes - and that would have gotten me into all sorts of trouble. I did go home - and I locked myself in the bathroom so I could cry and cry and cry without anybody knowing about it. For the next few days my school friends took the piss - they even told my teacher about it and he took the piss, too. But then they all moved on to taking the piss out of something or somebody else.
When they eventually found out about my exam results, my folks told me I'd have to work harder, pull my socks up, stick in and show them how smart I really was...
But I couldn't and I never did.
Comments
Post a Comment