Copyright

Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.

HarperTrueLife

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First published by HarperTrueLife 2014

FIRST EDITION

Text © Caroline Church 2014

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Cover layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Caroline Church asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008100162

Version: 2014-11-24

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1: Puberty 1980s

Chapter 2: Billy 1990s

Chapter 3: Freddie 2003

Chapter 4: Cody 2010

Chapter 5: Hysterectomy 2012

Last Word

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Puberty 1980s

The transition into womanhood and a personality change

Growing up in the Seventies, I came from an ordinary working-class family and, although there was an underlying sense of financial difficulty, there was always food on the table and an abundance of love. As I started junior school there was no hint of the heartache to come, and I simply enjoyed life, being popular and surrounded by neighbours and friends I loved. I had a regular life, free of responsibility, with a mum who worked tirelessly in the home and my formative years spent playing games and, during the summer, being out enjoying the long days. We would return when we were hungry and not before, when we would grab a snack and be on our way, without a care in the world.

When I was just ten years old, Mum told my younger sister and me that she had a surprise for us. We both waited patiently while she explained that she was going to have another baby, and even though this news was unexpected, we were both overjoyed and couldn’t wait to be her willing helpers. I remember being fascinated and intrigued by her growing bump, and would often pretend to be the midwife with my stethoscope and nurse’s case, while she allowed me to examine her tummy and listen for the sounds inside; sometimes the baby would get the hiccups, which would make me squeal with delight. It was a joyful and happy time for us all as we waited for the baby to be born.

At the time, we lived in a large block of flats where there was a communal garden and the sense of a very close community. As children we would play the days away, happy and carefree. I was surrounded by little ones, often my baby sisters, and sometimes one of the neighbours would allow me to bath or feed their baby while they got on with their chores. I simply couldn’t wait to have my own child, and I would often walk my sisters in their prams and pretend they were mine. People would stop to admire them and ask me about them, and I just felt so proud that they belonged to me and were so angelic to look at.

By the time I reached puberty, happiness gradually started to leave me; my struggle with depression had begun. I couldn’t figure out why I had this sudden change in personality. I felt immediately different and very alone as I tried to make sense of what was happening to me. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and I remember feeling dreadfully insecure, intensely sad and sorrowful, though I couldn’t say why. It was as if someone else had moved into my body and hijacked my mind, as my thoughts seemed so different to the innocent ones of the past. I tried desperately to cover my despair and sense of anguish with a tough exterior, as I didn’t want anyone to know how I was really feeling or think that I was strange or different in some way.

Fundamentally, as time went by, I just felt as though something was missing and that I didn’t fit in. As I developed and changed, this feeling of despondency increased and I began to suffer from health worries and anxiety. It was then that I noticed my thoughts were becoming obsessive and hostile, and I would sometimes be preoccupied with death and morbidity, which would leave me feeling extremely frightened and alone. I was perpetually worried that something bad was going to happen to my parents and my sisters, and I would be obsessed with trying to protect them whilst lying awake at night, filled with dread and unwanted thoughts. The more my body changed, the more I noticed an increasing mental chatter, with the same thoughts going over and over, as if on a loop, and I would struggle to slow them down. This, of course, left me emotionally drained and sometimes physically exhausted. I hated this whole change in my persona, which seemed to materialise overnight as my body began to change.

When I was fourteen I started my periods and, being at an all-girls school, the realisation hit me quite early that not everybody was suffering the way I was. The pain was something I hadn’t anticipated, and would often leave me hunched over and unable to straighten. In lessons I would flush hot with embarrassment as the teacher was often a man and he wouldn’t understand that it was the first day of my period. More often than not, I would have to go to the nurse’s office as the cramps were too much to bear and I needed to go home. On my way from the office to the sick room I would vomit violently, over and over, and as I clung onto the toilet to stop myself from fainting, tears would stream down my face and my eyes would burn. I would be crouching on the filthy toilet floor, desperately trying to catch my breath as the agony seared straight through my legs and into my pelvis, from where it would wrap around my back. Once the purging had done its job, I would go to the sick room and curl up in the foetal position before falling into a deep sleep, which seemed to be the only respite from the month-to-month misery that was to increase throughout my adolescence.

As time went by, my change in mood went from bad to worse, and I started to experience my first feelings of paranoia. I began to believe that I wasn’t wanted at home, so I decided to move out, far too prematurely, on completion of my school exams. I moved in with friends first, but convinced myself that they didn’t really like me, so I moved again, into a rented house where the people were relative strangers. This, of course, had a disastrous effect on my state of mind, and I went downhill rapidly as I became more and more isolated. I started to drink alcohol, which helped enormously with my racing thoughts, and I gradually began to self-medicate as depression and anxiety took over my life. I would pour myself a drink and swallow hard, waiting for the calmness to envelope me like a warm blanket as it crept through my veins. It greatly relieved the feelings of tension, and I thought that I had found the perfect solution to my problems. Unknowingly, this was the beginning of my self-harming, as I desperately sought out ways to find relief from the crippling and worsening anguish within.

At around seventeen years of age I started working as an auxiliary nurse in a home for the elderly, which involved extremely long hours and probably did little to help my worsening condition; I would often have to ring in sick as I struggled to cope. I had also started to have intermittent sobbing episodes, sporadic days when I would begin to cry and often still be crying several hours later, which of course left me utterly exhausted. I just couldn’t fathom why I seemed to have these issues, why I sometimes would be weeping for days with a deep sense of bereavement for no particular reason. I also had a ghostly feeling around me, which seemed to be getting worse, and I would sometimes feel a sudden eeriness that would leave me suspicious of everything around me. Even my bedroom and the house in which I lived would become spookily unfamiliar, and I would suddenly be terrified. I just couldn’t explain it, and because I felt so ashamed of my thoughts and feelings I didn’t tell anyone, which of course increased my sense of isolation.

As time went by, my racing thought process became so troublesome that I began to see a psychiatrist in the hope that he could help me make sense of what I was experiencing. I had gone from being a playful, happy child to a damaged young woman within a couple of years. I epitomised the phrase ‘troubled teen’. As a direct result of my cripplingly low self-esteem I was also becoming more and more promiscuous, which did little for my reputation and self-respect. I was desperately trying to fill the missing void at any cost, even if it meant compromising my integrity. I hadn’t had a disturbed childhood and, as far as I was aware, I didn’t have any emotional baggage or hidden trauma, so I was concerned by this side to my character. The sex had started to become another addiction, along with my dependence on alcohol.

Once I started to divulge my feelings and worries to the psychiatrist, he became very concerned and asked to see me weekly. I had started to harbour thoughts of violence and suicide, but I was also experiencing the ghostly feeling (known as depersonalisation) more and more often. I began to suffer from nightmares and would wake in the night with a great feeling of impending doom and terror, which would then start the sobbing again and prevent me from working. My paranoia increased too: I would wake suddenly and my heart would race in my chest; I felt sure that somebody was in the room with me. This, of course, was terrifying and would sometimes happen over consecutive nights, so for a whole week I would be frightened to go to bed because of what was awaiting me.

The psychiatrist and I decided together that I would try a mild antidepressant, in the hope that it would slow me down and help with my persistent feelings of paranoia. I would often feel the need to sleep during the day, and would sometimes still be there seventeen hours later. As soon as the relentless chatter in my racing mind stopped, I would then stay in bed for hours at a time, utterly exhausted and unable to function. The situation was abysmal and had started to impact severely on my whole life, though I still couldn’t tell anybody for fear of what they might think of me. I genuinely felt that my colleagues perceived me as strange, and I often felt left out, self-conscious and plagued with self-doubt. As the months went by and the depression worsened, I became increasingly perplexed by this sudden change in my character and the helplessness within.

I had been taking the antidepressants for some weeks when I had my first out-of-control experience, and it has haunted me to this day. There had been a conflict of some kind at home with my parents and I returned to my lodgings, where the crying began. The sadness engulfed me and, as I sat alone, I felt that the whole of mankind had died and left me on my own. I really felt the grief and loneliness that anyone would feel in that situation, along with the eeriness that had been around me before. All the room felt so odd and dreamlike, but without the protection that a dream could bring, and I cried pitifully and long into the night. I didn’t want to stay any more with all of this desolation and sorrow, and it seemed as though my heart was broken but without a cause. I picked up the bottle of pills, emptied the tablets out, crushed some of them up and placed them on my tongue. They tasted so bitter and I immediately gagged, so the rest I just swallowed with some wine that I had in the cupboard for sedation purposes. I didn’t want to die as such, I just wanted the feelings of misery to leave me, and as I gradually fell asleep, I allowed the tension to leave my body and the anxiety simply melted away.

Fortunately, the landlord found me just in time, and at the hospital I remember waking up as the nurse held me down while she fed a pipe down my throat. I struggled against her and retched violently as I tried desperately to pull the tube out of my own stomach. I could feel it dragging along my insides. My efforts, of course, made the nurse angry, and she shouted at me to stop while she tried again. I was annoyed, as being asleep had made me forget the feelings I had been experiencing; I was so disappointed to be awake again and to have to face it all. As I fought her off, I looked at the lights above my head and my body suddenly became floppy, without anything left to give. I fell into a deep sleep, which lasted three days, and when I finally woke up, I had never felt so embarrassed and ashamed as the reality of what I had done suddenly hit me.

The week following my suicide attempt was an absolute nightmare. On my release from hospital I returned to see my psychiatrist, and he decided that I needed more intensive treatment. I was initially quite pleased to be going into a psychiatric ward, as I felt that at last I would get the help I needed and I could at least get a diagnosis. The reality, however, was extremely different, and although the doctors and nurses were kind, I was surrounded by schizophrenics and people with bipolar. Some were extremely ill and were withdrawing from alcohol and drug addictions, which was painful to see and extremely frightening. One particular lady I secretly named the ‘pacer’, as she wandered endlessly backwards and forwards while chatting away to herself. She seemed to be having her very own conversation and was even answering herself in a different voice, whilst her husband looked on despairingly. She seemed so normal in some ways and yet so damaged at the same time, and I desperately wanted to reach out to her and help her through it, which of course was futile as I was clearly in need of help myself.

The first couple of days, I sat on a window ledge and gazed over the green while silently crying. I remember feeling so upset that my world had come to this, which was exacerbated by what was going on around me. Sometimes the patients would freak out and the nurses would wrestle them to the floor before one of them administered an injection. The nights were absolutely awful, and I would often lie awake, rigid and scared, while some other poor soul whimpered long into the early hours of the morning. One particular day, I found a soiled pair of underwear on my bed, which did nothing to help my increasing paranoia, as I believed it was a deliberate attack on me and I was being watched. It was a sorry place to be and I felt more and more disturbed while I was there, which naturally hindered any chance of recovery. As the days went on I couldn’t wait to get out of there. In comparison to what was happening around me, I just felt I was in the wrong place and so very, very alone.

When it was visiting time I could see the pain and confusion in my parents’ eyes – my poor mum looked so worried. I had done such a good job of hiding my depressive state that they had no real idea of how bad things were; they had possibly even thought it was a desperate attempt to gain attention. I had tried to shelter my mum from what was really going on, as she had the girls to look after, and anyway, it would mean that I had failed in my quest to be an independent woman, which I had so desperately wanted to be. What I should have done was return home to the sanctuary of my family, but instead I just moved further away from them, towards the internal struggle that would go on to dominate my younger years and had already begun to ruin my life.

Once I left the unit, still none the wiser and without a firm diagnosis, I moved house quite quickly, thinking that it would help with my increasing symptoms. I started wondering if my illness was a lifestyle problem, and I thought that if I could move, it would make things better and I would find a miraculous cure. However, the stress of the move only created further problems, and I started to spend more time at the doctor’s with various ailments, which were by now becoming physical as well as emotional. I was referred to another unit where I would receive help for my increasing alcohol dependency and health anxieties, as the doctors felt that my various neuroses were all part of the same ‘personality disorder’. As much as the health professionals were blaming my issues on a psychiatric element, I felt sure that there was something physically wrong with me, but my hunch was dismissed and I even started to believe that I was becoming a hypochondriac, questioning whether I was indeed ill or if it was all part of my imagination.

Despite this, I was experiencing extreme lower-back pain and severe restless legs. I felt sure my health problems were related to my menstrual cycle but it hadn’t yet been proven. I had a number of exploratory operations in the hope that a cause could be found. I had period pains even when I had no period, and the vomiting and fainting was relentless, even though I had been prescribed the contraceptive pill to help me. I had sporadic episodes of shaking and had developed a tremor in my hand, which was exacerbated by the amount of alcohol I was drinking to calm my symptoms. Eventually I was detoxed, in the hope that it would stop me feeling endlessly unwell both in body and mind. I seemed to be going round and round in circles, and was in therapy at every opportunity, trying to gain some control over my life.

As I approached my early twenties I started to experiment with cannabis, using recreational drugs to attempt to rid my body of the acute tension that was with me day in, day out. I was still in therapy, but I was now on stronger antidepressants and sometimes tranquillisers as well, in the hope that they would save me from the negative feelings and internalised pain. If things were really bad I would use a mood stabiliser, and then I would use Ecstasy at the weekends too. At one point I was using so many different concoctions and potions, trying to find anything to help me, it’s a wonder that I was able to function at all. If I was really wired and agitated I would use alcohol, drugs and even sex to decipher my feelings and help me cope with the day-to-day misery of what the doctors had convinced me was a general depressive illness, which didn’t have a physical element at all.

The problem with using recreational drugs and smoking cannabis was that they worked extremely effectively at controlling the feelings of tension, so by the time I was in my early twenties, my life had spiralled out of control. I was regularly feeling suicidal and permanently manic, and I was starting to experience delusions and wild imaginings, often believing that there was somebody living in my apartment with me. I would rush wildly around and then crash, sometimes for days at a time, while feelings of imminent doom and terror would wake me from the deepest sleep. I had a panic disorder that would cause me to imagine someone was following me, and I was on the edge of despair most days, believing that there was something living under my bed waiting to grab me. Sometimes I thought it had moved into my airing cupboard, and I would move past as quickly as possible in case it jumped out to get me! I was so filled with adrenaline I would run from task to task, even in my own flat, and I would imagine endless scenarios over and over again. I still had a preoccupation with death and would manage to convince myself that I was dying, my family was dying – and that someone was going to murder me.

The incessant chatter would drive me to my absolute limits, and I would use anything to try to quieten my mind, which invariably meant chemicals. I felt that they were the only way of putting an end to the turmoil within and relieving me of the feelings of acute stress and tension dominating my thoughts. I would use drugs to calm me down and then medicine to help me stay up, and that was the way it was throughout my early twenties. I was living in a state of perpetual fear – frightened even in my own home – and in a cycle of ill health, which was an appalling way to be. Sometimes I would lie in my bed with my face constricted tight, wishing that someone would put an end to the torturous world I inhabited alone.

During the early Nineties fate intervened – I was offered a new job and a career in Spain. I had become disillusioned by nursing, and although I was working only sporadically, I wondered if my job was to blame for my worsening condition. I seemed to be continuously looking for a reason to explain my depression. No matter what I did or how I did it, I desperately wanted to pull myself together and gain some clarity and control over my life. I had answered a job in a newspaper for a travel consultant and felt sure that it would answer all of my problems. There was also scope for working abroad, which hastened my application, and I couldn’t wait to have a new start.

Within a few weeks I had secured a position in Menorca and was confident that this would be my geographical cure and an end to my situation, which was deteriorating daily. Apart from the illness that was dominating my life, I was in a relationship with someone who had begun to use heroin. Given that I had an addictive nature, I was naturally concerned that I would be next to succumb to the drug, and I couldn’t wait to get away from it all and the people around me. My drinking was getting worse, and I would have memory blanks in which I was violent with anyone who happened to be around me. This, of course, was mortifying and would leave me feeling incredibly ashamed and embarrassed, as I genuinely couldn’t remember what had happened. I was filled with self-hatred over my actions, and this fuelled my sense of inadequacy and, of course, increased my low mood. Sometimes I would be on the phone to the Samaritans long into the night, just desperate for help, and sometimes I would wonder where else there was left for me to turn as my situation grew more and more hopeless.

After the aircraft had landed in Menorca, the sun shone down as I loaded my bags into the car; I really felt as though I had a chance to make a change in my life. I was so utterly convinced it would mean the end to my misery that I now wonder how I could have been so naïve. As the taxi drove through the pretty villages to where I was staying, I remember feeling blessed that this opportunity had come my way, and I initially felt more in control of my feelings. However, within a few days of being there the mind-numbing flatness had returned, and as I waded through the surf I knew that it was all pointless. The water was the most beautiful turquoise and the fish would swim around my feet, but still I couldn’t see what was before me as the evil mental chatter returned. My head would be filled with torment, and I couldn’t see the paradise that surrounded me no matter how hard I tried. The people were lovely, the situation idyllic, and yet still the misery followed me. I despaired as I realised that it was never going to leave me, no matter where I went or who I was with. As I looked out over the glorious cove, I remember feeling once again like I should give up and leave this world that I just didn’t fit into.

By now I had seen several psychiatrists, numerous doctors, psychologists, counsellors and a good few gynaecologists. I had seen spiritualists and healers, and taken all manner of medications in the hope that I would get better. I was a drug user and a borderline alcoholic, and I was suffering from all manner of emotional disturbances, which ranged from severe to catastrophic. I had tried art therapy, relaxation therapy and hypnosis to find a cure. I had moved house several times and even moved country in the hope that I would find some respite from the emotional misery that was, and is, clinical depression. By the time I left Menorca, I had been mentally ill for some seven years, and I was just twenty-two years old.

Billy 1990s

A first-born son and a bonding delay

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