From darkness to hope

It all started out as a happy family home with my parents, my older brother and younger sister until my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She battled for 5 years and passed in 2000 the day before my brother’s 10th birthday. I was 8 and my sister was 6. Life changed from then on.

My father was heartbroken and turned to alcohol. Life was miserable and dark. Our curtains remained shut, the door remained locked for years on end with no one coming or going.

He didn’t know how to parent

Life was strange. We weren’t allowed to talk about our mum because it would hurt my father’s feeling. He was violent and completely unfair and disproportionate with his punishments towards myself and my brother.

We know he tried his hardest, but he just didn’t know how to parent. He was a working, travelling man that grew up on a trailer site. He was a traditional gypsy man, so it was hard for him to adapt but I always felt he tried but just didn’t know how.

I began drinking with my father too from age 14 and smoking cannabis, he would pull me out of school to help him work on cars and have a drink with him etc.  

I became a father myself

I got a girl pregnant at 16 just 4 weeks after losing my virginity to her. 

After 2 years together with things on and off as she would just end it with me and kicked me out over such silly things. If I didn’t make her tea in the morning before I went to college my stuff would be packed and thrown outside.

She fell pregnant again and told me and I was so excited. Unfortunately she aborted our baby while I was at college without even telling me and she thought it was funny. 

It didn’t work out and she stopped me being a father. There isn’t enough support for fathers in this country and it destroyed me that this was legal and allowed. How and why am I being stopped from being a father just because we don’t get along?

In-between her having different men to play the dad role she would let me see my son but because she wanted more. If I said no to her needs then I couldn’t see my son.

This went on for the first 4 years of his life. Then she met a long term partner and I was stopped all together from seeing my son.  

I turned to alcohol

I turned to alcohol as that’s all I had seen growing up and thought it was normal. I became alcohol dependant and would seizure when I didn’t have enough alcohol in my body. I was desperate to stop by age 23 and needed help.

Services refused to see me as I was intoxicated while hospitals would tell me I had to keep drinking to prevent seizures.

Apparently CGL was the only place to get help for detox but they wouldn’t see me because I drank but under professional advice I couldn’t stop.

I had 50 plus seizures and each one could have been fatal. At age 26 I started throwing up pure blood, I was taken by ambulance to hospital and finally this time I was offered detox. I snapped the opportunity with both hands and have stayed sober ever since.  

Anxiety became my new problem

Unfortunately, anxiety become my new number one problem in life and it was controlling my daily living. I couldn’t leave my bedroom let alone the house.

I tried medication, GP appointments, psychiatrist appointments, mental health specialists, crisis teams, CBT, hypnosis, meditation. I felt I had tried everything and couldn’t get better and was just stuck.  

I had my father living with me at this point and while he was still an alcoholic and drinking and struggling every day, he was my best friend and I was he’s registered carer.

I only had a one-bedroom flat so he had a single bed next to mine in my bedroom. I forgot to mention my father was evicted from our council house home in 2013 so me and him and my uncle where homeless for a few years while all being alcoholics.

We lived in my younger sisters front room for a few months before living in a tiny caravan in a lay by. I got my flat in 2015, 3 years before I stopped drinking. 

I spent nearly every night at my father’s bedside

On my father’s 49th birthday (2017) my father was taken to hospital as I was concerned for his well-being and called an ambulance. He had sepsis and was placed in an induced coma.

We were told the likelihood of him coming out of this coma healthy was very slim. However, against all odds he eventually pulled through and was better. He stayed off alcohol for about 4 months.

On my father’s 50th birthday – so a year to the day he was taken in – I was throwing up blood and haven’t drunk since. 

2 years ago, aged 55 my father had a cardiac arrest in my flat. He was rushed to hospital and placed into an induce coma again. I spent nearly every night at my father’s bedside.

Even towards the end when I believed he was getting better. Unfortunately, though he passed away. This crushed me.  

There are better days to come

Now still I suffer with anxiety, but I’ve found that a positive mindset goes a long way and so I’m now writing music to try and help others through a journey of healing. There are always better days to come. 

I now have a good relationship with my son. we talk most days. 

His mum has split with her 10 year partner and started trying to get back with me but I don’t want that. I won’t go into the stuff she sends me now. 

I did go to court over my son when I was sober and won the child arrangement order which she ignored and I couldn’t do nothing about it so what was the point in court in the first place.  

Last year I was in my darkest place and there nearly wasn’t a tomorrow. 

Now I just have one ambition in life – to help others and prevent them feeling how I felt. I hope my music can do this. 

My life through music

You can find My life through music on Distrokid.

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