Character-Building Stuff

© 2012 by Declan Shorthall. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/26/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1433-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1434-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1435-0 (e)

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Contents

Introduction

Early Memories

Northern Ireland

Back in Taunton

On My Own

Mad House

On to New Beginnings

Working Life

Life after CAT

Conclusion

Afterword

Introduction

People have been suggesting that I write a book about my life for several years now. However, I have never really known where to start. But so much has happened over the past four or five years that I now feel compelled to write something. So I shall begin by giving you a little information about myself.

I am currently thirty-seven years old. I have been married to my wife Lisa for fifteen years, and we have three wonderful children. We live in a council house in a lovely picturesque village in Somerset, England. I will not mention what stage of my life I am in at the moment, as I feel it may not be the right time.

One of the main reasons I am writing this book is to try and counter the popular view of young people as being unsalable or irredeemable. It is a fact that many young people who become involved in antisocial or criminal behavior do tend to continue this behavior into their adult lives, but life, as we all know, is constantly changing and never predictable. Even the most secure employment is at risk during a recession, and marriages are forever falling apart with at least one person involved oblivious to the fact that there was a problem to begin with.

None of us know what life has in store for us, and I believe that life is a sequence of events that become linked by what we make of them. I am a great believer in things happening for a reason and that everything we do—coupled with what others do to or with us—affects and guides us through our life journey. My life has always been very difficult, to the point that as a young man growing up Catholic I questioned God’s reasoning daily. I have, however, tried to learn from every single experience, and I have developed a way of seeing my own life as being all about timing. If things happen for a reason, then we just have to wait sometimes to see what that reason was.

I look at everything as character building and path forming. If someone had told me ten years ago that I would be doing the job I now have and writing a book about my life, I would have thought they were mad. I spent my childhood learning the hard way about the consequences of domestic violence and child abuse, and the effect this can have on young people and children living in these environments. I was not at the same point educationally as my peers when the system wanted to judge me, and so my self-esteem was always quite low until very recently.

When my teachers wanted me to concentrate on math or English, I was wondering whether social services was going to pick us up from school that day because we had not seen our mum that morning (and this normally meant that she was unrecognizable or unable to move). By the time I was seven years old, this was an ordinary occurrence in our lives. Violence was to always play a big part in my life and was something that I would struggle to control in myself until very recently. To this day, I am still haunted by some images and memories from my childhood and from my own adult life, and I am hoping that writing this book will help put some of these memories to rest.

Timing is relevant, because by acknowledging that I was unable to learn effectively as a child, it gave me the drive to want another chance, to prove that I was more capable than many teachers and headmistresses had made me feel. I was judged at an inappropriate age, and I have come to feel that it is unfair that all children in this country (the UK) are judged the same regardless of the sometimes obvious disadvantages that some children and young people have to contend with. How can someone who has no wish to even have a future know what he is meant to want to do with it when it arrives? How have people not seen that the reason lots of teenagers who are disadvantaged drop out of education in the last year do so as a defense mechanism?

To suddenly realize that the one thing that has kept you safe and sane over the past eleven years (meaning school) is going to be gone is a nightmare, and the thought of fifty years or more living the life you already hate is just unbearable for some. Many are forced to turn to a life of alcohol and drugs to even attempt to do this.

I was expected to fail by just about every adult I had met, and they were quite happy to tell me what a parasite they thought I was going to be. I knew deep down that it was unfair because it was not me they were judging, but that their opinions were mostly based on my parents or siblings. At least in my day, it was purely a class thing; now it is much worse, as the pressure on teachers to achieve has led to a labeling culture that forces young people into a similar situation to my own in the EBD system (emotional and behavioral difficulties).

I was not able to concentrate in school, and we did not have the money for school meals or PE kits. I was never given the money for school trips, and I was constantly trying to hide the marks on me so that I would not be taken away from my mum. So maybe I was a little distracted, maybe I was a bit of a loner, maybe I did need attention when others did not. I think it is sad that I (and many others) have been judged on this. We should not be written off as unteachable by those who have had the opportunity to help us.

I have really enjoyed learning over the past five years, and I have achieved amazing things. I am reaching the highest academic levels and doing so at an Ivy League university. I am sort of happy now in life, and I gave up worrying about people who do not even worry about themselves a long time ago. My wife and children have watched me, not only overcome great personal tragedy and go on to do great things for young people in the same situation as I was, but also to find out lots of things about myself.

I have come to realize that I am a good learner and a good student, and now I always strive to get high marks in everything I do. I want to help young people who read this to understand that who you are at sixteen is not the same person you will be at twenty-five or indeed thirty-five, and that everybody gets their chance to shine. The trick is to never stop looking for opportunities and to know that it is the system that is judging you at sixteen that has the problem, not yourselves.

Early Memories

I do not know much about my early childhood, as I think a lot of it was deliberately blocked out. However, I will write the bits I know or think I remember, and hopefully memories will come flooding back. I must mention as well that this will be a journey into the unknown for me. I am really apprehensive about doing this project (as I will call it). I do not wish to dwell on bad memories or to relive my past unnecessarily, but for the sake of understanding, I feel I must try.

I know that I was born in Newry, County Down, in Northern Ireland in 1972 and that I was the third son of three boys and later a girl. I will not name my siblings, as I do not feel it would be fair to them, since they experienced our childhoods rather differently than I did. My family was Irish Catholic, and so religion was a big part of our lives growing up, although I am probably more of an atheist now (but I do still find myself saying prayers now and then, especially when children are in hospital or, worse, missing on the news). I will not pretend to know much about this time, as I was still a baby, but for the sake of clarity, I will give as much detail as I have managed to uncover for myself.

My mother came from a large family as did my father, some of whom I have managed to meet over the years and some of whom we were not allowed to meet for whatever reason. My mum’s family was very close, and all married and remained in Newry, although I believe that some of my cousins have ventured farther afield. My father’s family all seem to live on one estate in Newry—most even on one street. Both families were very big drinkers, and this was also to become a big part of our lives.

As I said, I was born in Newry in 1972, and I was baptized within twenty-four hours into the Catholic church. My mum lived in a small house not far from the rest of her family—her parent’s house was just 200 yards or so away. My mum had gone directly against her father’s wishes in being with my dad, as my mum’s father hated mine with a vengeance. This was to have a huge bearing on my mum’s life, as he died when we were young and my mum always felt that the rest of the family had blamed her as a contributing cause.

Anyway, my dad was heavily involved with the wrong people in Northern Ireland at the time, and so he was away from home a lot. My mum said that he had to remain on the run in the south of the country most of the time, although he did slip over the border to see us from time to time. It was this connection that led us to England. My dad, by all accounts, was sent to rob something in the south of Ireland, but Dad being Dad, he decided to keep the money and flee to England. My mum was completely unaware of all of this until she received word from my dad that he was waiting for her in England. He had blown all the money and been captured by the police in England for the robbery.

I think I was about three years old when my mum put us all on the Belfast-to-Liverpool ferry for the first time to meet him in England, and I suppose that this is where this story really begins. My mum was leaving everything she knew behind to follow what I think she must have felt was the right and Catholic thing to do: support her husband through thick and thin. From what I have managed to figure out, we were moved straight to Somerset and put in a caravan (mobile home) until a house could be found. My dad made a lot of lifelong acquaintances on this site, ones who would inevitably lead to a life of crime and prison and, above all, violence.

My mum was shunned by her whole family for many years for this move, and because of my dad, she could never return to Newry as his wife. She was an outcast from her own town and culture because of the man she had chosen. She would live to regret this for her entire life. I think about the choices she had to make back then, and I really sympathize with her. What choice did she have, really? To stay in Ireland as a single mother for life, or to try and get a divorce? In Ireland, this would have been unheard of and certainly would have meant some form of social isolation—not to mention the fact that many of the people whom my father had upset lived and worked in Newry, and so living in Newry would have been a nightmare.

I do not think my mum knew exactly what had happened until she landed in the UK, and by then it would have been nearly impossible to return. She decided to stand by him and try and make a new life in England for the sake of us boys, and soon she was pregnant with my little sister. My dad was full of big ideas for our new future in Somerset, and my mum was still young enough to believe him.

I know that my mum suffered many years of physical and mental abuse from my dad, and I think it would be easy for him to blame the change in circumstances for this, but unfortunately I have discovered that the one reason my mother’s dad hated him so much was the beatings she took from him whilst they were still courting. I mention this here because my young life is just one big domestic incident to me, and I wanted you to understand that the things he did were not because of the incident in Ireland but rather a personality trait that was always visible to everyone else but my mum. Maybe she felt that it was the troubles he was involved in growing up that triggered his anger and that moving away from the mess would change him. Whatever she thought, it was obvious to everyone else that he was a nasty piece of work.

We were all very young at this point, although I think my eldest brother remembers more than the rest of us about this time. He has told us about the fun we had on the farms around the site, and apparently, we had some good friends at the time. I can sort of remember playing hide-and-seek in a barn once, but as with much of my young life, it is all a little blurry.

We lived on the caravan site in Wellington for about nine months before we were offered a house in Taunton. This was to be my home until I was eleven. The house was quite big as far as council properties go—it was a four bedroom house with a great big garden around the back. I shared a room with my brother for most of that time, except when my eldest brother went into care much later. I don’t remember much about the neighbors except that everyone was terrified of my dad. He was a big man by anybody’s standards, with red hair and the temper to match.

They were mostly elderly neighbors, and most tried to befriend and help my mum in the beginning, but my father was so unpredictably violent that they eventually just avoided eye contact altogether. My mum was a stunningly beautiful woman, and I think this was a major problem with regards to my dad. He was so jealous and paranoid (which tends to be a trait in most women beaters I have met), maybe because he knew what a horrible man/husband/dad he really was. But it is unfortunately more likely that he convinced himself that she was flirting and driving him to it. My eldest brother seems to share many of these traits when it comes to women, especially the pretty ones—although I must say that it took a lot of counseling and therapy before I myself was completely free. I have had my moments of domestic horribleness, and I am sure my wife Lisa could share a few stories of her own.

I had serious attachment issues, and Lisa and I have had to work hard to remain together. I will discuss this