When I was 14 years old my mother came into the kitchen unexpectedly where I was washing up after a family meal and she was shocked and concerned to see that I was actually crying.

In the rush of the discovery she was quite insistent that I told her what was the matter, and I recall in that moment, telling her, that I hoped I would get married and that I wanted to have children  but that it was inconceivable that I would ever be able to take off my clothes in the presence of a girl and so my hopes and aspirations would come to naught.

Her response was kind and re-assuring and she lead me to believe that when the time came, I would be absolutely fine and that I was feeling like this because I simply was not ready, but the time would come when I would be.

I’m sure she laughed to herself, but she did not make me feel small or ridiculed for my teenage tears.

Of course she was right, the problem changed over time into keeping my clothes on in the presence of a girl, not taking them off!

After a recently prolonged period of intense emotional pain, which has been very destructive to my mental state and within my family, despite my best intentions,  I have been trying to find a place in the past which signaled the start of my anxious life.

I recognise that my emotional strife did not start with the teenage tears in the kitchen, but my anxious nature had certainly taken hold at that time and it has resulted in a life of suffering, which I have not quite been able to overcome.

My mother says that a fall in pregnancy may have deprived me of the nutrients I needed to feel safe in that safe space, and being a small baby at birth, the period of separation from my mother in the first two weeks of my life (in hospital without her) affected again the security of the bond between mother and child.

Perhaps!

Perhaps not!

Perhaps I was sensitive to the economic and social conditions in which I was raised.

Perhaps I suffered as a result of not being able to fit in with my male peers at school.

Perhaps I was isolated because I had no interest in playing football or any other sport for that matter as a child.

Perhaps it was the periods of bullying and threats at school which affected me.

Perhaps some trauma occurred early in my life that I cannot recall which robbed me of my sense of safety.

Probing into the past has helped me to understand the here and now, so that I can lift up my head and say to myself,

“I survived”

despite it all

“I’m alive”

despite it all

“I will thrive again”

My next blog will be: Turning Point

William Defoe