It's mad to think...

It's mad to think that it's been nine years (well, give or take a few months)...I wander where I'd be had I not crumbled internally...to think that I would not have met the people I now know, nor developed the friendships I hold dearest to me had my life gone the way I'd planned it to....so much failure, but I guess that's how it is meant to be, you know? Plans are perfect until they're exposed to the real world, it's just....insane....who would take your place? Would anyone? What would it have been like to have gone to university on the back of the International Baccalaureate...with all that money I had....I think I'd have flunked out in the first year...I think. With what happened, and the way my head was after...well, it would have been a disaster, and with little chance of fixing. Couldn't imagine going to uni for a second time, without money, without loans, maybe it was a good thing it took me so long to pull myself back together...gave myself a chance to learn, to understand, to get over it all.

I remember when I was young, about five or so, my family went to a party, I think it was hallowe'en, or new years, or something, anyway, the party was at my step aunt and uncles because yay, extended family  but yeah, the party was going on, and everyone else is off, adults were doing adult stuff like drinking and being shits to one another, and the other children were off doing kid stuff, like playing games and being shits to one another, meanwhile, I hid. See, there was this room that we weren't allowed in, and it was locked...so naturally I stole the key and hid inside it. It was a playroom kind of area, toys, video games, comics etc. and I still don't know why we weren't allowed in there, or why it was locked, but I didn't care, I went in there, made a pile of soft toys in the corner of the room, found a book (an old batman story, can't remember much about it other than it had the penguin in it) and hid under the toys reading it. So anyway, I stayed there the whole night. People looked for me, but didn't find me, and they gave up in the end (fear my ninja skills!) but what I remember is my mum (talking to a friend) looking in the room, not finding me, then as leaving the room saying "oh don't worry, he'll turn up in the end", then they went back to drinking...the other kids didn't look. Anyway, the point of that story is that my family (well, it was only my mum and step family there to be fair to the rest of the family) suck balls. I could've been anywhere, this house was built by Jericho Lane, it was a new housing development, other houses were in the process of being built, vacant lots and power tools everywhere as well as being right by the Otterspool promenade, you know, a place with a less than stellar reputation now, but much, much worse 20 years ago (holy fuck, that's two decades ago....this story takes place two freaking decades ago?!) and all the doors, front and back were open in this house...but no, "he'll turn up in the end"...that's going to end well isn't it?!

The point of this story is that I never really had anyone care for me, well, except my Nana Betty who was great, everyone else just treated me like a chore...When I was seven, I was ran over, and had this thing called an external fixator placed on my leg. It's basically screws drilled into the bone which are fixed together by an external rod, and they're used to realign/mend fractured bones, anyway, the salient point here is that it's basically giant metal screws sticking out of my leg....so very painful and also requiring scrubbing everyday to prevent infection...for a while my mum did it, until she got bored, then I had to do it myself. You understand I was seven years old at the time. Seven year old boys don't get in the bath when they're told, try telling one to painfully swab the pus drooling open wounds on his near destroyed leg...well, I did do that. Three times a day, everyday, for about six months. The point of that story is, I was very independent...I had to be, I couldn't rely on anyone else to look after me when I was growing up (again, except for my nana betty, thank god for her)....little side note to that story, I always thought my mum was actually showing concern for me with the whole cleaning the wound thing for a while, and the wheeling me to school everyday (prior to my being bound to a wheelchair, I walked to school, since what? the age of five? after I could walk again, I walked alone again, or rather, I was forced to walk my brother and later my sister to school as well), turns out she was claiming DLA on my fucked leg...and she was making a show of being the caring put upon parent because her friend in the benefits office tipped her off that she was being monitored for potential fraud. Yeah...another side story, she had me tested for depression when I was four years old, I was actually diagnosed with depression (how shit does a household have to be for a freaking four year old to get depression...especially to be diagnosed with that in the freaking 90s!), but then my mum found out she couldn't claim benefits on the back of that (it being the freaking early 90s and that) and so stopped taking me to the therapist.

Anyway, the point to all this is I am a messed up individual who can be very anti-social, very independent, and I know that this can cause a lot of friction, make me appear haughty, or condescending even, but I'm not, I just find it very hard to be natural around people, because I don't want to push people away, even though that's what the eventual outcome is anyway, a self fulfilling prophecy....For a long time though, I blamed others, I blamed my mum, and yeah, a lot of it is her fault...but then, I should never have let it get to me. We can't choose what happens to us, only how we react to things, and I reacted pretty fucking poorly. I'm still reacting poorly, I'm getting much better though, I think, I hope. I know I'll never be fully normal, I can't be, not after how I was raised, all I can do is keep moving forward and trying to be a better person....anyway, rant over, go back to eating cheese, or ramping motorcycles or whatever it was you were doing before reading this....if you read this at all...I'll put a tl;dr at the bottom....

TL:DR, bad things happen, wah! maybe for reason? oh, I'm getting over it, hopefully, yay!