I am Child Z

Chapter Three - The Broken Family

Chapter Three - The Broken Family

Dad and I woke up in hospital the following morning; mum wedged herself between our beds, holding both our hands so tightly I could feel her pulse rushing through my veins. Dad nuzzled his head into mum’s chest, as if reverting back to a foetus. After four days of observation, the hospital released us, but nobody could release us from the devastating agony of losing grandma in this truly horrendous way. Despair and grief filled the clean fresh air of Devon and its community for many months to come…  

After grandma’s funeral, I spent many weeks crying in my room. I couldn’t handle the pain. I loved that woman. She was so amazing and kind. I couldn’t believe she had died under such horrific circumstances. I suffered ghastly nightmares in the months that followed; I woke up at random times in the night shrieking and shaking like a person with Parkinson’s disease. Mum slept in my bed with me at night to ease these terrible suffering. But I knew, however, that we were really pacifying each other. Mum needed to get out of her marital bed. Dad had started to act strange; his personality had changed, altered drastically. He developed intense obsessions with mum and felt unstable when she wasn’t around. He grew an unhealthy compulsion with mum’s physical form and wouldn’t leave her alone; sleeping in my bed gave her a breath of fresh air. Although mum supported dad and consoled him, nothing she did could bring him back to his normal self again.  

  A few weeks later, Dad had a breakdown. He did not know how to endure the guilt of his mother’s death. If only he hadn’t argued with her before she stepped on the boat, things may have gone differently. Would she have driven the craft so recklessly and dropped her phone, if he hadn’t pressured her to sell the Devon home? The feeling of culpability consumed him. He believed he had caused his mother’s demise. He couldn’t go on with this guilt hanging over his head, and he certainly could not live without his precious mother. If his existing compulsions and obsessions weren’t bad enough, he started to experience peculiar hallucinations that made him scream out in the night and break into uncontrollable sweats. Sometimes, he would even sneak out the house in the early hours of the morning and go to the casino to drink and gamble. His night visits to the casino became unmanageable. It got to a point where police had to escort him home, ‘cos he was dancing in the streets, drunk as a skunk, with fifty pound notes he’d won in bets, dangling from his dirty drooling mouth. Clearly, he wasn’t well. Dad’s doctor heavily medicated him; but that only brought about terrible mood swings that made things ten times worse.                                                                                 

Rapidly he deteriorated and soon got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which really had a terrible effect on the family. There were times when I couldn’t sleep or eat ‘cos of the worry – and I was so tired at school I experienced fainting spells. My grades hit the ground; I got D’s and E’s in English and Maths – which shocked teachers, as previously I achieved straight As. Mrs Whitmore, The Principal of Eleanor May High School, was so concerned about my welfare that Social Services almost got involved. But during the home visit, Mum convinced them everything was fine. Clearly, it wasn’t; we were all falling apart and the amazing kin we once were had dissolved before our very eyes.                                 

Mum tried so hard to help dad but he isolated himself, pushing her away and went further down the path of ruin. It was like living with a crazy person when he was in the house. Dad got loads of counselling and stuff, but it didn’t do much good. Things got from bad to worse – and the saddest most harrowing thing happened, when mum begged police to section dad under the Mental Health Act. Mum had to do this because dad threatened to take his own life and was saying lots of irrational things that mum got really concerned about. Within two years, he’d lost his mind and we lost him, completely. Dad died alone in a Mental Health Hospital on 1st July 2012. We could not get to him in time to say goodbye. It crushed me inside that he’d passed away – and spent the last days in this world all by himself.

That’s when I started to go off the rails – getting into fights, truanting and hanging around on the streets causing trouble with the unruly kids from school. I couldn’t handle losing two people that I loved in such a short space of time, so I acted out. I used to be a sweet, considerate and adorable child... But everything changed - when my wonderful grandmother and father were both cruelly stolen from me, just three years apart.                                                                                                                   

 Mum didn’t do so well after dad died. She spent most of her days bawling her eyes out locked in the bedroom. For many months I went without dinner because mum did not feel up to cooking. I often ate soup and bread. Other times I burned myself on the cooker attempting to cook a meal. I found my stools were really dark and smelly as I wasn’t having vegetables and stuff in the evening. At one point I had awful constipation and couldn’t do a poo for days. Mum heard me straining on the toilet a lot of the time, but she had no emotions or reactions. She didn’t really care whether I was okay or not, because she was more concerned about her own grief. She wasn’t being mean, I understand that now. She was very ill – and she, like dad, had developed a mental illness.