Hello and Welcome...

In December 2023, I needed emergency bowel surgery which left me with two gruelling weeks in hospital. It forced me to be restricted from activities for a six weeks and visit a nurse every other day for complex wound management, which in turn offered me a lot of time to reflect on my own life.

 

I've had to be resilient for most things since childhood, but this really tested me as it came at a time in my life when I was recovering from a series of unfortunate events. Looking back over my life, the exposure to abandonment, identity challenges and trauma have resulted in... well, the person who's taken to write this blog with an aim at sharing positivity, ironically.

 

Events like the following will either make you, or break you and having been on the very edge of breaking multiple times, I have finally found a way to stop saying "why me?" and start saying: "Well why not me?".

 

This blog exists ultimately for me, to reignite my creativity and to share my experiences and if someone can relate in someway to this; and turn their perception around in the same way as I have, or at least I'm trying to, then maybe we can all learn from one another and start stimulating more positivity in the world. Pain is your friend, if you use it correctly. 

​

Having grown up in a broken home filled with domestic violence and alcoholism, my Mum did the best she could to protect her four children from the harm my Dad caused. Kids are not stupid however, and we knew what was happening. My Dad used to manipulate my Mother to stay at times she was prepared to leave by hanging me over the banister by my ankle, and she'd spend some nights removing glass from our bed before we got into it. Domestic violence back then was not as recognised or safeguarded against as it is now, and The Children's Act only came into force in 1989; the year I was born - up until then, there was no legislation. 

 

My Mum had already lost her first husband to suicide, and she suffered at the hand of a bully for many years after that right up until my brother Leon was hit and killed by a train at 22 years old. She lost the two men she loved, and was left with a man who broke her nose, and regularly beat her up.

​

I don't remember much about my childhood, not until around 9 years old. Most of the things I do remember are not always good, like seeing my brother Leon on the sofa with blood on his face, and my older sister Sarah shouting at me to get upstairs whilst barricading the front door from being smashed in with the bureau. Sometimes we were being rushed into neighbours homes for safety, only to find my Dad at the bottom of the garden manipulating me through the fence to let him in. I recall some scanty relationship with a man who tried miserably to be a father, who we would visit in a variety of locations, only to witness him beating up the next woman... and finally my last memory were his words to my step Dad Paul, throwing me at him saying "take your weirdo son, I don't want him anymore". I still have marks on the cheek of my face from anxiously picking away at my skin in fear. 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

I do remember some weird good things, like dancing in the lounge to a Cindy Lauper album, and playing racing cars in the kitchen on Christmas day with Leon. I remember a very white Christmas in the conservatory and the coldness of it, and robins. But I have to think really hard if I try to remember good stuff, only bad springs forward. 

​

Fast forward to 14 years old when came out gay. I was at a Catholic School and their teaching on Homosexuality was something along the lines of "What you need to know is that gays wear lots of glitter, and the lesbians don't know their own strength... I wouldn't want to meet one of those on a dark night". A lot has changed in 21 years, thank god... but coming out resulted in years of horrible bullying from my peers, being beaten up and harassed in school. I was lucky enough to find a small group of girls as my haven who are still my closest friends today, and on my last day of school I remember some of the boys coming up to me and apologising for all the stuff they put me through. 

​

That sense of being an outcast was not just in my friendship circles, if I'm honest I've always felt like the black-sheep in my extended family. With over 120 cousins that get together often for events, anniversaries and holidays; I am still the only gay person. Something I'll never forget, is what one of my cousins said in regards to if I ever got married, it was "Well I wouldn't go, it's not right". These days it's a lot better, but for a long time I didn't feel part of my family.   

​

I left home at 18 and moved to London, I managed to get into University to start my dream career as a Paramedic, a role that puts you side by side someone 12 hours a day, you get to know that person more than you know your partner is some ways! Yet the suicide of my crewmate, educator and friend Simon I never saw coming, after 2 years working together it took a big blow. It was the first death of a friend I had experienced, and to that of suicide... but unfortunately he was not the last. I then lost a number of friends to drugs or suicide, in a very short space of time. 

​

Sometimes resilience is required, other times it's demanded. One thing for sure, is it's not always possible. Being a Paramedic, as 999 demand grew Paramedic welfare shrank. If there were emergency calls waiting, you were required for the next, and the next, and the next regardless of what you had just been to before until you can't go on anymore. I've had my hand in someone's clam-shelled open chest, assisting with open-heart surgery and providing pressure to there aorta whilst we flood them with blood on their white shag carpet trying to save their life. I've witnessed eviscerated organs in children from psychotic fathers in religious rituals, 12 year old student from Germany jumping out his window on a school trip only for his broken body to be found by 17 of his peers the following cold frosted morning on the hotel kitchen roof.

 

The problem with that cycle is that if you don't deal with the things you need to deal with at the time, you're as resilient as a chocolate tea-pot. 

 

The thing is, it's all finally got to me. 

 

I've spent the last 35 years trying to be loved by people who don't love me, trying to belong where I'm not welcome, trying to prove myself to people who constantly doubt me. The sacrifice you pay for a sense of belonging and self actualisation, is you stop being who you really are; because you stop loving yourself, because you think you are unlovable. I know many people will read this, and identify with it. 

​

In the long run, you stop respecting yourself, you allow people to do things to you that you know you shouldn't, or you sacrifice your principles to allow a substandard of what you deserve. You try to quench your thirst for love, even when its drank from the most poisonous of chalices, and you forgive all the things you know you wouldn't dream of routinely doing. You compromise on your own self-worth for a chance to have something you've never had before.

​

Finally I've got to the point in that I don't want to waste more years pleasing people who don't matter. I want to do what makes me happy, and surround myself with people that love me for who I am, and stop being a people pleaser and allowing things to happen to me, because I believe I am flawed and un-loveable for the person I really am. 

 

I love country music, and I also love flowers, and I play guitar and I like to draw Marvel. I wore a wig for seven years, and I have back fat. But I'm also a very warm and compassionate person, and I have a kind heart. I might be found in the broken-toy cupboard, but I'm still fun. 

​

I'm 35 now and I want to really start to learn how to love and respect myself more. To stop compromising on my principles and morals to facilitate relationships with people destined for problems.

​

I want to spend more time with my family and friends, and the people that mean the most.

You never know how long you have them or they have you for.   

​

My favourite memories are holidays in Wales, or 4am departures to Cornwall. Driving in convoy in overheated Ford Fiesta's without power steering but a small sunroof ajar, my Mum slapping the side of the car to Bruce Springsteen and randomly clicking her fingers in the air with the other. My sister Sarah is the coolest person on this Earth and I miss her carefree, spontaneous but risky attitude in life, I'm forever grateful for the love and role model she played stepping up to be a Mum when our Mum was suffering. I love how my Sister Katharine would beat up anyone who would pick on me at school and her amazing red hair. I love my step-Dad (who I just call Dad) so much, he did the best to give me the opportunities in life and treated me like his own son. 

​

I read somewhere that your cousins are the first best friends you'll ever make, and it's so true. I adore my cousins, and I'm so lucky to have so many of them. I'm proud of my family, and how 'The Vaughan's' is the name of an ever growing competitive cult of ridiculous games like standing on one leg the longest and how many people can jump a jump-rope at the same time.

 

I miss the adults playing midnight Dracula in the huge houses we used to rent, the singalongs around the piano, and the infamous Cousins-Night-Out in Bath getting drunk, watching some relatives use Library Cards as ID to get in the Irish Pub. We started the Caravan Club from Tents, to Trailer Tents, from Caravans to Statics. One thing I know is if we all survived that night trespassing muddy unexploded mine-fields, we can probably survive anything. I miss the spud-wagons.  

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

"Discovering more joy does not, I'm sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet, as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken".

​

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy.

​

​