The end of the Rope

Where to begin?

This all started a long time ago, nineteen years a month and 7 days to be exact. Ever since I was born all I remember is living life with my mother. Now that was all great, the first home I remember living in was a small two bedroom bungalow in a small Fenland town. Life was simple, at least for a young boy. I have a feeling looking back that it might have been a lot more stressful for mum than I realised but that's detracting from the point.  I was happy as a child. Starting primary school was fun and I enjoyed much of my time there in the early years, but eventually I realised I had trouble writing and couldn't always complete the work. Needless to say, kids being kids, I got teased for this, it didn't really bother me at the time as I had a lot of friends as well, so I tended to just ignore it. But as the years went by and I still couldn't work at the same speed as the other children the teasing got worse. I wouldn't call it bullying because it really wasn't something that caused any major trouble for me, it just made me feel like I was out of my depth a little. Year 3 came around and with it the news my mum was pregnant... the pregnancy carried from the middle to the end of year 3 and my twin sisters were born on the 3rd of July 2003. This began a decline in my mood and overall growth and development. By the time I had gotten to year 4 we had to move house as the bungalow just wasn't big enough for our family and with moving house came moving school. At the time I was excited, a chance to start new, leave the teasing behind and make new friends. However once I started at my new school I soon realised how much I was going to miss everything I had. My old friends, my old teachers, the old playground. Everything was going to be different and I wasn't sure how I would deal with it. It turned out that I dealt with things relatively well and made some good friends at the school. I enjoyed my time there and was even working fast enough to keep up. This was a school I felt like I belonged at. In the background of all this however was something very dark indeed. Mum had a boyfriend, the father of my sisters, who was very abusive. Constantly beating her, I don't remember him giving his reasons although I know he told me. I think I've blocked that out entirely due to not wanting to bring it up, but I had to stand by and watch as my mother got slapped, punched, pulled to the floor and stamped on while being absolutely worthless... there was nothing I could do to help her, after all I was between the ages of seven and nine when this was going on, scared out of my wits because I didn't want him to start doing the same to me if I did something "wrong". Eventually mum came to her sense and went to the police, he was arrested and charged with domestic abuse, disturbing the peace, actual bodily harm and criminal damage by fire, now not all of this happened in one arrest but it was easier to give the full list rather than tell an elongated version of what happened. Long story short, he assaulted and terrified my mother for years, he set fire to our bins and fence, smashed our front room window and was a genuinely disgusting human being. I'll never forget walking to school one day and him stopping me. I was terrified, what was I meant to do? I knew he wasn't meant to be anywhere near mum or me. I simply answered his questions as best I could and carried on walking telling him I'd be late for school and get in trouble. From what I remember he never acted out towards me, or my baby sisters directly. Life carried on after he was removed from our lives and I ended up loving my time at school. Acting in the school performances, getting good grades in my SATS and being recommended for a scholarship at a grammar school. Oh how different things could have been if I had been able to go to that school instead. Secondary was very difficult for me, from day one I was bullied, I wasn't one of the "cool" kids so often got excluded from things, picked last for teams in PE, stuff everyone has to deal with at school but it took its toll on me. I was constantly worried people were talking about me, or thinking of ways to hurt me, physical abuse is nothing compared to the mental torture you go through due to this kind of behaviour. Of course no-one noticed anything, the kids didn't realise how they were making me feel, or if they did they didn't care. The teachers didn't notice my attention slipping in class, my lack of wanting to be in that damn place. After five years in that hell hole I finished my GCSE's and decided to stay on for A-levels seeing as I had managed to achieve the grades needed. This is where things get really weird. The start of A-levels was harmless enough, the people who bullied me had left. I had friends in the school and sixth form that helped me with my studies but I still didn't have the motivation to continue on and do well. At home mum was struggling with depression, trying to look after me, my sisters and my recently born little brother. In my time in secondary my uncle had been arrested in our home for possesion of a firearm, in the same house as two 4 year old girls at the time who had seen my toy guns and knew how to fire them, all it would have taken was for one of them to have found it and someone could have gotten seriously hurt or worse. The police originally came to the house on a drugs raid due to my uncle smoking cannabis and more than likely taking other drugs, however I have never bothered to ask my mother or him about it. After that mum got with a new man named Richie, the father of my little brother born August 11th 2009, although he never laid a hand on my mum he played mind games with her for most of their relationship, me and Richie had a very love-hate relationship, somedays we would get along just fine, others we would be at each others throats. Everything my mother went through she went through almost alone, the only person she had to truly help her through it all was me. Eventually this took its toll on me as well. There is only so much helping someone can do when they are going through their own stuff as well. Mum eventually decided to walk out and walk to the bridge where she sat at a bench and contemplated her choices, seriously weighing up suicide until I arrived on my sisters bike. I probably wouldn't have found her if my friend Glenn hadn't messaged me and told me where she was, and to him I am eternally thankful. We walked for hours around the town with me trying to convince her to come home. In the end she agreed to come home and go to her room and stay there until the morning when Richie, who she had been arguing with all week, went home. We walked in the door and immediately were confronted by him, shouting at us both that we worried him sick, that we didnt care about him or my siblings because if we did then mum wouldnt have walked out and I would have rang him when I found her, despite not having a way to call. Mum went to leave but I grabbed her and showed her to her room. Put my sisters to bed and sat in my room braced and waiting. Surely enough in he came shouting the odds, calling me a two faced cunt. He pinned me to the wall and asked me to give him one reason not to hit me then and there to which I responded with "I don't have one, if you really want to go ahead" He then stormed downstairs and didnt say a word until the morning. He continued to be a pain in my side for a year and a half more until he agreed to no longer come to our home, instead picking up my brother and going back to his for a weekend every fortnight and having time with him in the school holidays. All of this played on the minds of both me and my mother, and I'm almost sure it has played on the minds of my sisters as well, even if they don't want to show it now. Well my sisters have since been the major problem in terms of mental health for me and my mother, they know how to push our buttons and stress us both out. This makes mums depression hit her harder and as a result makes me have to help her through it all again, making my depression come to the forefront of my mind once again. Recently I have been having issues with a decision I need to make, without mentioning names I have feelings for this girl but it's not enough to want to be in a relationship with her, I've tried having fun and enjoying the single life but any girl I do anything with just reminds me of how I feel about her. I don't want a relationship with her, but I can't lose her either and am stuck at a crossroads with what to do. And then two nights ago mum tried to overdose on her medication, popping the pills out of the foil packaging in front of my sisters who had wound her up to the stage she felt she couldn't handle it. Taking the pills off of her, taking the knives and razors from the house and putting them all in my room out of her way so she couldnt get to them and getting very little sleep to make sure she didn't try anything stupif again that night. I had plenty of time to think, and a few certain thoughts kept crossing my mind. "Why don't you do what she was planning on doing?" "You obviously aren't much of a son if you can't stop her getting to this stage" "You obviously aren't much of a brother if they constantly behave in this way and make you and mum suffer" "Just do it, stop being afraid and do it!". If it wasn't for my amazing friends who helped me through that night and kept me calm and kept me from listening to those thought's I honestly don't know if I'd be writing this now. I recognise this is a very much shortened down version of events but I needed to get this off my mind, and who knows, maybe if people I know read this they will get a better understanding of what I have been through, and who I am as a person, maybe they'll stop and think about the fact that while I have helped as many people as I can I have never asked for help myself unless I knew for a fact I was going to struggle otherwise... Maybe people will realise that I am at the end of my rope.