Boy To Man To Soldier

 

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The beginning of it all

 Abandonment, betrail, violence, drugs and a disfunctional family of sorts.

My life began like any other life but I will not fill you in on my creation as I feel it maybe too much information.  I was born in Spalding in Lincolnshire in 1986. My mother Mandy and dad David were magically in love (or so you would think) being together for a few years before my conception, my father married her because everyone wanted her! She was a model and someone that men could not resist. Once my father had her, he would not let her go. When they married she had two children from a previous marriage and were older than me by some years, however this did not stop her from doing what parents would feel is the most cruelest of actions that a person let alone a mother could do to her children.

She was beautiful and mysterious. But there was a darkness in her that other people recognised that my father did not. Their relationship was full of lies and betrayal. Pain and emotional blackmail. My father was an explorer into the beds and hearts of reckless loose women. He always tried to change them and put them in a box full of suffocation, don't get me wrong I'm not blaming him as he was a selfless man and cared and loved deeply for me and his step children. However he blindsided himself, putting his lust before his heart and his penis before his brain. I think my wife would say that's all men, however I beg to differ.

So where did it go wrong you may ask. Well, one fine day early in the year of 1988 my mother decided to leave. But in spectacular fashion. Leave all her children, her husband and with  no apparent reason why. I was told that she came back after spending two days away, my father had phoned the police and filed a missing person report as she had never done this type of thing before. So when she came back my father was overjoyed and angry. Where have you been? Who with? Why? All the questions that would run through anyone's mind. I was playing with my two brothers on the floor nearest the front door she just appeared from. I don't think she even looked at us as she stormed upstairs with my father not far behind, asking where she had been. 

She had locked herself firmly in the bathroom, at this point my father was trying to break the door down because she was not acting herself and worried for her safety. The last blow to the door opened it and there she stood at the mirror doing her makeup. My dad looked at her in the reflection as she gathered all of her cosmetics and without saying a word brushed past him, care free and down the stairs clutching her makeup. She stopped as she looked at her beautiful children and shouted "you can't have them two because there not yours, but you can have him" and with that she pushed herself through the door and briskly took herself on up the street.

Shocked and disoriented and upset my father didn't know what to do with himself. Is this just a phase? has something happened to her? is she in trouble? He must have asked himself! My father knew she wasn't coming back ever again. This is the part of the story where my dad got absolutely pissed as a fart and decided to go on a rampage. In a angered and hurt fuelled rage down the street. Smashing windows and destroying people's cars and properties, to which I might add was arrested by the local police and fined a lot of money in damages. This woman had sent him mad. I think this was the first time where drink had played a part in his life and significantly changed it.

After a few weeks of just about coping my father knew he couldn't manage all of us and went on a search for my brothers father. As hurt as he may have been, he knew he didn't have a choice. After a time my father also knew that the chance of happiness again in the house and city that inflicted so much pain and anger he decided to move. In 1989 i moved with my father to a place called Cambridge in east anglia. Hope street, number 5a. This was our new start. As you can imagine my father got himself back firmly onto the dating scene and started to go out with a young woman called Sylvia, she was blonde and good looking as I would of expected. Sylvia had a flat in Cambridge where my dad used to take me and I think he fell in love with her rather quickly. 

They spent quite a few years together and were happy for the most part. The bad luck that my dad had endured if you could call it that, felt to have ended. Things were looking up. Until that fateful day in the bathroom at Sylvia's flat. Just one of those ordinary days and my dad decided to have a bath, which in hindsight was the if you believe in fate. What was to come next, shocked everyone to the core. He slipped after trying to get out (the clumsy git) and smacked his head on the  sink, knocking himself out and needing medical assistance. Sylvia called for an ambulance and went to the hospital with him. 

A scan of his brain was needed to ensure no bleeding or swelling had occurred this was the doctors best move. Sylvia worried and holding me tightly. The results were in. The cancer had been there for years. Laying dormant in his brain. It was a brain tumour that you would normally witness in children. For ease of treatment and post operation procedures my father was to spend his time on the cancer ward with the children who had the same prognosis. Chemotherapy, radiation, an operation to remove his tumour and a shunt to stem fluid from his brain down his neck. A lot to handle for a young single parent father like him.

Kelly-Marie a cheeky little girl who would love nothing more than to sneak up on my dad whilst he lay sleeping in the hospital bed and pull on those huge leg hairs. They got along so well. They were like best friends. She too had the same tumour as my father. Beautiful and innocent. Janice her mother grew increasingly close to David and they all shared something that was like a solid and unique bond, impossible to fracture. The day Kelly-Marie died shattered my dad and Janice. This girl was far too young to die. Just past nappies stage and she was taken whilst my dad lay there helpless to move out of an emotion other that guilt and sadness, guilt that he was still there and she was not.

Eventually after nearly a year my dads prognisis was good although the surgeon had explained that the tumour would likely come back so was to have regular check ups to catch it early if it reappeared. My dad and Sylvia were back on track and had everything to live for. That everything would soon be taken away and everything would not be the same again!

Shopping, a girls birth right. This my father said was the bit about women he never got. Always going shopping looking for that bargain. Thousands of shops looking for that fantastic deal, only to go back to the first one they went into 4 hours previous. After returning to Sylvia's flat after a day of wonderful shopping (sense the sarcasm), they pulled up at the bottom of the steep metal stair case that led up to her flat.

Sylvia grabbed what she could and started to make her way up the stairs. My father still trying to grab all that he could from the boot of the car. Upon reaching halfway, my father looked up directly in front of him and saw a man helping Sylvia with the bags at the door. Thinking nothing of it he carried on upwards. A few feet away again, she gasped and my dad realised all was not right. He had a knife up her skirt and was threatening all sorts of violence. Quickly droppping the bags as they rolled down the stairs David grabbed the man and struggled to gain a firm enough grip as he stabbed Sylvia in the stomach. As she slumped to the floor my dad wrestled further to try and disarm the man. He was possessed. They struggled as my dad held up his hands catching defensive knife wounds to his elbow and forearms. This was not going to end well. Once a grip had been firmly lost the man pinned my dad over the banister exposing his chest. The man then preceded to puncture my fathers abdomen, throat and chest. 

Nine deep stab wounds were laid upon him in a gruelling attack. Once he had finished the man fled down the steps towards the road. He just ran after him. I asked him how? But my dad just called it adrenaline. As David caught up to the man he stopped and turned round. My father said there was a moment that lasted a life time where the man just stared at him. Black, dark lifeless eyes poured onto him. He then lunged at my fathers groin and stabbed him again just as my dad punched him and split his face open. The man ran, ran and ran. My father was dying, Sylvia was still at the top of the stairs losing blood. David crawled to the gutter and slumped, his lifeless body up against a garage door. My father had said people had just walked past him. Not wanting to get involved, not really sure what was going on in the dark night.

The first ever memory I have was walking into the hospital with my grandparents to witness my dad having his staples removed from his chest. 4mm to the right his heart would have got it. 3.5mm to the left his main artery in his neck would have been severed. Couldn't understand why people called him lucky after that. This man was far from what I thought lucky was. Sylvia's parents blamed my father for her injuries and the doctor had said to her that she would never concieve children. Sylvia's parents said that my father should of left him to rape her, she may have never been hurt. When he told me this later in life I could not fathom this response at all. Oh and this is Hope street, where a man they called lucky lived!

Sylvia and David carried on there relationship and healed there wounds together. Would they ever get past the horrible ordeal they had gone through. Imagine what that must of done to a relationship. Sylvia had always said that the impossibility of her having children was not an issue in there relationship and that there would be no need to use protection, what would be the point? But when she fell pregnant my father was gobsmacked. Later he learned that Sylvia had made it all up. Schemed and lied in order to get what she wanted. A child. A little boy. For my father this was too much and felt that he had no choice but to leave.




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Guilt of true offences

 I was the smallest, cheekiest little "Del boy" wanna be ever. At 6 years old and moving to the other side of Cambridge, into a nice flat. It gave my father and I a new start. As all young children do, I pushed my luck all the time. Such a little problem child. However this little boy (me) had some grand ideas of how to get into the shit ALL THE TIME! I used to walk to school and past a little Londis shop. Tiny little thing it was, but at 6 years old I was the Artful Dodger, or so I thought I was. I used to steal chocolates, magazines (give to the teachers), sweets, toys. I began at 8 years old with a little tuck shop at the back of the field making millions (or maybe like £15-20). Undercutting the school tuck shop by at least 50p an item. 

One day though as I tried to walk out of Londis the manger stopped me, he grabbed me roughly and sat me on the side near the till. Shouting in his foreign tongue at me, words I could imagine were, all the swear words I was never aloud to use. The few words I did understand though was "phone" and "police". This was not good, he then said that he knew my father and I was going to pay for this. This I remember with deep regret as this moment shaped my childhood. Luck would have it though after being grabbed I managed to slip through his grasp and run all the way to school, my father found out though the next day when he went to get some milk. Grounded for a month. 

Like i said, school was like a business in my mind. It was where I knew that children needed and wanted things and I would steal them, or aquire them in order to make a profit. This was almost true in every case. Colourful rubber bands, we called them "shag bands". Every colour was worth a different price depending on the rarity, would depend on how much people would pay me. Now in school I would sell these bands for a tenner. I would really only pay 50p for a bag of 25 assorted shag bands. So in school I was the go to guy. I made the mistake though by being greedy and sold 50 bands to Martin for £500 and true to his word, he came the very next day with the money. I did not think at 10 years old that this was a problem. But that very day I was called to the headmasters office where my father and martins parents were. My father was looking at me in disbelief, disappointment and worry. I sat down and proceeded to explain that I would not return the money as it was a legitimate business transaction. Legitimate business transaction, wow, I was unbelievable.   However I was right. I also asked if the goods were damaged or sold illegally. To which I was told to stop being cheeky by the head teacher. I don't think my dad had ever seen me talk like this and was shocked. Needless to say Martin had stolen the money from his parents and this was apparently my fault. I gave them half back and told them I had bought all my friends stuff and gave some money to homeless people so I was unable to give them the rest. His mother was so annoyed.

The head teacher suspended me from school and off I went down the road with my dad. There was silence all the way home, until I pulled out a wad of cash. My dad went crazy! But knowing there was nothing else he could do, my dad kept it as I presented it to him as a gift. Or a bargaining tool, so that my punishment would of a lenient nature. I don't know where I got it from, this gift of the gab. You needed a pen, special protractor, cool calculator and pencil cases. You needed anything I was your man (or boy). I guess the road I was headed down was a dangerous one. I did not see it. I didn't want to, I was liked at school. In fact at primary school I was the cool kid. The girls wanted to be with me and the boys wanted to be me.

Marriage, I never realised it was that serious. Now 11 years old and my dad shacked up with another good looking blonde. Crazy in love apparently. He asked me if I was ok with the idea as he pushed a bowl of sweets under my chin. I didn't really know. But what I did know is that I didn't want to be forgotten about. She had two daughters and they were to be my sisters. One of them was 3 Years older and the other was 3 years younger.

I was, through the life I had lived up to now, adaptable and accepting of change. However I was not liking the fact I was NOT going to be the centre of my dads world. I just wanted it to be the same as it had always been, just me and my dad.  But soon it will all change. He met her in the after school club I went to. It was at the back of the school, Her friend was one of the mangers, but as my dad was always thinking within his pants he thought it maybe a good idea to have sex with his new girlfriends best friend. He had told me this when they were going through a rough patch. I never understood why he would do this, when he said he loved this woman he was going to marry after all. At this point I had a warped understanding of what loving the opposite sex was all about. Was it ok to have this type of relationship? 

To be honest the day of the wedding I was feeling blessed. I was after all getting everything I really wanted, which was a family. We had the typical family holidays and days out. I had everything, everything! She even said early on that if I wanted to I could call her mum! I was so thankful. Things were good at home, however somehow, somewhere deep down I knew I wasn't right. I started to hang around with my best friends brother. He was a bully and a complete drug addict. I started to smoke cigarettes and do things that was just wrong. Trying to show off and being twelve, impressionable it meant I would do anything to fit in. My home life started to suffer. I started to suffer. 

I started to play truant through school and go off doing drugs. I would steal from my family as it got more serious and it got to the point where I would need to spend at least £40 a day on drugs. I would steal from my father, my step,others purse and toys from my sister, anything I could do to sell for my habit. I was, the scum of the earth. I had turned into something that my father had never wanted me to be. A selfish, inconsiderate thieving little shit. I had no respect for anyone, I started to lose weight and had to wear two T shirts to bulk up. I would get into trouble with the police and other people would just think I was a waste of oxygen. But nothing or no one would be able to halt my ways. 

Drugs were apart of my life from the age of 12-18, which is something I was not and am not proud of. I was just lucky that in the end my family did what was necessary to kick me into shape. I look at my younger days through that life and eyes of a young child and cannot understand how it accelerated so quickly. I think my best friends brother who I mentioned earlier had such a massive influence on my life. He nearly destroyed me. I remember times he would sit there with his girlfriend and just spit at me, call me all the names under the sun. I would just sit there, like a puppy waiting for his bone, or in this case a toke on his joint. He made me feel almost nothing in life. I was deflated. I was paranoid through the drugs. My father had brought me up to be emotionally in touch with my feelings, considerate of others, respectful, courteous, thankful and loving and caring. In one fake swoop this older brother of my best friend had undone all of this in the space of a year.

At the age of 15, I was trying all sorts of other drugs. Wanting to be the big man. It was just ridiculous really looking back. I remember one day I was travelling into town with my best friend, he decided to take me to see his uncle who was staying in the local YMCA, I just said ok, went along to please him. I walked in and said hello. He was an older guy, who had looked like he had been through the mill. You guessed it, his uncle smoked weed, so we persisted to smoke weed in this little  box room.

This room was tiny, I sat on this bed in the centre. After smoking for sometime, I was beginning to get a headache. I asked him for some paracetamol for the pain. He said to try some of this juice. It will perk you up and make you feel better. I was thinking great. However little did I know that after taking this substance I was in no control of my motor functions. He had given me methadone, which is a substitute for heroin, his uncle was a heroin addict. All of a sudden I was being tucked into bed. He was telling me it was going to be alright. I heard him trying to explain his actions to my best friend. I knew that it had started into an argument, I knew that also if he had left me there, he would of abused me. 

Taking me out of the box room some hours later, I realised how serious it was. I had no choice but to tell my father what happened. All I knew is that two weeks later this man had died of an apparent heart attack. calmer maybe, or drugs catching up with him. Who knows. 

All of my friends had done drugs and I remember one day, we had a knew friend introduced into the fold. She had never done drugs and by 16 I was an expert at it. This girl was pretty and educated, she should never have joined this group. She started to smoke with us, but with the more she smoked she started to turn into something she wasn't. I think the chemicals did not mix with her correctly. She started to lose the plot. She actually started to get paranoid delusions and had to be sectioned by the police. I was astonished that this drug I had been taking for so long had this dramatic effect on someone. I felt so sick to the stomach that this young girl had joined this group and forged her fate with us. Guilty is not the word to describe the feelings I have. 

Another moment in my life which I wish I could change is meeting my brother for the first time. Walking down the street and seeing a boy younger by some years than me. But in the first instance it was like looking in the mirror 5 years ago. After I got to know who he was, I quickly realised that this was my brother, whom I had never met before. Naturally he wanted to be with me, act like me and he wanted to be accepted by me. I opened my damaged wing and let him in. The one and biggest mistake I ever made. I introduce my kid brother into my life. He had know decent role model and decided to follow me. He followed me into the path if self destruction. He went further that I dared to go. He went from an A* student at primary school, having dreams and aspirations to time served in a juvenile prison for street robbery and theft. What had I done, why?

I do not know how to explain why I thought it would be a good idea at 15 to take a life like that. I owe him a life he would of had. I owe! I have not spoken to him in years, I think he is still in the midst of drugs and has a reputation of the thug you don't want to cross. I did that, I made him, I made him what he is. As a child myself at the time of meeting him, meeting a person who was actually a blood relative in the circumstances I did. I suppose I just wanted a sibling, a real one. No excuses should be given as a 15 year old, you have enough of a responsibility within you to understand that good ideas are good and being a drug addict, horrible person, involving a kid brother into that is just wrong. Guilty, guilty.



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Change or be changed

 Could after all I have done, make it worse in my little insignificant life. Self pity is the key role in this game. Vicky at the tender age of 16, gave me that piece that was missing. She let me in to her life, her perfect homely, beautiful life. We used to watch videos together and her family were lovely. She was the only one that let me spread my wings away from the friends that had the enduring role of helping me destroy my life. I remember the first time we did it. It was and is always a massive thing to lose your virginity. I remember watching the film ARMEGGEDON and as the music kicked in to "I don't wanna miss a thing" played in the back ground she endured the best 7 seconds of her life. Ok well, maybe it wasn't that good, but hey wishful thinking. We had an intimate relationship and a good one. As I grew, still doing drugs and with my parents enevitably splitting up my father decided to go down the road of self pity and alcoholism, it made sense really as I knew that nothing that good would last, it never does!

My father never admitted it, to me or himself. But when someone sits in the same chair from 5pm drinking whisky until he passes out at 8pm and then wakes to find half a glass still in his hand and carry on drinking I believe, maybe that is. Slight drink problem. I felt extremely sorry for my dad. I loved him more that the world, but he would throw abuse at me when he was drunk and make me feel worthless. I think he was right? Sometimes he would piss himself and as I knew he had work in the morning I knew that he needed to go to bed and he needed to have clean clothes in the morning. I would wash them, out him to bed, sit with him, stroking his head to sleep, making sure he didn't throw up and choke, do all the washing up, dry his clothes and hang them up with a fresh note in his pocket, which explained the nights events and that I wanted it to stop because it was killing me and ultimately killing him. It was heartbreaking to see the man I thought was Superman look and act like that. Addictive personality is something I have, a definite trait that my father gave me to me.

As time went on, I had every job you could imagine, from working in a chemical factory, fastfood and selling windows and doors. I had done everything. Things were very rocky at home, the more my dad drank and sunk into his depression, the more I smoked and did further drugs. Eventually my dad kicked me out of our flat. He meant it too. I was on my own. Fighting for myself. Sofa hopping at the age of 17. Vicky had seen the light and left me. I was alone.

My grandparents decided to phone me one day with news of their neglect of me. They were to no longer speak to me as a grandson. They had given up hope, given up on me! I had reached the pit of self destruction, depression and self pity. More drugs and alcohol to follow. Change or be changed. It's easy to say younwill change. I would either end up dead or end up in prison. Change or be changed. I chose change, or should I say change chose me! Walking through the town where I lived with a joint in my hand I came across a man in uniform stood outside the Army careers office, how do I get my whole family back on side? Funny as it sounds I walked straight in and asked for a job. I was nearly 18, skinny as a rake and weighing 7 1/2 stone. The man in uniform just laughed at me. He signed me up but told me to quit the drugs and I had three months to sort my weight out as I was too skinny and training would wipe me out if I didn't put it on!

Someone to believe in me, that's all I needed. I rushed home to tell my dad, well I mean his home as I had no home! He opened the door with a disappointed look in his face. I told him that I was joining the army, he laughed at me and shut the door in my face. I remember I stood there at the closed wooden brown door, I was expecting open arms, forgiveness, love. I knew the drugs had to stop, that was the hardest thing. But slowly and surely within two days I had stopped completely, I started eating a lot of pizzas and fried food to bulk up and sure enough in a couple of months I was about 10 stone. I went for my final interview with the careers office, suited and booted and was accepted as a member of her armed forces. 

This was the proudest day of my life. I remember running home from town, holding my Oath of Allegiance. I once again knocked on my dads door. He didn't even answer, so I pushed the Oath through his letterbox. I started to turn away, and he opened the door, still reading it he looked up and I could see the look of disappointment drain from his face and proudness fill it. He just simply asked me if I wanted a brew and I followed him to the flat. I felt more like a man that day than I ever had. We sat there in the kitchen for a while in silence, he opened his mouth and said "come home son, we need to prepare you for this". He got up and gave me the biggest of cuddles ever and I knew that everything was going to be ok. 

There was an element of doubt in his eye, I knew with all of the lies and deceit. But the day came to go and he almost didn't want me to go. But it was my time to change and to be changed. To make someone who is that disappointed of you, so proud of you is the most emotional time in my life I have experienced. 


The next part of my first book will be released soon......

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