The Day I left my childhood home I was sick.
I actually vomitted in the Midland Main line Intercity 125 Toilets from Market Harborough to Sheffield, before then boarding the Cross Country To Darlington, then two pacers from Darlington to Thornaby and Hartlepool, Sorry my train nerd distracted me there.
It was August 1996, and I was sick.
The train was on its way to Hartlepool for to start my gap year.
For me it was the day I left home.
Left what I couldn’t describe or articulate but had been a horror show of a childhood.
The last straw of simmering fury, that I held in, had been my 18th Birthday. When I didn’t get the chance to do what I wanted to do, and in peace, (without them) without them interrupting what I wanted to do and spoiling it. March to August 1996 was 5 months, but the clock had started long before.
The Clock had started when I was about 13 or 14, may even been earlier. But definitely by then.
The great escape was a dim light on the horizon, a shard of yellow in the darkest of tunnels, but it was there. Freedom awaited.
Only 4 more years, only 4 more school years, only 4 more football season years – and fortunately 1992-1996 were glorious for my team. So that was an emotional soother.
Counting down the months, the years
Every day , every month, every year – and they got quicker, the more I worked, saved, studied and was busy the day got closer.
I also knew that I had to be independent from them completely. Too many stories about Parents bailing out their kids at Uni, student debt, I was alone, and had to be independent from them. So id saved up a lot.
When there was an end date to it, there was hope.
The light got bigger.
Though I was in a situation of being trapped… I may have been accused of treating the home like a hotel – but at least I didnt run it like a prison. The date of escape was getting nearer and so was the light of freedom.
That light was one of the things that kept me going.
It gave me hope. It gave me a sense of future. It was escape. It was freedom.
(It wasn’t the end, it wasnt dealing with all the shit of childhood, but I didnt know that then)
The escape helped me survive, I have no doubt.
The glimmer of distant escape was enough.
Though it was bad, and I didn’t realise how bad. There was enough of a glimmer of light to know that I wasnt trapped.
There was a countdown clock. I had set it too. At 18 1/2 I was out.
It made it far easier to cope with the present – knowing there was a fixed point of an ending.
I have just finished ‘Mans Search for Meaning’ by Victor Frankl. In it he writes about how not knowing about the date or time of release or freedom from the concentration camp was one of the hardest things. They just didnt know, so, time and days had so little meaning as there was no future to look forward too, only a past that has blurred endings and present of torture. Time was condensed. It was a ‘provisional existence’ . Once prisoners gave up on having faith in a future, they lost hope and fell into despair. He watched, the prisoners who started smoking were on the path to killing themselves, they had given up. It took a mental resolve, an inner strength to show up each day.
I didnt know at the time how much having a known date of escape, of leaving home, gave me such strength and hope. Im not saying that the psychopathic parents didnt do what they could to ruin my plans, or manipulate those who were about to be my new employees and ministry leaders.
But one of the reasons I survived was knowing there was a way out.
Its no wonder that I was sick in the best of British rails Intercity 125’s toilets that Tuesday morning. It was 4 years of build up.
I am so aware that the times in my life where I have felt a deeper sense of despair, a deeper sense of that swirl of black, hopelessness – has been when there hasn’t been a coherent sense of time – the feeling of being trapped, stuck and feeling like there was no way out. Trapped by expectations, trapped by shame, trapped by the thought of difficult processes to free myself, trapped because there didnt seem to be any way out, stuck.
Provisional existence is a brilliant way of putting it. Knowing that there was an end in sight was such a construct of survival for me. It would end. It would be over. The day to day prison being ran by a psychopath was over and I was out.
The only way, however, that I have got out of the stuck feeling, in the moments of real despair has been vulnerability.
I had to say I needed help. I had to take a risk in talking to someone. I had to be vulnerable. I had to give someone else a tiny shard of responsibility when up until that moment I had held it all, and tried to cope all alone. It was and still is so important for me to have people around me to listen, support and give me the opportunity to share, reflect and give me some building blocks, coping mechanisms, therapy tools – whatever, to help me in the moments – and more importantly too, to give me perspectives. Give yourself the gift of time, a glimmer of the future, hold on to it, and know that you are stronger, more capable and more valuable a human being. The gift of future time.
James Ballantyne 