As far back as I can recall, there have been mental health issues in my family.
My grandfather, a proud, strong, bear of a man who served as part of the Special Operations Executive in World War II, suddenly and without warning, suffered a “nervous breakdown” while running his own small business.
It wasn’t really discussed. As young children, we were simply asked to be a little more gentle around granddad. After a year or so, he appeared to be back to his old self and normal, knockabout grand-filial relations resumed.
A decade or so later, after several years of being married to an absolute prick of a man who thought nothing of settling any disagreement with his fists and boots – and not exclusively among his immediate family – my mother began to bear the mental scars of repeated attacks, as well as a degree of guilt at having kept myself and my two younger brothers in this man’s firing line.
To this day, she still suffers. She is now remarried, to a gentle, patient man who adores her. But it’s still there.
Me? For years, as the oldest of her sons, I’d put myself in the way of my step-father’s rage. If he was hitting me, everyone else was safe. The bruises I carried were always assumed to be the result of my sporting endeavours. And, while I continued to do well, academically, no alarm bells rang in the minds of teachers.
I breezed through O Levels – yes, I am that old – but then, somewhat belatedly when compared to some of my peers, I found girls and booze and, ultimately, trouble. Nothing terrible. Probably no worse than a lot of teenagers with an attitude and something to prove. But, in the space of two years I went from being talked of as Oxbridge material to scraping into Preston Poly.
I didn’t last. The dysfunction from which I thought I was running simply followed me there. My rebellion, for want of a better word, broadened its focus from everything, to anything.
And to where does an angry fuck-up flee? Why, Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, of course. They’ve rarely, if ever, been known to turn away a bad attitude in need of a target.
So, I took the the Queen’s shilling. In the Intelligence Corps, no less. You see, despite all that youthful aggression, I had shown an aptitude for language study. The Corps’ own tests highlighted this.
I was to be an Operator Special Intelligence (Linguist), specialising in Arabic, a certain late Middle Eastern dictator’s sabre rattling of the time pushing that particular agenda.
Generally speaking, a couple of minor glitches aside – that misdirected anger still hadn’t completely deserted me – I thrived. The army provided me with the stability, the discipline, the family even, that I’d been seeking.
They provided me with the skills to do my job. Firstly, as a soldier. Then, latterly, as a specialist.
What they didn’t provide was the means to handle death. It didn’t matter if it was a fellow trainee, barely remembered, dying in a road traffic accident or a number of colleagues dying in a helicopter crash. A close friend killing himself following his return from the former Yugoslavia, or the thousands of bodies we saw there.
The numbers were adding up. They still are. Years after leaving, I hear news reports of another soldier dead and tense up. It’s distressing how many former colleagues have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I might be daft, but I’m not stupid. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew that the chances of me serving, without encountering death, were remote. What I didn’t expect was the cumulative effect it would have on me.
I don’t know what it’s like now, but back then, the army didn’t really do counselling. And, if it did, it was more a case of it being mentioned by a well meaning officer, but ignored by those who really needed it, in favour of another session in the NAAFI bar.
We’d get shit-faced. Sometimes we’d even get emotional. But we were among friends who knew what we knew, had seen what we’d seen but our understanding was nothing if not tacit.
When I left, a knee injury having failed to respond to months of physiotherapy, it wasn’t my decision. Ultimately, that rankled. My return to Civvy Street, never the easiest of transitions, was made more difficult by this.
And then, the marital break-up, as messy as it was inevitable, just made things worse.
I descended into a destructive spiral of drink and drugs, followed by some significant debt. I was living well beyond my means, but given where I expected this to end, I wasn’t too worried. I became estranged from family, as well as friends, rupturing bonds which had taken years to build and which still haven’t recovered.
It was only when someone recognised that there might be more to my behaviour than mere hedonism that I was persuaded to seek help.
Even then, I baulked at it. Several appointments were made and subsequently broken. Finally, I was accompanied to the doctors and, later, to the consultant, where I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – which had gone untreated for several years – and bi-polar disorder, which may have gone undiagnosed for several more.
I may always have been susceptible to mental illness. As the third generation to have episodes, it looks as if there may have been a genetic predisposition. But there have also been environmental factors, too.
I spent a couple of years in regular counselling, as well as ingesting the usual cocktail of prescription medicines, before I chose to discontinue this treatment.
I’m not cured. Not by a long stretch. I’m not trying to fool myself into thinking I am. I’m just trying to get through life, making the right decisions for myself and those around me. Trying to rebuild, however tentatively, some of those bridges.
I still have days when the old impulses are there, but I try not to act on them. The ghosts are still there, too. But I’ve learned to live with them.
