by Lily O'Brien
He got straight on his mobile phone and told me about the house, then he rode back to the estate agents and told them that we were interested in buying the house. And straightaway, they drove Tony back up to the house so that he could look inside, and after a short conversation over the phone, we made an offer on the house that same day. Then Tony got back on the bike and rode back to London and it never stopped raining until he got off the bike.
After a few days, the offer on the house was accepted, but it took nine months to complete and then the house was all mine. And Tony and I spent the next three years restoring the house; but by the time we had finished the restoration, we could not afford to live in the house as we had spent all of my compensation on buying the house and most of Tony’s wages over the three years on the restoration of the house. We were now broke and the only time we could use the house was on weekends and school holidays, but we didn’t mind as it was perfect for me to get away from everything when I needed to.
For the next couple of years, we continued using the house as often as we could; and each time I had to leave the house and go back to London, it became harder and harder for me, as I had become attached to all the peace and quiet of the countryside. I was still taking my medication to help me cope with everyday life and Tony still did his best to help me through each day, but now he was exhausted from everything and he began to feel ill. He had spent the last twenty plus years looking after me and putting up with all the problems that came with me and now it was his turn to be sick, but he never said a thing to anyone and I had no idea that something was wrong with him.
Then one day, while he was at work, he began to get pains in his chest and he knew it was time to go to the hospital; and as soon as he arrived at the hospital, the doctors took him in and then they rang me. They said that he had arrived at the hospital on his motorcycle and that he was still using it while he had chest pains and they were concerned that he could have had an accident if the pains had become unbearable. Then they said that they wanted to keep him in for observation because they thought he might have had a heart attack. I said ok and then I went straight to the hospital.
When I arrived, Tony was lying on a bed, with wires and tubes stuck all over him and he had a drip in his arm, but he was awake and he said hi. Then one of the nurses took me to one side and she shook her head from side to side and she said that he had to stay in the hospital so they could do tests on him. Then she asked Tony what he did for a living and he couldn’t remember, so she asked him his name and he laughed as he said that he knew that, but the nurse didn’t laugh, instead she asked him again and after a couple of seconds he told her. Then she gave him some tablets and she told him that they wanted him to stay in the hospital; he was not happy about staying, but he knew something was wrong and he said ok. I spent the night sitting next to him while he rested and they did more tests.
And in the morning, a doctor came to see us and he said that it was good news; he said that Tony hadn’t had a heart attack. However, they still wanted to keep him in the hospital while they did more tests, as his heart was beating at twice the speed it should, and it would not slow down on its own. They were also having a lot of trouble slowing it down with drugs and his blood pressure was at a dangerously high level. But the worse thing was that nobody was allowed to make Tony laugh, as even laughing seemed to make his heart race out of control and his blood pressure go up to a dangerously high level; and the nurses would have a lot of trouble trying to bring everything under control again.
And he had to spend a week in the hospital, trying to relax, while the doctors tried different drugs to gain control of his heart rate and blood pressure. After the doctors got his heart and the blood pressure under control, they said that he still had an abnormality on his cardiographs, but they didn’t know the cause of it, and they asked Tony if he had any explanation; but he had no idea what the problem was. So the doctors decided to send him for a stress test and they sent him off to run on a treadmill. Once there, they covered him in wires and sensors, then they connected him up to a machine and they told him to start running; and he kept running until his heart rate got to over two hundred beats a minute. Then they told him to stop and he went back to the ward and, after a couple of hours, they decided that he was well enough to go home. However, he would have to take tablets every day for the rest of his life, to control his heart rate and blood pressure. (I think he just needed a rest.)
Anyway, once he got home, I could see that the tablets were working and after a week he went back to work and everything was back to normal, apart from my brain. I felt so tormented by everything around me and I felt that I couldn’t cope any longer and I felt like I wanted to kill myself. I seemed to be spending most of my days lying in bed and I didn’t even want to get up to make dinner or to do anything else for that matter. And Tony said that my behaviour was beginning to affect him, as doing everything on his own was just too much for him now.
I knew something was wrong with me, so I went to see my doctor and he said that he wanted to change my medication for another type and I said ok. He gave me a new prescription and, after collecting the tablets, I put my old medication into a box and I began to take the new ones. At first, they seemed to make little difference; but after a week, my old tablets must have worn off and I went nuts. For no reason at all, I began shouting at everyone and no one could speak to me, as they could not make any sense of anything I was saying.
Then one weekend, while we were all at the house in Wales, I felt like I could not cope with myself anymore, so I went upstairs to my bedroom and I slashed at my arms with a metal nail file and my arms began to bleed. I sat on the bed and I thought to myself, ‘What have I done?’ I got up, opened my bedroom door and then I called out to Tony. He walked up the stairs and as he walked towards our bedroom, I opened the door and I stood in front of him. “Please don’t be mad with me”, then I held out my arms and I showed him what I had done. He said, ‘Please, no more, I just can’t cope with anything more. Please, no, not that.’ I looked at him and he looked pale, then I said sorry and he sat on the bed next to me and I told him how I felt; and I begged him to ring the doctor’s and get him to change my medication back to my old tablets for me and he said, ‘Ok, I will.’
The next morning, Tony rang my doctor, he explained to him what I had done to my arms and he told the doctor how I was feeling. But my doctor said that he would not change my tablets back unless I went to see a mental health adviser, but I said no, I just could not go to see anyone and I certainly didn’t want to see another counsellor. So, Tony spoke to the doctor again and this time my doctor agreed to change my medication back, so long as I would go and see him as soon as we got back to London and I said ok.
When we got back, I went to the doctor’s, but I took Tony with me for support. Tony told my doctor what had been going on with me and, after he had finished speaking to him, my doctor said that I would have to go and see the mental health adviser or he would have me sectioned under the Mental Health Act. I said ok and we left the doctor’s with a new prescription for my old medication again; and after a couple of weeks, I felt normal again or as normal as I would ever feel.
Then the appointment to see the mental health adviser arrived in the post and I felt like the abuse was starting all over again, so I sat by the kitchen window, I lit up a fag and I wished I had been dead. A couple of days later, I went to the appointment and I told the doctor almost everything about myself; and when the appointment was all over, he was shocked, but I felt no different. A week later, I went back to see him again and this time I told him everything about me and my baby brother Simon and how I missed him; and when I finished, he said that I should write a book about my life, so I did.
How Do I Feel Now?
I feel sad for myself, I feel angry at everything, I hate everyone and I feel sorry for my children. Almost everything about my life has been bad, I am not happy and I never will be. If I live a thousand years, I will still feel the same as I do
today. What everyone did to me when I was young was wrong, this is my life now and I have to live with it. I deal with each day as it comes, but my past still haunts me to this day and it always will.
The problem is that when you experience life as a child, it should be with your mum, dad, brothers and sisters and other children, playing and exploring the world around you. Going to bed happy, smiling, and waking up with excitement and anticipation as to what you will learn and discover throughout the day. When you are a child, your mind is free to absorb its surroundings and absorb the feelings your body experiences, both physically and emotionally. This is how you learn good from bad and right from wrong.
Still as a child, you learn to read and write and to make friends. I never had any of that and now I am beyond the reach of any counselling or education and I have been so from when I was four years old. From the first day that I was abused, my life changed forever; and when I walked through the institution’s doors in Ireland, my life was set on a path that has destroyed my soul. I never had a childhood and I never will; for me, my childhood was over before it began and my life with the nuns was hell. My emotional pain today is as strong as it was the day it began. From a very early age, I suffered at the hands of the very people who said they would take good care of me and at the hands of many other people around them who they called their friends.
For me, my pain will never leave me alone. When I go to sleep, it is in my head; and when I wake up, I can see it in the mirror. It is a part of me that I grew up with and is now and always will be embedded within me. You cannot change me or the way I am with counselling, education or money and you cannot split me into two like my personality.
No matter how much counselling the doctors give me, it will not help me. Counselling does not work and it never will; I have been through many counselling programs and they do not work. I did try. I took up the offer of counselling, hoping it might help in some way, but it did not. Money will not change me or the way I feel; it will not make me happy, it cannot buy me love, friendship or a childhood and if I had one wish, I’d wish I had never been born.
However, I do have three children who I love very much. They have suffered because of my upbringing and my personality; and if anyone deserves something, then they do. And they deserve more than what I can give them. This is where I would get the satisfaction and the benefit of money. I am not and I never will be a greedy person and perhaps that is why I have very little. The damage to me was done a long time ago and it will stay with me and haunt me until the day I die.
Who knows what I might have become if I had the chance to be myself in the beginning? A doctor, a cleaner, a mother. The time that I spent in the institution has made me into a very complicated, difficult and unhappy person and my emotions are cold. I am only waiting to die and I feel like it is taking too long. My family began the path to my destruction, they used me and they abused me, but they never ever loved or wanted me, or my baby brother Simon. If I have a soul, then it is lost somewhere between hell and Ireland, and I do not think I will ever find it; but time will tell.
Little Children
The first step through the institution’s doors began a struggle that many children lost by paying the ultimate price with their lives. Some gave up the struggle while still in the institution and others, like my brother Simon, gave up at a young age, when they could not cope with the pressures of real life any longer and the abandonment they felt when no one wanted them.
Many of my friends from the institution are now dead; taking their own lives was their way out and a means to peace. I am still alive, but only because I found someone who truly loves me for whom I am; and without his help, I would be dead. I am not going to kill myself, because I have put too much into living this long and it would be a waste to give up now, but I am not happy having to live the rest of my life without my beautiful baby brother Simon by my side.
I dedicate this book to my baby brother Simon and to all the children who went through the institutions in Ireland and to those who took their own lives later in life as a way to escape from the torment that never left them alone.
I will never forget you.
I would also like to thanks my partner for writing this book for me and for never once judging me for what others have done to me.
THANK YOU.
God bless you all if it means anything.
The End