Hi everybody, I'm Shaun (under the name of one of my dogs), the guy offering this holiday. I appreciate that it might be a bit difficult to reach out to a complete stranger for a free holiday so I thought I'd share my own story in the hope of showing why I think kindness is important; to be there for each other and, you know, just generally be nice where possible. It's a bit of a read but kind of explains why I'm so motivated to offer something to folks who might derive some benefit. Cheers, everybody!
Over the past few months I’ve been asked a few times about my own background and why I’ve been reaching out to charities and groups helping those afflicted with various social and psychological ills. So I thought I’d quickly knock together what has motivated me to offer these free holidays, in the form of my own biography.
The first twelve years of my life were pretty feral. My mam was a boozer with several kids from several fathers and my dad was the least socially capable person I’ve ever known. Nowadays we’d say autistic and/or depressed; certainly some type of full-on emotional disorder. My cousins were all expelled from school by the age of 12 and to the best of my knowledge, nobody ever went to university after having attended my inner-city comprehensive. It just wasn’t a thing.
Then my mam died unexpectedly when I was 12. One night my dad came in, announced the death and we never spoke about her again. No consolation, no arm round each other, no psychological or social support…we just buried her and then departed into our fractured worlds.
My dad went on permanent night-shift (usually with over-time) which meant leaving me alone in the house from half past five every afternoon. In the aftermath of a bereavement of this magnitude I’d humbly venture to opine that leaving a little kid locked in a house (even with a lock freshly put on the bedroom door as in my case to give me a sense of security lol) is not optimal for his cognitive, emotional, spiritual or psychological development. I was terror-stricken at the loss and perhaps more damagingly, by the abyss that followed the death which unsurprisingly engulfed me entirely.
My terror went through the roof and all predictability and perceived control of life disintegrated there and then. I was left with a 57 year-old autistic depressive who couldn’t muster much beyond “Poor, poor, poor me. Why was I even born?” or another one of his classic refrains “Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of my life” I had to listen to these self-pitying lamentations emanating from the living room while I was locked in my bedroom. I’ve been reading some stuff lately about the statistical differences of words spoken in middle-class and working-class homes and I think on this scale I’ve got to qualify for the super-hyper-uber-lumpenprole championship of the world as these words would often be the only communication in our house for days on end.
My father was an old, socially incapable man who had no ability to look after his family or even himself…so my child’s brain created order and stability on his behalf, in the only way it knew how; by praying to the omnipotent God who had shown His power by taking my mother (was it because I’d been out thieving and generally behaving like all undisciplined kids would in such an anarchic, chaotic world? Was I to blame?)
I think my motivation was based on keeping my weak father safe and the more he was unharmed the more I saw my prayers as efficacious acts and the more the pathological cycle of praying continued. Anything resembling a perceived threat (maybe even a knock on the door as we had no callers ever, so an unexpected knock could be terrifying) was met with more prayers before I answered it and the absence of anything bad befalling him was evidence that my prayers were working so I redoubled my praying until it consumed my entire consciousness; a legitimate OCD.