One evening, bored and still looking for answers I decided that I would look for my old children’s home/nursery. I remembered the name of the road was Ladywell Road, but sadly not the number. So I used Google map and found myself looking down a road that for some strange reason, thought that I might remember. I didn’t, of course I didn’t. No signs of children’s home or nursery just rows and rows of shops and three bed roomed semis. I googled for children’s homes and soon found a number 82 Ladywell Road, Lewisham. I again searched Google map, found number 80 and found 84, sadly no number 82. ‘That’s odd.’
This then took me to the national archives, unsure how, but that’s where I ended up and soon I was filling out forms to my many unanswered questions. I was informed that the children’s home/nursery was once a workhouse but had since been demolished but I could ask for some photos. ‘Yes,’ I replied and within a few days my email had a letter with five photographs. I had found the nursery I used to live in and what a grim, cold, barren place it was. There were two photographs of the exterior. There were three very unattractive huge blocks. One photo showed the toilets with tiny sinks and toilets with no doors. One photo was of the dormitory and a series of cast iron cots and one photo was of a playroom and all were beyond depressing, I guess it didn’t help being in black and white but even so, what a horrible place to start life. There were no pictures on the walls, no drawings drawn by happy contented children. There was nothing, but cold, grim, lifeless and barren.
I was told I could purchase these photos, ‘No thanks,’ I whispered.
I wanted to find out more, but not about this dump but more about what happened to me while I was incarcerated. I was directed, with help of a few phone calls and soon I was talking to Janice O’ Rourke who helped with all my enquiries. I was told I would have to wait a few weeks to get all the paperwork. Some weeks passed and I, being ever so slightly impatient, rang Janice up, who explained that she had the documents and was about to send them off to me. I really wanted to speak face to face so asked, ‘could I come up?’ and it was hastily arranged that I would drive up to the London Archives in EC1R, the very next day.
The journey was one that I had driven many a time but not for years, same A40 and same Marylebone Flyover, just a lot more traffic and rancid pollution. I reached my destination just in time for the heavens to open with a deluge of epic proportions and of course got I soaked to the skin. I arrived and met with Janice who still clutching a large brown envelope shook my hand and made our way through the almost silent library of people tapping away while staring at computer screen after computer screen. We walked into a small office where we began to open file after file.
What we saw, read and then discussed at some length was far from what I was told as a child, and the story was not a good one. We slowly but surely pieced the parts of this broken jigsaw together and what I was told and what was told about me, was false.
This of course had a serious and detrimental effect on my life but remember she ( my adopted Mother) wanted to adopt a non white child and as you are aware, she also changed my name to Kim from the book of the same name by Rudyard Kipling. I, even at the young age I was didn’t believe this story to be true. I didn’t care so much about the names called (though when accompanied with aggression, clenched fists and the word fucking used before the racist rants, it did) but what it did do is made me feel different to everyone else as all I wanted to do was fit in, not forgetting I had just spent five years of my childhood in a very bleak, harsh and cold environment where I was called some really horrible names, and had real issues with a fear of strangers, institutionalisation and various other choice issues. So for the entire time I was at school I was abused with racist name calling. I took it for a while but when you are constantly provoked and already have a volatile nature there was only going to be one outcome and I exploded time and time again, which in turn caused only me more grief. I was trapped. So what was the truth?
My birth Mother did get pregnant, obviously, but used any means possible to get herself out of the mess she had found herself in, i.e. pregnant, single and now homeless. The man she claimed to be the father was in fact living and involved with another woman (not saying that he was innocent) and all she was doing was trying to put the blame firmly on his shoulders so he would pay towards the child, simple really and my adopted Mother would have had access to the same documents that I was now reading with Janice.
It appears my birth mother had lied a lot, about marriage, fathers and boyfriends to anyone who she felt would listen and perhaps help, and went from one bad relationship to another and more unwanted children. I then began to feel real empathy/sympathy towards her and her plight but also extreme anger at my adopted Mother. ‘Why?’ was my initial reaction when here it was in black and white that this man was not the father and birth Mother had just tried in vain to get help? We read that my birth mother was ‘very attractive, with dark brown eyes, frizzy hair and a sallow complexion,’ (with the word Negro? in brackets, how ignorant can one be?) seems I shared something with my birth Mother as I obviously had the same eyes, sallow complexion.
I felt sad as I drove home through the busy traffic of London but I also felt anger and this is why. All my adopted mother had to do was tell the truth as it was written, i.e. my mother had quite dark skin and my father was unknown. I am English and born in London, that might have saved me from years and years of abuse, fighting, arguing and rage that I really didn’t need. By making me into this freak it also made my life hell and that made me seethe. I can’t change the past can I? But at least now I know the truth.
So back to the computer and the search continued to see if birth mother was alive or dead and if dead, where, when, why, etc etc.
I joined the online site Ancestry and started putting in all I now knew, and with yet another married name for my birth mother, a picture began to unravel. I found I had a half brother, I already knew of a half sister and I also found out that my half brother had died aged forty four of cancer, my grandfather also died of cancer and my Mother had died aged forty four of an overdose.
Did I really want this search to continue? No I did not, so I decided that the end of this long arduous somewhat painful journey of discovery would soon end.
I then thought about the grim, grey unloved time spent in the shithole of a nursery and how it had affected my early years, the fear this child had to endure was undeserved and wrong. I thought about how I was picked due to my adopted parents wanting a ‘non white child’ and being unwanted by so many because of my non white status. I am more than a colour, right?
I then thought about the massive change in my situation, from the deprived life to a new one many miles away, with parents and new siblings, the new schools and surroundings, it was heaven in comparison and although overtly strict it was better than where I had been and better away from birth Mother who only had time to have unwanted children and to cause damage to not only herself but to those around her. I looked at my adoption and life in a clearer light. I was and am a whole lot more appreciative of my life and those around me who helped me grow, yes there were terrible times but that’s life, isn’t it?
So before you enter into the search for lost family remember it doesn’t always end up like it does on the TV series ‘Long Lost Family’ with the patronising toothy grin and inane wittering of Davina Macall as she asks sarcastically, ‘would you like to see a picture?’ No Davina I would not. I smiled to myself imagining the photo that Davina wanted to show me was a picture of an unkempt and unmarked grave, which funnily enough was heartbreakingly close to the truth. So tragic and so sad to think that not one person even cared.
I was nearing my sixty second birthday and at last I can be free of the past and understand more about my life. The scars have finally healed, I think.
.
I took a look at myself
What did I see?
Invincible and vulnerable
The reality I feel
Is also the disease in me...
Well it’s been almost one month since I found out about my birth Mother. I felt I should add a bit more about the effect this new found information had on me, after all its not every day that you find out that your mother was a prostitute, who spent much of her time in prison....and your father? Nothing more than a sperm donor...
I don’t think I have ever felt so alone, so unwanted and so repulsed. I always knew that I wasn’t wanted enough to keep but I did think, or just perhaps, hope that there might have been the slim chance that she was having a decent relationship, where they overdosed on love and affection for each other, perhaps they lay awake at night dreaming of their new born child, of what schools, what clothes and even marriage. The truth that I was actually the result in some sordid fifteen minute sexual encounter actually made my skin crawl. That I was the result of one woman’s desperation to make ends meet and that of one dirty bastards sexual incompetence in being unable to control his revolting sexual desires made me sick to the pit of my stomach. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to hide. I was a mistake. I wasn’t chosen. I wasn’t planned. I wasn’t arranged. I wasn’t wanted. I wasn’t nurtured. I wasn’t loved. I wasn’t part of a dream. I was a bastard who nobody wanted. I was the result of two people’s requirements. Hers was to pay the rent/buy food and his, to release the egoist male testosterone. I felt dirty. I felt like weeping. I didn’t, instead I just smiled. I smiled and embarrassed smile while thinking aloud, ‘well that kind of sounds about right, sort of sums up my life.’
‘How could this sound right?’ I asked myself quietly while walking the dogs through the silence of the woods.
‘Well it fits in perfectly with your life, the way you are, the feelings you possess, the anger you hold and control, your volatile nature and the fear you accept as part of this journey called life. 'This all makes sense.’ I whispered. No wonder you have had issues with rejection, separation, abuse, fear, strangers, woman, trust, love, hope, being accepted and understood. No wonder you are alone in a crowded world. No wonder people fear your anger or their lack of understanding as they have never ever had to deal with my life where you my son, have had to deal with 100%. Really I just wanted to weep, but perhaps tears of self pity don’t work with me, never have and never will. I only get tearful when people are kind to me. Life has not been that kind, unless of course this entire broken and unwanted fragmented existence has another purpose other than to break my mind and body into a thousand fucking bits, but it didn’t, I never broke completely, but it was fucking close.
I tried to explain to myself the sufferings and troubles, the loneliness and fears of this unknown Mother of mine. I felt just sadness and sympathy for her and not one single ounce of anger. Imagine for a moment how her life must have been like. Are you any better than her? She was a whore, but there are bigger whores, who will stop at nothing to sell themselves for that extra like or connection, there are whores in the media, in the government and those who happily drape themselves scantily clad emblazoned across the world’s pithy sites and advertising hoardings who happily sell themselves for fame and false fortune. I would prefer to spend time with my mother, my mother the whore, who only made a few shillings to survive this life. No, I am proud of her but trying to explain her to the stupid and ignorant is going to be difficult. Mind you in saying that Jesus apparently hung round with whores/prostitutes.
I have found the truth and the truth hurts. I am wiser for this new found knowledge. I am stronger for this and more able to understand life and the battles some of us undertake. I have done and carried the scars of life and now my mother’s life, yet I am the stronger person, the wiser, the more tolerant, grateful and the more forgiving.
So thank you Kathy Hunter, for the chance of my first breath of life.
You may ask... are you angry or upset in anyway?? Â NO...I have a life and irrespective of the trials and tests, pains and misfortunes, I was given a life and for that gift I am happy, perhaps it's why I am so humble and dislike the greed and self importance in humans lately. We have life, food, water and shelter, believe me when I say, everything else is a bonus including having parents, be grateful...
So where are we now?? I hear you scream...well read on...
ENLIGHTENMENT...
 The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it.
Two years ago, I was sitting next to a flowing river; the sun was shining on a beautiful English summer’s day. I was with my two rescued dogs, Bigfoot and Little bear who were busying themselves in play. I took my shirt and shoes off and then dangled my aching feet into the cold flowing water. I had water to drink and fresh fruit to eat. I smiled not just for a few moments but what seems ages, I just could not stop smiling. I had in my eyes and after an extremely long journey of self healing achieved what I had set out to become so many years before when I was a broken shell of a man full of pain and anger. I had at last become a contented man and a contented man with nothing and I mean nothing. No huge bank account, no flashy car or many homes, no wardrobes full of unworn clothes and shoes to adorn my body, Just me, my memories and my belief in a better self.
I reflected on the abuses meted out during my formative years, on the anger and the volatile nature of my soul. I thought about the amount of pain and suffering I had to endure, all down to the hands of others. I wrote in my book Battle Scarred Journey about just some of these abuses and the feelings of rage towards my perpetrators. I also wrote about forgiveness, not because I was told to by God, Jesus, Mohamed, or any other wise prophet. I learnt to forgive as this was the only route to enlightenment because to hold the pains inflicted by others means I was also holding their pain, which I will not do. They were wrong to carry out such heinous crimes, but it is they that have to live with themselves. I simply refuse to and when I realised that I don’t have to carry the odious suitcase of suffering forever, I began to feel better about myself and less concerned about the illness in the perpetrators and believe me, being an abuser is an illness and an illness that needs to be cured. There is no self loathing as some have suggested.
I have never felt or believed I was a victim; I refuse to be anyone’s victim. My book was about life, my life and if you cared to read between the lines, it’s about how little we care for each other and the gross neglect of a dreadful society and government. I have never sought sympathy and dislike the reams of rhetoric that spews forth from the mouths of the simple who want to justify an illness by punishment. You don’t put an angry dog in a cage and expect the anger to disappear, so why rather than help the sick do so many want to beat, stab, castrate and hurt the mentally ill. I recently had the misfortune of making an honest comment on an idiot’s page (LinkedIn) who hated my ability to see through the crime and instead of an eye for an eye mentality, try to understand, help and learn to forgive. I forgave all my abusers and there were many. Yes, my abusers were wrong to abuse me, but to be unforgiving and spiteful did not help me become enlightened, because you will just become part of the thug mentality of the baying crowd. So dislike me for saying a sick man needs help but the truth is this, you will never reach any enlightenment until you can be open minded and not negatively deformed like some of the people and their vitriolic screaming of hate.
I have learnt many important lessons in life and there in those few words are in truth, the crux of the matter, is learning to forget and not be beaten down by the weakness or sicknesses of others.
So hating my abusers and wanting to hurt them back had in truth, only achieved one thing. I was brought crashing down to the level of the sick and I, I am better than that.