Two Decades on From Cambridge.

More than a quarter of a century has now passed since I returned to Cambridge as an undergraduate. I arrived in this week 1988 as an arrogant naive dreamer. In June 1991 I graduated despite severe mental illness and was admitted to a psychiatric ward some 6 weeks later. I was battered, broken, and unable to believe in my own senses any more.

Today I have come a long way. Readers will attest to that and those gracious enough to humour me by reading my books will also attest. But has Cambridge moved on?

When I got home this afternoon I logged onto Facebook to find a message from an old friend from my school days in Cambridge. There was a link to a story in the Guardian. 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/oct/06/cambridge-university-student-depression-eating-disorders 

Still the driven perfectionism that no one admitted back in my day apparently is rife in my old stomping ground. A friend Richard just started work there as a counsellor last week. He wondered why it was that despite fewer students some 600 more students a year access counselling there than do at Hertfordshire. Maybe today's story is proof for him.

I survived despite. Many blamed pressure of Cambridge. Yet there was no pressure until I got ill. I could cope. I was thriving. Then the most obscure emotional attachment destroyed what was my life. What I know is that my life was already a mess. But it was not Cambridge that triggered it.

Think of all those driven high flyers. Privileged? Flawed just like everyone else. They are just bright, bright and flawed. Just like me. Some say suicide rates at Oxford and Cambridge are 10 times higher than at other places. Who guides them back from the brink? Not me.  Perhaps one day I will return but that is in the hands of others. I tried and failed 4 years ago. Now I'm good and thriving again. There will be lows in the coming weeks. But no sign of them yet.

I Heard a Voice.