That Autumn.

As the heat of summer dissipates, the days get shorter and a chill is in the air I always cast my mind back to the early autumn of 1988.

A lonely, clever but angry young man was in East Kent was preparing to go to Cambridge. I was kind of confident but fear also stalked me. Is it really 35 years since I was prepared for Selwyn?

Looking back now my life was already wracked with anxiety. That sense of struggling to fit in. That expectation that everyone piled on me. That weight I put on myself. That burden of others glorying in my achievements. 

Oddly enough I have fond memories of that autumn. The truth when I got to Cambridge in October was that I spent a year desperately lonely, too frightened to make new friends, too uncomfortable at all the parties I was invited to because I played rugby. And too overwhelmed. 

I got through though before another very lonely summer in 1989.

None of us can rewind the clock. 33 years of mental illness have punctuated my life. Cambridge came and went. I had a breakdown. I was locked up and eventually told I was untreatable. 

Who would have known that was my fate? Other than as it transpired my cousin Cedric who years later told me he always knew I'd have a break. 

On this quiet Saturday afternoon in my small part of Hertfordshire people view me as a wise man. Am I wise? Towards others maybe but towards me no. 

I Heard a Voice.