surrounded by people, yet all alone

It would be fair to say that I find this photo really hard to look at. In fact, I put away nearly all family photos some time ago, as they reminded me of happy times to the extent that I couldn’t bear to look at them. I can now, just.

This post is about AJ. I never really imagined that I would have children, I didn’t think I was the type. Then one morning I woke up and BOOM! The need to have a child was overwhelming, and didn’t really leave me until I discovered I was pregnant.

AJ was a contented baby. He fed well, he slept through the night from around six weeks, he was smiley. It was a walk in the park. Everyone told us that, and we had nothing to compare it to, but it did seem a bit of a breeze. I used to go to mother and baby groups and listens to tales of horror and woe and I just couldn’t connect to it at all. ( I feel the need to say, I did second time round with The Middle One who was the complete opposite!).

He grew into a really easy toddler who only had one tantrum that I recall, and that was of such epic proportions that it has gone down in family history. His brother ( The Middle One) came along almost exactly two years to the day later, and whilst he was much more, erm……..demanding…..AJ adored him and they got along just fine.

I went back to work after all of my maternity leaves. It was important to me, and I think I tried terribly hard to compensate for that by over-speccing the Working Mum job description – so we did the whole baby yoga – baby singing groups – baby drama – organic food – knit your own yoghurt thing – I could go on. Looking back no wonder I was knackered – but it felt so necessary at the time. I should add that when little M came along some years later, I did none of it.

Living where I do, I kind of also felt obliged to join in with the mini Boden, latest Bugaboo, terribly earnest organic living thing too. I even had a terrible Daniella Westbrook Burberry phase ( there are some photos somewhere) but I’m glad to say that didn’t last long – not least as we couldn’t afford it.

Later came, swimming lessons tennis lessons karate golf horse riding youth theatre cubs hockey youth musical theatre football rugby you name it we did it.

My god, I did try hard.

AJ became a happy and outgoing child. He would talk to anyone, about anything. He was enormously generous, he would give a stranger the shirt off his back, and he would probably give them mine too. He had a large circle of friends and was doing well at school. His teachers loved him. He was incredibly empathetic, to the extent where sometimes it got him into trouble. He was once late for dinner because he had found a man in his eighties wandering about rather confused. The man had missed the last bus home, it was cold and dark and AJ wouldn’t leave him. He phoned us and told us we had to go down and help. We did, ending up driving the somewhat bemused man 8 miles home, where AJ escorted him to his doorstep. When we eventually got home to a very late supper and recounted the tale, The Middle One pronounced “I’d had left him there. He might have been a murderer” and he would have done too. But helping someone out was AJ all over. He would never, ever see a friend or a stranger in distress.

The onset of adolescence came very quickly, and kind of felt too soon. I am sure it does to all parents, but by 13 he was nearly 6ft tall, with a full beard, and looked like a grown adult. From the age of around 12 he was constantly questioned about his age, denied a child’s bus fare, not allowed on a childrens ride at the fair. Once when he was playing outside with his brothers and friends, he was verbally abused by a woman who called him a paedophile for hanging out with children all the time. He was 13. He was very much a jock, so was playing rugby (there was a dalliance at one stage to signing for a professional club) and Roller hockey at international level at this stage, for two years.

He developed this strange habit of giving things away. All sorts of random things, and at times, some of which didn’t belong to him, and to children who weren’t even in his friendship group. I remember a mother stopping me in the street and saying how incredibly generous it was of him to have given her son a particular jacket for his birthday. I smiled and agreed, having no clue what she was talking about and when I got home, asked him about it. After much probing it turned out that he had given away a new designer jacket I had bought for him. When I asked why he simply shrugged and said that the other boy had wanted it. This happened over and over again.

At about the age of 14, things started to change, almost imperceptibly at first. He spent a lot more time at home. He stopped going to rugby, and would often say he was too ill to go to hockey, which was his absolute passion. Then he started missing school. We tried to talk to him and he simply wouldn’t – saying he was unwell. He became incredibly secretive and withdrawn.

Eventually, after a row one morning about not going to school, he broke down. He said he hated being at school and that he had no friends. We were astonished. School were as astonished by this as we were. Their perception was that he was one of the most popular children in school and certainly in his year – the life and soul of the party. Everyone wanted to be his friend. I checked this with my sister – whose boys were in the year above – and they confirmed the same – he was Mr Popular.

He was surrounded by people, yet all alone.

We started driving him to school – about ten miles away – and the nearer we got, the more visibly agitated he became. It was absolutely horrendous. One day I thought he would jump out of the car at the traffic lights. Some days he would refuse to get out when we got there.

He really, truly didn’t feel like like he had a friend in the world. He seemed to drift down into a hideous spiral, becoming more and more withdrawn and uncommunicative and even on the days when he did go into school he spent a great deal of that time in a special area for children with educational and emotional needs. It was if the world was too much for him – almost like a sensory overload. The School counsellor was helpful – and seemed to be the only person who AJ – on occasion – would consent to speak to. We watched as every one of his friends we had known over a number of years kind of faded into the background.

He would spend hours and hours in his room, in the dark. Or hours and hours walking the streets, usually sparked by us trying, gently, to talk to him. He had to get away from us, in fact he ran away several times.

With great reluctance on his part we took him to the GP, who made a referral to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), saying there was a very long waiting list. In the meantime we were in and out of the GP, sometimes with him, and sometimes without. On occasion he would do a runner as we walked there, and often he refused to go altogether. Most times we would get there and he would not say a word. We were beside ourselves.

By somewhere in the middle of year 10, every day started with a horrendous battle to try and get him out of bed and into school. Some days we didn’t have the energy to do it so we just let him sleep. I defy anyone to get a 6ft 15 stone rugby player to do anything they don’t want to do. I wasn’t particularly worried about being pursued for non-attendance – school did know that we were really trying. What I was concerned about was that my child had turned into a shadow of his former self and I had no idea why.

That question. Why. You can torment yourself with it. Was it because he had developed so fast physically? Was it because he started to feel out of place, didn’t fit in? Was it because he was simply too empathetic? Was it because I tried too hard? Was it because I didn’t try hard enough? Did we send him to the wrong school? Were we too strict? Too liberal? Ah, it goes on and on and on.

I am not sure I know, even now. Very possibly I will never know, and I have come to realise that that might be because there is no specific reason. Coming to that realisation can bring some peace, eventually.

Coming to the realisation that there is precious little you can do to make things better, to “fix” things, is a really hard moment. I battled against that one for a very long time. You might still be in that battle and sitting there thinking that I’m wrong, and I get that. A very wise friend told me over lunch one day that I couldn’t fix AJ – and I was so stung. So affronted, I don’t think I spoke to her for months after that. I raged against it, I would not accept it. And of course, she was right. But I am skipping along too fast.

If this post has seemed clunky and difficult to read – that’s probably because it has been incredibly difficult to write, on a number of levels. I suspect some of what I have written and what is to come might not come in quite the correct chronological order. That will be because these last four years have often been something of a blur, and I did not keep a diary because writing things down makes them real, and that is too painful. Which I suspect is the other reason for the writers block this week – it is painful to write this down. In doing so I am reliving the not so recent past and to some degree it feels like I am losing my son all over again. They say that grief is the price we pay for love.