My childhood caught up with me and I felt a lot of rejection and worthlessness. I was trying to be independent, but felt very lost. This is where my life took a different turn. I refused to admit defeat and move back home so I met friends and found my own place. I moved with a partner at the time to just outside London, but after some time the relationship fell apart. This was a constant party and I felt again that I had found my group. This brought a constant income in, and I decided to move into the city with four other gay friends. I left college early and went into the world of work. Everyone had heard what happened and the bullying stopped because they had nothing more to say. This only made me stronger, and after some time away from college I came back to silence. Leaving a scar that now stays until today. Having drunk a lot, they saw an ideal opportunity to beat me up – head butting me and splitting my head.
One night I was using a local phone box, when a group of older ex-students from my school spotted me. This made the whole situation a lot easier. They responded with ‘We know, we were waiting for you to say it’. Through the tears and laughing, I stated: ‘I’m gay’. The stared at me and my Mum replied: ‘Oh god, who’s pregnant?’ This helped to relax the situation as I began to laugh. I sat them down and began to drunkenly explain: ‘Mum and dad – I have something to tell you.’ This was the point, where one evening after many vodkas, I decided to tell my parents. I began to rebel – wearing crop tops and outrageous outfits. We struck up the best friendship and I was instantly introduced to the scene. In college, I made a new group of friends that included a fabulous drag queen. I continued to deny it right up until college. The theatre, singing and dancing didn’t stop either, and perhaps didn’t help my case – along with my slightly camp demeanour. It didn’t stop any bullying however, and I think the other kids knew I was gay.
I also joined various groups and did hobbies to try and mask who I really was and fit in. Coming to terms with my sexualityĪs I began to move into secondary school, the feelings that I was different grew stronger and I struggled a lot with my sexuality.ĭesperate to fit in and not be the ‘weird adopted kid’, I had girlfriends. I began to make friends at school and felt settled in my life.
Younger life then began to settle into holidays, days out and the ‘normal’ family life. We were given a second chance, but my birth mum and birth dad were always in my mind. It wasn’t easy, as we both came with a lot of emotional baggage, but our new parents worked extremely hard to ensure that we spoke about our past and were a very open family with the best chance in life we could have. We met them a few times and eventually began to spend weekends and weeks with them.Įventually we moved in with them, and their two cats. When you have been passed around a lot as a child, you just think it’s another move into another home. I remember not really understanding what that meant. Some were good, healthy places and others were the type that you read about in the papers today. We continued to move through various foster parents and children’s homes. This was the last we saw of her, and I remember the pain and tears of being torn away. Very little explanation was given, but we had one hour with her to play and take photos.Īfter this time, they literally took us away and at that age, it was hard to understand why you are not allowed to see your mother again. Social services eventually decided to split us up but thankfully, this decision did not result in us losing each other.ĭuring this period, we still had supervised visits to my mother and by the age of about four or five, she had fallen pregnant again with my sister.ĭuring one of these visits, we were taken into a room before meeting our mum and told that this would be the final time we would see her. We were moved into a variety of foster homes, all with the hope that we may be eventually adopted into a new family.īecause we were two boys, it became difficult to find us adoptive parents who wanted two children. This all occurred within the first three years of my life.
It was decided that she could not cope and my brother and I were taken into foster care. But the relationship broke down and I moved with my mother to London, where she became pregnant with my brother.īy this point, she was struggling to cope and had developed a strong drug and alcohol addiction, which at times, put my brother and I in dangerous situations. My mother was around 17 when I was born in Glasgow in 1982 and my father was roughly the same age.įor the first year of my life, we lived as a family.