Secrets

Atschool, mine was my grandmother — my mother’s mother. She lived with mental illness, though we didn’t have those words then. In the tight-lipped neighbourhoods of the sixties and seventies, she was simply mad. And I, by proximity and blood, was the mad woman’s grandson. The stigma wrapped around me like second skin, whispered in the alleys, hinted at in glances. It felt as though her illness had leaked into my own body, marking me before I had a chance to speak for myself.

I never mentioned her to anyone. Not to my classmates. Not to my friends. Back then, the world was binary — you were either normal, or you were not. There was no compassion between the lines.

I was sent to a Christian Brothers formation school. I left at fifteen. Quietly. Because of abuse. I told no one. Not a teacher, not a sibling, not even myself — not really, not then. The shame was dense, a weight that buried itself in my bones and stayed there. This was the 1970s, a time before the language of trauma, before children’s rights were more than an afterthought. It took me decades — into my forties — before I could name what had happened. That silence, too, became a secret I had to live through, and live with.

When I was eighteen, during my apprenticeship, a senior took an interest in me. At first, I was grateful — he seemed kind, generous. He gave me money, attention, things I hadn’t realised I was missing. But his kindness curdled into control. I lost myself in the quiet fog of his power. It took all the courage I had, at nineteen, to end it. I never spoke of it — only now, years later, have I begun to tell that story. And now, I watch over young people with the eyes of someone who has lived through that trap. I won’t let them fall into it.