E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
O'Toole / Bates Unseen
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80458-337-1
Verlag: Gill Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
A Memoir of Trauma, Ireland's Psychiatric System and a Lifetime spent Healing
E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80458-337-1
Verlag: Gill Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Breda O'Toole is a music teacher, a mother of eight, three of whom died as babies, and a grandmother of twelve. She lives in Connemara, County Galway.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Chapter 1
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
Trauma changes people. When he finished school, my father, who grew up on a farm in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, with three brothers and five sisters, joined the British Army. He fought on the front line in the Second World War. When given the order to shoot, people died at his hands. Like many others, his experiences of battle trauma left him feeling disconnected and distressed. When we were children, he never spoke about the war. At that time, counselling was not an option. It was only when I went into therapy years later and started watching Second World War films that I began to really understand what he had been through in the trenches living with such violence. How in the name of God could anybody be the same again after experiencing something like that? You couldn’t. I realised there was nothing to forgive. He was a victim of circumstances.
My father was a heavy, stocky man, with a round face. He was a domineering male influence over our house. From as young an age as I can remember, my father was violent towards me. As a child as young as five or six, I would have been locked in the bedroom for extended periods. They wouldn’t give me any dinner. As part of my punishment, I was denied food until breakfast the following morning.
After one of those beatings as a small child, I remember lying in the bed and trying to find one part of me that didn’t hurt. At the time, I didn’t see anything abnormal about that.
Most of the time, we were just brushing past one another, rather than having much of a relationship. I lived in absolute dread of him coming into the room, because I didn’t know what was going to happen next, what was awaiting me. I was terrorised.
I remember one day sitting down as a child to read a book, which would have been a very rare thing for me to do. Out of nowhere, this figure appeared and swiped the book from me, saying, ‘What are you doing? Stop wasting time. Get up there and do the housework.’
I can remember incidents where my father would leather me, and I would be able to see my mother standing over in the corner, not lifting a finger to help me. I was distraught, crying. Why wouldn’t she do anything for me? Why wasn’t she trying? I had to try and cope with it on my own. I think now it was male domination. Maybe she was afraid of him too? Either way it never felt like she was someone I could appeal to. The odd time, she herself would also become physically violent towards me.
Times were also hard for my mother. She was born in a small village near County Tipperary’s border, leaving home at a young age to work. She had six siblings, three boys and three girls, and also grew up on a farm. Money was scarce. People depended on slivers of land for a livelihood, and the children helped with the work from a young age.
My mother had never received affection from her own mother. We sometimes visited the family home in Limerick when I was a teenager. It was old Ireland – the fire, the turf, baking the bread. My grandmother was always cloaked in all black, a silent figure. I never saw one word pass between her and my mother.
In turn, my mother never hugged me, or showed her love physically in any way, but she didn’t see any harm in that. I never remember seeing love between my parents either, our home was a constant battleground for rows between them.
I was born on 20 April 1949, in Holles Street Hospital, Dublin, the eldest of my family of seven siblings.
Growing up in a house of such chaos, there was no relationship between us children. It was a case of everyone trying to get through each day. There was very little lightness or play in our childhoods. When I was a youngster, the word ‘survival’ would not have been in my vocabulary, but now I can see that that’s what I was just desperately trying to do. Survive each day. We did the best we could.
I was three months old when my parents emigrated to England. I travelled to London in a wooden orange box. My early years were spent at 36 Bavaria Road in North London. A severe attack of pneumonia meant that I wasn’t expected to see my first birthday.
One of my earliest memories is of being left in my cot when I was very little. My parents were obviously making love. I could hear all these sounds. They frightened the living daylights out of me; I thought he was killing her. How could I have known what was happening. I had just been plonked in a kind of cage.
The Second World War had blighted everyone’s ideas of a decent life. Poverty was rampant. Butter, tea, sugar, jam, cheese, eggs, milk and meat were scarce, and every family had a ration book. Our home was a three-storey dilapidated building. The place felt damp and cold. I found out much later that my father had bought the house to renovate the building and lease it to tenants. I can still see my father stepping down into the basement of our house after a long day at work. His face black and sooty, his clothes ragged and torn, the look on his face frightened me.
Gradually we filled the house with 16 lodgers. Mammy had to cook for all of us. One evening, I sneaked into the kitchen at the end of the corridor and stood against the back wall. She was bent over a low, deep, white sink with her sleeves rolled up. This was the first time I had seen so many dirty pots and pans. The surroundings were dark and gloomy. I wondered how she managed to cook there. A few weeks later, I remember her becoming very ill. She was coughing up blood and was diagnosed with a lung disease.
Looking back now, I can see that, like many women at the time, my mother was struggling with the burden of domestic life, and the dominant male presence in our house. My father was a heavy drinker, and probably spending a lot of their money on alcohol. I remember walking to the shop with her one evening, her grabbing me roughly and showing me a loaf of bread, saying that was all we had to live on for the week.
I think the circumstances of her life were very hard. In her way, she was trapped. Seven children. The expectations from my father on her, and on us children, as to the work he expected us to do, were colossal. He was working around the clock, and he expected all of us to do the same. Life was very hard for many women then. Now, I understand more about what her life was like, but as a child you cannot comprehend this. And she expected me to carry out a Trojan amount of housework, as if I, as the eldest daughter, was an extension of her.
Today, I see the happy, smiling faces of parents with their children on their first day at school. Everyone wants to make this day as memorable an occasion for the children as possible and a fun-filled day despite the tears.
In the 1950s, post-war, life was very different. On my first day at school, I grasped my mother’s hand as we entered the building. The place was packed. All I could see were towering adults above me. I held onto my mother for dear life, but when I needed her most, she let go of my hand and vanished. I looked back to see if I could see any sign of her, but she was gone. I was alone in a world full of strangers.
I remained motionless in the corridor, terrified. Everything was a blur. After some time, I felt a grown-up’s hands on my shoulders from behind. I was guided into the classroom and brought to a desk in the front row. That afternoon, we were told to fold our arms on the desk, put our heads down and sleep. That made no sense to me. How could anyone sleep on a hard wooden desk?
Later, I glanced around the classroom. The other children had their heads down and were busy with their schoolwork. I continued to stare into space, not knowing what to do. I felt desperately out of place. The teacher came up, smiled, bent down, and, after a few kind words, showed me pictures from a nature book. I couldn’t believe my luck when she said, ‘Would you like to take the book home with you?’
There were moments when my father showed an entirely different side of himself to me.
I remember him bringing us one Sunday afternoon in London for a trek through the forests around Hyde Park. I was in my element as we meandered around the trees and windy paths. On another sunny afternoon, my mother brought a chair to the courtyard and gathered us around her to read a story. As I gazed at her, I thought she was the most beautiful person in the world. The fable she read fired my imagination and transported me to a different world.
My father was a member of Knights of St Columba, a lay organisation of Catholic men dedicated to charity, unity and fraternity. He was immensely proud of this. Once a year, there was a big ball, and my parents dressed up for the occasion. My father wore a dress suit and a dicky bow for the event, while my mother wore a glamorous dress. I was in awe at her long white gloves stretching beyond her elbows.
My father was a great dancer, and I love dancing and music. One evening when I was about 11 or 12, a waltz came on the radio. He took me in his arms, and we glided gracefully across the floor. I wished that precious moment would never end; I was in heaven. He loved tap dancing, and I dreamed I’d be able to dance like that one day. Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly were among his favourite artists. He also loved Bridie Gallagher, an Irish singer from Creeslough, Donegal.
One Christmas Eve, he lifted me high, put me on the top bunk of the bed alongside my brother, and taught us to sing the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’. I felt loved in a way that I never...
