No child should take on a parental role at not quite 8 years old, but here I was, bringing up Douglas

Douglas John Pritty arrived in to my world on the 6^th of July 1973, everything around his arrival was fraught, the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and he was delivered prematurely by an emergency C-section. It was found that there was a Rhesus blood incompatibility between Douglas and my mother and out just a few hours old he had to have a full blood transfusion and he suffered quite severely from jaundice.

Douglas really drew the short straw when it came to parents. My mother always said that my step-father insisted she have a baby, but over the years I think she had Douglas to trap my step-father. As step-fathers go, he was an OK guy, he never got involved, but he was always kind to me. He was completely distant and absent though where Douglas was involved. When my Mum left the hospital and brought Douglas home little did I know how my life would be forever changed. With little over a month to my eighth birthday I became the surrogate parent, both mother and father to Douglas.

England in the 1970’s was not an easy place to live in

I was given the full responsibility of his primary care, bottle feeding, nappy changing, bathing and burping. This was a difficult time in England, it was the Thatcherite era of massive industrial action and the three day week. My mother and step father moved from house to house and town to town to follow work, always taking on additional jobs in the evenings if they weren’t singing in their band.

We lived without a gas and electricity connection, cooking on a camping stove and boiling water on it to bath. The hardest thing for me to ever come to terms with though, was that there was always money for cigarettes and booze. “Got to have my little luxuries” my mother would say. She put smoking ahead of our eating. I hated coming home from school to find that the fridge was bare.

By this time my Dad was back in England. My mother had iron control over access and both my Dad and I had to toe the party line or we would not have been able to see each other. I was so overjoyed at being able to see him it didn’t matter what was happening at home. Depending on where we were living, if it was close to my Dad or not, I would see him on Monday nights and maybe one weekend a month. My Dad was living in single quarters on the air force base and we would go down to my Grandparents in the South of England for the weekend. It was always a little bit of heaven for me, an escape from the reality of my unconventional childhood. My Granny would make me all my favourites and there I felt how a little girl should feel. A few years ago I asked my Dad where he was during the years I lived with my mother’s parents. He had no idea that I didn’t know that he and my mother were divorcing as he was forbidden to discuss it with me, given that my mother told him she “had it under control.” I then shared some of this story with him and he was devastated. It was a difficult story to share.

How do you tell your children that they don’t deserve any money?

One night whilst watching my mother put on her make-up as she was getting ready to go out to work at the bar with my step-father, I asked her for some money to go to the corner shop and buy baked beans and a loaf of bread to make Douglas and I beans on toast. I can remember it like it was yesterday, she looked at me via the mirror and told me simply, that I didn’t deserve any money. Two profound things happened on that day that would shape my life positively and negatively. The first was that from that moment one I knew that I had to find ways to earn money, and the entrepreneur in me was born, but, the second was to linger into my forties which was my paradigm around money and that I didn’t deserve any.

Douglas’ part of the family story is longer than I expected, but his effect on my life all the way through to 2014 was significant, and he never had an advocate to share his experience. To this end I will tell a little more, I am sure many of you who read this will resonate with this story, in part if not in all.

The impact of my mother’s throw away comment that I didn’t deserve money and that in turn neither did Douglas was crushing. Surely he deserved something? He looked to me for everything, food, clothing and affection. He was an extraordinarily clingy child, small as a result of his premature birth and needy as a result of my mother and step-fathers emotional neglect. In today’s world I believe that we would have both been removed from her care.

I had to learn how to make money to buy food

Getting back to money, I had already started helping the young boys in our street to prepare their newspaper rounds each morning. I lived close to the Newspaper shop and would make sure their bags were ready in the morning. They didn’t mind giving me a share of their money as it meant they could sleep a little longer before going on their morning rounds.

This came to an end as once again we moved, this time to a converted garage in Uxbridge, in England. I was around 10 or 11 when we moved here. Times were very tough with less food than ever. The garage was one big room with sleeping areas screened off and we shared a bathroom in the main house. It was cold and damp and it was a thoroughly miserable time for Douglas and me. It was here that I started High School in the year I turned 12. We would never have breakfast and we had to pay for school lunches. My mother was always behind in paying and often it was too embarrassing to go to the canteen, I’d rather be hungry. Douglas was going to infant’s school in those days, I know he always got lunch, but there were many days when we weren’t getting dinner. At high school I discovered boys. Not in the sense of young love and infatuation, no not in that sense at all. What may appear shocking to some will be understandable to others who have experienced the same, I discovered that boys would pay me to do things for them. It was then that I discovered sexual activities and sexual favours for money. This behaviour continued on and off for most of my high school years, and in hindsight, I was at a reasonable school and I cannot understand that my behaviour was never discovered by teachers and staff, but it wasn’t and I slipped through the cracks.

Douglas’ early school years were traumatic for him. He was small for his age, cheeky, and the bullies picked on him mercilessly. I would get involved when the older boys bullied him and remember more than one physical fight where I got involved to protect him. He was hard to like, even by me, but I always protected him as best I could.

Leaving England for South Africa

Christmas 1980 my mother calmly announced that we were moving to South Africa in 6 weeks’ time, just like that. Fast forward a few years. I had continued to look after Douglas after we moved to South Africa and he always referred to me as his primary carer, if he was in trouble at school he always gave my name and not my mothers. I was in a rebellious phase and had left school, found my Prince Charming, gotten pregnant and was getting married. Freedom at last, I was going to get away, or so I thought. It was only 25 years later that I discovered what impact that had on Douglas.

When I left home to start bringing up my first son, I didn’t think that anything bad would happen to Douglas. I assumed that finally my mother and step-father would have to step up and take responsibility. He had health issues with epilepsy and had to go to a special needs school for a while. He would always gravitate to and attract the bad crowd. He needed nurturing and he was neglected, what my mother did do was completely control him whenever he was with her. He was 10 when I left home. His life spiralled erratically for years, he had an attempted suicide and then ran away to the coast where he began a long relationship with drugs. In the mid 90’s I brought him back from the coast. My mother was living with me for a while, another story, and we tried to get him back on track. He stole from me, money, and alcohol, anything he could get his hands on and eventually they both moved out. A few years later he left South Africa to live in Brazil. The story of his life really was that he was out of control when he didn’t live with my mother, and a scared, pitiful child when he did. I could never quite get my head around any of it.

Trying to make sense of it

In 2008 after ending a long term relationship and seeking answers to behaviours and cycles I kept repeating I decided to get some therapy and see if I could find the answers there. I was riddled with a lot of guilt around so many things, and this included my mother and Douglas. At this time my mother worked for me, and Douglas was wandering aimlessly around South America. I couldn’t rid myself of my dislike for him and his lack of achievement. I know that this sounds harsh, but although he’d had problems, he had had a lot of opportunity come his way and never grasped it, and mostly because he was lazy.

When sharing all the family background with my therapist, he asked me a few questions;

“Suzanne, have you ever taken drugs?” “Suzanne, do you drink alcohol to excess?” “Suzanne, have you ever taken antidepressants or needed therapy for these life experiences?”

The answer to these questions was the same in every case, “No.” The only reason I was in therapy then was I felt guilty for not liking Douglas and my mother, and I couldn’t understand why I kept attracting the same kind of man into my life over and over.

My therapy ended that day. A wise and kind man, my therapist told me that under the circumstances if my only hang-up was not liking them after all my experiences, then I should let myself not like them, after all, I had lost my childhood as a result. I always loved them both, regardless of what happened, but in all honesty I never liked them, ever.

I spent many years since, and will do all my life learning as much as I can about human behaviour, particularly my own.

Douglas returned to South Africa the year before I met Chris, and to my best endeavours I reconciled my relationship with both him and my mother. You see, my relationship with them was none of their business, it was all about how I felt and reacted about them. The energy vibrations I focused on sending to them were of love, and prosperity because I couldn’t have love and prosperity in my life if I didn’t want it for them. Their relationship with me, was none of my business, and the following years I know they didn’t ever really reconcile with me.

He still couldn’t manage without her

When my mother retired back to England in 2011, she was already riddled with Lung Cancer. She had kept this secret, retiring to “her home” she called it, even though she had lived in South Africa for 30 years. A year later she came clean with the diagnosis to a certain degree, when she needed me to get some medical details for her. Unsurprisingly Douglas wasn’t doing well on his own in South Africa. He went to visit her in the English summer and my mother persuaded him to move back to England. Unknown to all of us, my mother knew that she was very ill. In the September she was told that with aggressive chemo and radiation therapy she might have a year, but that it was unlikely. She accepted the treatment and moved my brother, lock stock and barrel to England, early in December.

My mother and I rarely spoke by then, but I kept in touch with her condition through my aunt. In early January 2013 my mother’s aggressive treatment was complete and I got the strangest call on the Friday before her birthday. Elated and sounding almost intoxicated my mother was telling me the tumour had shrunk; it was working she was on the mend. On the morning of her birthday, I was going to text her birthday wishes, after all we had spoken on the phone a few days prior. The day slipped past me and in the early evening I realised that I hadn’t messaged her, so I decided to call her instead. She sounded awful, she’d had a reaction to the last radiation therapy and wasn’t well. I felt for her pain and ended the call with “I love you mom.” She died three days later.

I am telling you this part of the story because of how it relates to Douglas. He had been in England for 5 weeks, all his money was in my mother’s back account in South Africa. When he called me to tell me my mother had died, his world fell apart and unraveled completely. What a mess. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time for us financially because Chris and my world had come crashing down we had just lost everything and were holding on to what we had left as tightly as we could.

Help the one who was alive, or respect the one who wasn’t?

Douglas declared that only I would understand what was happening, and that only I could help. He didn’t know what was to happen, who was going to handle everything and that I needed to get to England now. Funerals are not quick to arrange in England. In South Africa you can do it in a matter of days and I knew if I went to England straight away, that I wouldn’t be able to stay until my mother’s funeral. Regardless of my relationship with her, she was my mother, but a choice had to be made and I chose to help the living and left for England. I could only do this with the help of my Dad who bought my plane ticket.

Douglas’ life had never been an easy one, he could be charming, endearing and massively dislikeable in the same way. For some years I was sure he was either suffering from Bipolar disorder or depression. When I got to England, I found that he had manipulated me as he knew exactly what was going on and who was handling all the arrangements. Even though I was there he plunged in to the depths of despair. My mother’s affairs were a mess, she had ploughed through an awful lot of money, and she was in debt and her estate insolvent. There was however an insurance policy and after a great deal of red tape and time spent in the insurance companies office, I got the funds released and Douglas could get back to South Africa.

I didn’t hear from Douglas when he got back for about six months. Then one day out of the blue he contacted me about personal development and self-help. He wanted to know how to start and what to do. Being coaches, facilitators and mentors Chris and I spent some time with him and his new girlfriend, gave them books and CD’s to study and even got him tickets for various seminars. I felt for the first time in his life at 40, he was going to do something with his life. He would get in touch sporadically, sharing his ideas for business and his progress.

Christmas cheer, or Christmas woe?

Then on Christmas Eve 2013, Douglas texted me to ask when I was closing up for the holidays and switching off my laptop. Not thinking anything strange I said lunchtime and that he should have a great Christmas. At a little past 1pm I switched everything off and stopped work for the holidays, sitting with Chris my phone buzzed and I saw a Facebook message come through from Douglas. I wont share the message verbatim, it was ambiguous in its meaning too, but Chris and I knew there was something seriously wrong. We rushed through to his flat and found him just in time. He had taken a massive overdose of pills with booze, the paramedics managed to get him around and treat him at home as he refused hospitalisation. He had become hugely violent and aggressive, attacking Chris physically and me verbally. He told the paramedic that he couldn’t make it in the world without our mother, and that I was supposed to find his body, not save him, that I was supposed to sort everything out because I was the strong one and could get over anything, even the death of one of my children. This was the time I had to put a stake in the ground.

Over the next few days I researched as much information I could about support groups for his behaviour and depression. I wrote him a long letter and told him I couldn’t help him anymore, that only he could help himself. I heard nothing more from Douglas for 6 months.

On the 30^th of June, he called and told me that what we described in December didn’t happen, and that he didn’t attack Chris and didn’t say that about me. I asked if he was getting help and he said that he had had all the help he needed, and ended the call.

Douglas’ body was discovered by his friend the next evening. We went to his flat and he had methodically packed everything up, labelled everything in terms of where it should go and whom it belonged to. He left a note for me, apologising that I would be the one to sort out everything, but that he had done as much as he could to make it easier for me.

Having never experienced any form of depression, I cannot speak with any authority on how it must feel to have no hope for an alternative outcome. We were born into the same environment, we both had extreme experiences, yet my outcome was so different. I do know that the pathology between my mother and Douglas was so extreme that he was completely unable to function without her.

I reconciled myself to the fact that he was honestly at peace, he had not had the life he wanted for himself, but truthfully it was by his choice.

Reading Bringing Up Douglas may have left you feeling shocked and sad, maybe even angry and vengeful. Whatever the emotions that you’re feeling right now, I want Douglas’ suicide to powerfully remind you of one thing – no matter how awful your circumstances are, you have the mental machinery in the way of your mind, to think cleverly yourself out of desperation in to revelation, to shift adversity in to opportunity, to move beyond lack and misery to abundance and prosperity.

Question:

Did you know that no matter how dark it is around you, you have an inner light which if allowed to shine, will dispel all the blackness?

Exercise:

1. What’s the blackness which surrounds you right now?
2. How does this make you feel? [name all the emotions]
3. As you embrace these feelings, what are your most dominant thoughts around this darkness?
4. Where or from whom, do these thoughts of yours originate?
5. What’s the price you’re paying for allowing these thoughts to live inside your head?
6. Will thinking this way help you get what you want or will they keep you trapped where you are right now, experiencing what you don’t want?
7. So, what do you want and do you have a clear picture in your mind’s eye of what your desire looks like?
8. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to pursue this picture / goal?
9. What decisions have you just made?
10. What simple actions can you immediately take to turn all the invisible, new potential energy locked up in your decision, in to visible, kinetic energy (motion)?
11. To help you and to really get you thinking like a visionary does, here’s a a brilliant teaching podcast on Expectation. Know this – what you expect, you get. So, until you expect to receive more, your desire for more will be nothing more than wasted, frustrated, energy:

My profound lesson:

Douglas was so talented. He was incredibly intelligent and had a most beautiful mind when he chose to apply it correctly. If anyone had the mental ability to change how he saw the world and therefore change his world, it was Douglas. Sadly he chose to ignore his beautiful mind and used it to create anarchy and destruction instead of good and progress. Douglas taught me that my mind just is. That it is always on and working. That even though it is my most precious gift from the Universe, my most powerful thoughts will become things, so best I learn how to use my mind well, how to think for exceptional results. Thank you Douglas.

To your success, with love

Suzanne