Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (2 page)

There can be no doubting that he was hard working and, in fact, he was truly gifted with his hands, in much the same way as my mother was gifted in her ability in interior design. It is fair to say that in another time and under different circumstances they both would have been hugely successful in business. But it was not to be. As with my mother, my father was a product of his own time and experiences and he certainly brought them into his marriage and into his role as a father.

Every time I hear the Furey’s song ‘The Oul Man’, I am reminded of what I never had with my father and what I never will have with him. There are so many songs that are full of resonances of my younger years and they fill me with
emotion as I recall the various experiences to which those songs relate. No doubt that’s true of us all. Something that distresses me now is the way in which I look like him. I want to have no reminders of him whenever I look in the mirror, nor have people tell me I look the image of my father.

For me, everything I have come to know about my father, every personal experience I had with him, taught me how not to be a man. In fact, people have asked me upon hearing this, if this was the reason I felt I was a girl? My answer is emphatically
no
, especially as my behaviours were far too instinctive and natural and predated any conscious decision on my part
not
to be like him, or my brothers for that matter. The one thing I will say about him was that, unlike my mother, he was equal in the severity of the beatings he gave us. In other words, he was impartial in his brutality.

One exception, and something that used to bother me and my brothers when we were young, was the time he spent with the girls and not with us. He would have them sit on his knee and play with them. It never occurred to us that there was something else entirely going on and that far from having any reason to be envious of them, we would have every reason to feel the greatest sympathy; though in my case it was more like empathy for what they were enduring unbeknownst to us.

I was fortunate enough to receive some old pictures from one of my sisters some time ago. I am in just two of them: in one, I am three or four years of age and the other, I’m making my First Holy Communion. They are haunting pictures and have helped to rekindle some memories that both cheer and sadden me. Looking at these pictures it is possible to remember the better and happier moments when, as a family, we
were physically, if not emotionally, closer. They bring back the sounds and activities that made up so much of our time together. It is nice to look back at pictures of my siblings before the rot had set in and they help to remind me of feelings of love and affection towards them that surprise even me.

Looking at the rounded faces of my little sisters and brothers, it is difficult to think that their lives and mine would become so divisive and so full of pain. Who would think, looking at them, that they could ever loathe each other and not be able to sit in the same room together; and all of this because of what has been done to them by two people, our own parents? The very things we share in common are also the very things that divide us and prevent us from getting close to each other, in the truest sense of the word. I still regret that.

My earliest memories of family life go back to when I was about three or four, before I started school. I remember going to the zoo and crying because I wanted to sit at the front of the coach. I got my way and was very happy. Another memory is of being taken to the army barracks for parties. We would be allowed to climb into the armoured cars and other military vehicles. These were pleasant memories, as were our trips to the seaside.

In some of the other photos, I am struck by several of my mother out of doors. She liked to travel and preferred that to being at home. There can be no doubting that bringing up so many children with so few resources between my parents had to be oppressive and led to them trying to get out of the house as much as possible, preferably without us in tow. They used to go off together on my father’s Honda motorbike. One of their favourite places was the Embankment in Tallaght, where they went to see Brendan Grace, Barleycorn, The Bards etc.
But it is also clear from the pictures that she liked to take her children out and about. We were taken to Dublin Zoo, to the beaches at Gormanstown, Rush and Portmarnock, where our father tried to teach us to swim. Sometimes a row would ensue between them because my father either didn’t want to take us or because he complained of not having enough money for petrol, which was often his cover for not wanting to take us. This wasn’t a problem by the time the younger ones came along as we older ones were bringing home significant income, which eliminated my mother’s money worries; something she never acknowledged.

So there were good times when I was a child. But there were also the darker, more distressing times that even now make me wince with pain and sadness. One of my most disturbing memories is of being locked into the bedroom for long periods of time. This was a common occurrence.

It is hard to describe my feelings aged four when I had been left behind by my mother, but I do remember feeling unwanted and abandoned and that I was nothing but a nuisance, something I was to feel many, many times since. I wrote my first ever poem on this very subject.

I don’t know the reason why my mum left me in the room that day and other days. Probably it was to go shopping or maybe she couldn’t cope with the house and with raising four boys, and maybe she just needed her space. Whatever it was, it made me feel totally alone and unwanted; feelings that were to dominate my life.

From the earliest age I can remember the stress that was to fill every nook and cranny of our house; a house that never felt like a home. A house I was glad to leave when I was nineteen years of age. This wasn’t helped by so many people
living in such a small space. We lived in a two-up and two-down. We did have an indoor bathroom and toilet, but although the houses were considered quite modern for their time and a big improvement on what had gone before, it was completely inadequate to accommodate fourteen people.

Of course, there was no privacy to be had for anyone, including my five sisters, who had to share the same bedroom with their brothers. That can’t have been easy for them. We slept in a double bed and bunk beds. Up to five of us slept in the double bed; three at the top end and two at the bottom. There were another five sleeping in the bunks, with brothers and sisters having to sleep together. This was the situation until we got the new bed-settee in the parlour and the eldest brother was moved down. Later, another was moved down and this gave some more space to those of us left upstairs. After the eldest brother got married and left the house, the second eldest then moved down and later I, too, was moved down to share the settee. The parlour was great, because we could leave the light on for longer and read. We also had the record player and radio unit in the parlour, which meant that we could listen to our favourite radio station, Radio Luxembourg and the European Top 40.

We would sleep under blankets and army overcoats. There was a constant battle to hold onto the bit of blanket or bit of coat. It was a constant tug-of-war trying to stay warm, especially in the winter months. There was no central heating in those days and the only fire was the one in the kitchen. There was an open fireplace in our bedroom but it was never used. Imagine waking during the night and in the morning with your brother’s smelly, long-nailed feet in your mouth and sticking up your nose or cutting into your skin. Added to this were the broken springs that kept pricking us. It was so
uncomfortable and very difficult to get a good night’s sleep. At Christmas and Easter, though, we were bound to have clean crisp sheets and blankets. My mother would threaten us not to tear them by telling us that we were not ‘to so much as breathe’ on them. Of course, we would try to make a joke out of this by holding our breath.

During the earlier years the stress in our house came mainly from the rows and fighting between my parents, or, should I say, my father beating my mother and her screaming and begging him not to hit her. This legacy of aggression was to be passed on to some of my brothers; while I was to become very passive and open to physical violence from males and females alike. Some of the worst rows came around Christmas, when my mother would go all-out to get us the best of presents and the best of clothes. Christmas was the one time of the year when we were sure to have new clothes, in fact, new everything. But it would be spoiled by my father’s shouting at my mother and my mother screaming with fear and pleading with my father not to hit her, but to no avail. When we heard the screaming and shouting we would start crying and then my mother would have to come and comfort us and try to reassure us that there was nothing wrong. But we always knew, and I began to hate my father for what he was doing to her.

But it really didn’t take a lot to make either of them angry and resort to violence towards their children either. It could be something like soiling our clothes while out playing, or losing money while going to the shops. Even something as innocuous as coming home late from school or crossing in front of the television as my father was doing the Pools on a Saturday evening. On a number of occasions, they beat and berated me for wetting the bed. The bedwetting was, I think,
because I lived in a constant state of emotional distress, partly because of my family, partly because of school and also because I had all the emotions and instincts of a girl, but without the right to express them.

I remember trying to resist reading girls’ comics and magazines, but I always felt like reading them. I was in a constant state of uncertainty about who I was and who I was meant to be. There was the need to belong, but hating what I had to do in order to fit in. It was also around this time that I felt the growing compulsion to dress as a girl, but there were no clothes to fit me save those of my mother. So, when she was out of the house and I was alone, I would go to her room and put on her clothes and try to look feminine. I would try to put on her make-up, but not very well.

What was most fantastic about this was the feelings of wholeness and of being right within myself. These were precious times and I would volunteer to stay at home from school, knowing that my mother would go out for a few hours and this would leave me free to get dressed. Of course, there was always the risk of getting caught, but it was still worth it. My sensitive personality was also becoming more pronounced as I grew, along with my empathic spirit. I had a growing sense of being split in two, but without ever knowing why. The tensions became a constant in my life and left me feeling extremely unsure of myself in how I was to behave. I found myself preferring the company of girls far more than boys, yet still trying to fit in and be accepted as
normal
. These developments were to have a profound impact on my ability to cope with the treatment I received from my family and my mother and father in particular. And it especially affected the way I responded to the beatings and the verbal abuse.

My father took issue with my being so sensitive and gentle as did my mother and siblings and he was not averse to calling me a cissy, because of my very girlish ways of dealing with things, and the way in which I would cry when hurt, or when I felt my brothers and sisters were hurt. Whenever I came home from school, he would call me ‘a fucking whinger’, or he would tell me to stop crying or he would give me ‘something to cry about’. Like the others, he chose to view my girl-like behaviour as attention-seeking on my part.

My mother knew that my father was extremely bad-tempered and violent; that he would give us severe beatings for even the most minor misdemeanours. If we did something wrong — at least in her eyes — my mother would threaten us with our father’s violence. I remember the time I’d lost money while going to the shops and having to come home and tell my mother. Or the time I had money stolen from me and I tried to convince my mother that it really was stolen, knowing full well she wasn’t going to believe me. I would receive the inevitable threat: ‘Wait till your father gets home; he’s going to fuckin’ kill you!’

It is so hard remembering these all-too-frequent experiences and the absolute terror they instilled within me without becoming upset. I can still remember the times I would urinate in my short trousers while walking home from school, knowing that I was going to get a beating. The nearer I got to home, the worse the urinating became. When I’d get home, I would be sent straight to bed without any food and I would have to stay there until my father got home. My stomach would churn. No amount of anticipation could really prepare you for the roar: ‘Thomas, get the fuck down here now. And don’t have me to tell you twice!’

No matter how much I anticipated it and tried to prepare
myself for it, I was still completely frozen with terror. I knew that the only thing worse than delaying the inevitable was what would happen if I didn’t go down straight away. While he was sitting there as a petulant god, I would be standing there and peeing on the floor in sheer terror at what awaited me. Sometimes, the only clothes I wore were my vest and underpants.