James McGrath

I would consider myself to have led a life mapped out with an inevitable outcome of disappointment and failure, that although having the dreams and aspirations of any individual starting off in life. My path was seemingly written on the adoption of my surname, as it had been by my mother on the day that she married my father. My childhood would have been my honeymoon period of a rosy view of possibilities in life, that would have reflected the joy and love that had been bestowed upon myself and my siblings within a loving home, headed by two parents that dedicated their very existence to the children that they created, Demonstrated by the sacrifice that they made in the pursuit of the happiness of each and every one of them, whilst being rewarded with nothing but sorrow and pain. This vision of a future that had been an idealistic road map to be repeated by myself, of happiness in a replication of what I had experienced as normality during my upbringing. Being married and being a parent, comparable to what I and my siblings took as what every home experienced very naively as standard procedure up and down the land, but was never to be, as life’s rug was slowly pulled from underneath my feet, partly my own blame, but also by the cards dealt to me in life, in my fickle expectations of repeating my upbringing in a stable relationship of the past that no longer exists, to be experienced by my own children, only to find ‘commitment’ as being a word forgotten. The pain of rejection from the investments made without return upon relationship failures, only removes any further ability to improve life’s outcomes. This has brought only pessimism and mistrust that led to a spiral of drug abuse and depression, and has brought me to this point in my life. I still hold on to the humour gifted to us by our parents that we all share and still binds us, and helps us to continue with whatever this existence throws at us next. But I shall march on and attempt to improve, and to be a parent and grandparent one day, hopefully to be dealt an ace from the pack and no longer the joker.