I Just Wanted to Be Loved: A boy eager to please. The man who destroyed his childhood. The love that overcame it.
The author of the bestselling Please Daddy No reveals more harrowing experiences of his neglected childhood.Having survived the terrible abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Stuart has to reach within himself again to live through the degradation of prison. He is released back into the world without any support or counselling from the authorities.The child abuse and numerous court cases had almost destroyed him, and Stuart became reliant on drugs and alcohol. With his life spiralling out of control, Stuart attempts suicide a number of times. The last try leaving the doctors that resuscitated him incredulous he had survived.At the point of no-return, Stuart was sent to an hospital in the Scottish highlands to fight the demons that assailed him and rebuild his life. This is the remarkable story of his fight to be his own man.
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Stuart Howarth
I Just Wanted to be Loved How one boy overcame a terrifying past
IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND ‘BRETT LOWE’
15 SEPTEMBER 1975–23 AUGUST 2008 AGED 32 YEARS
‘Many are called but few are chosen’
And
‘MICHAEL ALEXANDER JACK’14 NOVEMBER 1952–8 MAY 2008 AGED 55 YEARS
‘It only takes a moment to inspire’
GOD BLESS YOU BOTH
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Growing Up In Ashton-Under-Lyne
Chapter Two - Trying to Make A Life for Myself
Chapter Five - Release from Strangeways
Chapter Six - Party at the Pub
Chapter Seven - Life on the Outside
Chapter Eight - Self-Medication
Chapter Nine - The First Steps
Chapter Eleven - Meeting My Real Dad
Chapter Twelve - Burnt House Farm
Chapter Thirteen - Waiting to Die
Chapter Fourteen - Living with Geoff and Sue
Chapter Fifteen - Housecleaning the Soul
Chapter Sixteen - The Pity Party
Chapter Seventeen - Family Therapy
Chapter Eighteen - Strangeways in the Dock
Chapter Nineteen - Learning to Understand the Past
Chapter Twenty - Under Pressure
Chapter Twenty-one - Please, Daddy, No
Chapter Twenty-two - Pushed to the Limit
Chapter Twenty-three - Crying on Live TV
Chapter Twenty-four - Losing My Surrogate Dad
‘What fucking time do you call this?’ Dad snarled as I crept in the door. ‘You're fucking late.’
I glanced over his shoulder at the clock and could see that I wasn't late. It was seven o'clock exactly, the time he'd told me to get home. If I got back before then I'd be in trouble so I always timed it exactly to the minute.‘I'm not. It's …’
The words dried up as he rose suddenly from his chair, his lip curling the way it always did when he was angry.
‘Sorry,’ I pleaded, as his fist caught the side of my head, knocking me into the wall. I crumpled to the floor. ‘No, Daddy. Please don't.’
He kicked me in the side and I curled in a ball with my hands cradling my head. It was no use, though. I was hauled up by the arm as he kicked and punched me ferociously then hurled me against the door before pulling me back up for more.
I was only seven. There was a loud buzzing noise in my head, the noise I always heard when I was terrified. He threwme round the room, laying into me wildly with his fists and feet, not caring how badly I got hurt.
When he'd finished beating me he shoved me towards the stairs. ‘Go and get yourself cleaned up, you filthy bastard. I'll be up to see you in a bit.’
My legs were trembling as I climbed the stairs. Why did I always make him angry? Why couldn't I get it right?
I washed my face then went through to my bedroom, every bit of me aching. I considered hiding inside the walk-in wardrobe but I knew it would make things much worse if he had to haul me out. Instead, I crawled under the covers and pulled them up to my chin. I buried my face in the pillow and that's when the sobs came.
I knew what would happen next. Even as I cried for Mum, my sobs muffled in the pillow, I was listening for him coming upstairs. Bile rose in my throat as I worried about what he would make me do this time. The waiting was horrible. I could already smell the rancid, stale-sweat smell of him and hear his panting breath. There was a bitter taste in my mouth and I hurt all over. There wasn't a single bit of me that didn't hurt.
I began to tremble with fear, and then I heard it: the loud creaking sound of that first step, and then the next. He was coming. There was nothing I could do.
I don't remember a time before Dad came to live with us although I was three when he moved in. He was a colourful, larger-than-life character who worked as a dustbin man in the smarter areas of Ashton-under-Lyne, and on his rounds he would pick up all sorts of cast-off items to bring home. We were proud to be the first family in the street to have a television, even though it only worked intermittently when you banged the sides, the first to have a washing machine, and the only ones to have a PVC sofa and ornaments and paintings on the walls.
All the neighbours used to come round to admire our newest possessions, do their laundry in our machine and drink beer and smoke in the sitting room, but there was an undercurrent of jealousy as well. There was definitely a feeling that we thought we were a bit above ourselves, which didn't go down well. I got bullied by some local boys, who used to play tricks on me like getting me to swallow a spoonful of margarine by pretending it was ice cream.
I had two big sisters: Christina, who was two years older than me, and Shirley, who was a year older than her. Poor old Shirl the Whirl, as I called her, was born with spina bifida that meant she was confined to a wheelchair, paralysed and without feeling from the waist down. She also had hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, and epilepsy and a hunchback, and she was always having to go into hospital for operations and coming back covered in bandages. There was nothing wrong with her mind, though. I loved Shirley because she was the one who looked out for me when she could and tried to make sure I was OK. Christina was tougher and more independent when we were little.
