The best years of my childhood were from the ages of 0 – 6. Then my mother met a vile human being. He was a psychological manifestation of physical, verbal, and self-implosive violence. When he got tired of beating and abusing my mother, he would exercise his will upon me. 

To this day, I still sense the now ghostly serpentine welts that ran from my ankles to the small of my back preventing me from being able to sit down for a day or two. Not surprisingly, I am a front sleeper.  

Other times, I would be punished for forgetting to take the rubbish out by personally having to boil a kettle with water, pour the boiled water into a cup, and he would stand over me until I drank the cup straight out of the kettle. 

He once found out that liver made me feel violently ill, so on some occasions, he would fry liver, the smell of which would waft up to my room forewarning me of the impending torture, call me down to the kitchen, greet me with a rye smile, hand me the plate, force me to eat the liver with tears streaming down my face – crying but in silence so as not to further anger him – gagging with every bite, until eventually throwing up onto the plate. He would make his way to the kitchen drawer, get a soup spoon, and make me eat my own vomit as though it was a soup. On occasion, he would sit opposite me at the table, eating a fruit yoghurt. Nodding encouragingly. And, when the last spoonful of vomit was kept down, he would wink at me and gesture with his head to return the empty plate to the sink. 

As an autistic child, I’ve always known a hypersensitivity to smell, touch, and feel. As an aperitif to the liver dinners, I would be tasked with feeding anywhere between 6 – 9 dogs. This included walking to the nearest butcher approximately 2 miles down a mountain, collect no less than 15-20Kg in raw bones, carry them back up the mountain road, and boil them down for around 4 hours in a basement kitchen with several hobs and pots. The basement had ground level windows, but he sealed them shut. He would then close the shutters from the outside so that there was only a sliver of light in the space, lock the door from the outside, and make me watch over the broiling of these bones until they were cooked enough for me to extract the bone marrow from each. I would be sealed in a dark space, underground, with several gas hobs on the go, several pots that were half my size, filled to the brim with giant bones, and a flathead screwdriver to poke and prod the bone marrow out. For at least 4 hours at a time. If at any stage I vomited, I would be forced to eat my vomit. It took me a couple of years to figure out that I could vomit into the boiling pot and stir it up with the bone marrow so as not to raise suspicion. However, to my detriment, he took that as proof that he was toughening me up and that I was no longer sick because I had overcome my disgust, which in turn meant more frequent trips to the basement, soon after becoming my daily routine. On school days, I would have to boil the bones the night before, so as to mitigate lost hours in the day.

I attended a very prestigious private English School. All my classmates were children of diplomats. Everyone was dropped off at the gates in their limousines and nannies made sure they had everything to hand, sometimes even staying outside the school gates all day just to make sure the child in their charge was never alone after school. My journey was probably a little less glamorous. 

Aged 6, I would wake myself up at 0500hrs, dress myself for school, collect eggs from the chicken coup, fry myself a couple of eggs and drink some tea, I would make my mother a cup of tea, kiss her on the forehead, feed the dogs and the chickens, take 500 drachmae (approximately £1 or $1.58c) from my mum’s purse to buy two bus tickets, and start the 2 mile walk down the mountain to the public bus stop. 

This was Greece in the 1980s, so that made me the only black child for 30 miles in every direction, at a time when anything darker than the shade of white fell down the slippery pole of humanity, prescribing the abominations of inflicted racism in an equally and conversely ascending rate of intensity. Let’s just say that the bus ride was fraught with racist taunts, foul spit to the face, overt statements that I smelled like a n****r, people leaving a bench seat when I sat next to them, jokes about my afro hair, pushes and shoves, slaps to the back of the head, and glares strong enough to burn holes into the shreds of the fabricated dignity I had left. 

An hour-long bus ride later, we would pull into the suburbs of Athens’ affluent area where my school was. I had a mile long walk to cover from the stop to my gates; however, the latter half of that mile covered the perimeter of a traveler Gypsy community encampment. Having managed to withstand the burden of being black from my house to this perimeter fence, I was now faced with a new dilemma. I was as brown as the Gypsies, but I was privileged like the white kids that used to taunt them from the school fence. So, naturally, the Gypsy children would setup ambushes along the perimeter, with sticks and stones, wait for me to walk by, and begin to hurl them at me before chasing me down to try and beat me and steal my school uniform. 

On one particular occasion, I decided to take a shortcut not realising that I was running into three rows of rusty galvanised razor wire fencing dividing the Gypsies from an apartheid type of no-man’s-land at the school fence. The Gypsies chasing me were going to be more punishing than crossing the razor wire, so I threw myself in between the strands of razor wire, entangled my hair in one strand, spiked my back in several places on another, and tore my left trouser leg above the knee on a third. 

All I remember from that moment was the huge gash on my thigh, an open wound through layers of fat and soft tissue to the bone, and me crying silently with fear. Not because I was hurt or because the Gypsies were taunting me back as they pelted me more sticks and stones, but because I suddenly realised that I would have to go home to an awaiting leather serpent with a sting more poisonous than the lashing tongues of racism, bigotry, disenfranchisement, and general societal devaluation of my existence. All because I would be held accountable for carelessly damaging my school uniform, without a thought or care of how much it would cost to replace it – as if in my alleged impertinence, I suffered the indignation of being unable to distinguish between the veneration in my fortuitous luck to have been born into white generational wealth and the phrase; “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

One thing I will give my mother credit for is that she would pack a lunch tin for me to take with me to school. Usually just before she disappeared into another drug induced stupor, rendering her and the world as detached from one another as accountability and irresponsibly neglectful self-indulgence. It certainly was a healthy one. 

Irish buttered Danish rye bread sandwiches, with Italian prosciutto from Emilia-Romagna, crunchy gem, iceberg, and romaine lettuce leaves from Mexico, French seeded Dijon mustard, Tunisian cucumber, and Swiss Emmental or creamy Isigny Sainte-Mère Camembert from the ‘Expatriate Members Only’ delicatessen counter at the AB (pronounced Alpha Vita in Greek) – the equivalent of London’s Harrods in Athens at the time. 

The rotation of contents also included packaged imports such as German fruit yoghurts, Arabian dates from Alexandria and Damascus, fresh squeezed orange juice from California, beetroot and spirulina smoothies from Brazil, sesame seed crackers from Tanzania, Himalayan salted Pretzels from Austria, Vermeer mini-cheese wheels from The Netherlands, raisins from Turkey, mini-Manuka honey jars from New Zealand, clay potted organic Pongal from Sri Lanka, sweet and creamy Monkoy bananas from The Philippines, Chilean peaches, Bolivian Brazil nuts, Afghan dried figs, and cherries from Hong Kong.

As an adult, I absolutely appreciate what my mother was trying to do for me. She failed in many ways, but this wasn’t one of them. However, as a 6-year-old, when all your school mates don’t carry AB artisanal lunch boxes, all of whom arrive every day with 5,000 drachmae (approximately £10 or $16) in their pockets to be spent at the school canteen, salivating at the thought of cueing for the freshly made chocolate iced donuts, Ruffles crisps, and ice cooled cans of thirst quenching Fanta blue during lessons, as the delicate scent of confectionary smothers each corridor and infiltrates every threshold in its predatory stalk, enveloping the senses like a dawn fog blanketing the coffee plantations of Jamaica’s blue mountain peaks.

As a child, the thought of an artisanal lunch box, filled with cosmopolitan delights, irrespective of the health benefits, creates a chasm of unrelatable childhood nostalgia in contrast. My school mates will always have fond memories of cohesive joy by association, whereas my memories simply trigger the sense of not belonging, being too different, and failing to assimilate with my peers. 

Ironically, my insatiable modus operandi to see every glass as half full, even when empty, is probably derived from the collective childhood differences I had in the types of freedom I experienced vis-à-vis that of my comparators. From a socioeconomic, social mobility, and perspective of privilege, I had it all. Wealth, an entire floor to myself in a 5-storey house, the private education, the newest toys and clothes, the best standard of food, all the comforts at home, two adults at home, pets, extracurricular activities, the heritage, and the access to high society anyone could ever dream of. From a material aspect – I needed for nothing whatsoever. From a perspective of existence – I needed not to be black, not to be the illegitimate son of a white woman from an all-white family, and not to be a strange and inhumane man’s projection of inadequacy, impotence, impudence, maternal enmeshment, and scarred Oedipus idolatry.

I want to be clear – on the face of it - there is absolutely nothing wrong being born into an all-white family of hereditary wealth, privilege, and societal standing. Far from it. One would be excused for rolling one’s eyes at what may perceived as an ungrateful expression of self-victimisation. But, if you are wrestling with that thought, please take a beat and try looking at it from the lens of my 6-year-old eyes. 

You look like nobody else in your family. You are fatherless and fathomlessly unrecognisable. Society treats you with disdain whilst your mother whose hand you are holding is treated with reverence. You are expected to fail academically and projected to thrive athletically. Your voice is undesired in a world where your skin determines your only right - silenced objectification. You are labelled angry, inconsiderate, unruly, ignorant, aggressive, brazen, or brash. Meanwhile, your white friends mirroring your behaviour and speech are congratulated for being enthusiastic, benevolent, excited, innocent, passionate, brave, or inspirational.

In a world where what you see, hear, and experience influences your interpretation of place, purpose, and value, being branded black - without credence to your mixed heritage and materialistic qualification of belonging - becomes a disadvantageous disability of alienating proportions. Your environment teaches you that no matter who you are or try to become, you will always be what you look like. Nothing more.

Then, throw in a healthy does of Autism and ADHD, before anyone had a shred of patience for them, and you quickly understand why the colour of one’s skin easily becomes the exposed flesh of prey amongst predators. By the age of 6, life meant surviving the slaughter of every day, with no end in sight, yet instinctively – somehow and for some reason – still managing to dream inspired goals; childishly as though love, hope, and the faith in anything being possible, are the catalyst of equality and equity. 

Despite the barriers, aged 6, I managed to sustain innocent thought without fear, somehow establishing the practice of a state of pure, unburdened thinking, free from the constraints of anxiety or apprehension. I managed to cultivate a state of mind that was fueled by conscious effort and self-awareness. I had to become my own guardian, through mindful self-compassion and the unrestrained embrace of uncertainty to defend myself against the fear of failure and the societal birthright to racial disappointment.

One other occasion was during my mother’s battle with cervical cancer. She first found out she had the cancer when I was four years old. She would travel to London once a year to undergo a specialist surgical procedure where they would shave microns of a millimetre of her cervix in order to dispose of growing cancerous cells. This seemed to work well at first, and my recollection of the years between the ages of 4 and 6 aren’t marred by fear, tragedy, imminent death, or abandonment. However, once my mother’s partner came into our lives, things started to change. Initially, everything was like a permanent holiday at home. My mother’s partner was the consummate ‘father’ and ‘partner’ anyone would be proud to declare as their own. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it was all too perfect. 

By the time I was 8, my mother had had a three-year indoctrination of controlling behaviours by her partner. By this stage, he was already accustomed to his recreational battery and verbal abuse, regularly requiring me to wipe and clean my mother’s blood from the walls in the house with warm soapy water and a sponge, followed by my learning to dress her wounds to her battered face and bruised body, knowing that once I was done it would be my turn. I guess, because I was going to school every day, he made sure my injuries and scars were reduced to my legs, bum, waist, and lower back. His thinking was probably that everyone would expect a young boy to have bruises and welts from falling out of trees or from playing sports with his friends. 

A core component of his controlling behaviour was to alienate my mother from her entire family structure. Over time, he orchestrated enough arguments and ultimatums between her and her parents, uncles and aunts, siblings, and cousins, that she had nobody left but him. That said, once his masterplan had been in effect for 14 years, I was the final remaining piece of the puzzle of expulsion. The older I got, the bigger the threat I became, purely because of the inherent mother-son bond that he would have to work extra hard to sever en route to becoming her only love.

Before that became a chapter in my life, he still had a trick up his sleeve to ensure he maintained coercive control over my mother and any potential I might begin to nurture. Having stopped going to London, England, for this special procedure to help relieve her of the symptoms of cervical cancer, my mother was at the mercy of the Greek medical profession, which in the 1980s was probably best described as an abattoir with stethoscopes. Greeks would sell their kidney to travel abroad to the USA, Canada, England, Germany, or Austria to have a bone fracture mended, because relying on Greek doctors and surgeons to do anything better than a small animal veterinarian could in their first year of study at university, would be naïve and foolish. 

For some reason, my mother elected to go to a Greek hospital in Athens, to have the procedure for the cervical cancer. I was too young to have any influence on the decision, my mother was completely alienated from her family, and her partner was in full control of her money – the only money, as he was unashamedly unemployed and had a well-established system of living off my mother’s inherited wealth. 

I remember sitting outside in the garden. The sun, a drowsy lion, stretched across the sky, its golden mane tickling warmth onto my skin. It wasn't the sharp, biting heat of midday, but a soft, honeyed glow that made my eyelids heavy. I lay nestled amongst the pine trees, their vibrant needles whispering secrets to the gentle breeze, like tiny, rustling echoes of Orthodox prayers from the morning’s chapel service.

The air hummed, a low, constant drone, a symphony played by a million tiny musicians. Cicadas, hidden in the gnarled branches, pulsed their rhythmic song, a dry, hot rattle that seemed to vibrate with Earth’s heartbeat. Fat bumblebee, striped like miniature tigers, buzzed lazily in the lavender and wild chamomile, their fuzzy bodies emanating a warm, vibrating blur.

The scent of sunbaked earth and white-washed tree trunks, mingled with the sharp, herbal fragrance of wild oregano and thyme carried by the sea air flowing through the mountain passes carved and hewn by years of ancient conquest. It was a smell that clung to everything, a dry, dusty sweetness that filled my lungs and made me think of long, lazy afternoons and sun-warmed rocks. A goat, tethered to a nearby olive tree, bleated softly, a lonely, echoing sound that drifted through the stillness.

The world was a kaleidoscope of shimmering light and drowsy sound. I closed my eyes, the sun painting warm, red patterns on my eyelids. The gentle breeze created a soft, whispering lullaby. I felt a sense of peace, deep and profound, settled over me, like a warm, soft blanket. The world was beautiful, and I was perfectly, utterly content.

The phone rang and my mother’s partner eventually answered the call in frustration. I knew my mother had gone to the hospital and I was anticipating that she would call to say she could be collected again. My innocent mind assuming she was just going to go in, do something, and then come out again just as she’d entered. 

I also recall a sense of perplexion as to why we hadn’t all gone together and waited for her at the hospital. After all, that would have been the common sensical thing to do. Or so I thought. 

Suddenly, as he shouted my name from inside the house, I got the same cold chill of fear in anticipation of delayed pain. 

By the time I got inside, he was sat on the sofa, Dunhill cigarette resting nonchalantly like a cantilevered wand of character, filter clamped between his coffee stained incisors, a pair of shorts cut from Wrangler jeans faded in endless indulgence with the seams still pulsating their cobalt blue hue of pseudo-aristocratic deference, his unshaven face with bristles of hair that could have been substituted for a hard bristle yard broom, scraping all sensitivities aside like discarded softness, lines of discontent forming a bastion of self-indulgent imperialism from his oxygen thieving nostrils and around his torturous mouth, thick black shoulder length hair slicked back with recently applied cold tap water from the kitchen sink, glistening with reflections of conquered abandon in the shadows of masqueraded supremacy, a chest with a juvenile flare of hair connecting his toxic throat to his venomous groin, his hairy shins camouflaging scabs from his rough brushes with endless marijuana stems in the attic grow house, and robust feet – the toes thick and hairy at the knuckle, sturdy like a dreadnaught’s keel, producing a callused perfume familiar to the alerting of a week old abandoned carcass in the hot Savanna sun, certain to invite the circling vultures of deceit from the paint stained fingers on his vassal hands of the Philips Di Paola empire.

The tone was one of impending instruction. 5,000 drachmae were thrown at my feet, accompanied by a phone number torn off from an expired lottery ticket. I was to call the number and order a taxi to take me to the hospital and return with my mum. There wasn’t any sense of urgency. Just one of degrading disgust at the sight of me.

I ran. Money clenched in my hands. Cutting through the white dust of the football pitch, through the white goal posts with no nets, the shrill screams and spine chilling groans from the caged giants in the newly constructed insane asylum - a siren’s song - becoming fainter with every jump over the centenary flowering giant cacti, drawn ever closer to the cross-roads at the bottom of the mountain, flanked by the sweet smell of honeysuckle and the alluring sound of civilisation, punctuated by the timely shuffling of pronated feet wrapped in the sandals of residential laziness. 

Having reached the cross-roads, money still clenched in my hand as if denoting the difference between my mother’s return or my abandonment, I saw one of the grey provincial 1970s Mercedes 300 SEL 6.3 litre behemoths ambling towards me like a cargo freighter from the port town of Rafina. I waved him down, open the back door, grabbed the thick rope handle that extended from B-pillar to B-pillar across the length of the front bench seat, thrust the 5,000 drachmae into his hand, and asked him to take me to the hospital in Athens to collect my mother. 

As we drove the 35-mile journey, I recall kneeling in the back and looking out the window, with the breeze of responsibility coating my nostrils with a satisfaction my adolescent mind deemed only experienced by the act of becoming a respectable man. I was going to bring my mother home. My mother would finally see me as a man she could rely on. This was my time to shine. I could finally show her that no mountain, playing field, building, structure, road, or challenging public transportation could keep me from being accountable and dependable for her. In truth, this stage of the journey was truly enjoyable in its aspirational dreaminess.

We arrived at the hospital entrance and I asked the taxi driver to wait for me to return with my mother. I jumped out of the taxi and walked the length of the marble tiled entrance, flag poles glistening in the sun, and tattered flags offering forewarned premonitions of what I was about to encounter.

I asked everyone I could find in a hospital uniform to tell me how to find my mother. Each and every time, I was met with the same look of repugnance. Once again, I was reminded of my place in the world. I was black, a child, and asking of a name – a Greek name – undoubtedly and incomprehensibly unrelated to someone like me. So, it was down to me again to solve the conundrum of turning an obstacle into an opportunity. Little did I know at the time how much stoicism and Marcus Aurelius would one day help me understand what I had naturally developed for myself as a survival mechanism.

Eventually, in one of the corridors, strewn on the floor, in a hospital gown, and unconscious – I found my mother. She was laying there, unresponsive, pale in complexion, and almost unrecognisable to life. I kneeled down beside her and whispered her name quietly as if not wanting to shock her from her sleep. I couldn’t get a response. I tried kissing her forehead and stroking her cheek gently. Nothing. I lay down next to her, placed my head on her arm, pulled her other arm over me, and looked at her face hoping she’d wake up from her slumber. I was 8 years old. I didn’t understand what surgery, anaesthetic, or hospitals were supposed to be like. In many ways, she just looked so peaceful. Like she was resting. She wasn’t frowning, or crying, or scared. She was just resting. I didn’t want to change that. I knew that it was only a matter of hours again before she would be frowning, crying, or scared. I decided to take hold of her wrists over her head and drag her towards the elevator and onto the taxi. 

I don’t remember much of the detail of the hospital whilst dragging my mother through corridors and elevators, but I distinctly remember the bright red hip-wide trail of blood that left an indelible stain on my innocence. 

Aged 8, I dragged my mother, haemorrhaging after a failed surgical procedure, across hospital corridors and into elevators, passed doctors, nurses, and security guards, and nobody once intervened to help my mother. A receptionist ran after me as I reached the taxi outside and handed the taxi driver a huge brown manila envelope. I must have crossed paths with at least a dozen pedestrians, all of whom simply went about their day, unphased by the little black boy, dragging a blonde-haired-blue-eyed woman in a blood saturated hospital gown, staining the marble tiles with the remnants of humanity juxtaposed by the sheer ferocity of consequential survival. 

Ultimately, my mother’s procedure went horribly wrong. The consultant surgeon butchered her cervix in such a way, that she could never have children again. Worst yet, it was the beginning of the three-decade long road leading to her death, as the once contained cancer, over time gradually metastasized and erased her from the inside out as her world imploded from the outside in.  

For me, these experiences are nothing compared to being invisible. I always felt like it was my job to find out who I was meant to be for my mother to see me. I became her best friend. From the age of 6, I knew how to plant, grow, harvest, dry, preserve, and roll marijuana into cigarettes for her to smoke – morning, noon, and night. Never a day missed. Earlier I spoke about my morning routine to school. What I didn’t mention was all the stuff that happened in between, such as making sure my mother and her partner had all the drugs they needed to smoke. Whenever I smell it now, I feel sick to my stomach.

I learned to drive when I was 6. I was taught to drive by my mother’s partner so that I could drive the car to the shop and get their cigarettes, groceries et al. This was Greece in the 80s. In towns outside Athens, the police knew everybody and as long as you were running errands for adults, children driving was turned a blind eye. This was normal. This was Greece.

Fast-forward to a time after Swiss boarding school and freshly graduated from Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Commandos, during a maritime NATO exercise, I managed to convince the ship’s Captain to permit me to stow my number one dress uniform affectionately called ‘The Blues’, so that when we got shore leave on the Greek island of Crete, I could buy a domestic flight to Athens, get a taxi to Rafina, and surprise my mother, standing tall in my Blues, in the hope that she would look upon me with pride and joy – finally to be seen again since the age of 4. 

I made it to the front gate of the house. Her partner heard the dogs barking and came outside to see what the commotion was about. I asked if he could get my mother. She came out onto the terraced steps and gazed down at me almost longingly from a cage. I reached through the gate and opened it. I asked her partner to send the dogs to the gated garden so that they wouldn’t mess up my parade uniform. After reassuring me that he had, I entered the driveway. As I reached half way, he opened the small garden gate, and 6 dogs came rushing out, jumped all over me, and covered me in mud, dog faeces from their paws, foamy slobber, and an ungodly stench of wet dog hair.

The same dogs that caused endless hours of being locked in a basement, bathed in the stench of boiling bones and marrow. The one's I'd managed to escape when I was 10. They left one more stain. One more time. At my one moment when I intended to show my mother that I'd finally become a man she could rely on. For a split second - majestic in my Blues. But now - forever seared in her memory - an unsightly mess draped in wool.

I stood there in pure anger and all that was going through my mind was every which way I was going to make him pay and suffer for the decades of life he robbed from me and my mother. But above all, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. So, I decided – in my brief interlude of dumbfounded silence – that I would laugh it off and walk towards my mother for us to embrace. Before I had a chance to take one step, he held his hand out like a traffic warden instructing a stop, turned to my mother, placed his hand in a menacing grip behind her neck, and said; “Now is the time to decide. Either he goes and I stay, or I say goodbye for ever.”

I’ll never forget the look on her face. I’ll never forget how scared I was for her. I’ll never forget that all I knew at that moment was that she would pay a price whichever way she chose. Even though I knew what she would do, as a captive victim of torment and drug dependency, and I was aware of the fear of my only nemesis – despite now towering over him and a trained killing machine – reverting me with a glare into the 6-year-old I tried to leave behind, it too left an indelible stain of abandonment the moment she quietly pressed her lips, turned away, and went back in the house without looking back. 

The last memory I have of that moment was the sweet and distinctive smell of Channel No.5 and Vetiver that she always wore.

In this excerpt of my timeline, there was life before 6, then a 30-year reign of trauma, and then there is life after 36.