In the spring of 1977, somewhere off the radar and beneath the surface, a submarine waited in dry dock. My story started nearby.
My dad was one of the crew. A stoker.
Which sounds coal-dust romantic, but really meant he spent his time fiddling with a nuclear reactor’s insides while trying not to die of radiation exposure.
My mum, meanwhile, was a Scottish teen runaway with two disabled children and a world of red flags wrapped in trauma. She’d fled her home and somehow also washed up in the same town as my dad. Because apparently, the universe loves a cruel punchline.
Their mutual friends set them up on a blind date. My mum said she was on the pill.
She got pregnant.
He married her.
They barely liked each other.
Reader, the vibes were not immaculate.
Not exactly a rom-com origin story, is it?
Two very young, very unsupported people.
One with the pressure cooker of disabled parenting and poverty.
One in uniform, pretending nuclear stress didn’t exist.
What could possibly go wrong?
Now, I could tell you everything about how toxic they both were.
How living with them was like surviving a Cold War in black mould ridden local authority housing, with every argument a depth charge of unknown destruction levels.
But today?
I’m choosing to give them one small bouquet each.
💔 My Mum
She taught me to read and write before I ever walked into a classroom.
And let’s be honest—doing that while managing two disabled kids, poverty, and her own emotional wreckage?
That took real f*cking dedication.
She could’ve just parked me in front of a telly. She didn’t.
That one gift?
It’s why I can even write this.
It’s how I got out.
It’s how I became.
💔 My Dad
Sundays were for polishing shoes. Military-style. Methodical. Silent. I sat with him and watched the way he worked leather into gloss and calm. If something broke, he’d let me fix it. Quietly.
Eventually, I became the household fixer. If something snapped, I’d sneak his tools, repair it, and fade back into invisibility. My mother always thanked him.
He never corrected her.
I didn’t mind.
I was a secret repair ninja, and that suited me just fine.
🖤 So What’s the Point?
I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t one.
Maybe this is just my version of polishing shoes—trying to find the shine in something cracked and unrecognisable.
But maybe it’s also this:
We don’t always come from love.
Sometimes we come from chaos, from obligation, from nuclear f*cking submarines and awkward Sunday silences.
And still—we grow.
Quietly.
Stubbornly.
Like weeds through concrete.
I didn’t bloom in sunlight.
I grew in shadow. In silence. In spite.
Throw dirt on me—and watch me grow wilder.
That last line was inspired by 🎧 “No Love” by Eminem – because some of us grow best in the dirt.
