Autobiography is an unpleasant thing to write, I'd by far rather someone else were here to write about my life, but there is no one, and such things are (even if only mildly) interesting to a reader, so here goes.
At the time of writing I am twenty-four years old. I was born at the end of November, on a Sunday although I have never seen any evidence that I am "bonny and blithe and good and gay" so I think I have disproved the old rhyme. This was never a good time of year to be born: I remember a friend of mine when I was a child had a birthday party where we hunted for clues in a vast treasure hunt all around our town. It was wonderful, lots of excited children playing in the sun. Come November the weather is too cold and too many amusements are shut until the tourist season begins for it to be a good time for a party. Still we cannot choose when we are born.
I grew up in a seaside town in England, and grew up speaking a variant form of English rather than the Standard I now speak. Sadly, schools being as they are I was taught not to speak that way, leaving me divorced from my first tongue even though I can still read it and, incidentally, also read older forms of English with ease.
I taught myself to read as a small child; seeing my parents' enjoyment of books encouraged me to begin to read myself. I spent most of my childhood reading, and writing my own came naturally from this. School encouraged me to write, and especially to write poetry as well as encouraging me to act - I remember writing a play of Beowulf with my schoolmates when I was eight, and a comedy in French when I was a little older. That is not to say that these things were good, but we were encouraged to write for pleasure by all our teachers at school.
We sang a great many hymns at school, and I grew to love some of their phrasings. Aside from a few notably awful hymns ("Glad That I Live Am I" springs to mind) I enjoyed the hymns, even though I sadly have a voice like a cat being tortured. My favourite hymns are "Hills of the North, Rejoice", and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."
I progressed well through school, my best subject being English, though I did not do badly at any, and was not terrible at any subject, certainly not so much as I believed. I decided when the time came to specialise in Arts subjects (though it was with something of a pang that I left physics behind), and A-level English gave me the delightful opportunity to read Chaucer in Middle English, something I found to be easy to understand and a great deal more vital than our present form of the language. When I went to university I elected to study theology and the growing obsession and understanding of that subject led to some of my present conflicts. Of which more in its proper place. I enjoyed my degree and earned a good class when I left. My time at university was not wholly happy, however, as I became plagued with depression and...other things which resulted in my being diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder (manic-depression), and it was during this time that I began self-injuring. It took a year for the illness to run its course and then I had two years of unemployment after graduation. I found myself with some difficulties as my qualifications were looked upon with some suspicion by employers and I could not enter the church due to my unstable faith and the illness I shall now have for life. I decided to retrain and studied physics and biology at night, gaining my certificate in July. During the day I attended various sessions for the long-term unemployed which merely seemed an excuse for others to make money out of us and I witnessed a great deal of discrimination based on class, education and race which was blatant. It was not I who was discriminated against, and those who were remained largely unable to do anything about it for they had not had the training in politics which I was fortunate enough to have had.
I was one of the lucky ones: I got and still have a job. Not a good one - minimum-wage waiting and bar work that leaves me feeling brain dead, poor and without any time to call my own. I spend most of my time working and sleeping, and keeping a constant watch on my health, which has started to destabilise slightly in recent weeks. I go back to university this month and will eventually work in healthcare though I am increasingly uneasy about the effect of my illness on my employment and the feeling that I have given up a great deal through the accident of falling ill.
Mine is not likely to be a story with a particularly happy ending, but my hope is that my story will not end with suicide or incarceration: if I cannot have a good ending I can hope for a "just okay" one. This website contains my interests and obsessions, my world in microcosm; I hope you like it.
Dubhóc MacEògainn, September 2005
© Dubhóc MacEògainn, 2005. Images used from Aon-Celtic Art, gratefully acknowledged.
