A crisis can cause a crack that lets us out!
I noticed a friend on Facebook posted as if Facebook was around 31 years ago when we got our O Level results. He just scraped through to do his A Levels. He, despite his results, went on to succeed in his chosen field. The point he was trying to make to current day 16-year-olds receiving GCSEs was, ‘Don’t be defined by your grades.”
Yesterday, I mentioned those ghosts that keep appearing as I revisit youth albeit as a parent observing Cee’s. So, as I looked back down the corridor of my timeline I could that I was not even at home when the results came out. Earlier that summer, I had taken the ferry to the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland.
I was a troubled 16 -year-old as I headed towards my 17th birthday. I wanted to escape from a world in which I felt imprisoned. Just before my exams in June, I walked a few miles thinking just by walking I would enter a new world. I called with a few friends along the way and also bumped into an acquaintance who persuaded me it would be best to do my exams and see what happened. It was an ill fated attempt to walk away but it birthed a seed that then waited for an opportunity.
I did the exams though I was preoccupied with the political tension on the streets. It was a difficult July with political fall outs causing animosity within my community. There were many reasons to leave and out of nowhere an opportunity came to leave for the Isle of Man. I took it and the £120 I had in Nationwide account. I bought a suitcase, a ticket and sailed the next day.
The generosity of strangers kept me afloat until I found a job waiting on tables at one the island’s many tourist hotels. I worked 7 days a week until the time came for me to find out those results and then decide whether I would sail on to England or return home.
I got 4 grade Cs out of my 9 subjects. Not good enough to do A Levels but enough to go to a local college and do Business Studies. I was surprised that I had an option that I hadn’t considered and thankful that I had heeded the advice of friends to do the exams.
I returned home. The situation that I had left hasn’t particularly changed but the experiences I had along the way had changed something in me.
Difficulties remained yet what seemed a crisis at the time created a shift in thinking that cracked the shell, let the light in and me, albeit slowly, out.
g.
