MY LOST TODDLERHOOD

I graduated from City Polytechnic with an upper‑second in 1986. I almost failed due to my dire dissertation. I returned home, signed on the dole, and became housebound. The cottage was ablaze with rows. Dad was unwell again, and months of painting for a local exhibition left me exhausted. Something inside me snapped. The catalyst was a slighting remark over my life plans, but the real cause had been building up for years. My book, Mirror Image Shattered explains: " That night, when I went to bed, I shivered. Not with cold, but fear. I pulled the covers over myself and felt my personality disintegrate. A black void surged like a vortex in my head, dragging me to childhood: intrusive thoughts, terror of the dark, the feeling of being consumed by something nameless ". I spurned the characters of my stories that had lived inside me for years. My secret novel I had toiled over for months on end felt laughable, stupid. My degree felt worthless. I imagined myself; a pathetic sad‑c...

I do not hear voices. I do not hallucinate. I do not act under imagined forces. Every consultation I’ve had has confirmed the same. I am not schizophrenic, bipolar, nor suffering from a neurological condition. I am rational, grounded, independent, and capable of living a normal life. And yet, something inside me was… wrong . My inner world grew stronger than my outer one. It felt fuelled by another self — a person I felt ashamed to claim as my own. I told myself he was nothing but a fantasy, an imaginary character like any child might invent. A childhood familiar. He was a man. And he would shape decades of my life. Birth of a Shadow Identity The earliest version of this man was grotesque. I imagined him with acromegaly — overgrown bones, pockmarks, a bleak scowl, a stutter, learning difficulties. He lived in a dead‑end town, misunderstood and doomed. I didn’t know where these horrible notions came from. They felt objectionable, intrusive, and familiar. My plotlines consist of tortured...