September 11th. It is a very haunting day. On the other side of the pond, almost 3,000 people lost their lives. It was a horrible tragedy. But I have my own on this date.
Three years ago, I still lived with my biological father. At this point of time, we didn’t get along. And I hated him, and still do.
You’re probably asking yourself why am I posting this sort of story on my blog about my Keratoconus. Well I can say once I explain the story, it will make some sense (hopefully).
11th September 2012. 2012 was a pretty rough year for me. I failed most of my GCSEs, my family was ripped apart and I was going through one of the most horrible phases I have ever had to experience. I wouldn’t wish that sort of experience on anyone.
It was the evening. I just came home from a local college that I just started to study Music Technology. I loved it. The problem was that they (the college) said to me that on the Thursday, I didn’t need to turn up because it was teacher training day. So I had a day off. Woo! But this is where it gets a bit complicated.
During my last year of Upper School, I used to skip quite a lot of days. I was under a lot of pressure, and now realise, I was also suffering from depression due to the upbringing I had. Most kids would resort to drugs and alcohol to solve this problem. But mine was just staying at home, and being with the ones I loved. But, because of the majority of my family moved out, I was always on my own. Not their fault, but mine. The house I lived in, I was born in it. I had an attachment to it. I lived there for 16 years and couldn’t see myself living anywhere else. So moving with my family to the other side of town was a no. And I feel stupid for not moving with them.
Back to the school thing, I used to skip a lot of school. To the point, I actually just didn’t turn up. But because my school were so advanced, every time I didn’t turn up, my parents would receive a text saying I wasn’t in and they wanted to know why. My biological father never confronted me about this until this day. But by the time he did, I had already left that school and basically snapped out of the need to skip everything. Education was very important to me, and I wasn’t going to waste it this time.
I tell my parents about the teacher training day. My mum says that cool. My biological father on the other hand, dismissed it and claimed I was lying. This really annoyed me. Really bothered me. I just couldn’t understand why my own father wouldn’t believe me. That was the only lie I ever told to him. And that was I never went to school because of everything I was dealing with.
Back to the evening, I come home after my family drop me off at the old house I used to live in, and my biological dad comes back from work (I think). I confront him about the situation. ‘Why don’t you believe me about the (colleges) teacher training day? You can call them yourself if you must’ as I’m in the kitchen, putting a curry in the microwave (anglo indian and proud by the way), while he’s in the toilet doing something which I won’t mention on this blog.
He finishes up and then comes towards the kitchen door. We start shouting at each other. The first thing you should know about me is that I hate fighting. I’m a lover not a fighter. So, as a way to stop this argument, I proceeded to tell him that i was going to shut the door, and end the argument there and then. But one thing about my biological dad is that he always wanted the last word. Even if it meant causing such an uproar.
I slammed the door. I could tell on his expression through the glass door that he wasn’t pleased. And he was angry. I then started feeling force coming from the door. I noticed it was him trying to push his way through.
After about 30 seconds of pushing and shovelling this door, he eventually wins and grabs a hold of me. And I grab him back. We have a bit of a pushing session. Then suddenly, he pushes me up against the hallway wall and then felt two sudden out of the blue blunt forces to my face. He didn’t punch me, he smacked me. Now you may be giggling and going ‘its going a smack’ but you have to take in account that he is 6 foot 2 and over 20 stone. Getting smacked by a big bloke feels like as if you’re being punched.
I felt sick and shocked. My biological father hasn’t hit me this hard since I was a kid. I was 16 and I thought that he still wouldn’t have the need to use such violence.
We were still struggling and the only way I could get him off me was if I ripped his shirt. I did the act, and he got upset by it, and freed me. I went immediately to my BlackBerry mobile phone and shouted ‘I’m ringing the fucking police!!!’
Months before this fight occurred, my grandma always used to tell me ‘If he ever does anything to you, ring the police!’ I would always reply ‘Don’t worry grandma, he wouldn’t do anything to me’ But boy, was I wrong.
‘GO ON THEN!’ my dad shouts as I’m dialling 999. He obviously thinks I won’t do it. He obviously thinks that I’m too scared to do so. But the moment he heard ‘999 whats your emergency?’ he facial expression went blank. He realised he was about to be in a lot of trouble. For some reason, he starts rummaging through stuff while going ‘where’s my charger?’ I could tell that he was fearful. Maybe he was scared that he was going to be arrested.
I tell the lady on the phone what had happened and that I wanted police to come around asap, and they came within 5 minutes.
There was a knock at the door, my biological father proceeds to open the door, and a policeman walks in the house, looking confused as to the surroundings (we had quite a messy house).
The policemen then instructs me to go back into the kitchen and then ask my dad to go to another room while I told the guy my side of the story. And as you know, I hate lying. I told him everything within a minute. I told him that we had an argument, I slammed the door and there was a fight, he hit me, and I ripped his shirt to get him off me. Very basic but very much self explanatory. The policemen then says ‘okay, I want you to stay in the kitchen while I talk to your father about his side of the story. This is when the bullshit happens.
My dad lied through his teeth to the police officer. I was listening through the walls, and he claimed that I went into the toilet room and was trying to wind him u[, apparently slapping a laptop out of his hand and apparently I choreographed this event just so I had an excuse to move out. This really upset me. I was the only giving a bollocking for lying about not missing school, and here he was, lying right in front of a police officer.
The officer comes back into the kitchen, and says that my father tells him that I assaulted him as well and that he wanted me arrested. I had never been so shocked in my life. A father wanting his son arrested for something he didn’t do, and which didn’t even take place.
There was a few moments of silence while I try and think about what I was just hearing before the policemen says ‘have you got anywhere to stay tonight?’ I say yes and I’d be moving in with my mum anyway after this. My mum and sister took tablets so they had a good night sleep due to the mental problems they were suffering. It took me around 10 times to try ring my mum. Nothing. Rung my sister around the same amount and eventually got through and explained to her what happened. She was worried and rightly scared. But I assured her I was alright and would be taken into a police car to be escorted to my mums house.
This was the first time i ever went in a police car, and luckily it wasn’t because I wasn’t being arrested. I literally walked out of that house with bags and bags of all my life.
10-20 minutes later and I arrived at my mums, she says thanks to the officers for driving me there, and welcomed me in. I was quiet that night. I still found it hard to comprehend what had happened.
The left side of my face was burning after the smacks I got from my dad. I didn’t cry, I didn’t react to the force. I just stood their quiet, not knowing what to do. And that was the night I moved out.
The reason why this story is related to my keratoconus is that after that night, I started experiencing black outs, nose bleeds and extremely painful headaches. I thought I was going mad. I then started noticing that the vision in my left eye was going. And I was too scared to tell anyone about it, so it went unnoticed for two years.
Finally, I had the courage to go to Specsavers and tell them the problem in my eyes. Took well over a hour to see what the problem was. The optician then started asking me weird questions and one of them was ‘Has someone punched you recently?’ I explained to him (the optician) about the night me and my father had a fight. You could tell that he knew what had happened.
He told me that I had Keratoconus, and my left was in the very advanced stage where it would probably need a transplant to even get my eyesight back. He also then started explaining that the smacks I took that night obviously dislodged the lens in my eye, and thus starting off the Keratoconus.
I have asked many other eye specialists about the possibility of receiving those kind of traumas near the eye starting my Keratoconus, and they said that they couldn’t be 100% sure, but said that it seems it.
So here I am, its 2015. And I’m awaiting a transplant in just over a month for something that could of been stopped. My life would of been completely different if my father had just walked away from the door, not having the need to have the last word. But no, because of his decisions, his son is blind in one eye. And I’m having to pay the consequences.
And that’s why I will have a lifetime full of hate and anger towards my biological father, because he didn’t think carefully enough about it and decided to basically beat his son up to the point that he’s lost sight in one eye.
But you know what. That’s okay. Because he’s just lost the only son he had, and his only son now hates him. I’m better off without him.
But he did me a favour, he gave the best ever reason to change my name, and I did. I’m no longer Oliver Mills. I’m Ollie Storey. And I’m happy to be like that. Because Mills is a shitty last name anyway.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me, you’re the ones who deserve all the credit.
Ollie x