So, I think not being able to communicate or even talk about how I felt afterwards and and I'll give you a story as well. There was um a really good family friend of ours um God restless her name is Dolores. She she died last year.
Um she was a great influence in my life. I want to say that like um in fact she's she's she's responsible for some of the phrases that I say to this day. Uh, I'll get on to that in a minute.
But, um, I remember she was driving past me one day and she said she saw me with my head down. I might have been going to school or whatever. She said that she saw me.
I was walking. I had my head down. And she said she didn't stop.
She just watched me. And she was like, "Yeah, he's going going through it. " When I look back and hearing that in hindsight, I'm like, no one intervened.
No one asked me, "Am I all right? " Uh, how do I feel? Um, what do you feel?
There was no afterare. There was nothing. It's just get on with it.
And I think that was really detrimental in terms of mourning, uh, starting the morning process, um, grieving and just general welfare, right, of a young a young a young black guy, a young black a young black boy. Yes, I was academic. Yes, I was of a certain in intellect.
And I think that was taken for granted by my family. Um, I've always been more mature uh at at that stage. I'd always been more mature than um I looked.
So, I kind of automatically was given that role. Just get on with it. Do you know what I mean?
I was, "Oh, it's King. He's all right. He's all right.
He can handle it. " So yes, I could handle it but the other areas start to you know uh be affected. So I I did my GCSEs and I remember one of the teachers was um head of the maths department.
Her name was Miss Brady and she said to me, she pulled me to one sign after class. She said, "King, now we are aware of what's happened in your family. Would you like us to take this into consideration for your GCSEs?
" I said, "Absolutely not. There was no way I'm going to let you use that as an excuse because number one, my dad wouldn't allow me to. " And even when I look back now and saying that to myself that at saying that at that age 14 15 the strength to say that with conviction and not really really even understanding why I'm saying it because it's it built in you to just get on with things and maybe it's cultural maybe it's you know traditional I don't know it's just built in you just get on with it don't use these things as an excuse blah blah blah blah blah when I look back now I'm like [ __ ] it.
How did I even How did I even take How did I even formalize that? How did I even take that on board to verbalize that? What do you think it was?
Um, I think it probably was my defense part part of it is my defense mechanism. Um, yes, I know what's going on. I don't really understand it, so I don't really want to talk about it.
Does that make sense? It's just like, yep, cool. Skip over it next.
All right. And I think that coupled with you're the man in the house. All of that stuff, it's compound.
All of that compounds. So you don't know what to do with that. You're just like, "All right, let me not deal with it cuz I'm not dealing with all this other [ __ ] So I can't deal with that.
So just skip over it. " So I did my GCSEs and I remember the the day I got my results came in the post and I got two A's, three B's and four C's. I was devastated.
I I remember opening the letter. My mom was standing there. It was a beautiful sunny morning and a letter came and I was anticipating it and I was excited and I opened it.
My mom was standing next to me and I told her the results and she was like, "God, your dad would be really proud. " In my head, I was like, "Yeah, but I could have done I could have done a lot better. " So yes, academics did fail.
Not fail. Academics were affected by what had happened. But at the time, I didn't just got on with it.
