33 YEARS ON.

I remember 33 years ago, today, it was overcast, and my parents had bought a caravan four months earlier, and while I was washing my parents’ Ford Maverick (a rebadged Nissan Patrol) a man arrived to measure for an annexe for the caravan. He greeted me and I returned the greeting and told him that yesterday had been the last day of my school life forever. “Was it?” he replied.

I was never really interested in caravanning and camping, but if I had my time again, I would have liked to have asked my parents if they could have towed the caravan up to the Sunshine Coast for me and let me stay there for a week or two by myself. When other kids were down at Schoolies Week becoming drunk, or others were beginning jobs or the search for them, I knew that I was in burnout, even though I had to go to Queensland Transport and obtain the handbook to obtain my learner’s permit, as two months from then I could obtain that.

I had given school everything and striven for every mark that I could get, and I needed time to recharge, and more time than I had allowed myself credit for. I also lost some of the skills and my mother became angry with me telling me that I was “a typical academic.” Yes, I was a typical academic, but a typical academic in burnout.

Unlike some of my contemporaries, I was unable to obtain my licence in Year 12, as I had started school early, and you had to be 17 to obtain your learner’s permit. I remember a colleague lost his licence for drag-racing on a suburban street.

33 years on, I am in a better place. I understand the complexities of PTSD. I also have an autism diagnosis. After little shits at school saying that they wished I was dead, I am glad that I’m still alive.