A Guest Post by LEANNE TERVIT –
I was born and raised in Woodmill Abbeyview, Dunfermline. I lived with my mum, gran and Di in the same house. My Di was an addict. He was an alcoholic. Despite this he was the best Di ever. Up at 6am sharp every morning. He would wake me up for school and my clothes would be on the fireguard warming up, my shoes polished and sitting under the fire; my toast and tea would be getting made.
I can’t remember my Di ever raising his voice to me but boy did we argue. Although we were always told to stop arguing but we called it debating. He taught me to voice my opinion, stand up for myself, and debate my truth. I’m 100% sure he would tell me things that were plain wrong just to get me debating with him.
I loved him with all my heart, and he was an addict. He was an addict well before I was born and drink money was prioritised. I noticed how my mum and gran would never leave their handbags around. They even took them to bed.
I saw him drink my whole life till he died. He never got help. Never looked for it although I don’t think there was help back then. There still isn’t nearly enough help. I’ve known addicts all my life. Alcohol and drugs. My nephew died of a drugs overdose in his 20’s. I held his swollen hand when he was on life support knowing that he was gone. He also grew up in a deprived area in poverty.
I was born in April 73 and my cousin Steven was born in September 74. Steven’s big brothers were a fair bit older than us, and as we lived just doors apart we grew up like brother and sister. In many ways I was closer to Steven than his brothers as we were closer in age.
We did everything together. Went swimming, played down the burn on the rope swing that the police always cut down before it was put back up again the next day. Played team chase and skipped the gardens. Went to the Glen all day with a piece and a bottle of diluting juice. We went to what we called the strike centre, run by the church during the strikes. We went on holiday together abroad and at Butlins. Joined karate together. We did everything together.
As teenagers we got up to all sorts. We lived in a deprived area and drinking outside at weekends with yer pals was normal.
I then had my son at 17 years old and while we didn’t spend so much time together we still seen each other often and spoke often.
I was 19 and pregnant with my daughter when it happened.
It all started with a young lad in the area hanging himself in police custody. He wasn’t searched properly and they left him in the cells with his belt.
It all kicked off in Abbeyview due to the young lads being understandably distraught at losing their pal in this way. Arrests were made and Steven was one of them.
Steven appeared in court and then hung himself not long after being released.
I remember my mum phoning me telling me to leave my son with his other gran and come to my Auntie Kate’s. I knew something bad had happened but I’d never in a million years imagined it was this.
When I walked into her house and was told Steven was dead it was like everything was collapsing around me. I couldn’t get my head round anything. The following days were spent with my family in a blur.
Steven was brought home in a coffin and I was asked to fix his hair before his pals came to see him.
The funeral was heartbreaking, all his pals were there, the place was full to bursting.
Life changed after that. It changed us all. How can it not?
I’m not alone though, we are not the only family in our area to lose someone to suicide. There’s plenty. Plenty families changed forever. It’s traumatic. It’s devastating. You don’t ever get over it. It affects how you act. How you live your life from then on.
Then you hear of the next one. And the next. And you know what they go through. And it brings your own grief back front and centre.
We know what to say though as we have been there. We talk about them. Say their name. Pull up the memories. Give the support.
Understanding what they’re going through.
And its still going on in our areas. Only now its not so much my age group commiting suicide – it’s folk my son and daughter’s age. Mainly young lads.
Like I said earlier I’ll never know why Steven hung himself, but I know of many like him and all are from the council estates.
And it’s still happening.
Poverty kills in many ways.
And it leaves families changed forever.
So when I see headlines from Governments saying they’ve “lifted thousands out of poverty” I get angry. Throwing a few extra quid does not lift people from poverty.
Poverty isn’t being skint.
It’s unsuitable housing. It’s living in shitty flats where you can’t dry your clothes and the water runs down the walls.
It’s mental health problems. It’s where you can get painkillers quicker from a dealer than waiting on a GP.
It’s crime. It’s violence. It’s where they put paedophiles when they get kicked out their previous council estate.
It’s getting stuff on tick and still paying for it long after it’s broken.
It’s paying more for the food shop as you can’t buy in bulk.
It’s where people are suspicious of authority because those in authority have made things worse.
It’s finding it hard to get work because you’ve spent time in jail.
It’s where there’s bairns who can’t join a sports club or go a holiday.
It’s the hoops you have to jump through to get benefits.
It’s kids in care and adults who have come from care.
It’s the stigma. The shame.
It’s where single folk with nothing but a broken couch and a pint of milk in the fridge live.
It’s where the steps and paths are a mess.
Its where disabled people are stuck in flats two flights up.
It’s depression. It’s fear. It’s stress. It’s lacking in hope and opportunities.
It’s suicides and it’s overdoses and addictions and losing friends and family all your life.
It’s going to take more than chucking a few quid at them to fix.
My heart goes out to Leanne and those whose life chances are so diminished by the poverty she so well describes. Who cannot see that independence for Scotland is the only way we’re going to change this desperately horrible situation for our citizens. And the sooner the better.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a more honest piece of writing, Leanne. Time for those in power to do something truly constructive.
An amazingly powerful post, my best pal, Stevie also, committed suicide. I remember his brother stopping his car and his face as he got out and approached. Stevie was a joker, a guid laugh until he fell in love with the wrong girl, thought he could save her from the heroine but only managed to get hooked himself. Stevie came fae Clackmannanshire and ripped the pish out of me being a stingie Fifer. I was a lapsed Catholic and he was from the flute band, king Billy tattoos and all, but we became best mates and he became embarrassed about his tattoos. He was a lovely guy, who’d been taught to hate, but had seen the lies. He became an addict and lost everything, his personality, his soul. The last time I saw him he’d just been released from prison, the man I spoke to was jacked, well muscled and fit from regular exercise, but his eyes were dead. He was found not many days later, hanging from the loft, his baccy tin and lighter laying where he’d rolled his last before the drop. My guess is that he knew he couldn’t break the cycle and the memory of his actions were too painful. RIP Stevie ma pal.
That was some read for a Sunday morning and every word shone out as truth.
I would only add that the three young lads I have known came not from deprived backgrounds but middle class ones , yet still death seemed preferable to life.
Our prison system isn’t there to reform or help in any way, its purpose is to further crush and dehumanize people who mostly come from brutal backgrounds.
This is probably the most powerful piece I’ve ever read on the definition of poverty. The pain is palpable.
Every political party should make their PPE Oxbridge graduates read this so they too can understand the reality of poverty.
Every political party should work hard to give people like Leanne Tervit a platform. We can learn so much more from her than any First Class Honours student who is elevated into politics with no real lived experiences to offer other than their own white privilege.
This is as a direct result of the Betrayal in spades we had with our politicians firstly by so called Scottish Labour and now their clone the British SNP, colonial administration, the pretend independence party. Aberdeen a city that Billions of pounds of oil flowed through is like a ghetto of despair. Dunfermline full of deprivation, Paisley what can you say, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh it’s the same everywhere you go in our oppressed colonised Nation which is disintegrating about us. The Union has exploited and milked us into the third world status. The colonial masters have impoverished us by design, when you are looking for where the next meal is coming from you dont have time to think about your liberty and freedom. Our right to Democracy is denied by the so called self appointed mother of all parliament’s, our political parties infiltrated by the Security services, we are to big a cash cow for the British elites to let go.
We need a real political champion a peoples movement AUOB ,Scotland United for independence to end this Zombie, corupt, rotten to the core, coercive Union. We need to stand candidates at the next election AUOB to end this abomination of Union once and for all.
“The Union has exploited and milked us into the third world status.”
Yes Alastair, postcolonial theory tells us that, in a colonial society, the level of poverty endured and the under-development of the nation and its people is a consequence of and equivalent to the economic plunder of a colonised territory. Which means that Scotland will never be rid of poverty and under-development until colonialism, which is a crime, is ended.
In the recent SNP leadership election both Yousaf and Forbes said their top priority was to rid Scotland of poverty. To achieve that aim they and all national party leaders and representatives will first have to understand and acknowledge Scotland’s ‘colonial condition’, and that independence means decolonization:
https://salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
I’m sending this to MPs & MSPs. It should be required reading for the Civil Servants too. In fact if everyone sent this on and bombarded our so-called representatives in Westminster and Holyrood, they might get the message.
Thanks Leanne, I feel it in my bones.
Standing in the queue for my free school meal and handing the blue ticket to the woman at the door when everyone else had a pink ticket. The smirks then the taunting.
Coming back to school after the holidays wearing my jumble sale clothes and shoes which were obviously NOT new. One year they were new but I was mocked anyway.
Not having the 20p to pay for the ingredients in the recipe in home economics class.
Not being able to go on trips with your schoolmates because there was no money to pay for them.
Sniffing glue was my escape. If I had been born 10 years later, it would have been the heroin which flooded my small NE fishing town in the late 80’s.
Now, sitting in Govan, almost confined to my home due to long-term illness it’s with me again. The jumping through hoops for ESA, the lack of life choices, the depression, the crap diet and on and on.
At 60, it’s too late for me but what our young folk need is a country which can make its own decisions. We have the resources, we just need control of them and to use them for the greater good. I hope I’m still alive to see it happen. That would be my fondest wish.
I’m 60 and by goodness I’m determined it’s not too late for us. Keep your chin up.
Thanks Eva, it’s a sair fecht but I’m trying my best not to allow the current political circumstances to get under my skin.
Everything you say here is bang on. And the long lasting effects never leave you. Its generation after generation after generation and its so so hard to break the cycle. I moved out my scheme only 5 years ago, but all my pals are there and my family and its those folk who are still suffering and dying. You can never truly escape the effects of poverty.
Its in you. Its your whole life experience. I hope you can get well pal. 60 ain’t old so keep on fighting. And aye the benefits system is worse than its ever been. Ill be back applying for carers allowance soon and I know the hassle to expect. Take care pal.
Thanks Leanne. It changes your brain chemistry, I’m sure. The constant fear of having empty cupboards so when you can you buy one for yourself and another ‘for the cupboard’. The packratting because I can’t bear to throw anything away – it might come in useful ‘one day’. Denying myself a sit doon in a wee cafe with a pot of tea because ‘it’s a waste of money’. It’s like I’ve become hardwired to reject the little pleasures which make life tolerable.
Thanks again for your kind words and experiences.
Hi Leanne – I grew up not that far from you. Had relatives who stayed in your neck of the woods. Wardlaw Crescent for a starter. I was a few villages along the road from you. Heading more towards Neale Hanvey Territory to be a bit more precise. I still support the Pars. Yes I get sickened at the super rich getting tax breaks whilst hard working families struggle to put food on the table. I also have attended a couple of wee Alba book events. Can’t deny AS is giving them his all to get that elusive Scottish Independence. Keep up the good work. it’s great to have folk like you in our corner.