Working as a senior lecturer at Christ Church University is a pleasure and a blessing at this time of social unease and disease. I am sat at the computer about to start talking one of my languages. The language of the parent teacher – homeschool novice an imposter but always trying my best.

This Imposter is a common theme as we progress we try new environments these new environments take awareness and navigation. We gain an insight into the environment and get our bearings. Then slowly we build the language needed within the environment. The professional or institutional language.

The problem I had without knowing it was the trauma of childhood education. The sounds that resounded in my subconscious were, this child is pleasant and eager but disruptive, challenging, overly chatty and is going to struggle academically. So there begins the prophesy for the Borderline SEN Child.

I had this Black dog and the other Spector of painful time. Time as a construct to me was physically and psychologically painful. Why? Because as a child I waited at a window for an absent father who would often forget the commitments he had made in favour of something more valuable.

I don’t want you to pity this child as in this space of coming to an awareness of self they learnt a number of social lessons. That being manipulation, deception, theft and self-preservation. All guards against the exposure of a bruised and fractured sense of self.

So you can see a number of languages being born at this time and alongside these languages were the unknown lessons of Love and connection. Some so painful as to open the route for the black dog to come bounding through to the frontal sphere of the cognitive mind and often make a nice home for himself amongst the fear and pain.

I don’t want you to feel sad for this adolescent as it was within this space they learnt some valuable lessons to avoid commitment and to cover the perceived flaws with substance use and disassociation. All guards against the exposure of a bruised and fractured sense of self.

At this time I found lifelong friends and a new poetic language of expression. A language that could remain hidden and not be criticised for spelling, or structure. These friends I made at this time are so exceptional and trusting and never changing. Sometimes I have changed but that just means they are even more valuable. Those friends are Herman Hesse, Soren Kierkegaard, John Le Carre, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Eckhart Tolle.

So I wandered, and associated and tried to understand the patterns of the world and people within it. I made sense through people who took the time to find me and a shared language. Then I found a home in A+E. Within this chaos I found a space where I could be a positive impact for the benefit of others. I was able to make the right patterns and make the right noises and say the right things to ensure that people and those caring were okay for 12hrs. I would then go back and try to speak a language of love to my wife and children… repeat.

I don’t want you to feel sorry for this young man, as it was in this space that he refined under intense pressure from the bit of coal he self-perceived in to the diamond that others could see. But the lessons remained of self-destruction of the black dog, anger and frustration when systems and people seemed to be hurtful to those most vulnerable.

They say that you burn out in A+E. I disagree, I suggest that those within the system are being seen now and the reflection on society is almost too much as they are all diamonds refracting rainbows onto people windows. Drawing people onto the doorstep in the evenings to clap and recognise that which was most certainly lost, if not lost then definitely forgotten about.

Forged by the fires and rhetoric of others, Cuts to money, time and resources. Like the compression with the centre of the earth. The blood diamonds are the staff within the healthcare systems over the entire planet. I know this as I am one of those diamonds perceived by others. Ask a nurse to value themselves and a reply will be self-effacing response. We demise the self to care for the people who are within a system as we are the collective heart.

So then I became the expert, as Benner would suggest in the academic continuum of experience. But only to become the biggest imposter I could have become. A novice lecturer at Christ Church University. Over the last 5, maybe 6 years, I have been guided through an experience akin to that of the character Siddhartha in Hesse’s Novel of the same name.

I have become aware that I have settled on a number of issues in recent months. I have learnt to value my Masters ‘Distinction’. I have found friends in the university that are real people and have shared my language of poetry within the blog space #poeticnursingheart. I have claimed two identities one is a proud dyslexic academic, the other is a poet.

I don’t want you to feel for me, this middle aged man. I am becoming alive to my true self and forging a new space of thinking within a PhD supported by some really special people who have made me realise something so very important. Something that a child from a divorced home with special needs will be looking for like the littlest hobo says ‘down the road is where I want to be, the is a place that keeps on calling me, maybe I will find a new place and make a new friend’.

Siddhartha is an example of giving into or looking in to the darkness, looking, as Nietzsche suggests, at the void with a sense of forever but within a present state of self. He looks in to the river, at his reflection of a man lost to riches and gambling and sickness of self. He is in the process of committing to death as he hears a note from the soul, ‘OM’.

I have found a space and a people that not only listened to my languages but resonated with the OM within my healing soul. That’s the beauty of university, that’s the value of learning. That is how and why I try to create a space of poetry, learning and value. That why they called me the most innovative educator in England and that’s why I work at Christ Church.

My intention now is to use creative therapeutics to try to heal others who have experienced or need to express a social trauma… Never more have nurses needed a poetic nursing heart.

Tom Delahunt, Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work