When the world turns its back, it doesn’t come roaring—it arrives as a hush. One morning you wake to find your phone’s recent calls list empty, group chats silent. That’s what happened to me after the Wonka event imploded. I went from flipping pancakes for Saturday-morning breakfasts—with bacon sizzling, Lego bricks underfoot and vanilla wax melts warming the air—to scrolling through news alerts that called me a “scam kingpin” before breakfast. Friends stopped answering. My ex, D., stood in our kitchen, the scent of melted wax suddenly sour, and whispered, “How could you keep this from me?” Then she turned away, and a home once brimming with laughter became an echo chamber of guilt.
It’s one thing to watch strangers on social media dissect your every move. It’s another to lose your sense of self in the aftermath. Outside, they branded me “Monster,” “Conman,” “Sex Offender Shocker.” Inside, I was pacing a cramped hostel room, the hum of fluorescent lights my only companion, replaying the hysterical “What ifs?” of that day in the warehouse: bare walls, muddy puddle for a chocolate river, and actors in smeared Oompa-Loompa makeup. I thought I was building something magical for families like mine—three kids running wild around our kitchen table. Instead, I watched my purpose flicker out like a faulty projection.
Public shaming lodges itself not in headlines but in your mind. In the waning hours before sleep, I relived the sting of a cigarette burn I bore as a child, tucked away in foster cupboards, taught early that my voice didn’t matter. I heard again the crack of a belt across my back in another house, learned then to read people’s moods like weather forecasts—so I’d know when to brace for pain. Those old lessons whispered back: “You deserve this.” Anxiety became my inbox, guilt my unread messages.
Healing began not onstage but in solitary confession. I surrendered to community payback, scrubbed graffiti off local parks—places once filled with families I helped through the Gowanbank Hub. I remembered the mums I sat with over biscuits and tea (“Billy Tea,” S. used to joke), the teenagers with hollow eyes I offered hope to, and the MSP who once praised our coat-cupboard community hall. Piece by piece, I stripped away the caricature the headlines built and found the man underneath—a man who had loved, who had failed, and who still wanted to matter.
Reclaiming identity meant untethering self-worth from external KPIs. I revisited our messy Saturday routines: homemade breakfasts, rummy games, my daughter’s six-year-old giggle lighting a dim day. I faced the harsh truths—my misuse of a “Dr.” title from a metaphysical institute, my desperate outreach in grief to someone I once loved, the fretting over who I was without those labels. It wasn’t excused, but it was human. And owning those mistakes was my first real act of self-compassion.
Today, the scars remain—unseen, yet potent. They surface when I catch a whiff of vanilla wax, or when a stranger’s stare lingers a beat too long. But they’ve transformed. They’re markers of resilience, reminders that I survived empty cupboards and collapsing dreams. They sharpen my empathy for anyone facing a digital mob, anyone whose worst day becomes their entire story.
True healing isn’t about erasing the past—it’s integrating it. I carry the grit of fry-pan breakfasts with three kids underfoot, the echo of laughter in that chaotic home, and the memory of every person I failed and every neighbour I helped. From the rubble of headlines, I’ve built a quieter victory: the decision to let my own voice speak, even when the world would rather hold its silence.