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Be patient. Don’t despair. This is the advice I would give my younger self, and those still struggling with that dark despondency today.

I empathise with young people who feel hopeless, overcome with gloom as they await their turn in life: for things to turn around. It’s hard when you’re stuck in the middle of circumstances you can’t seem to control.

I remember my own despair well. Although I was raised amidst great wealth in a loving and caring family, it was always apparent that there was something not right about me. I was sleight and timid, and late meeting many a developmental milestone.

It used to be said of me, “I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy; he just won’t get on!” In secondary school, my nickname became Billy Nomates, known for wandering around the school grounds all alone.

While other boys were bulking up, I was extremely thin, incapable of building muscle. Whereas nerds are usually brainiacs, I had the unenviable epithet of being a thick square. I seemed to struggle academically and had difficulty maintaining relationships.

Teachers who could see my weirdness took a particular disliking to me, castigating me at any opportunity. Because I was both very shy and weak, I became the target of vindictive students who seemed to strive to make my life miserable daily.

It was thirty years ago this summer that I walked out of those school gates for good, never to return. I planned a brave new start at sixth-form college, where nobody knew me at all. But it didn’t work out that way.

Actually, it was just more of the same. Once more, I struggled to make friends. I remained severely self-conscious about my lack of muscles and weird looks. My nickname here became the Geek Kid, a sentiment almost universally held.

Whatever I did, it seemed, I couldn’t change a thing. Despite changing my environment completely, everything remained the same. It seemed I was stuck with who and how I was, and no attempt at reinvention could change that.

By the final months of college, most of the relationships I had forged were disintegrating all around me. Utterly isolated, I hit rock bottom, with no direction at all. While my peers were applying to university and learning to drive, I pursued neither.

Instead I became absorbed in the what-ifs of aborted resolve, completely beguiled by a non-reciprocal teenage crush, which came to occupy every waking moment as I rebuked myself for the timidity which had sent me into a cowardly retreat.

By the time I got around to applying for university, I thought things might be different at last. But no, just more of the same, history repeating itself all over again. Perhaps it was worse this time because I was nineteen now, but still looked like I was in my mid teens.

Still horribly thin, immature, devoid of facial hair. Still incapable of establishing meaningful relationships. Still mixing with the wrong people. Still being followed around by vindictive students intent on belittling me and putting me in my place.

My despair this time around culminated in me smashing up my own face with a glass bottle. It wasn’t a cry for help or attention, but a physical manifestation of my self-loathing and revulsion. Still, when there was no reaction to my bruised and scored body from anyone around me, I finally realised that the onus was on me alone to change.

Perhaps that was the moment that changed me. That was when I set out on the lifelong road of inner reform, striving to turn my life around. Of course, I did not know at the time that many of the physical and psychological ailments that afflicted me were manifestations of an undiagnosed chromosome variation.

In the midst of such despair, it can be very difficult to see a way out. That’s why I empathise with those stricken with that dejected distress which can become all-consuming. But to those I say “Be patient.” Don’t despair. Hang in there. Things will soon turn around. Verily in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest.