Author Archives: jdstockholm

Legacy

by

12

Legacy

An odd word really, it conjures up a happy image perhaps when someone says they were left a legacy. The word legacy itself means a gift, or to have something passed down.stethoscope

Yet, for an adult who suffered a form of child abuse, the legacy is far from happy. Often, at least I have found, the legacy I am left with is far worse than the experience itself.

Legacy, like a shadow I cannot lose.

I am sure I am not alone in this, that the gift that was passed to me, haunts me in my every days. Whether it is something as simple as smelling something, or seeing a story on the news that is triggering or a child walking past me that still has his innocent smile. There is always something.

I find because of this I pretty much alienate myself from everyone in every way possible. My family does not know the real me, they see smiles. I do everything; I function as I am meant to. As I said before, I have perfected the happy external image.

I don’t keep friends in my real life because I can’t talk and if I could, they would not understand. Maybe a day I am hugely triggered and I cannot do something that was planned, I have to cancel. I lost my high school friend this way, he got tired of me cancelling plans and perhaps the other way around I would have too. I am at university, but I do not make friends because I don’t fit. People talk to me of course, but I am more comfortable sitting with my head in a book and being lost in a fantasy world, than talking to real people. Yet sometimes I watch them from over my book, the way they are so free to laugh or be sad, to talk or cry. To do whatever it is that friends do. I wish in many ways I had that.

I think I do a good job of driving my online friends away too. I get quiet when I am not feeling good in my mind. Something’s I will say, but too often I feel like a burden, because these things in my head are stuck, but I don’t want to be that friend that people dread, because I never seem to be happy. Who really wants a friend that every time you speak to them, they make you feel depressed with their issues?

I had to go to the doctors this week, for a cough that I have had since October or November time, it got to the point that I can’t sleep, so I gave in and called. Doing that was hard in itself; I don’t like to go to the doctors. Not because I am afraid, but because it is so triggering, weekly my mother would drag me there with various ailments I was meant to have, all because she wanted to see the doctor herself.

According to her, I was ill so much because she was meant to be with the doctor as his wife and so fate, made me ill so that she might see him often and work on being in a relationship with him. She taught me that he was never interested in making me better, but more in entering into sexual relations with her.

This is what I think about when I need to go. When I am sat in the waiting room like, I did as a child and being made to tell her for the umpteenth time, that she looks good, and after, the grilling, I would receive. Did he look at her nicely, did he smile. Do I think he was happy to see her? And my answers dictated how the rest of my day would go. If I made her happy, I was fed, I could watch the television.  My father wouldn’t beat me. So I sat in the doctors waiting room on Monday, probably looking like I was afraid to move.

Then there is the going into the doctor’s office itself, I hate to say how I feel, but I have to, and I have to remove my top so that he can listen to my chest. He put his hand on my shoulder, while he stood behind me and like any doctor, he listened to my breathing. My mind was going haywire because he had hold of shoulder and he was behind me, I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, he said he wanted to try some antibiotics for a week, but perhaps they will have to x-ray. I sheepishly asked for the medication in solution form, because even more thanks to my mother, I cannot get myself to swallow tablets.

The doctor sighed and I know he wasn’t happy, he had that ‘tone’ like I’m being a pain and I couldn’t explain to him why I can’t take tablets, I just had to sit there and receive that look as if I was being difficult on purpose. He did what all doctors seem to do, he tells me, he’ll give me a solution, but because I won’t take tablets, I have to have this specific one that will probably make me vomit.

And there it is, a giant trigger for me, if anyone has read my books, medication that is likely to make me vomit is so huge for me. I took the prescription from him, thanked him for his time, but the prescription was in the trash can on my way out the door and I wondered why I just endured all that trauma.

I get home, and my children ask me what the doctor said, I just told them I have a cough and got medication and then I went to cook them dinner, they are content with my answer. Inside I am shattered from a simple trip to the doctors, that felt like retracing my steps through hell and there’s no one to tell.

The legacy of childhood.

Last Day Free

by

6

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Free Today, Last Day Today!!!

Telling Teddyteddy2cover final

http://tinyurl.com/On-Amazon-com

http://tinyurl.com/On-Amazon-co-uk

 

Mr. Ted holds the hand of his six-year-old friend as they share more of his deepest secrets. Poignant and bold, the boy’s courageous words are detailed and real. He takes you farther into his abusive life and broken mind as he survives the tangled deceit and lies of his everydays. Sit alongside him. Hear his voice and listen with your heart as he opens it up once more.

 

His story continues…

FREE!!! for two days

by

3

Please Share

Free Today!!! For two days.

Telling Teddy

http://tinyurl.com/On-Amazon-com

http://tinyurl.com/On-Amazon-co-uk

teddy2cover final

Mr. Ted holds the hand of his six-year-old friend as they share more of his deepest secrets. Poignant and bold, the boy’s courageous words are detailed and real. He takes you farther into his abusive life and broken mind as he survives the tangled deceit and lies of his everydays. Sit alongside him. Hear his voice and listen with your heart as he opens it up once more.

His story continues…

Alley Kid Eleven

by

8

I can feel the phet beginning to clear away as the light of a new day comes in. It washes away the dark and takes it from the outside and puts it on the inside, like a dirty puddle in my mind.silhouette of man/male on wall, cast by orange light /sunset.

The lightness from the phet inside my head gets replaced by darkness. I can feel it; a weight behind my eyes. Suffocating me. Dying on the inside once more. Often, I wish I could close my eyes and never open them again. I don’t want to die; I just want to make it all stop. Something to fill the gaping hole inside.

Karla is in the bathroom while I get dressed in the bedroom. I wonder what I’m doing. Why I’m doing it. I have no desire to be with Karla, but then I have no desire to be with anyone.

I have to leave before someone in her house wakes. She lives with her parents. I don’t want them to catch me. I don’t want them to know my face; to familiarise themselves with who is sleeping with their daughter.

Part of me wishes she would leave me alone. She wants more than I can give. More than I am capable of. She wants the world and I am nothing more than a waste of her time. Yet I cant end it. Part of me craves the fact that she wants me. What if I was to leave fully and it was a mistake?

Karla comes back out of the bathroom and I tell her I have to go.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” She asks. I don’t really know. I give a non-committal nod. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing tomorrow. I just want to go home.

I say my goodbyes, but I don’t end it with a kiss. She waits for one. I feel it. But she’s just like everyone else, waiting for what she wants and not seeing what it is I want. Not that I know. Everything feels pointless.

I get back to our flat and Joanne says nothing as I get in and it’s after 6am. She doesn’t care either. A quick stop off at the fuelling station on my way home for cigarettes and she’s happy. Of course when I walk through the door it’s as though she didn’t notice I was gone. The place is spotless. She and Angela are sat smoking and chatting. The overflowing ash tray sits on the table. I throw her a new pack as I pop my head around the door before going to my own bedroom to gain my happiness again.

Its almost an instant lift as I take the phet. Like pressing a button inside my mind and everything feels great again. The adrenaline up along my spine clears away the darkness and I feel normal once more. Normal enough that I go and join Joanne and Angela. Normal enough that I can sit and talk and I don’t really care what we talk about. Usually men with Joanne. She laughs and jokes.

Between the chaos, the days just go passed. It feels as though we have sat there the entire time. I haven’t seen Maz, but that is not unusual either. She takes days of rest, days away from this life where she sleeps. I don’t blame her. Sometimes I wish I could do the same. To close my eyes and sleep the days away.

Five days I have been going on the phet. I can smell it on my skin. My body sweats it out. We just have a little left now. The money is all gone. Woody came around and gave us what we needed. He went away pleased with almost three hundred pounds in his pocket. I have cigarettes and phet, I don’t need anything else. Will is still at his mother’s. Colin is with us and he doesn’t seem to mind that we have been awake the entire time. Mark has been a few times to take his brother out. Part of me gets on edge when I see him. Maybe today will be the day the police catch him here. I haven’t seen Phil or Becci. I wonder what he thinks of his car.

Joanne and I sit in the lounge. It’s morning. That itself always feel strange to me. When I have been awake all night and we watch the new day come in, it feels as though I’m outside of the world. Like I am watching people on the inside get up and do normal everyday things. They missed the new day come in. How strange for them. They went to bed and when they wake, it’s all different.

“We have a bit of money left,” Joanne says. “Shall we get some more phet?”

My mind screams yes, I want to. I don’t want to feel the darkness. But I know I need to rest. Five days, my jeans are loose. I can feel my bones. Maybe another day and it could fix everything. Fight away the dark. Not listen to my father tell me I am fat.

I sit on the sofa and turn on the television. The week’s daytime television is just beginning. I can hear my cat, Sooty. I haven’t seen him for a few days. He’s crying in the hallway. Joanne is on the sofa opposite putting on her shoes. l go to get the cat while she goes out for more phet. But I turn to stand and he is there. Behind her.

I lose control in that moment. He’s right there. I see his face. Just as I did when I was a child. The bad man. The man of my nightmares. The one who came to my room every night. I scream and back myself away as fast as I can. Joanne stands up. She is screaming at me, but I’m not looking at her. I’m looking at him. His eyes, his smiles. The darkness that is there, it holds his intent. No one can help me. He’s blocking the door and I can’t get away.

I can’t breathe. I clutch my chest. It is tight. Joanne grabs my arms. She shakes me. Asks me what’s wrong. I pull away from her. I have to get away. I look at the door he has gone. I can’t hear sooty. Maybe he killed him. I remember the cat. The one in the woods. Just the same. Its black and it can’t get away and the man killed him.

I move back from Joanne. I can’t get the air in. I’m going to pass out. I know it. I can’t breathe. “I’m calling an ambulance,” she says as I clutch my throat to try and get air. I shake my head and tell her no. They can’t come. They’ll know about the phet.

“What’s wrong?” She yells at me.

I’m shouting. She can’t understand. I can’t get the words out enough for her to get them. I gasp for breath. I shout. “He’s there, and point at the hallway. No one is there.

I get to the window and open it. Joanne yells at me again. “What are you doing?”

“He’s here,” I shout. I can’t shout hard enough to make him go away. I can’t make Joanne understand that he is there. I can see him. In the shadows out in the hallway.

“I’m going to call the ambulance,” she says to me again as I try and hold myself up. The room is spinning. I need air, but I can’t get it. My throat is closing. I can’t breathe deeply enough. Joanne gets the phone and I take it off her.

“No,” I say. I smash it down onto the table so she can’t call. She can’t call anyone. I watch for him at the door. The bad man. I can see him.

“I’m going to get Maz,” she yells at me. She is crying. “Stay here.”

Joanne leaves, but I can see him there. His eyes in the darkness. The silhouette of him. Like in the dark when I was little. The way he stood at the end of my bed before he got me. When I was little and couldn’t fight him off. When he did what he wanted and no one came.

I’m crying and screaming and yelling at him to leave. He doesn’t move. I open the window more and get my foot out of it. I don’t care that it’s the top floor. I need to get out, I won’t fall. It’s a big ledge. I’m half out the window. I can hear him. He’s making sounds like before. Like a growl.

I hear all the noises in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is. I get more out of the window ready to jump. No one can get me if I jump. It’s better than him. Better than his nails and his teeth and the things he’ll do to me.

Maz runs into the room. She doesn’t come very close. She shouts my name, but I can’t come in. But he’s gone. I can’t see him now. Maybe he is hiding. Maz walks slow to me. She puts her hands out. She is crying too. “Please don’t move,” she says to me. Joanne is with her. She stays behind.

Maz moves forwards. She grabs my hand and pulls me in. She wraps her arms around me. I can’t breathe still. She sits me down, she doesn’t let go. She lies down with me and wraps herself around me.

“He was there,” I try and tell her, but my words don’t come out.

“Don’t try to talk,” she tells me. She runs her fingers through my hair. I close my eyes and let go. “You’ve overdosed.”

A Bed

by

5

I feel like someone different today. I’m not sure I can work my moods out. I guess numb is probably the word for it. A sort of pre occupied, don’t care kind of mood.

I’ve had a strange thing in my mind of late. Perhaps it’s weird.

My grandfathers bed.

He had it for years and took to it for about a month before he died on it. It was old and broken and the springs were coming through the mattress on both sides, but it never got changed.

I didn’t have a bed. Not for the first nine years of my life. The only time I slept in a bed was with my parents or when they put me up on a fold out sun lounger at the bottom of theirs. I don’t know why I didn’t have one. I never really questioned it.

My parents moved out behind my back when I was seven and then took me back when they got a new house when I was nine. I even got my own room in their new house, and rather than buy me a bed, they gave me my grandfathers.

I’ve never been able to work out if that’s wrong of them. Should I have been given the bed, mattress and all that my grandfather died on? Was it strange of them to do that? Perhaps it’s just another example of how I was nothing. They couldn’t even get me a new bed, or at least replace the mattress. I used to wake daily almost with my leg torn to shreds from where the sharp bit came through, of course I learnt to avoid it in my sleep somewhat and the wounds got less.

Does this just prove how little I meant? I wonder, if my grandfather hadn’t died, would I have got a bed at all?

Shadows

by

3

The hot sting of a scratch, the grip of a hand. The smile, the laughter from a torturous face.  I lay in bed asleep, these things invaded my dreams until my mind woke up and told me to open my eyes. He’s here. He has you, you fell asleep again and he got you. I jumped up in bed, yelled at him to let me go. Fought with him, anything I could to get him off me. I shouted for help, as always even though I knew none would come, and then I realised he wasn’t there. shadow-man

I searched my arm like crazy. I could feel the impression on my skin where he had held me. I could feel where my arm burnt as he clawed down my skin. I could feel his breath. I could hear his laughter in my ears. My room was just as I had left it when I closed my eyes. The door was shut tight. The lights were on; he was not and had not been there.

Yet today he felt so real.

Release

by

1

I want to thank all who purchased my new book, “Stupid Boy”, or helped to promote it by sharing links to it, for me. Release day is always an emotional rollercoaster for me. Not because I am thrilled or overjoyed, but because I am afraid. Not only am I putting myself out there to the world; a world that is often judgemental and not always for the better, but because I am telling.

I am telling the real secrets I have held onto for 20 years or more. I am putting out into the world, a view of my parents that I do not actually hold, but one that those who read it, will form.

My father is still in my life, when I see him it makes the guilt more when I know what I have said about him. I feel like a child in these moments; of perhaps, facing my father and thinking who is going to believe me.

He is well respected. He has friends; he is liked. People seek him out for help and advice. He cares. His own daughter idolises him yet, here I am making him out to be some kind of sick monster with my words. Knowing how the world sees him and knowing what I know, I always feel like a liar. Even though my words are the truth, in my father’s world, I would be the liar and he would never do such things.sb cover final

It makes me question. I ask myself if things are real. Did I make them up? Did they really happen? I question my sanity. Perhaps, I am insane and these are just the visions from a psychotic episode. I detach and the events seem like a dream.

The guilt I feel is tremendous, yet each time, I sit to write. Each time, I let that little boy inside, have a voice. I feel better.

People often ask me how I can bring it all back up again. How I can relive it. They assume writing it is painful for me, but it is not.

Not writing it, is what hurts. Denying that boy his voice and his right to tell, leaves me lost. He thrashes around inside with all these things he wants to say and when I don’t let him, my dark days come.

It does not make a person sick when they take the poison out, it is when you try to hold it in that it devours you.

 

Stupid Boy

by

6

Finally, I am pleased to announce that Stupid Boy, will be released tomorrow. The third book in the Dear Teddy series.
” I am a stupid boy, with stupid hair and stupid clothes. I am always stupid, forever. My badness comes out and makes it all stupid. I don’t tell Mr. Ted though. He is my friend. We go outside and we get to play. We chop up all the bad people with our swords. We play with Andrew too. He is magic, he is invisible. He doesn’t know that I am Stupid Boy. Nobody ever wants Stupid Boy.”sb cover final

Stupid Boy is the third instalment of Dear Teddy, and continues the pain-filled journey of a seven-year old boy through his horrific childhood of abuse. In his own words, he shows you his scars and tells you the lies that he believes; every page an accounting of the deliberate destruction of a child by those he loves and the strangers he is forced to please.

His gentle spirit will reach out and amaze you with its strength. Wrap your arms around him as he opens his heart once more and shares his life with you.

His story continues…

A review from a dear friend, Cyn, who beta read Stupid Boy for me 🙂

Have you ever felt such deep anger and hatred for two total strangers that you would happily hunt them down and cause them great physical harm? Well, this is how you will feel when you read JD Stockholm’s third book of the Teddy series. Any parent who can subject their child to the horrors that these people did should be made to undergo the same kind of torture. And worse. Because they deserve it. Their innocent child did not.

After reading the first two books, Dear Teddy and Telling Teddy, I remember walking around in a haze for days after. The books had shocked me and affected me so profoundly that it seemed I could think of nothing else. At home, at work, in the car. My own problems suddenly seemed dreadfully small and insignificant in comparison. The thing is, I knew about child abuse…but I didn’t actually “know”. These books open your eyes to a nightmarishly harsh reality that you wish did not exist and make you realise that, as a society, we are not doing nearly enough to help these innocent, helpless children.

I thought I had read the worst of it and that things could not possibly get any worse for our little hero in Stupid Boy. Unfortunately, I was so very wrong. This third book serves to illustrate just how deep his parents’ depravity runs. It will leave you frozen in horror and rage. Despite having realised from the first two books what kind of monsters we are dealing with, these people’s actions still succeed in shocking you into speechlessness.

The seven-year-old little boy still longs for his parents’ love and acceptance. He still desperately wants to be able to live with them because he needs them in his life. It is heartwrenching to see his sadness and despair for these undeserving people. He is like every other child who adores and even idolises his parents and craves their love and approval in return. But these are not normal people or parents worthy of his love. They do not even deserve the titles “Mum” and “Dad”. However, this is not something an innocent little boy’s mind can grasp or understand. He still believes that everything bad that happens to him is his fault and that it is because of “the evil” inside of him.

The role his mother plays in his sexual abuse, which is made much clearer in this book, is deplorable. You are appalled by her abominable behaviour and outraged that she could reject and maltreat her young son in that way. His father’s neglect and barbarity continues to be just as contemptible as it was. However, what shocks you most is how far these people’s mistreatment of their son eventually goes. The actions of his parents in this book are shockingly heinous. They are perverse throughout the book but I literally felt as if my heart had been ripped out at what they allowed him to be subjected to in the end. It is impossible to relate to their inhumanity and their complete lack of compassion or parental instinct.

It is ironic how this young boy tries to protect his mother in one instance in the book, when it should be the other way around. She should be trying to protect her child but she has done nothing remotely close to that. In fact, she has allowed the exact opposite to occur. Even here she pushes him away, rejecting his help and him once again. It tears you up inside and makes you hate her even more. As for his father, you seriously question whether he has any humaneness or any sense of decency in him at all. Whether he is even human.

The story is made even more effective by the way the writer has us see it from a little boy’s perspective. His childlike mind and speech make him totally loveable and his innocence is utterly endearing and heartrending. At one point, his benevolence and kind-heartedness even has him worrying whether he may have caused hurt or discomfort to the very people abusing him. This is one of the things that makes this entire tragedy even more saddening.

Another thing that breaks your heart is how he believes he is so bad that not even God wants him in heaven. All this, after he has just survived another case of brutal abuse. He wonders why he did not die and comes to the conclusion that he is not good enough for heaven. Also upsetting is the fact that he says and thinks this with such acceptance. He believes he is responsible for and deserves all this atrocity. Atrocities that will make you shudder and cry.

Stupid Boy also broaches a much debated and predominant issue in today’s society. How and why a child can turn to self-harm, imaginary friendships or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. How it can engender a false sense of alleviation or relief for a child.

JD Stockholm is an extremely talented writer and has again done an amazing job in making you experience the boy’s anguish, terror and despondency as if you were there with him. You feel it so deeply that you wish you could climb into the pages of the book and pull him out of all the dreadfulness. The author should be applauded for his courage to write these books that talk about such painfully horrendous experiences. They have served to open our blind eyes and urge us to act. They urge us to stop looking the other way and acknowledge a grisly truth that we would rather deny.

I highly recommend read this book, as well as the first two if anyone has not already read them. A definite five-star rating.

External Images.

by

13

External Images.

I feel sad today, I’m not really sure why. I saw my therapist yesterday and then I had a date and went for a drink and then saw the hobbit. It was an enjoyable evening, yet this morning I find myself with that lost empty feeling.

Some of the things my therapist said I understand why he said them, but they don’t make me feel better. He reassures me that the things I deal with aren’t so strange, that many people have the same fears.

We talked about the fear of the dark, the way I am terrified of it at night. The way I’d rather be outside in the dark than trapped in my home. He told me that many are afraid of the dark, it’s quite normal and that some part of us is inbuilt to have fear, it’s a part of our survival.

I feel like I want to shout at him, it’s not the same. I don’t care if others have this fear, I don’t care that I’m not alone. I don’t care that it’s ‘normal’ it doesn’t feel normal. It feels insane when I’m afraid at night; sure that just maybe the bad man is there once again.

We talked about my mum a little, where my fear of the darkness comes from. He told me I had really suffered. He told me he was sorry that I had. He said that considering all I had gone through, I survived. I came out quite sane. It makes me want to scream inside. I wish I could show him inside my head. I wish I could make him feel what I feel so he would know that I didn’t come out the other side in one piece.

But I also realise that I sat there. Perfectly still. Perfectly sane on the outside, without the tools to break my silence of how I feel, because I’m trained in keeping secrets. I even do it on the outside. Perfect external images.

Whatever

by

19

Whatever.

25716152

(Sometimes I just write to get things out, this is one of those times.)

I want to hurt because it’s there. I want to scratch it out and make it go away. I want to make me go away. I want to turn it all off. I can’t cry it out enough, shout it, say it, or do anything to get it all out and gone.

It’s anger and aloneness, all at the same time. I want to curl up so it will go away and leave me alone. Then I don’t have to feel it any more.

I want him to take it away, say he was sorry, and know what it feels like. I want him to feel it so he really does feel sorry, not just words, but for him to understand. I want him to go back and fix it.

I want to be normal, go back, and make me be normal then. Why couldn’t I have proper things like food or clothes or just to feel safe? I do not know whose fault it is. It’s a mess.

I can’t think. It makes me want to put my head through a wall. There doesn’t seem to be a point. I can’t undo any of this. I just hide. It’s all a secret. People think I am one thing and really, I am something else inside.

My brother said when he moved out of my father’s house that it would be the end between them, but instead, he gets a normal relationship. His father coming to his house to help with DIY projects. My brother pops to our dad’s for things, he has a key, and he just walks in like a normal son. He gets everything and I have nothing.

I keep my dad away and I feel bad for it, but if I don’t, then it doesn’t change. He touches me, he hurts me, he leers at me and reminds me it’s all my fault because I was a ‘nice’ child. It was me. I turned him on. I flirted. I was the one with the smile and the face that promised more.

That is how I get everything.

That is all anyone ever wants.

It was me who climbed into his bed and I never said stop, not when he started to remove my clothes. I could have. I wasn’t afraid. I could have got out of the bed but I didn’t because I wanted that and he knew it. He knew it all the time. When I would come home from school and get changed; the way I got changed and that he could see me, made him want me. When I took a shower or a bath and walked passed him in just a towel.

It was all me, not him. Not him, because he didn’t make me. I got him to do those things. Not him. Me. It was me.

That’s why I don’t get things, because I’m the bad one and my brother is innocent. I am hard faced and I don’t feel anything and I don’t care. I am bad.