Category Archives: Journal Entries.

No one really cares about child abuse. Especially when you’ve grown up.

by

14

No one really cares about child abuse. Especially when you’ve grown up.

 

That’s how it feels sometimes. I mean, everyone wants to prevent it, wants to stop it, and wishes it didn’t happen in the world, but after, then what? Does it just go away? Does the kid just get over it and it’s done with.

If you follow me on either of my blogs, then you know I journal daily. I have done so for a few years now, and today, somehow, I wrote the immortal words, I was abused. It took me by surprise that these worse existed on my page. Not that I had forgotten, but it’s like a dirty sentence, a thing still to be ashamed of even now. Even after five books documenting it, it feels so strange to say.

Sometimes I feel like a shadow walking through the world amongst all the other people who can’t really see me—the real me. No one ever really sees shadows, they’re just there. They exist as the darkness following people around.

I remember someone saying to me, oh sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you about the abuse. It took me aback to hear that. To realise people were afraid to bring it up with me because hey, I’d forgotten all about it and might suddenly remember and fall apart.

It’s very hard for me to comprehend this, because I don’t forget. That’s the problem. It’s here, in my head, always. I walk up the stairs at night when I am alone in my house … a house where nothing ever happened, and around the corner I might possibly walk into the shadow of my childhood. I stand in the shower and a momentary lapse of judgement; I realise I have turned my back to the door and suddenly that fear is there. Someone is behind me. I wake in the middle of the night, gasping, realising I feel into such a deep sleep.

There isn’t a day goes by where I don’t think about something … some part of such a giant slice of my life. And I don’t think anyone understand that.  I type this and bite my lip to keep it from trembling, just so I can go on and get out of my whatever random babble it is I want to say. Of course, I’ll wipe my eyes, and take a deep breath and switch the screen over when my other half comes down the stairs. I’ll plaster on that smile that people understand, because what’s underneath is too hard for them to see, not for me.

I’ll go back to being that person who forgot what happened.

I still haven’t told people my dad is dead. None of the people who know me in life, know he is gone. I mean, of course anyone close to me, my family do, but friends, people I stop and chat with, have a coffee with, have the odd meal with. They don’t know. Every time I see them, I think to say it. But the more time goes on, the harder it is because how do you tell someone, yeah, my father died over two years ago, and I never told you.

I still have his name programmed in my phone and when his mother calls me from the house, my phone announces, Dad is calling. For that split second, my mind jolts and my heart skips.

I think my dad’s death goes in the same box with everything else labelled, things I can’t talk about. Not that I can’t. More it is people can’t listen to. It’s such a terrible situation. I must listen to endless days of the same conversations. What shoes someone has, what they had for dinner, what’s on the television, what the government is doing now, it goes on and on, but if I were to mention my thing more than once, I see that awkwardness in their expression. I see them not knowing what to say, but worse, I feel that I am complaining, that I am going on and on and eventually I know, they’ll be sick of hearing it and tune off. On their breaths are the whisperings of just get over it.

You know what I realise about any kind of child abuse? The times they happened weren’t so bad. Each event, they came, they went. It’s living with it that’s the problem. Because even now, even after all this time, I’m still as silent as I was as a child. The only difference now is people know.

 

The Bully in my Brain

by

19

The Bully in my Brain

When I was a child, I experienced bullying at school. It didn’t last for too long. I wasn’t the type of kid who stood for it, mostly because there was nothing anyone could do to me that was worse than what was going on at home. Bullies tried, though. I mean, I was the outsider, the quiet one. The one with the dirty clothes and greasy hair. I was the kid who everyone knew was poor. Whose mother couldn’t handle him (Her lies).

I was that problem child who’d burst into a rage, hit another child, rip up someone’s school work for no reason at all. But I was also an easy target. One of the worst things of bullying, I think, is the silence, the shame, those moments alone when you can’t find a way out of what’s going on, and you know, tomorrow, when you’re walking down the road, that bully is there. He’s waiting. He’s got every god damn tool, and he’s been waiting for you.

Forty-two years old, and I’m still the victim of a vicious bully, except, just like when I was a child, I can’t report this bully to anyone. I can’t get them to stop. I can try and say it, try and fight, but how do you fight a bully that’s your own head?

I feel like I’m sitting in this never-ending pit of darkness and silence. It’s got me locked in a closet, far away from everyone. I try to open my mouth, open messages, start replies to my friends. My bully keeps catching me, keeps putting the gag over my mouth, over my thoughts, over every piece of me. So I close messages, I put down the phone. I utter the lies that I’m fine. Just tired.

Do you know how many just tiredsI am recently?

The problem with bullies is that they isolate you. They cut you off from the world for so long that people give up on you.

I can’t tell anyone that part of me wants to die. To just close my eyes, fall back and let go. I can’t say it because no one understand. People hear die, and then they go into panic and stop listening. Tell me what I have to live for. Maybe they think I don’t know, like I can’t see my kids, my grandkids, my life and know that it’s all so great, all so worth taking each breath.

Don’t they think I know that? If I didn’t have those, I’d not feel this way because I’d not be here. That’s the difference. I’d fight this bully by taking us both down. We’d fall off the building, and I’d be holding onto his hand and making sure we go together. But I can’t jump. I can’t fall, and I can’t tell anyone, because no one understands.

No one can make it stop.

I feel like a person trapt in the body of someone else. I feel like cutting today. Like taking something sharp and taking it down my arm from the inside of my elbow to the edge of my wrist. Every see Terminator Two? Where Arnie cuts off his skin to show what he is … that’s how it feels. Like I could dig right in and pull something out of me, maybe the bully, maybe the monster inside my head who keeps weighing me down.

I feel like I’m drowning. I feel like I could put my hands on either side of my head and scream until I can’t speak, but instead I sit silently. I put on a false smile and tell everyone okay.

I even cracked some jokes today. Isn’t that a great cover story? He’s not sad today, he’s laughing. Look. Everything is just fine.

I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

I’m so ready for this bully to go home.

The more I try to fight him, the more he tells me what’s the point.

And I pause here, because even this seems useless.. I feel half dead, but I’m still breathing.

A misunderstanding.

by

14

Wow. I think judging by the responses to yesterday’s blog post, you all got it wrong, well, I put it out there wrong. Because the common thing was that post and how it probably seemed.

I was getting out my anger. I have a lot of that at the moment. I think it gets stirred up sometimes when things occur. It was my father’s birthday just recently and that sure as hell fires up my brain with all the thoughts.

I know some of you mentioned me being down. I’m not. I am a happy person. Ironic, I know. I have depression, but I consider myself a happy person. Or at least, a positive person. I have depression. It’s a little chemical torturous bastard inside my head that tries to lie to me. Tries to steal my happiness, and in those best times when I am achieving things I want, it will whisper at me, “well what’s the point in doing that?” I think that is not the same as being a sad person, or a miserable person, or in some deep dark hole. I refuse that part. Of course, I have down days, and sad days and days where I have to fight to get myself out of bed, but I am not negative.

Yesterday’s post was just an expression of some things—an outlet for me. It was about a few things really. About anger, about when my brain tries to make me fall apart. About friendship … mostly about friendship.

I struggle to have friends. Not because of them, but because of me. I think it can be even worse if you know my story, because there’s this sort of pity there, and that’s fine. You’d not be human if you didn’t feel some pity to the things in my books. People who know my story think the things that are wrong with me, can be fixed, but they can’t. No. I am me.

As I have got older, I have reached a place where it is more, this is me, accept me or don’t. I have problems. I have mental health issues. Aside from Depression, I also have OCD and borderline personality disorder. I was also diagnosed with a touch of DIDNOS. If you don’t know what that is, it stands for dissociative identity disorder not otherwise specified. Basically, it is like having an identify disorder, but not quite. I am sure you’ve seen split … not that it is like that for me, but that is full blown DID. It’s like having different personalities for different tasks. It makes for an interesting thing with me, and quite scary to share here because the movie world has made that illness into something of a scary aspect of mental health.

I do also suffer from derealisation, which is as it sounds, I quite often don’t feel realty. Literally, I don’t feel like I exist. It is one heck of a weird feeling when it happens, and probably the one thing I hate the most. I was about nine when that developed. I guess it was a coping mechanism at the time.

You can imagine, being in my head is not always fun. Being my friend is even harder. And I’m not being all low self-esteem like when I say it is hard to be friends with me. It is. I have meltdowns. I go from calm to manic in a few seconds. Especially if my abandonment issues get triggered.

I say the wrong things.

I jump in and out of versions of myself. People who talk to me, may or may not notice the DIDNOS part of me and how I can switch into different (I’d say personalities, but it isn’t quit that.) more like versions of myself.

The problem I was having is that sometimes people get mad with me. I frustrate them, because what seems normal to someone else, isn’t for me. I remember upsetting a friend because her son was sick, and I didn’t ask if she was okay. I didn’t ask, because her son was sick, I knew she wasn’t okay. To my head, it was a pointless question, but my lack of question meant she thought I didn’t care. I did. I just didn’t know what to do or say.

If someone cancels plans on me, it’s like they’ve told me they’re going to die. It is that serious to me. That little child version of myself hops on out and throws out the emotions of the kid who was left on the side of the road by his parents at age 7. I can’t help it. It’s like a cancellation touches that wound, and out he comes, fears and tears and everything else. And there is nothing you can do to calm me down. Let me ride it out, let me shout, accuse, whatever it is. That issue for me is like a chain reaction.

Cancelled plans = child meltdown = other person not understanding and trying to reason like an adult … it isn’t an adult they’re really dealing with = self-harm, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts because right then, that little boy inside is seeing how hated he must be and wanting to end the pain.

I am a quiet person, but I am also a chatter box. Depends which part of me you get. Sometimes I will talk your ear off, laugh, joke and all other things. Other times, I won’t speak to you for days. I can imagine how hard that is for someone else … someone who doesn’t understand and thinks it’s personal. It isn’t. I promise you.

I very rarely start conversations, in my personal life or on Facebook. Not because I don’t want to, but because I get afraid the other person won’t reply. It’s easier for me to say nothing, than to risk even the slightest bit of rejection.

The more you get to know me, the more I start to think you won’t like me. If I talk about something, I can guarantee the next day, I am thinking to myself, god, you must hate me and wish I’d shut up. And this comes from the child part too. If my own parents couldn’t like me, how will anyone else?

This leads to my self-harm tendencies too. Usually I get mad at myself for saying something dumb. Out comes the little blade and the swearing at myself.

It’s fucking nuts living in my head. I tell you.

It’s very misleading being my friend too. Because you’ll know me first as a normal person. That part of me comes out, and chats to you like the next person and the next, but the more I get to know you, the comfier I get, and the more the other parts of me will come out. And this person trying to be my friend, comes down the road with me.

I don’t know if I explain it well enough.

Imagine there is version #1. That’s the version everyone sees first. He’s friendly, happy, no problems. Strong, whatever. Just a normal guy.

Under that is version #2. He’s got a little problem, but not much. It’s manageable. Sometimes he just can’t get out of bed. And that’s okay.

Version #3 is a little worse than #2

Then there are, #4, and 5 and 6 and so on, until you get to #9. This is the one that is broken in so many ways. The child I guess.

The more of my friend you get, the closer you get to peeling it all back and finding #9.

You know the song, Unwell by Matchbox Twenty. The part

 

But I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell
I know right now you can’t tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you’ll see
A different side of me.

 

That’s it. That’s exactly what it is like. And what happens is the person wanting to be my friend can’t cope. They can’t understand and they ask me to stop. Ask me to change or be better, and I can’t.

And if you’ve read Teddy, and then ask me to be well … this was where yesterday’s post came from. I can’t switch myself off and be what people want. I can only be me … the raw, hard to live with, hard to be friends with, version of me.

If you had a friend who ran marathons, and then suddenly got hit by a car, ended up disabled and in a wheelchair, which meant you now had to push them around in the chair all the time and it was damn tiring, would you ask them to try to walk?

I think not. This is the same for me.

People keep expecting me to walk, and I can’t.

 

Sorry it’s such a long post, and if you’ve read it all. Thank you all so much for replying, for listening. I hope you understand some things above. They’re bloody scary to share. You know, because my head wants to tell me the admittance of things is likely to send you running.

 

I enjoyed my sexual abuse

by

24

I enjoyed my sexual abuse

Weird title for a blog post, right? Weird thing for anyone to say. Let me explain it.

It’s taken me years to write that one line. So many years, you have no idea. Why am I writing it now? Well because maybe someone else can’t say it.

Do you know how many times I have googled that phrase? So many. Like this compulsive need in me to know that I am not sick, that I am not perverted, that there is not something wrong with me. I just needed to find one thing that validated that statement and let me ease the burden I feel inside every time I think that.

I tried searching it even yesterday and I can find reports about childhood victims having their bodies react, or they become aroused. Places like the NSPCC use phrases like, forced pleasure.

I remember when I was eleven years old, there was this child helpline that opened. I believe it still exists. ChildLine? Maybe. I went to the call box two blocks from my house and I dialled the number. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe no one would answer me, after all they hadn’t in the past, so why now. But this woman did answer me and I put the phone down. I stared at it for ages, unable to breathe, feeling overwhelmed. Feeling like a liar.

What was I supposed to say? My father was sexually abusing me? It was lies. He wasn’t.

There was an incestuous relationship there, but to me it was like stealing sweets with your mate and then running to tell the shop keeper your mate did it, while hiding a bar of chocolate in my pocket. That was how it felt with my dad. How could I tell anyone when I was part of it?

Everything they teach children is that they won’t like it. That it hurts … yeah, it did hurt when I was younger. But not like they say.

Sometimes I think to myself that that was the most dominant relationship I had. I would write the word best, but that’s not the right word and I can’t think what else to use, but then when I think about it, maybe it was. From the age of 4 to at least 19 it was happening. That’s probably the longest sexual relationship I’ve ever had in my life. It’s natural we measure future things with past things, so why wouldn’t I use that one?

I sit here now, wondering why I am writing this. I don’t really know. Aside from to tell someone else looking like I do that they aren’t alone. I don’t have any piece of wondrous advice about it.

It plagues me a lot. Makes my head spin when I try to think about it and think it logically. I still can’t say I was sexually abused because it still feels like lies. I know people will say I was innocent because I was a child, but nah. I wasn’t. I remember my head. I remember being the one to start things sometimes. It was like some craving inside myself that needed it, wanted it even. I don’t even know why.

Maybe I craved the arousal and the release.

It was always like a bad cycle when I was a kid. I’d try not to go to him. If I didn’t go, he’d leave me alone. But I’d give in. Climb in bed and then afterwards, I’d cut my arms in my room, cut my legs, carve words into my skin like freak and fuck. I’d cry myself to sleep most of the time. That seemed to get worse the older I was. I don’t even know why.

Sometimes now, those thoughts still keep me awake and I feel them in my chest like a wound-up ball that stops me breathing. It makes me want to cut. It makes me want to hurt him inside.

It was my fault.

I liked it.

I wanted it.

Untitled … like me!

by

18

I don’t write here very often anymore. I used to write on here a lot. Sometimes it was daily, sometimes weekly. Now I don’t even think it is monthly. It isn’t that I have got bored of here, or found something better to do. It is that I get sick of the sound of my own voice. I get sick of saying my things … not because I don’t want to, but I imagine you … whoever you are reading this, looking at me and shaking your head. Looking at me and thinking, here he goes again.

I get like that when my head is a mess. When I am standing in my house and everyone around me is living and all I want to do is find a corner and cry until whatever is inside is gone. It’s like I can hide myself. I can hide from everyone and they don’t really notice me.

Someone says to me, how are you … I say I’m fine. I say I’m okay … I type it to them, as I wipe away the blood from the last meeting I had with my secret blade. I’m fine … Fine! Don’t you hear me?

What’s the point of saying I’m not? You can’t fix me. You can’t make everything in my head go away.

I can make you go away. I can. You won’t believe me, but see … I just have to be me and then it gets to a point where every second you’re around me, it’s hard. It’s difficult. Ultimately, it’s me who leaves, but that is because you’re at the point of falling apart. I do that.

I know writing here, I’m not really speaking, but you know … this is the place I come and I take my skin off and underneath all of that I am just bones and muscle and broken cogs all loosely held together. I am open, afraid, mad, angry … I am a bunch of many things rolled into one.

My flashbacks have come back. I don’t know why. Just the other night. They started up.

When I was a child, there was a man. I don’t know who he was. I don’t even know what he looks like. I can’t remember. In my head, he is just a dark figure … a monster … someone.

He used to keep score on the wall above my bed. He’d scratch each conquest against me into the wall. I was four. He won many times. I couldn’t sleep the other night. It was like he was there … he was waiting, ready … just needing that moment for me to drop off, then he’d strike. That was always his favourite time.

I lay in bed anticipating the feel of his hands on my arms, on my legs, his breath in my face, his teeth against my skin. He used to bite till I screamed. He used to scratch down my back till I bled. He liked to make me jump. The more terrified I was, the more he liked it. I remember that.

I remember him waiting for me at the side of my bed while I slept. I remember opening my eyes and he was there and I was trapt, and that was it.

He was in my room with me the other night. Every time I tried to close my eyes, he was there … he was there and he was waiting and watching and no one would come. No one ever came.

This is my head …

I did the only thing I could think to do. My other half was asleep. I cut. I cut into my skin, into my leg, into a part of me that needed to feel it … needed to bleed. I curled up with my shame then. The shame that I had given in. The shame that I was having a flashback.

The shame that I was me.

I clutched that blade, stared at it, tempted by it. I could make it all over. I realised that, but then there is that usual thing … that part of me that gets upset because I can’t. I mourn the chance to make it all stop because if I were gone, who could care for my children? Who would they go to?

I feel like I’m mad inside my head. I feel like I could cut more. Maybe I could stop being me. Maybe I could stop being so crazy. I can’t find the switch to turn it all off. I feel like ten people inside one and we’re all falling apart.

Some days, I hate myself.

 

Stolen Everything

by

16

I think as I go more and more through this journey in my life, I discover more and more has been stolen. Of course, I lost my innocence a long time ago, and maybe that was the worst thing to lose. Or maybe it was that I lost myself and who I was meant to be, but there are moments, things, that I never realised I had lost.
Sympathy.
Not mine. It’s a weird thing to lose. I sit here with my chest tight and my shoulders weighted down, but there is no one to really turn to. People’s dislike for my dad is stronger and they can’t see. They can’t see what is being taken from me.
When normal people’s fathers are sick, suffering with something like cancer, and the normal person sees their parent slipping away. When the adult who raised them suddenly needs help to fasten shoelaces, make meals or simply fill out a form. They talk to their friends, they get hugs and care and sympathy.
I find myself in this place I never imagined, where that has been stolen from me. I tell people my father is sick, and they say good. Inside, the child who is there, who loves his father, wraps his arms around himself for comfort. 231b6640ef7d79030ade6674b2b0185d
When I say that I am helping my dad, fixing his car, cooking his meal, I am told that I am doing more than he deserves. I end up finding myself torn between what feels right to do and what people think I should do.
When people ask me why I would help him, my answer is because he is my dad. I find myself envious of that normal person who wouldn’t be asked why, but would be asked, what help do you need.
I wish I was a normal person. Instead, he is my abuser and I am his victim. But I wish the world would see that he is my dad, and I am his son.
I never knew that this part had been stolen.

Dark Mornings – Dark Mourning.

by

3

I hate the mornings when my mind is in that dark place. When my chest is heavy and tight. When my arms and legs feel like they have turned to lead. All I want to do is lie in my bed and stare into nothingness, hoping that any moment, sleep will give me a slight reprieve from the agony inside.

I tell myself to get up. Listen to the words of people. Just get up. Make yourself get the hell out of bed. So I make it to the side of my bed with my clothes in a pile next to me and I just sit. The clock ticks along. Time goes by, and I am moving in slow motion.

I take my small blade. Put it against the flesh of my thigh. The sharp prick as it first breaks the skin echoes in my mind. I move the blade along. I can’t feel the pain in my leg, but in my mind, it’s like the sound of a diamond on glass. The crystal sound in my dull and slow mind.o-DEPRESSION-facebook

I sit between the voices. Not voices in my ears, but the internal plight of myself against myself. One side urges me to move. To get up. Get dressed. And the other, like a hand on my shoulder, whispers in my ear and asks me What’s the point?

I can’t answer that question. I don’t know the answer. What is the point? So I pull up my knees and wrap my arms around them. I am between the two sides of myself arguing, and maybe the only thing I’m going to manage to do today is breathe.

Sanity

by

5

This is another one of those posts from me asking what people want me to talk about. TeAnne asked, “How you kept your sanity. I know you had survival mechanism in place?”

I am not sure I have really. I have many problems that I deal with day to day, but back then, I didn’t know I had them. In writing Teddy, I can see where many started. I can see where my OCD began, and I think that was a survival mechanism to begin with – some kind of order in my mind about this world I didn’t yet understand. sanity-is-madness-put-to-good-uses-george-santayana

Obviously there is my bear. I told him everything. I had an imaginary friend, too, called Andrew. He is also in the books. Both of those helped me; it was a way of having some kind of social aspect without a real social aspect. I also read a lot. I could read for hours and hours and take myself away into the stories. I learnt to read very young. I was reading at four, and by the age of six, I had read the Hobbit – to give you an idea of my reading abilities.

I also wrote. I wrote all kinds of things; stories for one. I wrote those for hours. I wrote poems too. Sometimes, though, especially right after some form of abuse, I would cry and write everything down, asking why my dad didn’t love me. Why I had to do those things.

I used to count too. I think that’s where my number OCD came from. I’d tell myself that in an hour, I’d be in my own bed. I’d be sleeping. I used to try to count to sixty, sixty times. I pretended I was asleep a lot too. I could pretend it wasn’t happening to me.

Of course, there were times I didn’t cope. I was maybe six, I think, when I tried to drown myself in the bath. I got into sniffing petrol fumes when I was about 9. Started smoking and drinking at 12. I even ran away from home, but got taken right back.

I became very introverted. I think that was the best mechanism I had. Taking everything inside, and outside, I just smiled.

Facts of Shame

by

27

Sometimes I have to be brave when writing these blog posts. Sometimes I want to say things that I think might make people hate me or find me disgusting. Sometimes fear keeps me silent.
This one probably falls into the hate me and disgusting category, but I have tried to write it before and feel it is important, especially to those like me.
There are three facts that I have struggled with since I was a child. Three facts that used to make me think I was the evil one. That everything that happened was my fault and that in no way was anything that happened to me abuse. I want to write this post for those who still think those things, but it is going to be very hard to write, and maybe a little odd to read.
My body would react to what my father did. I enjoyed what he did. Sometimes I can find that thoughts of rape/abuse/incest arouse me.
That sentence was so hard to write. Even harder to see and leave it there. Will you think I am disgusting? Will you think I deserved what happened? Will you think I am sick?
For a long time I thought that about myself. People talked of child abuse and give this image of a crying or screaming child. And there I was with my father, and my body would climax. It had to be my fault, right? It had to be, because if it wasn’t, then I would scream and cry too, and I wouldn’t have this feeling that felt nice. I was 7 years old the first time it happened. After that I craved that from him. I went to him with the purpose of that feeling. I didn’t understand. Someone said to me once, “Congratulations. Your body works.” I stared at them as if they had gone insane. Was that really the answer? I wasn’t sick? I was shaking so badly that day.
I remember reading after that, having it likened to be tickled. No one really likes being tickled, but when they are, they laugh. Laughter is something of a pleasure, right? So why would you possibly have a pleasurable experience of something you neither like nor want…? Because the body is designed to have these reactions.
Does a child who orgasms during abuse, or an adult during rape, hold some of the responsibility? No. It’s exactly as I was told. Congratulations, your body works. shame-child-face-hiding

I also once read somewhere, and this was a post from a woman, but I think it still applies. She stated that the sex with her father was the best she had had. No partner since had ever come close to it. You’d be inclined to think she was sick? Twisted?
I stared at this when I read it. Is it really normal to feel the way I do? I took this then to a counsellor. He told me that we learn everything from our parents. Lessons that we take into our adult lives. These things become the “right“ way to do things. They teach us how to cook, how to write. They teach us what to believe in, the way we should act, the norms of the society we live in, and in our minds, these are right. So what happens when your parent is the one teaching you sex? It becomes the thing that you gauge every subsequent encounter with. If like me, the sexual relationship with my father is probably the longest one I have ever had, maybe it was the same for that woman too.
Perhaps the last part of the statement is the hardest to get across without sounding as if I will repeat what my dad did, because I won’t. It would never enter my head. In fact, I often feared dressing my own son when he was little in case someone thought that of me. But I know I am not alone in that violence and sex is arousing, even in the worst forms. There’s a whole world of BDSM and erotica out there that makes a fortune. It is just the same, except… I guess it links in with the first two things. My father was doing something that my body liked and he did it for a very long time. My experiences with him became the foundations. Most teenagers have this period in life where they explore. They take things at their pace, try things out, fumble, mess up. All the things that are normal. People like me, we never had that. I was taught that sex was violent. That it involved incest and secrets and shame. I still fight with this one. I don’t know how to put it across properly without sounding like I might be a monster, but I just want people to know they aren’t alone. And they aren’t monsters either.
Remember the child only had the tools he was given.

Monster

by

5

It’s been a while since I have written my thoughts on here. Of course I have written many other things. I have since finished therapy. I had in total 14 sessions. I didn’t find them very helpful. It was ironic in a way that I was there because I had stumbled into my doctor’s surgery one day to tell them I wanted to kill myself and it took so much inside to say what was at the root of that, my father, and yet, when I got to therapy, if I tried to mention my parents in anyway, my therapist would tell me that it doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. And while this is true, it is in the past. Most of the occurrences are years ago. They are still big to me. I have not got over them and the parts inside me struggle.  how-to-fight-depression.WidePlayer
Mt father is dying. He has cancer. He has had it a while and because he is older, it is taking a while. I do not imagine he will be here this time next year, maybe not in six months either. He is in the final stages now. I used to think I wouldn’t care if he died. Not because I hated him for what he had done, not because I had cut him off, but because I was sure that I wasn’t capable of loving anyone or anything. I don’t feel it inside for people, not until they leave. It was a terrible time when my children were growing up and I questioned continually my feelings for them. It feels like some part inside me doesn’t work.
My father at the moment was just awaiting tests to see if his cancer had spread even farther. He messaged me today to say that it hadn’t. I found myself disappointed with that and I have no idea why. It isn’t that I wish him anything bad. When he had a heart attack recently I found myself upset, but what I realised was that I wasn’t upset about him dying. I was upset that his chance to ever make things up to me was gone. The chance he would ever be my father was at risk.
I sometimes think that inside, I am a monster.