Category Archives: Journal Entries.

Some Days

by

10

Some days, everyday feels like a fight. Usually, I have had a trigger when it gets this way that goes like a snowball. One thought and my mind is off for days until it gets to a place where it can rest, or perhaps, I simply have too much and it gets too big and I can’t carry it on.

snow_road-winter-xs

A couple of weeks ago, I got stuck in the snow on the way to University. Every day, I have to drive through the area I grew up in; so many places, so many memories. Some good and some bad.

While driving a road that normally takes less than five minutes, and took me almost forty-five through the snow, my mind wandered. I spotted the fish and chip shop my Nan would take me to when my parents had left me. I saw the shop owned by my Nan’s friends. She would drive me insane as she chatted about all the boring things adults say, while I, a seven year old, just wished she’d say goodbye. I got to the main part of the road where my Nan used to walk along each day, and that was when my mind got stuck.

She’s been gone almost thirteen years now, but I remember her face, the way she walked, her voice. I can hear it perfectly in my mind, and on that day, it was almost like being able to see her walk along that same road as she had done when she was alive.

I reminded myself that she was gone, but of course, that led me on to remembering when she died. I was twenty-four.

She had collapsed in her house, but luckily, she was by the telephone and called for help. She had a blood clot in her lungs and was taken to hospital. My dad called me up to tell me and inform me that she was probably going to die. Of course, I didn’t waste time in going to see her.

Every day, he would call me to say, your Nan is sick, maybe she will die today and she will be by herself, and each time, I would panic and get there as fast as I could. By Friday, she had been there for five days. I went to the hospital and my father was there with my brother.  I didn’t want to stay with him and have to listen to what he would say after, about her. I don’t know why I gave her a hug and a kiss. I hadn’t done that in a very long time, but I had just wanted to.

The next morning, was the same scenario. A call from my dad to tell me my Nan was going to die alone.  I was going to see her anyway. I was going early because my partner and I had a young baby and we were house hunting.

I knew the moment I walked onto the ward that she was gone. I felt it; like emptiness. The nurse caught me before I got to her bed and ushered me into a side room. I didn’t want to hear the words. My dad sat there with his fake tears and fake grief, getting all the attention and pretending that she had been like a mother to him. He had loved her and  spoke whatever lies he could think of. The kind nurse asked him if he would like to see her and say goodbye. He said yes please, through his sobs and asked me if I was coming. He sent my brother out for a walk, so he didn’t have to deal with it.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see her. My last memory had been me saying goodbye and that was enough, right? He stood at the door to her room. I stood to the side and couldn’t see her. He started to cry again at the sight of her and told me she looked like she was sleeping and smiling.

I agreed to go in, but she didn’t look like he said. She looked dead. Her cheeks had sunk, she was pale, and cruelly, she was still warm as my father carried on his performance of the grieving son in law.

He took her personal possessions from the nursing staff, including her purse, which he emptied and spent the money on my brother. I went home and kept my grief inside because he stole it from me.

The biggest part of this memory is that I remember thinking, what if now she can see the truth. What if she knows what I had done with my father all these years? Now, she would hate me. Now, she would know I am a monster. She would know that everything about me was a lie and that I was some sick human that engaged in sexual contact with my parents.

I realised that this is when I buried everything and I became sick within my mind. This is when my OCD really began to peak because it needed an outlet.

This week has been like opening something I didn’t know I had sealed, and feeling it.

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?

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.

 

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.

New Therapy

by

9

New Therapy.

I met with a new therapist today. He was pleasant enough and direct which I think is what I need. Not someone that will aww and pacify me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not for me.

It was very hard to talk and tell him the things I did. He asked me if I wanted justice and my answer was no. I don’t. I don’t see the point. My father is sick, what would ripping a family apart to label him whatever achieve?

Then my therapist explained it and I’ve never had it explained before. He said if I sought justice it’s more symbolic. The blame gets given to him. The words are said out loud. It would officially not be my fault.

What a thought. I can’t even begin to explain how it feels. That maybe I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t make him do it like he said.

There’s a child inside down on his knees crying because maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he wasn’t bad inside. Maybe he was really loveable. Maybe he wasn’t made evil. Maybe he didn’t make them do it. Maybe it wasn’t the way he was made.

Maybe it wasn’t his fault at all.

And the adult on the outside, I feel such anger and frustration, I can’t ease those feelings. I can’t bring myself to gain justice for that child. All I can do is watch the child suffer and not be able to put it right.

I keep him where his father put him.

I wish it had been someone else and not my father. I wish it was just a no one that treated me badly all the time, maybe then I could hate him enough to not care.

There isn’t anything I can do.

20121216-011316.jpg

I can’t reach.

by

10

Some days, like today feel as though I have just come out of a hole and the whole world moved on and I didn’t recall it happening. It feels like it’s been weeks, not just days since I have posted here, or written anything at all. I thank all those so much that did reply to my two forgiveness posts. I will reply to you, because the support I feel I get is so huge. I wish I could show each of you.

My nights have been long this last week and filled with nightmares, more than I am used to. One night I even woke screaming and I was sure that I was a child and I was in my room and the man, I named in my books as the bad man was there. He was so real to me, although his face and identity still remains hidden.

Perhaps some part of my mind wants to show me something. I have never had nights as bad as these all night and every night. I wake and I am little in my mind. He’s there and it’s taking me a few minutes to realise, no he isn’t and I am safe.

Safe.

I wish I knew what that actually felt like. I can tell myself I am safe, that I am an adult and he can’t get me.  I feel like I am going crazy.

I have many people to apologise to, so many since my last posts on here that I still haven’t got myself to talk to properly. I’m finding it hard to talk. People want to chat about the ordinary things and all I can think is why does any of it matter? But then who am I to ask that?

My self harm hasn’t stopped, twice today. I can’t dig in deep enough to cut away what it is I’m trying to remove. I don’t even know what it is that I am trying to reach. I can’t get clean. Not in the germ dirty sense, but somewhere inside I feel something. I can’t wash it away, I can’t cut it away. It’s driving me insane.

Talking here, or talking to anyone, I just want to tell myself to shut up. None of it matters.

 

Forgiveness, The Afterthoughts.

by

19

Yesterday I wrote about forgiveness and how to do it, almost after I had posted it and replies came in, it occurred to me that perhaps it isn’t my father or even my mother that I have to forgive. Perhaps it is the little boy himself that needs the forgiveness. 

I’ve hated him for a very long time, to the point if anyone asked me I would say, I would happily push him down the stairs and hope it hurt for the things he did.  But I have to ask myself, if he were a real child stood in front of me, if he was anyone but me, would I do that to him and no of course I wouldn’t  I would never hurt a child.

In a way it is like I am on the side of my mother and father, I help them to abuse him even more because I blame him. I get asked many times if I think I could confront him about the things he has done and I can’t, not that I am afraid of him, but if I confront him, then he will know that he abused me and I don’t want to hurt him. How strange is that? But it’s what I feel and I think, points to I actually have to accept that what my parents did was abuse, because I don’t, and I only call it that for the sake of here. When I was in therapy I could never say it out loud, it felt like I was lying, not about the events, but about the label.

I found myself nodding a lot to the replies I received yesterday; one of them was from someone named Lil, her words were so very true. Especially about my recent issues. I have a very hard time right now sticking to the decision of having my father out of my life. He doesn’t make it easy because he keeps emailing me and messaging me, of course none of them are nasty, in fact most of them are so nice its heartbreaking, because he is teasing me with exactly what Lil mentioned the answer to my craving for a parent.  He’s showing me what I have longed for my entire life, but part of me knows that if I go back, he’ll snatch it right back again.

And here I am, full circle in my thoughts, I don’t accept that what they did was abuse, I don’t accept it because it’s my parents., I can’t let go of the belief and hope for the parental love back. I blame the little boy for what he did and making me who I am today, because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been abused and would have the relationship I so clearly want.

I need to forgive that child. I need to forgive myself.

Forgiveness

by

15

Forgiveness.

It’s a strange word and while I do know what it means in theory, knowing what it means in feeling it is a completely different thing. I am not even sure if it is something that is possible. How exactly do you forgive someone?

I am not a religious person; I don’t believe in God, I know a lot of people will answer with regards to their faith of God and forgiveness. I think if I did believe in God I wouldn’t know how to forgive him either.

I guess forgiveness comes in many shapes and sizes; it makes hypocrites out of us. Me especially. I haven’t been very good with keeping up with people this last month or so. Not that I have ignored anyone, or not replied, I just haven’t had it in me to talk. Messages have gone unanswered, my phone has been left, emails not responded to. Yet I in some way expect and hope that these friends will understand when I say I am sorry. Many of them have thought they have upset me and that isn’t the case. It’s just a bad time and I hope they forgive me for my lack of communications.

But forgiveness is probably part of why I have been quiet. I wonder if discovering forgiveness would be the key to removing or at least healing the pain inside. It was my birthday just a couple of weeks ago. It’s never a good time; it makes me anxious and afraid. I’d happily ignore it if I could. This year was worse, added to that is my decision to not have my father in my life. It’s made me very ill these past few weeks.

My hands are very sore through the overwhelming feeling of not being able to get clean, though I know some part of this is my minds way of coping with everything else. I do suffer from OCD and when it is at a point that my hands are bleeding, I know I have something bothering me. The fact that even my wrists are cut and bloody tells me I have a problem. I have had days of not eating and over eating. Nights of no sleep or nights plagued with bad dreams, but the biggest one is, in ten days I have only had two days where I have not self harmed. Some of myself harm days have been multiple occasions.

I look at all of this and why I do these things. I feel sane on the outside, but my actions feel far from it. None of my insanities can ease the pain I feel inside. I wish if I could give my father anything, it wouldn’t be confrontation, but it would be a day of feeling what I feel.

Forgiveness might be the key, but how do you do it? I’m not sure it’s possible. I wonder if forgiveness is real at all, or is it just something we convince ourselves of?

Christmas 48 Days To Go…

by

17

I can hear the screams now, no don’t remind me. Not yet. it’s too early…. the odd dread people have for this season that I never understand. I count down the days. Christmas is my favourite day in the entire year.

I never really had Christmas as a child, the family celebrated it of course, but for me it was the way in which my hopes would be torn apart each year. My mornings were the same, I’d watch my brother open gifts and hope the ones I had were from my list, but they never were. Anything that was on my list always ended up in my brothers pile. I asked for a train set for years. Every year it was at the top of my list, I loved trains. And every year I didn’t get one, until when I was 12. On my list again was a train set. I went to bed hoping and wishing like all the other children and in the morning when we opened our gifts, my brother got a special one. He got a train set. This kind of thing had gone on all the time, I asked for a go-kart, he got it, I asked for a bike, he got it, but nothing made me more heartbroken than watching him get that train set. I watched him build it with our father over the days. I watched him play with it and I got banned from touching it.

That is what they did all the time. Through the day I would sit by my Nan and watch my brother and wonder why he got what I asked for. My dad would always tell me they couldn’t afford it for me.

My Christmas Day nights always ended the same way, year after year. My father would sexually abuse me and then I’d go to my room and cry it out into a notebook, sometimes I’d cry so hard I though it possible I could die from that alone. Those were my most sorrow filled moments.

I guess it’s odd that Christmas is my favourite day given all that, but I’ve come to realise my parents never took that day from me. They didn’t have what I had. I had my Nan. I’d sit curled up with her and watch movies on the television while I tried not to think about what my brother had. I’d sit with her at dinner time to ensure I got fed. I’d share her giant mugs of tea with her, her laughter, her jokes. We played board games. We sat away from everyone, the two hated outcasts. But she gave me love and warmth. Christmas Day didn’t start until she arrived.

If there’s anything I miss, it’s her sharing that day with me and now with my children. I wish she could be part of that.

I remember getting my first real Christmas present. I was 22. It was from my mother in law. There were gifts for me, I was surprised. I had sat watching everyone open their things and never realised she would buy me something. I was part of my first real Christmas. she put the wonderfully wrapped gift in my hand and I stared at it. I didn’t want to open it. I was afraid but excited inside. I just held onto it because that moment was worth more to me than anything anyone could give me. She asked me if I as going to open it and I was so shy. How do you tell someone they gave you your first gift? She’d think I was crazy. I didn’t tell her, but I did open it, but she gave me more than just a gift that year, she showed me what family Christmas was.

That is what I love, the family part. If someone asked my children about Christmas, it wouldn’t be extravagant gifts they remember, it’s the funny things. The year they wrote letters to Santa and left them trailing up the stairs and he replied to each one. The year we watched 24 Christmas movies, one a night. Midnight baking of mince pies and cookies. The special gift they get on Christmas Eve. The time spent hunting for each years Christmas decoration. The scene we make from marzipan to put on our Christmas cake. Making crackers and decorations, window painting and so much more. No amount of money could ever buy those memories.

This year I’m going to give someone else Christmas, because in all my hate and anger and jealousy, I released that my brother has never been given Christmas. He doesn’t remember the toys he got. He remembers the fights and the arguing and the beatings. He remembers the disappointment and heartache. When I talked to him a couple of days ago about Christmas, he said he wished he had a real family so he could do Christmas. He may have had the gifts of expensive toys, but he never had the fun or the laughs.

I guess I didn’t see that he lost out too.

It makes me a little mad when people moan about Christmas and all the money they have to spend and how they hate it, because it’s not true. we’ve already got our gifts. They are the people we spend Christmas with and memories we make. Nothing can beat that. No one says we have to buy all the latest gadgets and buy ourselves into debt.

This year Im going to Berlin for the Christmas markets 😉 I’m taking my brother. He might kill me when I’ve walked him for hours, and his legs want to leave, but I can’t wait to see the look on his face.

I want to give him his first Christmas.

20121106-004013.jpg

Days

by

9

Days.

I hate the days when I feel pointless. like today, I feel it, like some pit of sadness that I can’t get away from, feels like drowning if anything, I’m not even sure why it started. maybe I woke this way, I’ve been so busy burying myself in everything else that I haven’t noticed.

I was probably around 9 or 10 when I really remember feeling this way on a perks ant basis, like I knew that this was my life and there was nothing I could do about it, or course if hope, I always had that. I’d try my best to be so damn good all the time and it never got noticed.

I used to beg God to take me away; to not let me wake up in the morning because I could t stand another moment. if I believed in God, perhaps I’d ask that of him now. everything feels so pointless.

I wonder what I’m fighting for. I’m here, I survived my childhood, but what for? what difference did I make?

When I was a child I would feel this way, usually after my father had… I’d say sexually abused me, but as I don’t see it as abuse I’m not really sure what to call it, but after my father had done his things and I’d go back to my bedroomI’d climb in bed and feel so dirty and disgusted with myself because I once again have in.

I used to write pages and pages of things, usually they started with why can’t my dad love me? why do I have to do these things? why am I so bad? I used to cry and pour my heart out into notebooks until I fell asleep. I’d curl myself I to the corner of my bed but I wouldn’t lie down, I was too afraid of that. what if the bad man came back?

But my sadness was because I was alone. completely. I feel that way today.

20121014-203945.jpg