I can’t Stop

by

8

Self harm. It’s like this beast that I can’t shake off. It lives with me always. Sometimes, we just exist side by side and other times, we cling to each other like it’s all I have.

I have been a self-harmer since I was four years old. A long time for it. It’s part of me now and part of who I am and an addiction I can’t seem to kick. Like my old friend I have to keep going back to.

This last week there are more days I have harmed than I haven’t. I keep trying to not do it, but it’s like when you’re on a diet and that bar of chocolate says one piece won’t hurt, or when you quit smoking and your brain says, just one cigarette, its ok. If you’ve ever tried to quit anything, then you know what I mean.

My other half despairs so I hide it. 36 years of self-harm has taught me how to do it so that no one sees it. I haven’t self-harmed yet today, but it is early and its there. That feeling in my skin calling for me to cut … just to feel that. It’s like taking a breath, holding it until your head pounds and letting it out real slow. Or that sigh you get when you finally sit after a long day … that’s what I need. I can see it in my head. Grabbing my blade, putting it into my skin and sliding it down slowly so that I can make the pain last just a little bit longer.

I can feel my chest wound up so tight as I try not to give in and my brain asking, why am I abstaining? What does it matter if I cut? I’m not hurting anyone.

My other half, my friends, they just don’t understand it. They say it hurts them, but why? I’m not cutting them. I’m cutting me. They eat chocolate and junk food. They drink coffee, watch tv shows. They do stuff that makes them feel better, why can’t I?

I’m not killing myself. I can’t say I’m even scarring myself. It’s just old wounds. The more I sit here and try to analyse why there is a reason to stop … the more I know I am likely to publish this blog post and head straight to my bathroom.

What kicked this off? Someone asked me. I don’t know. My dad died a few months back, but it is so big for me now. Bigger than it was when it happened. I don’t think I paused when he died, and then something happened a month or so ago and it seemed to kick of my grief. It was the strangest thing perhaps. My grief coming months later and now it’s so much inside that it hurts to breathe because he is gone.

He’s gone …

Some people have said, when he died, they were glad he was gone. I think those people forget me, the adult, the son … still the child. They see the man in my books and see him as a monster, but they don’t see the connection that was there. It’s hard to explain to people who see it black and white. We had secrets together, a thing … it made me who I am and made him who he was and now it’s like half of something is missing.

I keep looking at my phone and expecting him to ring.

There’s no one that can make it better. No one who can fix it. I have messages that say he isn’t suffering any more, and I know. I don’t miss that dad. I don’t miss the dad in a bed who needed feeding and cleaning and dressing. I don’t miss the man who suffered.

I just miss my dad.

I can’t …

Silence 

by

11

One of the skills I mastered as a child was silence. It’s a great skill sometimes. I can sit in a room feeling completely shattered inside and no one would have a clue.

I can act normal. 

When I was a child, I used to think that if I told anyone, my parents would go to jail and I would end up lost. That’s what my parents said anyway. They’d tell me that if I ever went to care, that my brother and I would be split up, and maybe he’d be sent to somewhere not very nice and I couldn’t help him because we’d not be together. They also told me that once you go to care, you never see your family again. 

My parents never actually told me not to tell. They never threatened me. They never told me I’d go to care if I told. But making me aware of what happened to others who spoke out kept me silent. 

I kept silent for 33 years.

Do you know that a child who is abused from the age of five to the age of 15 … that’s 11 years. Everyday for 11 years is 4015 days. A child who is abused (I originally put the word rape here, but deleted it. It’s seems wrong.)  every day between 5 and 16 will be ‘abused’  over 4000 times. 
Do you know how hard that is to hold in?

Although, technicallly, I didn’t hold it in. I spent more nights than I can count crying myself to sleep. Asking why didn’t my dad love me? Talking to my bear. Asking God if he would please just not let me wake up tomorrow. I poured my words out to an empty room because I had no one to tell. 

At 33 I told someone. I sat one night and told someone. I was shaking and crying and falling apart and thinking, God, what did I just do? I’d said it. I’d said that bad thing. I’d let the shadow out to show someone else. 

I sometime get mad with myself. Mad because all of that … those years of stuff stick in my head. Like on repeat. 

Maybe my body was taken 4000 times, but in my head it’s more than that. The worst thing about abuse isn’t the abuse. You only get that rape once, physically, but in your head you relive it hundreds of times. Suddenly 4000 incidents because an unimaginable number and then someone says 

… stop thinking about it. Move on. Grow up. 

It’s like a punch to my gut and the hand across my mouth again trying to silence my screams. I can’t breathe. Is that it? Just stop thinking about it? Stop talking about it?

I guess if someone stepped on our foot on purpose in school and the hurt our feelings, we’d have forgotten about it, right? 

Suddenly I feel crazy. Like I don’t know who I meant to be or how I am meant to ask. I didn’t ask for that life. For this life. For these memories. 

Two nights ago, I was asleep. I was dreaming. I dreamt of that man. Not my dad. The other man. He had hold of my legs. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I could hear him. My body reacted before I woke up and I leapt from my bed, fighting, screaming for him to stop. I was by my window ready to jump out because falling to the gravel below is less painful than what he could do to me. Then I’m down on my knees, shaking, I can’t breathe and my other half is there. Asking what’s wrong, but suddenly I am five again. And, I’m so afraid. 

Telling me to shut up makes me feel crazy. It makes me feel that when I have moments like that night that I am wrong. I makes me hate he face in he mirror. 

You want me to battle my brain with my brain. 

I’m so tired inside. 

Sometimes I cut my skin like aversion therapy. If you could just be normal, I say. If you could just act like everyone else …

I stare in the mirror and I hate the face that stares back. I hate the man there. The one with the memories. The one with the mental health issues. If I could punch the glass and hit his face, I would. 

Shut up. 

Move on

Try to get better 

These aren’t lessons  you’re teaching me. They’re just another blade to cut myself because you make me feel like my dad did.

That me, who I am, is not good enough. 

I wish I could blink and wake up. 

I’m Fine

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19

I don’t write here a lot anymore, I know. Mostly because I’m fine … I’m fine. Yes. Like a mantra. A little bit of that is because I feel like I’m whining all the time. Like who wants to hear about it?

So the man is crazy? So what?

Who cares?

I’m fine.

That’s what I have to keep saying.

Look out the window and think about jumping … No, I’m fine.

My dad died. I miss him and I hate him all at the same time, but … I’m fine.

I came off my medication. I couldn’t write while I was on it and even after my dad’s passing, everything was numb. Not in the grief kind of numb. This was different. Just numb that my emotions had flat-lined. Christmas came and I tried to enjoy it. I tried to feel it inside like I had for years, but it was gone. Maybe losing Christmas was more heart-breaking that losing my dad … maybe. But I’m still fine.

I couldn’t sleep on the medication. I developed something called restless leg syndrome and my doctor told me that I had to choose, my mental health or my legs. I know people will say change medication, but see, I can’t take tablets, and so what I can take has to be a liquid and so my choices were limited, but my medication was to target my OCD and my depression, so what I was taking was the leading medicine for that.

It did work on my depression. I don’t feel depressed. I can get up in the morning now and not feel like I want to just roll over and die.

I found a lump in my body and I must go to the doctors to get it checked out, but I can’t. Not because I am afraid of what they might say. This lump lingers in my thoughts so often, knowing it needs to be looked at … knowing I need to ask, but I can’t. And it’s like a war inside my head, one that says what if it is something serious and you leave it too long. Then what?

Tell my kids something bad, because I couldn’t go to the doctor?

But then if I call the doctor, he has to touch me. He has to see me and look and examine me. Just the thought of it now has me wanting to bolt for the bathroom and pull my friendly blade from the soap dish and cut away every little millimetre of dirt buried under my skin. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the thought of it … hands on me. Even the doctor.

I could tell him, right? I could say being here triggers me so bad that I am ready to hurt myself for it, but what do I say?

I was a victim of sexual abuse?

I wasn’t. It’s a lie. It feels like a lie.

I was a participant. Its different.

I can’t say to the doctor, don’t touch me. Touching me reminds me what a disgusting person I am. It reminds me to hate myself and hate the child I was.

I just sit in the corner

Over here.

Out of the way.

I’m fine.

 

The Masks We Wear.

by

7

So many masks, which one to wear today.

I wear masks. Not the real kind. Not the ones that make our faces into monsters, but the other kind. They suit I wear when I go out, depending who I will be. Maybe it’s one of the many legacies my parents left me, or maybe we all have them.

I’ve been working a lot on myself, the face behind the masks, because I know that the masks I wear feel more fake with each passing day. They get so hard to hold into place and maybe one day, they’ll disintegrate until I am left with one. Maybe that one is a mask I don’t like.

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I have the parental mask, maybe that one will never leave. There is the student mask, the one with me all the time at university. I have the lover mask, the one when I am with my other half, but the one I hold the most, is the happy mask. The happy face.

I realise the more things happen, like my dad for example, him being unwell, I hide. I hide my upset. I hide my pain. It’s like my parents made me ashamed to feel anything, so to the outside world, I don’t.

It makes my life hard, this mask, because as well as not showing the sad emotions, I can’t show the really happy ones either. Someone gives me a gift, I hate it, not because I hate the gift, but because I hate the fact I know the giver is waiting for a smile from me, or a thank you and any words I utter feel forced and fake. But inside, in there, my real mask, I am beaming. So damn happy that someone did something for me.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to wear masks, and other days, I know I’ll never part with them.

So Far …

by

5

I thought I would do a check in. Before I started to take my medication, I did a lot of looking online for reviews. I wanted to see if it actually worked. I think I am maybe 2 months in now and I have to say it is going pretty good. I am glad I gave in and got this help. Although I don’t like to say I am on medication, but it is a lot easier than feeling like I just need to die every day.

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I have also read the book called a Miracle Morning and have been working on that for about two weeks. I am sure that it is helping my healing, although I have my moments. I haven’t been totally self-harm free, but it has only been once or twice, which 2 months ago, it was every damn day. So I would say that is a bonus.

It hasn’t touched the OCD part of me yet. Maybe it has made that a little worse, but then it is end of my final year at University and I am about to hand in my dissertation, so my increase in symptoms could well be my anxiety at getting that right. It does mean my hands are very sore and they bleed like I have been punching a cheese grater. I think maybe my doctor will increase my dose when I go back. That’s a little bit scary for me, but we’ll see.

The Plunge and Life

by

8

happy-pills-istock_000001056304mediumSo I did it. I took the plunge and tried medication … I never thought I’d say that. If you know me and have read my books, then you know that taking any form of medication was off my list. I refused Decided that I could deal with my mind and I’d get through it.

I’ve been on a downward spiral for a while now. A good few years I just couldn’t get off the damn slide and I was slipping farther and farther down it. It’s been really coming to a head these last few months. Over Christmas time I struggled so hard just to get myself out of bed and I’d have these arguments with myself almost. Like why was I feeling this way? But no matter what I did I couldn’t shake it. My self-harm has been so bad. I’ve had so many stitches. I’ve landed myself at the hospital. It’s just been a total nightmare with this monster in my head.

I’ve been on my medication for four weeks now. I started at a lower dose and then my doctor doubled it, mostly because I was afraid of taking this leap, but my god. I know these meds take 2-3 months to work, but I already see the benefit from it. I’ve not self-harmed in four weeks. Four Weeks!!! That deserves those exclamation marks, because before I started, I would be lucky to say four hours.

I’m not saying the medication has fixed me, or cured me, but it’s certainly had a great effect on me and my mood. I’m still struggling with my anxiety. That’s increased a little bit. It’s such a strange thing. My anxiety has increased, but I can cope with it better. Rather than having a full blown out episode, I can stop and say to myself, okay. This is my anxiety. Let’s deal with it.

I have some side effects too, but nothing I would say are overly adverse. I’m grinding my teeth to the point that my jaw aches and I have to stop it. Sometimes I feel a little spaced out, so I take my medication before bed and seem to sleep that off. I can’t multitask like I used to. My mind seems to want to focus on one thing and if I try to add more, then it has a freeze up. Not really a bad thing I guess. Multitasking is bad for you anyway. I have to most weird vivid dreams. They feel so real. Sometimes they’re horrible, actually more often than not they’re horrible, but I am sleeping. I sleep all night I also find that I need to get the full eight hours now. If I don’t I get sluggish the next day. Also not really a bad thing. But so far so good. I can’t really say they’re major bad things really. Just things that I notice.

I feel a lot of anger recently, though. I’m not actually sure if that is my medication, or that is stuff that I’ve held inside for so long coming out.

My father has had a do not resuscitate order placed upon him. He wanted me to take it off. He was quite upset about it. But he isn’t of sound mind. He was upset because he believes himself to be going to work every day, and he isn’t. he can’t even get to the bathroom now. It was very hard for me to fight this because I felt like I was holding his life in my hands. And ironic all at the same time, that I am the one with these choices. I am the one who suddenly has come control on my father’s life and he has to trust that I will do what’s best for him and that I’ll care for him.

It creates a lot of anger for me I’m losing my dad and I’m fighting with my emotions inside. The part of me that is his child wants to grieve at the coming loss and the part of me that is so angry at the things he has done, doesn’t understand why I am upset. It’s almost like I can’t comprehend that I am upset about him. And all these years, all the family has ever seen is that we’ve been at war with each other He’s seemed to hate me all my life and I’ve done so well to wear a mask that shows it doesn’t hurt me, that I don’t know how to take that mask off now in front of my family and show that I am upset. Somehow even the right to be upset has been taken from me and if I try to take it back, I feel like a fraud.

That’s Why.

by

9

I have been meaning to write this post for a long while now. I know I don’t post so much here any longer. A lot is trying not to bore people, trying not to sound like I am whining all the time and some is just trying to stay afloat in my own mind.

I was in a class a few weeks ago, we were studying sex offenders. I was a little anxious when the class began, I didn’t know what to expect and worried the class might trigger me. It maybe did in a way, but perhaps a good way. We studied people who sexually abuse children as part of this class. I am not going to call them paedophiles. I feel that is like saying that is all they are, but I am not defending them either. The act they commit is wrong.

We were learning about why. Why do they do this? Because when people here about it, the first thing they think is that sick bastard. Should be shot. Should be hung etc.

Why is probably one of the hardest questions I have. Why me? What was it that caused it? Why not my brother? So many whys that plague me for so many years and the answer came in this class. It is hard to explain, but I will try.

Many people who sexually offend against children lack social skills. I don’t mean that they can’t be social, or can’t talk, but something about them is different. They lack that thing that connects them to another. So their relationships feel empty. Usually this comes from things in their own childhoods. Not abuse, but maybe an overly strict parent, maybe a parent who didn’t hug them. Something that meant they didn’t quite learn how to connect with others. So they feel different.

My father’s parents weren’t abusive, but his mother was a gambler and his father worked a lot to pay for that habit, this meant that my father didn’t have much parental time, which meant that these skills never developed in him.

So he met my mother, and what he got was someone who was domineering, didn’t listen to him, wasn’t the same as him. People like my father have problems with peers. They just can’t fit in with them. Then this child comes along. Not just any child, but one that the adult can connect with, intimately and when I use that word, I don’t mean sex. I mean like a close friend. That’s what the child becomes. And this was where my why is. My father likes to read. He likes science. He is intelligent, but he had these parts missing and then I came along. Someone who is so similar to him in mind. Quiet, a reader, someone who likes to think. I was reading by the time I was five, suddenly my father has this connection with a human that he has never had before. Someone he can talk to, but also because this someone was a child, there was no fear of rejection, he was at the top and I was at the bottom in the hierarchy. So he had control. And this is generally what it is. So how does it get from having a friend to sex? I guess this is the part where it gets screwed up. Where the adult wants to get closer and closer to the child and they do, the child becomes like a relationship partner and sex is generally a part of that. Suddenly the child is no longer a child, not in the eyes of this adult at least.

I realised in this class that it wouldn’t have mattered if I was the first born, or his tenth child, he’d have picked me every single time, because it was something about me, but not something that was bad. It was because I was the one he connected with the most, because I was the one who was most like him.

In some sick twisted sense, it feels like a compliment.

I am not saying what he did was right, but this, if you can understand what I am saying, it is the answer to that question. Why?

Why am I here?

by

4

Why am I here?

It is truly a great question. I don’t really know. Why am I here? Why is anyone here at all? What is the purpose to be alive? This question always sends me into a tailspin of depression when I think about it for too long.

How do you find meaning in your life, in the future of it, when it is impossible to find meaning in the past?

Sometimes, I stand over a dark hole just teetering at the edge. Why don’t I fall in? Jump? It wouldn’t matter really. I could curl up, close my eyes and sink into the darkness and be gone.

Instead, I stare at a man. I look at him and ask, why are you here? He is old and frail now. He is waiting to die. His mind flits back and forth between the years of his life and one moment he is in the past and the next he is in a world that never existed. Why is he here?

You, my father – the decrepit old man who no longer walks. The man with the face of confusion and fear and helplessness.

I should laugh at the way your life is ending. I should rejoice in it. I should relish in the hand that karma has given to you. As I watch you die, I feel loss. A deep intense loss in the depths of myself. I’m losing my father. Not you. Not the one I have, but the one in my head. The one I hope for. The one that I hope will emerge one day and tell me he is sorry and it was all a mistake. I’ll lose my hope. My chance for answers that I don’t really want. I’ll lose that chance that one day you might wake up and realise you want me. I’m losing that part that maybe one day you’ll tell me it wasn’t my fault.

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But I am losing something I never had. All I am losing is things that I hoped for.

Why are you here?

I stare at you sometimes. You’re almost bed ridden now. Your skin hangs loosely where age and sickness has stolen your muscles. You have legs that don’t hold you. A mind that doesn’t guide you. You have frightened eyes and I a gaze that maybe I once had. One that’s innocent and lost and needing something, yet so many times all that stared back at me when I had that face, was you. You and your anger and your wants and desires. Not once did you stop. Not once did you look into my eyes and see my tears. Yet I do that for you.

Somehow it is the other way around and you are the scared one. You are the crying one. You are the one needing someone to come in the dark and make it all okay. You ask me to do it and I do. Guilt tugs so damn hard in my chest that with everything, I can’t turn away. I can’t do it. How did you?

After everything you have done, I cannot hate you.

Why am I here?

I have no idea, but why are you?

A Few Questions

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3

I was asked some general wonderings, too, when I asked what people wanted to know. I guess that these are things I can’t quite cover in the book, so I’ll answer them here. Anything else I might not cover, just ask on my page or here, or message me. 🙂 I try to answer as best as I can.

These come from Kimberly:

 

“What happened to Nathan? “

 

We were friends until I was around 27. I still see him on Facebook, but we don’t talk that much really. He doesn’t live far away. As far as I can see, he is happy. We drifted apart because as my mental health got worse, I started to cancel things and eventually, he stopped asking. I miss him a lot, though.

“Are you still friends with anyone from college? “

 

No, aside from Facebook, I don’t see them anymore.

“Do you still live in the same area? “
I don’t live that far away from where I grew up. Probably just a 15-minute drive.
“How are you doing without being in therapy?”
I found therapy useless to be honest. I do better alone. My last one, last year, was pretty bad. He wouldn’t let me talk about anything. He’d say, What does it matter? It’s in the past. And had me down as having low self-esteem issues, which I don’t.

I did have CBT for my OCD at one point, but it didn’t cure it, just helped me to calm it a little. I needed that back then. I was living in a bubble.

I went to one therapist about my PTSD and the badman. He pretty much accused me of having an overactive imagination and said we’re all afraid of the dark when we’re on our own.

So, without therapy, I cope as best as I can.
“Do your children know anything about your abuse?”

 

They don’t have a clue. They know little things, like me not having a bed until I was 9, but no, they have no idea really, and I am glad about that.

 

“I’m also curious why your brother hates your dad so much. Was he aware of the things going on maybe, and just didn’t say? Was he abused in some way? Do you have a relationship with either of your brothers?”

 

I don’t exactly know why my brother hates my dad so much. I think it’s just a bad relationship and that our father is selfish, and he sees that. They fell out really when my brother asked me lots of questions, like whether my Nan used to beat me, like our parents had claimed. He realised it had all been lies and that made him angry. I don’t think he was abused, but he has issues from living in that house. Maybe he saw things. He was in the same bed as my father and I. He doesn’t live too far away. He comes and goes, but we talk. My older brother lives abroad now; we talk on Facebook. I have other siblings from later in life. My youngest sister is 12. I don’t really have contact with them, though.

 

 

Loss

by

14

I lost myself.

Isn’t that a weird thing to lose? Yourself? I mean, I am right here. I can see myself when I look in the mirror. It’s me – same eyes, same nose, same scars, same smile. Even my hair is the same. But I am lost. Me – the one who is inside.

It may be the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. Years ago, maybe five years plus, I was different. I was…me. But how was I me, and how did I lose myself? Well, that’s maybe the oddest part of all, and maybe a little hard for me to fathom.

One day – at the end of 2009, I think – I created my Facebook account. I had fun on there; played, made friends. It was probably a really great time for me. But the catch was I had a pen name for my writing. Yet, oddly, the time I wore a mask was when I was able to be me.

I realise that I lost myself the day I released my first book. It wasn’t fiction nor fun, but it was me. The real me. It was about me and my life. Somehow, when I sent myself into the world without my mask, I got lost.

Maybe it is better to write under a pen name. Maybe it is better to hide a little. Isn’t it weird that when we are unknown to the people around us, we are more ourselves than with the people who know us and love us dearly?

I miss my jokes – not that they were funny.

I miss my daily writing – not that it was ever good, but it was fun.

I miss devouring book after book and not coming up to view the world.

I miss laughter…my own.

I miss music and my endless searches for another great band or song.

I miss that writing spark inside – it’s there, I can feel it sometimes, but I fail to ignite it.

I miss drinking beer while sitting on my decking outside.

Mostly, I miss myself.