Tag Archives: abuse

Yes Man

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4

Yes Man

 

Funny film, but not what this post is about.

I have been thinking about the replies I got to my post about Blame.

See here.

Thank you to the wonderful people who left them. I had expected people to say it wasn’t the child’s fault. Of course, anyone would say that right? Even me.

But I looked at what each person had said and tried to see it how they did. Of the biggest fingers that are pointing to blame, there is one that says, I never said no. I chose to go to my father or whoever my mother thought I should.

I have to ask myself why? Was it for love? Its part of it, I am sure. But also, there is rejection and that is one of my biggest fears.

I have to look at many sides of this and they all come down to that same thing. Rejection.

I was trained to never say no. If I said no I was going to be rejected. But, I wonder if it could be that simple. I see it in my actions now. I am talking to someone in a Facebook chat, but I’m dying to go to bed, or to go off and write, but I don’t. I’m afraid to say, I’ve got to go. It feels like saying no to them. I am telling them they cannot have my time right now and this will make them not want to talk to me later. This is my logic- it’s inbuilt.

I think back to the days when I was taking drugs. I took more and more. I played around. I tested. I did not fear death. I also didn’t want to say no. I might lose my friends if I wasn’t jabbing a needle in my arm and being that person they wanted.

When I was into that life, people wanted me around. I was the guy with the bike, the drugs, the money and women. I didn’t care. When I was a person I thought they wanted me to be, they wouldn’t reject me.

I see it in relationships too. I was a terrible cheat, never faithful to anyone. I look at why I was. I didn’t really care for half the women. Some, I couldn’t tell you their names.

So, why did I go ahead and get intimate with them?

Fear. Fear that if I didn’t give myself over, in one way or another, I would get rejected.

I see this ‘yes-man’ in so many things and in so many times when I have been hurt.

The Yes-Man was at the helm.

I wonder if that is the reason I never said no to my parents.

Perhaps the times I chose to go to my father willingly, it wasn’t that it was my choice outright. Maybe I was being who he wanted me to be so I didn’t get rejected.

My father trained me to give myself physically and mentally in order to hold onto people.

He created Yes-man.

Not Through My Eyes.

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20

ImageToday I sent off a picture of the child I was to someone who is doing a collage of survivors. I didn’t think so much of it until I was staring at his face. Looking at the bruise on his forehead. Looking at the smile on his face that hid the horrors he had endured the night before.

He still smiled.

My therapist used to tell me often to take out a picture of myself when I was a child and to really look at the face and the innocence that’s there. I never really did it. I didn’t see the point. I didn’t believe what she was telling me.  She wanted me to look at him with my eyes and not my parents.

I couldn’t do it.

I hate that child. I agree with what he endured. I wish I could go back in time and push him down the stairs and tell him how much I hate him. Because I do. Some days I hate him so bad that I wish I could reach in and rip him out and throw him away.

I see him through my parent’s eyes. I see that he is unworthy. That he caused his parents to do the things they did to him. That he didn’t fit and wasn’t good enough to be part of anything, including his family. I don’t even see him as a child. I’d never hurt a real child, I’d never hate one, but him, I loathe.

He made his parents that way. They were not abusers until he came into their lives. It was his fault that they did things people would think as awful. Yet they were not awful people. They were good; they just got landed with a child that made them do bad things.

Today I looked at his face and saw him with my eyes.

It was one of the hardest things I have done.

Mirror.

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8

Mirror 

Note: I wrote this some weeks ago when I was at a point I didn’t see a way out of, I needed an outlet. I thought I would share. Could be triggering to those suffering self harm issues and possibly disassociation. Read with care.

When I look in the mirror I am shocked. That is not my face. That is not how I look. I want to claw his face away. It’s a lie. I am trapped in his body. I don’t look like that. 

I see what everyone sees. I see why they hurt him;   right there in his eyes. It is what he was made for and what he deserves. I hate when I see the tears in his eyes. He looks stupid when he cries. He doesn’t deserve to let the tears go.

You cannot cry for what you are. It’s his fault; he has no right to cry. He is bad. He is worthless. He doesn’t get to cry about that. 

I see his blood in the mirror but it isn’t right. I need to see it for real so that I can feel it. I can’t feel it in a reflection that is a lie. I need to see it happening. I need to feel it; the sharp burn as the skin gets cut.

I grind my teeth down because it hurts, but then I see him doing the same. He doesn’t get to keep the pain away. He isn’t allowed to.

It is his entire fault. I want to smash the mirror. I want to pull him out and beat him. I want him to go away and never come back. I want him to die.

I hate him.

 
He eats and he isn’t allowed. He doesn’t deserve food. He doesn’t deserve to taste things, but I watch him and he does it like he can’t help himself. He has no control. He should eat nothing. He should feel hunger. He should feel everything. 

He is a lie and everyone sees through it. Everyone knows that he is there to be hurt. But it’s not him that gets hurt, it’s me.

They get it wrong. 

I keep drifting off. Not to sleep; just somewhere. I get lost. Maybe he does it. Just like now. I don’t know where I have gone. I don’t really know. My mind keeps wandering. 

I like to watch the skin bleed. I like to watch when it burns from the kettle or the iron. I feel it when it goes over me like calming music. Every nerve reaches to feel it, but then he is there. He spoils it. 

Everything I do, he spoils. I get happy; I get content and think maybe this time things are right. They feel right, but then it’s him and he ruins everything.

I hate him.

Because of him, it all goes. Something happens and it is supposed to be him that gets hurt. Not me, but it’s me that feels it. Me that hurts.

I see the walls fall on the comfortable place I made. They crash down so loud I can’t hear anything else. It’s always this way. It happens every time. I’m a fool to believe that it is different. Foolish to believe in people. Foolish to believe that maybe this time he won’t ruin it. 

Each time is worse. I curl up inside and wish to be taken away. I just want it over. I ask all the time; just take me away. Make it stop. But I am never answered. I know there is no one listening.

 I can’t cut deep enough. I keep trying and it doesn’t go away. It just bleeds. I don’t want it to bleed. I just want to feel that pain and not this one.

He can’t even give me that. 

I want to smash his face in the mirror. 

My Voice Is Silent

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5

My Voice Is Silent.

​ My voice is silent. It has been that way for days, yet today, feels worse. I cannot shift the feeling of being in the wrong for talking.; for letting my secrets out. It is six days, I think, with no real sleep. Maybe it is more. I don’t really know.

​I am floating from one day to the next without having the time to stop and enjoy it. I am just watching . Somehow, I got knocked back inside my head and I am not sure how to come out again. I make myself write this so I can see what I feel and understand myself.

​I was out of bed, in the middle of the night, in a frightening moment when my mind protected me. I was yelling to be left alone before I had even woken up. Suddenly, I was in the memory of a five year old, and the man I do not know was stood by my bed in the dark once more, like he always is and always was.

​I was not dreaming of him. I was not even thinking about him. I had laid there in the dark for almost an hour, getting annoyed with the inability, once again, to fall asleep. I closed my eyes; I must have drifted off a little. When I opened my eyes in half sleep, his face was in front of mine. His hands were on my bed. I didn’t think, I just reacted. It wasn’t until I was at the other side of the room crouched against the wardrobe with my arms in front of me, telling him no that I realised it was thirty years later and he was not there.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.

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7

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.

I have a picture of a man, laid in bed with his baby son sleeping on his chest. He is reading the paper. I look at it, and I wonder what happened to make that man hurt that child.

My abuser – My father.

I hate to call him that. I hate to label him.

He is my dad. The person that helped to create me. The person whose genes I carry. Whose reflection stares out at me whenever I look in the mirror.

Yet he is the one who took from me. The one that beat me. Starved me. Committed countless assaults on me for over a decade. Sold me. The one who broke me. The one that made me a mess and left me with all these shattered pieces to pick up.

I should walk away but I can’t. I think maybe that is hard for people to understand. Perhaps those that are fortunate enough to have real parents. We see child abuse in the paper, on the television. Hear about it on the radio and each time often peoples thoughts and even my own sometimes. Is why didn’t someone take the child away and do something?

Why didn’t the child leave?

Why do I still keep my father in my life?

I was asked once by a teacher if everything was okay. She had put up with me for months coming into the classroom and sitting at my desk and just crying. Of course I tried to hide it, but I could never stop it. It would just happen. I don’t really know why. Maybe it was because I was safe and I could.

I’d cry because I was hungry, because I had a new bruise or it hurt just to move.  I’d cry because I was tired and hadn’t slept or I was sick because my mother had given me more medicine and still I wasn’t good enough. Sometimes I’d cry because I was alone in my world. I was ten.

My teacher saw me crying again one morning and took my hand. She walked me down to the library. Gave me a drink and a tissue and sat with me. She held me when I cried and then she asked me ‘is something bad happening at home?’

I froze. I stared. I stuttered. I had no idea what to say because I realised in that moment I had given it away. I had shown my secrets.

I lied to her. I said no. She asked me why I cried and I lied and told her that I was upset because my brother had more toys than me and didn’t share. It was partly true, but a lame ten year olds reason.

I lied because I didn’t want my mum and dad to get into trouble. I didn’t want them to go to prison. I didn’t want to be taken away. I didn’t want to live somewhere safe. I just wanted my mum and dad to stop what they did to me and love me like they did my brother. It was that simple for me.

After that day I never let what was going on at home show to the outside world. I had to protect my parents. People wouldn’t understand. People would think they were bad. They would think they were evil and they weren’t.  People didn’t know my parents like I did.

I realise that I still hold that same hope. That’s what keeps me from walking away. Nothing has changed. He called me a week ago, and within twenty minutes had sunk me. Not with anything malicious, just the gentle hints of manipulation that remind me I am nothing to him. I am nothing more than the scrapings of a child he helped to make.

Yesterday he called me again. He was happy and excited. He talked to me about his grandchildren like a real father and grandfather. He gave me a glimpse of the dad I wish I had.  I held onto that. I fed it to my guilt. I told myself I was wrong for being upset with him. I was wrong for even having Dear Teddy out. It was saying bad things about him and he doesn’t know of its existence. I felt so guilty for the way I have treated him. The no father’s day card. Everything bad that I had done towards him came crashing down in my mind, because for a few minutes he gave me hope.

A friend of mine whom I talked to. She told me to look at it. See it for what it is, because if he was the father I was wishing for. The one I was waiting for then he would show remorse too. He would apologise. He would feel bad for the things he did.

He doesn’t.

Maybe the wolf dressed as the sheep and I believed it.

Crying Without Tears – Self Harm.

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12

Crying Without Tears

Self Harm

Five days and I have not self harmed. I am trying not to break it today. I am trying to hold on with everything I have got to not give into what’s inside.

I’ve come so close, my hands shake, I can’t move, but I try. I fight.

For me.

I’ve self harmed since I was 4 years old. It’s what I do. What I know that cuts away my shame. That’s 31 years of being a slave to this condition, but it calls to me. Deep within. The tug inside. The ache under my skin that needs to be let out. The way I feel it. It’s like a need to breathe. A way to cry with no tears. To appear normal. To move onto the next moment because this one feels so smoothing I need to cut free.

I will not cut today. I will not give in.

***

Self harm is an addiction. It is passed off by society as something odd looking teenagers do while listening to depressing music to get attention. That is not why I do it. It is not why many do it, I am sure.

It’s misunderstood.

Sometimes, all that is needed is a hug. A tight hug until the only option is to break and let it out.

I read in the paper a short time ago that when a patient comes in with self harm injuries to the emergency room, the nurses would not give the patient anything to numb the pain. Because it was self inflicted,   the patient can deal with their pain then. They can deal with it while getting stitched up and wasting time.

I am sure it’s not practice but it was still a debate. The cause of self harm is passed off as nothing more than looking for attention. Perhaps it was a new idea to save money.

People think it can be stopped. Just don’t do it, but it is not so easy.

Three weeks ago, I had to seek medical aid for something I had done to myself. I was thankful that the nurse numbed the area before she began to stitch.

I am not proud of what I did. I don’t show it off. Most of the time when I am not feeling such mental anguish, I feel quite ashamed of what I have done But while I am  in those moments, self harm is the best painkiller I have for the internal pain I feel. All I care for is relief.

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