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. 
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.
Tag Archives: health
From Victim to Parent
I asked the readers on my Facebook page a week or so ago if there was anything that they wanted me to blog about. I have tons of blog ideas, but maybe I never really hit the spot. So I thought that I would put it out there. I should really make it a place people can ask and I’ll answer. I’m going to answer the ones I have over the next week or so and in no specific order.
The first one comes from Dawn. She asked: “How you managed to overcome all that you went through to become the strong caring father & person you are today. That’s one thing I’ve never really seen explained in any books written by people who were abused as children……how do they go on & function & be able to be caring, competent adults. It has to be so hard to overcome all of that….I can’t even imagine.”
Terrie also asked: “How you were able to raise your children when your parents did not pass any skills to you?”
There are quite a few questions in there, so I’ll break it down. How have I managed to stay a strong and caring father? 
I didn’t start out that way. I became a parent at 16 years old. It was way too young. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. If you read Scars, you’ll see that I did a lot of things wrong – a lot of bad things. I had to go right down before I could get up again. I ended up on drugs and almost lost my son to social services. My dad was going to get my child and be his legal guardian. That was the moment I looked at my life and at my son’s life and thought no, this isn’t going to happen. I had to make a choice to get clean or I was heading for prison, and my son was heading for my father’s house. This is what Scars is about; it’s the journey downwards, until I couldn’t get any lower in my life.
With my children now, I often try to judge what I am doing. They are the family I have and I try my best to make them happy. I try to give them the right guidance. I try a lot to protect them because my father is still around in my life and they don’t know my past with him. It’s easy to be a better parent. I just do the opposite of how I was raised.
Some of it is just an act, though. The functioning adult part is. I don’t think I will overcome things really. Not ever fully. A recent example is last night, at 3:30 a.m., I had to wake my friend up on the phone because I was afraid. I had had a bad dream filled with flashbacks and all kinds, and I couldn’t feel safe. I was sure the bad man was coming back. I could feel him. I was very afraid. The frightened child inside me takes over. I have so many fears because of this man. I have in the past slept outside or in my car because my fear has got too big. 
Every minute of every day is a fight, and my children help me with that. If they could see inside, though, they’d see I am not that strong. I suffer from OCD. Just getting up in the morning is a drama – what to wear, what to eat. I debate whether I should eat, because I have phobia of vomiting and bringing up my breakfast. I get afraid of being outside and want to go home sometimes, because I just can’t face people. At university, I can’t touch the doors, and I can’t touch people. I have to maintain a distance just so I don’t flip out. I actually have a support worker at uni and a provision that I am allowed to leave the lectures if I can’t cope. I use a Dictaphone to record all my lessons because I suffer dissociation, too, and sometimes I can miss the entire lecture. When I finally get home, it is hard to go inside if my house is empty because the children are at school or something. I look through the windows and check that it is safe.
I try not to have any friends because I can’t cope when they need to do things in their own life – even if it’s just something normal and simple, like shopping. I can’t cope with any kind of abandonment. I have one friend, and she has to cope very well with what to say to me and how to say it. She needs a medal some days. My fear that they won’t come back is so great. It is much simpler to just be alone.
I am a self-harmer. I have to hide that from my children too. So much of how I am with them is because I never want them to become like me. I don’t want them to have my fears or phobias. I want them to enjoy life. It really is because of them I am here. If they weren’t, I would have ended my own life a long time ago. I often wish my father had done it while I was a child and saved me from these years of torment.
Some days the only functioning I can manage is breathing. But I try.
I’m not really sure if this answers your question, but put simply, I use a lot of how I felt as a child to guide me with how to raise my own children, and I hide behind a façade of normalcy to hide what is inside. Only when no one is around do I allow myself to break down.
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BPD – Help Wanted
Asking for help.
It isn’t a secret that I have borderline personality disorder (BPD). Anyone who reads my page often will see that it is something I suffer from. I find it is a much stigmatised illness too. So many think that sufferers are nasty and manipulative and that people with this illness should be avoided. I have even seen books advising family members to just carry on and that the BPD sufferer will get over it. It hurts inside to see those things.
On the contrary, many BPD sufferers are very kind and giving. They love nothing more than to make someone they care for happy. It is more of an imbalance of emotions that become very intense and the sufferer does not know how to deal with them. Simple things. I often liken episodes of someone cancelling a lunch date with me as having the same emotions as if they told me they are going to die tomorrow. That is how intense it feels inside. I feel helpless in a matter of seconds and I can’t control it. For me, this is where I take hold of my razor and cut into my skin just to get it out. 
My reason for blogging isn’t so much to write about my experience. There is a world of information on the web about BPD by sufferers. It is to talk about the silent sufferers – our friends, partners, wives and husbands, and so on. People who we care about deeply are the ones we lash out at the most. Afterwards, there is such guilt. I know for myself I can get so ashamed of my behaviour. I hurt someone who is very close to me often when I am upset. I make her feel helpless and she doesn’t know what to do to help me. It makes me very sad afterwards when I can think clearly and I have calmed, but it is too late. The marks are carved into my arms and she’s pointing at herself thinking they are her fault.
I have searched so many times, as has she, for something good that can help her to understand what it is I need in those moments, and there is nothing we have found yet. Not a word. All I can do after each episode is tell her what we should have done and maybe we can learn from it. Because of this, I want to write about my journey, but I want to write about hers too. I feel it is just as important. I know also that every BPD sufferer’s illness is different, so I am also asking for some help.
If you have BPD or are a supporter of someone with it, would you be interested in helping with this project? To get some real information out there as to what helps and what doesn’t. Tips and advice. Real stories from real people, not text books from someone who has never been on either end of the illness. You won’t have to have your name in the book if you don’t want to. It would be your choice, but as I write each little bit, I would be wishing for others to contribute what they can from their experience so that we, the BPD sufferers, can help those who support us.
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Loud Noises
I keep seeing many posts around the social media that seems to me to be so narrow minded. Of course Robin Williams is still big in the news. I wish people would look at both sides.
I see people say that suicide is selfish. This is people who don’t understand. Imagine being hungry for a week, a month, or as with depression, years. Being so hungry that you would eat absolutely anything. The someone gave you a sandwich and put it in front of you, you could smell it, touch it, and you don’t even have to close your eyes to imagine how delicious it will taste and how much it’s going to take away the hunger pains. Your brain in the moment does not consider anything else but that sandwich. What if someone else wanted that sandwich? Are you going to tell the starving person that if they eat it, they are selfish for ending their pain?
I know that people say suicide is selfish and that the person committing it is not thinking of their loved ones, but isn’t it also selfish for those loved ones to want the suicidal person to stay? They want them to stay because of the hole that they would leave, so that they don’t feel grief, loss – a form of pain that is on the same unbearable level as the one wishing to leave this world? Isn’t that also selfish?
I am not condoning suicide here. Not at all, but don’t hate someone because they did it or attempted it. Don’t tell someone who is suicidal that it’s selfish, because it isn’t. Most suicidal people don’t actually want to die, what they want is the pain to stop. Not to end life. Not to cause more harm. Not to make others suffer, but to put an end to what feels so unbearable inside their minds.
I saw another post today also by someone with terminal cancer. Of course they ranted about how someone with everything, money, fame, family etc could wish away their lives and in Robin Williams case, take it. How could they do that when people like this cancer sufferer fought every day to live?
It’s a valid point. However, depression and any other mental health issue is a killer. Robin Williams didn’t kill himself, as nor did anyone else, their illness did. And if you don’t believe me, think back to the sandwich.
While I can never understand the fight and the fear and everything else that happens with some who is terminally ill, I do understand what it is like to want it to stop. I know what it is like to feel a pain so much in my mind that I have begged God or whoever to please not let me wake up again.
There was another status I saw after that too. Someone had posted that they would understand why he took his life he had been suffering a deadly debilitating illness and they were pleased that actually he might have been because he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, so they understood that. Why do they not understand that depression and everything like it is a deadly and debilitating illness?
Imagine the one thing in the world that drives you so insane that you can’t think. Fingernails down a chalk board. The sound of a knife and fork being brought back and forth over a ceramic plate. A loud shrilling siren. Sitting on a nine hour flight with a screaming baby. 
Imagine that sound and then imagine listening to it every minute of every day.
How would you switch off the pain in your ears?
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Time Limit on Mental Health Recovery
Why does mental health recovery have a time limit? It’s one of the things that bugs me the most. Many people put into therapy get 4-6 weeks of therapy and then they are cast out into the world again. Some people get 12 weeks if they are lucky, but that seems to be the maximum. Why is it that mental illness comes with such a limit?
Would we treat a cancer patient and say well you’ve got so many weeks of chemo, but after that you’re on your own? Or tell someone who is recovering from something like a stroke that they have 12 weeks to rehabilitate and then off they go to do it themselves? I don’t think so. Why is it okay with mental health? It’s just as debilitating as any other illness. The difference is, is that it can’t be seen.
The reason from my rant today comes from my own experience. When I had taken an over dose those few weeks ago and gone to my doctor after the hospital had discharged me and for the first time I said to someone that I think my thoughts are wrong. I need some help, did I get some and felt relieved.
I was assigned a therapist. I have had therapists before and for various reasons either I didn’t stick or my time was up. This time I tried to give everything I had. I tried to be honest about how I was feeling. I even showed him my many self-harm episodes across my skin. 
It was heart-breaking to hear at my last sessions that I only have three left. His manager said I could have 14 sessions. I’ve done 11 so far, because I needed so much, but that’s it for me. I feel let down again. I feel lost again. I keep hearing those words in my head and it makes me upset.
I am not a stupid person, but I am an ill person. I don’t understand how the doctors can say to someone who –
Who is suicidal and has tried many times before.
Who self-harms almost daily (although at the moment it’s been 8 days)
Who has flashbacks, sometimes so bad he has to leave the house.
Who suffers disassociation and often doesn’t know if he is a real person.
Who has BPD and breaks down and wants the world to end at something as simple as a cancelled lunch date.
Who suffers DDNOS and flits between different parts of himself at different ages because he is fragmented.
How can someone with so much to recover from be told they have 14 weeks and then they’re on their own again.
No wonder people don’t tend to get better. You can’t put a time limit on recovery from anything. That includes mental health.
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Sometimes I Miss You
Sometimes I miss you
Sometimes I miss you so much that it makes my breath catch and my pining heart beat faster.
Sometimes I miss the sound of your voice so much, that I can still hear it.
Sometimes I miss the touch of your hand in mine, that I can still feel it.
Sometimes I miss the sight of your face, but then I open my eyes.
Your absence makes me see the real you, more than your presence ever did.
You blinded me, made it so I couldn’t see.
Sometimes I miss the lies I believed.
Sometimes I miss the fake comfort I had in the illusion you created.
Sometimes I miss what you only pretended to give me
Love
My heart still feels bruised
Because…
Sometimes I just miss you.
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If you don’t want to cut, just stop it. Simple
Yesterday I wrote a blog title Death, I can’t really explain what it is about because I wrote it out yesterday whilst thinking and can’t remember it that well. But I do remember that someone had commented on my facebook page and said that she wished I didn’t self-harm. She said she didn’t really understand it.
I like that she said that, so many people who don’t understand simply say, if you don’t want to cut anymore then don’t. That’s like telling someone, if you’re on a diet, don’t eat any more, if you want to quit smoking don’t smoke any more cigarettes, pretty easy answers I guess and true in ways, but if you have ever tried to stop doing something, you’ll know how hard it is and how much that thing niggles at you and you give in, always tomorrow right? To diet, stop smoking, stop cutting or whatever vice it is you wish to give up. 
I can’t answer why everyone self-harms, but I can explain why I do it.
Have you ever been lied to? I’m sure you have. I want you to bring to mind just one time, but when it was a real big lie, one that really hurt. It doesn’t matter who did it, mother, brother, wife, husband, children, best friend etc. Anyone’s lies can hurt us deeply.
Do you remember the pain of it? The way it smack you in the chest so damn hard you couldn’t breathe. The way your stomach plummeted and your heart contracted in agony, pain that shot so deeply it brought tears to your eyes and angry to your cheeks. For those first few seconds you can’t think or can’t hear, nothing but your own heart beat in yours ears.
I’m sure right now if you are thinking of a lie that did that to you, you can bring all of those feelings to the forefront of your mind once more and you can feel it and you feel angry and betrayed and for some reason still can’t fathom why you weren’t worthy of the truth.
Remember that moment. Imagine you couldn’t say to that person who had lied to you, that you knew and that you were upset. Maybe they were at work, it’s only a few hours right? But its endless, this lie and the hurt goes through your body in torturous waves and you have to say something. It won’t stay inside. Even if it’s just picking up the phone and ranting to someone else about how you just got hurt. Sometimes the hurt from it feels like it will never go away. How can your relationship ever go back to the way it was? How will you ever stop feeling this hurt? Does it sound familiar?
Now instead of a lie, change it to something else, bullying, parents who don’t understand you, or in my case, abuse. That one lie hurts so bad doesn’t it? Even now, days, months, weeks even years later, there is a lie you can recall that still hurts. I know I have one from last year and when I bring it to mind it cuts inside the same way it did back then.
But what about child abuse? When someone is hurting a child. A child is so different to an adult, they don’t have the skills to process hurt and betrayal. They haven’t grown into an adult who understands these concepts, but they can feel this hurt, and they don’t understand it. But its more than that, when it is the parents doing the abusing, how does the child let out that hurt? The same hurt that you felt when you were lied to. For the child it’s a new additional hurt every day. Given to them by someone who is supposed to love them and care for them, but their actions say they aren’t worthy.
Me and so many other children had nowhere to go with that hurt. There was no one I could tell it to. No friend I could pick up the phone. No person I could yell at and make them take it back. I didn’t have the same skills available to me to deal with betrayal. And like liars, if you have ever noticed when you catch them, they get defensive, tell you how it was your fault, they deflect the blame so that they don’t feel any guilt. Much like a child abuser. So suddenly there is this child with pain and betrayal bigger than any lie could ever cause and words that point back at them that tells them it is their fault. What do they do?
They look in the mirror and they hate the face that stares back. They get mad at it. All that hurt and anger and pain and betrayal gets pointed at that reflection. Maybe they hit them, bite, scratch, cut, burn, pull the hair, but that face in the mirror has to pay, because it is their fault that child’s parents do what they do.
Multiply those days by weeks and then months and then years and then even some decades. The child is still there, just bigger and older. The pain is inside, but now it isn’t just one time, its years and years of betrayal by the people who were supposed to do the protecting. Every morning that adult wakes up, carrying years of agony inside them. For me, so many mornings just waking up is more pain than I can handle, I’m bursting with it, and the only way I ever learnt to let it out was to let it flow with my own blood and tears. So I do.
The next time someone lies to you. Bite your tongue, don’t confront them. Take it away and let it go silently. Can you do it? Or do you know you would only last so long before you exploded?
That’s self-harm. Minutes and hours trying to hold in the pain and nowhere for it to go.
Its not attention seeking. It’s not something that can just be stopped. It isn’t even a cry for help. It’s that moment when all the things inside need to come out but can’t, physical pain makes it better. Like releasing the valve on a pressure cooker before it explodes into a thousand pieces.
Sorry this is long, but I hope it explains it.
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Day Two!
Day two. Yes, day two of no self-harm, quite an achievement, especially when I didn’t start the day that way. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face the day today, but I did, I got out of bed before that harming feeling took over. I wanted to share something today, it’s from a reader, he gave me his permission to share this. If all my books ever do is help children like the one he speaks of, then they were so worth writing and sharing. I’ll paste it below. I wish everyone in the world could have this kind of insight.
It took me a while to realise he was talking about me and talking about that little boy from long ago. I had to read it a couple of times before I understood, but here it is. Thank you Colin, and everyone else for the bundles of support I receive every day. I hope you all know how much it means to me.
Hello James my name is Colin. I don’t know where to start… It feels like I’m sitting down to write an essay… I’m 43 living in a small town near Shepparton Vic , Australia.. I’d like to tell you about a small friend of mine.. He doesn’t know me but I feel I know a small piece of him and his life.. He decided to write about himself and published a series of books. He wrote in a fashion I could understand about his misfortunate upbringing and day to day life….. I’d like to tell you how much I cried and still cry on a daily basis of the horrors this little friend went through and I believe still goes through every minute he breathes.. I can’t understand and I never will how he feels. He doesn’t know how much his books have changed my life forever…. I have lived in a gay relationship with my partner of 12 years, He’s a GP and has been there for me in the past month for when I felt really down and helpless reading my little friends books.. I couldn’t help him and I got heavily depressed… But that was ok, My feelings were nothing compared to what this boy was going through. My partner was very understanding and I feel for him too as he has to try and diagnose people with their own problems.. Recently my bike was stolen from my house by a 14 year old boy, He was caught and charged. I thought nothing more of it until I received a phone call one day.. I was requested if I had the time to be apart of a group conference for the young lad. I find out later this boy is living in a foster care type of accommodation and is only allowed to see his mother for 2 hours a week. I thought long and hard about doing this, I was in the middle of reading my small friends book at the time and took a different view of this young thief. I did go to the conference. I’m a funeral director and to be honest with the job I do I really couldn’t care less about my bike. What I was more concerned about why had this kid got into the state he was in… The funeral industry has changed my views on a lot of things, one being, life is too short as it is to worry about material things… I explained this to the kid and how in the first few months of doing the job I had to prepare a 14yo girl who had suicided for her funeral… I explained how I cried and that she had made a bad choice, he on the other hand still had his whole life ahead of him.. The long story short he seemed like a nice enough young man and had been influenced by the conference. I got a good feeling from it as well but then heavily saddened by what life he has gone through to get where he is. I would like to help this kid so I’m making a few phone calls to see if there is anything my partner and I can do for him. We have to be careful as some of the public are still on the belief that all gay people are perverts… Anyway It brings me back to my own plight, While reading the books I felt there was a heavy bearing of my own life in them.. I too sniffed petrol from a very young age and from a broken family of alcoholism on my father’s side I had my own questions to ask. As a child of around 7yo I remember overnight stays with one of my mother’s male friends of the time. I don’t recall any bad doings from this man except sleeping in the same bed. Confirming this with my brother and sister I think I was fine. My mother has passed away so I couldn’t ask her anyway. I’m sorry I hope I haven’t rambled on.. James I think you know my little friend very well, I’ve started to cry again as usual while typing this but he has taught me that’s ok.. please cut him some slack and give him a big hug for me.. That’s all I can do.. I still feel helpless but I hope for the best for him and yourself.. One of your photo’s say “sometimes when you see a person cry…….. I am here!…..” You can re-blog my letter if it makes any difference
Please tell our little friend how much he means to me… Thanks Colin
I know you all can’t hug me, but when you send messages, even when I am too sad to reply, this is how it feels.
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Happy New Year
Happy New Year to you all. I hope you all saw the new year in with friends and family. I saw the new year in alone this time, it’s been a while since I have done that, but it was okay.
It’s been a while since I have posted here. It’s been a while since I’ve really bothered talking to many people. I’m not really sure why that is, I think about doing it, saying hi, nudging, inquiring how people are, but then I always come back to what is the point? I’m better off quiet I think. I thought very hard about shutting this site down and my facebook pages too, but then I know that those who support me need somewhere, and so I don’t do it. Perhaps there would be some way to fade into the shadows and not be seen, to just be there and observe, so that people could forget me.
I realise how depressing this post might sound, I’m not really depressed. Just fighting and tired from it. Fighting to eat or not eat. I can’t make my mind up which I want to do. Today is a not eat day. I ate so much over Christmas. I fight to keep my OCD down, from it’s torturous voice. That one is winning at the moment. I’m back at university on Monday and I’m afraid. The voice of my BPD confirms to me when I look in the mirror, why no one is around. Self-harm is winning. Three days of the new year, three days of self harm. At least my PTSD has been a little more under control recently. So many things to fight.
I wonder if when I see the next new year in, my father will be here. I’ll be surprised if he is. His cancer has progressed, although that doesn’t seem to stop him in his ways. My own stupidity on Christmas day saw that I turned my back on him, I didn’t think, it allowed him to grab my head and ram it down twice into the roof of the kiddies play house. Then he tried to kick me, but I moved and his foot only just brushed passed me. Some lessons I really need to learn.
I wish all my friends peace and happiness this year.
Take Care.
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Vanish
Everyday feels like I am running through mud with my eyes closed and going backwards when really I should be going forwards, yet I see no point in it. The most I can do is stop and try to breathe. I wish somehow I could lift the ache inside my chest. I feel so much like a fraud living through every day. I go to university and sit in my lectures and I look normal. I look like everyone else, yet I am not. Every move I make is thought out. Every door I open, I don’t touch. I feel like I’m living in some kind of bubble that any moment is going to be invaded by I don’t even know what.
My mind is so crazy. No one knew today as I sat with a couple of class mates in the canteen and declared, no, I’m not hungry, I had a huge breakfast that I was lying. My stomach inside was starving. The smell of the soup from my friend’s tray, or the look for the chilli on the plate opposite me was like torture, but still I sat and did not eat. The stupid echo’s in my mind. Sometimes I wish they would just shut the hell up and get lost. I cannot eat, I don’t deserve too. It’s like having a voice on my shoulder, every time I go for food it starts with the names and the reminders and I just walk away defeated again.
I wish it would vanish.
I wish I could vanish.
It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t expect anything off my father as usual. He hasn’t bothered for 36 years, what would make 37 any different? But of course still there was that hope that never goes away. Maybe this year will be different, but it isn’t. He did message me a couple of days after, to tell me that he forgot. What kind of father forgets his child’s birthday? No matter how old they are. Why tell me? Why point out how useless you are and always have been. Is forgetting some kind of excuse? Doesn’t he realise it makes him look bad rather than excusing it? 
I get mad at myself when I have anger at him. He had a heart attack and what if he dies? It wasn’t so long ago. I broke down when I was told, but I realise the reason I broke down wasn’t because I was afraid of losing my father, I wasn’t scared that he might die. What I was upset about was, he might die and never make amends. He might die and never say he’s sorry. He might die and never realise he is actually my father.
I realise I’m waiting for the impossible and I don’t know how to let go of that hope that keeps breaking my heart.
JD Stockholm. 