Tag Archives: neglect

You Were Supposed to…

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Childhood is supposed to be innocent,1

But you stole mine.

You were supposed to protect me

But you didn’t come when I screamed, you sold me

You were supposed to keep me safe,

But you violated me

You were supposed to care for me

But you made me sick

You were supposed to feed me

But you starved me

You were supposed to clothe me

But you left me undressed

You were supposed to hug me

But you beat me

You were supposed to console me

But you laughed

You were supposed to comfort me

But you turned off the lights

You were supposed to teach me

But you scared me

You were supposed to praise me,

But you made me ashamed

You were supposed to guide me

But you broke my mind

You were supposed to love me

All you raped me.

Love was all I wanted.

I hate you.

 

Goodbye Teddy. Released Today

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The wait is over. Goodbye Teddy, the fourth and final book, in the Dear Teddy series is now available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

With four, 5 star reviews already.

Dear Teddy Banner

This journey has been an odd one; I didn’t even know I was on it. Dear Teddy was born out of a conversation with my therapist at the time, a way for the child to speak after so many years of silence and being locked away in the dark. Once I gave him a pen and told him it was okay for him to talk, he didn’t stop. He had so much to say, and he did.
Goodbye Teddy is the fourth and final book in the Dear Teddy series, as with the previous books; it is told through the eyes of the child. He asks you to walk with him as he shows you his world. This is a tale of child abuse in all forms. Every page takes you through the horrific events and the ways he came to survive them. It shows you the betrayal by those very people that should have protected him; his mother and father.
Listen as he shares his secrets, his fears, his hopes and dreams. Laugh with him, cry with him, but don’t stop or close your eyes.

Goodbye Teddy
Goodbye Teddy

Goodbye Teddy

Excerpt
I sit on the cushions. I look at my dad’s bottle of petrol. Maybe I can drink it. It is poison. My dad says it is. He shouts when my brother plays in there. Because there is lots of things and it is poison and can make him die and go to heaven. I look at it lots of times. Maybe I can drink it all down. I think about it inside. Maybe it tastes nice. I like how it smells. Maybe it doesn’t taste very bad.
I reach over and get it. I open it. It smells nice. Maybe I can count. Not to four, though. Four is very bad. I count to three. One, two, three. Then I can drink it and I can go away and then everyone is happy about it.
One.
Two.
Three.
I lift the bottle up and then I put it at my mouth. I don’t tip it yet. I don’t keep the crying part away. I don’t ever be any good. “Drink it.” I say it very bad to myself. “Drink it. Drink it.”

 

goodbye back italics

The entire series can also be downloaded from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in a single book.

Children Abusers

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Do you have siblings? Had friends when you were small? Did you fall out with them? Hit them? Be mean to them? Normal children’s behaviour right?

How often do we see children bickering and pushing each other, nipping and biting. I have a granddaughter in her terrible toddler phase. She bites, she kicks and as she does it she laughs. Is she evil for this? A bad child? No, she is simply a two year old being a child and pushing boundaries. She is just a child and her innocence protects her.

What about in five years’ time? She’ll be seven. What if she has a sibling them who she chooses to pick on? Takes delight in making them cry? Or a school friend she falls out with and kicks in some childish temper tantrum? doll

Granted she’d be told off, reprimanded in some way, or least we would hope so to teach her right from wrong. As with all children the chance of her acting that way again is likely, and again she will be reprimanded and told that her actions are wrong. It’s how children learn.

Any parent reading or someone with experience of children probably agrees that this is just normal childish behaviour, children being naughty nothing more and as adults it’s our job to teach them right from wrong. Age her again, perhaps to ten or eleven this time. Are her actions still wrong? Picking on a younger sibling, does that make her evil? Hitting someone at school, would that make her potentially a threat when she is an adult? I don’t think so. Perhaps something would need to be looked at if it was excessive as to why she was acting this way, but as a society, we would brush this behaviour off as a child being just that, a child.

It’s not the child’s fault right?

What if a ten year old child coerces another child into a sexual act? What if a child subjects another child to watching pornographic scenes or films or even talking about it? What if a ten year old child were to have sex with another child? What if a child raped another child?

Do we say the child is sick? Because the act is different than just violence, do we point at the child and say they should have known these acts were wrong? They should have known not to do that? Do we label them sexual abusers or predators? What if sexual abuse is all the child knows and they are merely acting out what they have been taught? Because they haven’t been taught sexual abuse is wrong. So is what they are doing actually wrong?

Why does society accept children being violent and mean and dismiss it as children being children, yet sexual acts, we have the makings of a sexual monster. Isn’t it just the same?
Can children be sexual abusers in the same context that and adult can?

The Grass isn’t always Greener

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About 18 months ago my father had asked to talk to me about birthday and Christmas gifts. He gave me some form of lecture, or rather speech, pleading his poverty to me and explaining how he couldn’t afford Christmas and birthdays anymore and that perhaps he and I should just leave them, because of course I am all grown up now and don’t need those things from him.

Whilst I somewhat agreed with what he was saying, it did make me wonder. What birthday gifts? What Christmas gifts? He doesn’t even know when my birthday is, I think he only knows Christmas because it’s an international celebration and there isn’t much escaping it, but these gifts? I didn’t ask where they were, I just said okay.

He has never sent me a gift. Well that’s a lie, when I was 31 he gave me a gift and then made me split it with my older brother whose birthday is a few days before mine. grass-greener-fence-iStock_000011126842Small-resized-600.jpg

However, It got me out of the yearly commitments that my status as son gives me. Except for father’s day, he still insisted on cards for those, but for the last two years I haven’t given him any. Since writing Teddy things like father’s day cards feel like a lie, and unless Hallmark brings out a range that says, “I only bought this because I was obligated,” this will be a yearly battle for me not to get him one.

It was his birthday just recently; I had to go around to his house to take something there. I hadn’t been for a good year after telling him to get out of my life. It’s always odd to walk into the house that I grew up in. I still go and stand in the spot as a child that I was only permitted to stand in. I still don’t use the bathroom without permission first and often I just don’t use it and I don’t under any circumstance venture into any other rooms in the house without permission or invitation.

I stand there, feet slightly apart, hands held together behind my back, quiet and watching, just as I did when I was a child. Waiting and on guard. Stood where I can see every angle. It’s an automatic thing. I didn’t go near my father as I placed the card down that was from my children to him to wish him a happy birthday, and I know maybe some readers will say he doesn’t deserve it, but he does actually bother with my children on their birthdays and as far as manners are concerned, I think the children should at least give him a card on his day.

My brother arrived as I was stood there, his arms laden with gifts for our father. He and his girlfriend wished our father a happy birthday and talked like normal people. I felt so out of place stood there. Once again not fitting with them, there was me, stood outside this family which I am biologically related to, but as always treated like I am stranger.  Such a stranger that I don’t even have a father I am allowed to with happy birthday too.

Sometimes it is the little things that I realise I had taken from me.

When I had gone home again, my brother called me, he asked why I didn’t get our father anything, not even a card. He thought I was being shitty, but found it strange because he knows that is not me. I told him, not the full story of course, but that I had been told I wasn’t allowed. My brother’s response was shock. He suggested perhaps our dad was in a bad mood that day or something. Of course my brother doesn’t know the things my father would do to me. He doesn’t know about the sexual abuse, as strange as that may seem.

I don’t know who has it worse, the son who has a father he loves and loves him back, but it’s an illusion, or the son who knows everything and aches for the father he never had, knowing and feeling that there is no love there.

The grass isn’t always greener.

 

A Bed

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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?

Telling Teddy Is Out

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Telling Teddy is out

My new book Telling Teddy, the sequel to the #1 ranked book, Dear Teddy, has now been released on Kindle. Please check it out.

 Mr. Ted. I love you very much.

 I love my Mr. Ted. He is all mine and he is magic. He keeps me safe from the bad man. I hug him all tight. We sit on the floor by the fire. I don’t be allowed to sit on the chairs. I am too evil.

Me and Mr. Ted like to write stories. He tells me what to write. Then I draw the pictures about it and we make it all nice. I put it in my scrap book. My Nan bought me the scrap book. It is big and has lots of pages. It has a car on the front and my name.

Mr. Ted holds the hand of his six-year-old friend as they share more of his deepest secrets. Poignant and bold, the boy’s courageous words are detailed and real. He takes you farther into his abusive life and broken mind as he survives the tangled deceit and lies of his everydays. Sit alongside him. Hear his voice and listen with your heart as he opens it up once more.

His story continues…

 Buy at Amazon.com 

Buy at Amazon.co.uk