A little

For a little while
It doesnt hurt so much
The tears dont fall
A smile breaks

Or even a laugh

For a little while
You break through
A fleeting touch
Held momentarily

Or even a bit longer

For a little while
You mean so much
Too much to know
What would you say

Or even would care

For a little while
It all seems so new
To discover and be
Lifes reason again

Or even todays

For a little while
I could dream true
Take the easy way out
Ceed control away

Or even share it

For a little while
For you

My Story, trigger warning

My Story Big Trigger Warning

“My mother’s boyfriend was called **, he was violent and abusive to us all. When I was 12 he cornered me in the kitchen and held me by the throat as he fingered me. This was his only sexual attack on me.”

“I found out that my mother knew he was raping his daughter whose name I know but do not include, ** son also allegedly participated in her rape.”

His daughter is believed to be living on an island possibly with her mother and brother.

“** is now dead with a history of violence and court appearances. I was told he was a victim of childhood rape within the catholic church he attended in Aberdeen, he was born and raised in Aberdeen. How many others did he violate is a good question?”

“Aged 14 I was raped by a local new cumnock man called ** who had previous for manslaughter. I do not know where the man is now but I had a job at ** recently (2013) in Dumfries where a man from new cumnock also worked and passed on my details. “I was verbally and physically attacked and sacked.”

　

“** friend (unamed) raped another girl in new cumnock who went on trial. She killed herself.”

“My twin was abused by our stepgrandfather (now deceased) but she managed to get it through the courts, although he wasn’t sentenced. She’s had her children removed and brought a claim against our mother. Our mother hasn’t been sentenced but has been banned from working as a nurse in the UK and has fled abroad.

When I was 15 I met **, a guy from Urmston Manchester. He was 21, I became his girl friend when I was 16 and had his child, It was a violent abusive relationship and we split when I became too old for him, I was only 18. Since then he has pretty much refused to see me and the child but stalked my life, following and trolling me on line, finding my address and using it to buy stuff in my name. I had kept in touch with his parents until 2008 when I had my breakdown, the whole family was pretty abusive except I've had an apology from his parents now after he trolled me online and I showed it to them. He has done stuff like report me to inland revenue/dwp/social services just constant low level stalking. “

“in 2001 I joined a dating webite Plenty of Fish and met a man called ** from near Biggar, a lecturer at Queen Margaret University Edinburgh. On our second date we went for a picnic. He raped me leaving some damage. I didnt report it to the police but did speak to my therapist about it as I was still dealing with my childhood abuse, she didnt report it either” He has further victims.

Also

** of Police Scotland based Lockerbie or Dumfries wont report abuse, gaslights victims into not reporting and works close with ** neighbourhood officer who is trying to evict me, Those two are dealing with children today.

There is a paedophile in my street.

There is a woman called ** who writes in a local magazine here who is a supporter of paedophilia, (a project worker for ** (a back to work initiative) who was made aware I was an abuse victim and told me how Jimmy savile was an amazing man then encouraged other ** attendees to engage in verbally abusing me) she is an associate of **, who works for the same initiative and runs a book publishing company, who has blacklisted me and allowed ** attendees to engage in verbally abusing me and who has worked with Edwina Curry on a book/s. They are friends with the people from **, another back to work initiative, who told me to go and slit my wrists.

** of **, is currently harassing my family, backed up by the police.

My life is in danger, my childs life is in danger and it all relates to these people.

Names have been removed because they will prosecute.

Please help save our lives

Hello,

I'm writing this and begging for help as I have absolutely no other options left.

I'm a survivor of rape and attempted murder as a child, I was twelve years old and subjected to this by my family. As an adult, they have refused to help or support me, leaving me with no one.

I have an adult, 19 years old, child and three cats.

I worked all my adult life up to 2008 when I had a break down. I lost my home and job and ended up in homeless accommodation with the promise from my family they would help.

They didn't and we've been left to fend for ourselves. I received little NHS help due to having PTSD, a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. I had 6 weeks talking therapy and unlimited anti depressants.

I needed more.

I was on sickness benefits but due to Westminster cuts this was stopped and I was put on Job seekers allowance.

I had to find work but I have been blocked at every available turn. My child and I are unemployable and the few weeks work i did manage to get, I was bullied, atacked and sacked. I have been blacklisted and my childhood abuse survival used against me.

On top of this we have had constant harassment in our home. I have been attacked in the street and in my home. We are in council housing property and their response to this is to evict us.

Currently we have no income, we are due to be evicted on 22nd August and we have no where to go and no to help.

All help I have asked for where we currently live has been denied. Plenty of places outside of the area will help but we have to live in their area to receive anything more than telephone help.

So I'm here, and I'm begging you to please, please donate a few pounds so we can move somewhere we aren't blacklisted and can receive much needed help and support.



Please help, just a simple click, a few pounds and you can, literally save our lives as we have nothing and no where else to go.

After all I've been through and the rejection my child has suffered your help will mean more than you could ever know.

We are hoping to raise £5,000 to cover moving costs and three months rent/deposit.

This should give us time to find work.

I am at the end of my strength and I hate having to do this but we have been left with nothing.

We also need help with not being evicted on the 22nd but I'll have to think on that unless you have an idea.

I am doing this alone with no help and really need you to be able to help us,

Iliana

Clean boots, dirty boots and scary birds

I ventured out in the wind and ran today to take a walk through one of the forest by my home.

I'm not going to give an exact location except to say it is somewhere in the southern uplands of Scotland. It is a beautiful part of the country and you are never very far from wildlife.

This is me starting out, or at least, my lovely clean, although well worn, boots.

Woolly socks are an absolute requirement whenever you go walking in Scotland.

Heading to the door in the trees.

Creepy trees

Scary birds

I heard this bird and legged it (apologies for the heavy breathing!) The area where I live is a haven for buzzards. I have had several run ins with them and give them as wide a berth as possible due to the fact that if you get too close to their territory they will dive bomb you from the trees. It is impossible to avoid them completely as they nest in the woods and there are woods everywhere. I don't know if this bird is a buzzard but it sounded like a warning call and this time I wasn't hanging around to found out.

After all that, this is how muddy my boots got

Inner child therapy

One of the most important therapies I've done on my healing journey is Inner Child Therapy.

By using meditation you "meet" your inner child. Now, I'm not a big fan of psychiatrist couch meditation or past lives meditation and fully went into inner child therapy with an attitude of "this will never work".

It did work though.

I worked through the guides. I remembered where I was happiest as a child, the place I loved the most. The place I thought my childhood was the happiest.

That was the big house and as a child it was my favourite place to live. The house was huge, we often had bats coming in through the attic or birds drowning in the water tank.

We had horses and paddocks and an orchard full of apple, pear, plum trees and bamboo. The bamboo area had a small field of moss before it and we built dens in the rhodedendron bushes. A lime tree grew by the driveway and every summer hundreds of bees would drink the flower nectar and roll around drunk on the gravel.

We had a stream and tree houses and hedgehogs. I thought it was magical place to grow up.

I met my inner child there, I'd hidden her there in my memory, somewhere I thought was filled with happiness.

In the meditation I was back at that house, standing in the middle of the driveway by the rose beds, she was running towards me with tears streaming down her face. She reached me, just a little kid of about ten, grabbed hold of me and sobbed choking tears.

I'd left her somewhere she was scared and unhappy.

After that initial meeting I had to work through why I'd thought that place was my "safe place". I even went to visit it again. Someone posh had bought it and built a wall and 6ft gate with fake gold on it at the entrance. It is a lovely place but being honest with myself, it was full of bad memories.

They were the best memories I had though.

After working through those memories I was able to take her out of that place and into a new place we've made together.

Now we live on a hill, it's a big hill surrounded by fields below and covered in flowers in bloom. There are always hundreds of seeds floating in the air.

In the middle of the hill under a big old oak tree, is a wooden picnic table.

We sometimes sit there or we lay out a blanket and sit on that. The suns always golden and in the mid afternoon. It is calming and serene just thinking about it.

My inner child is always happy and laughing and full of fun there.

Three of us visit there, me, my inner and dark figure. I can't make out any features of him, he's like a child's drawing, filled in with black pen but real and 3D.

I think he's the security in case something, someone, a bad memory tries to break through into our safe place.

We like him being there, although sometimes he isn't.

It is really worth doing inner child therapy. Not only does it help you reconnect with who you where as a child, it can help break down some of the coping therapies you created and give you great insight into who you were and what you went through.

In some ways my childhood was privileged, we were well off, we lived in a big house, we never had money worries or heating worries or work worries. We were tucked away from the world in a secret idyll.

And that made it not a good place.

Mans best friend, the faithful black dog

I haven't left the house in seven days.

Seven days.

I've been sat here with the black dog.

Depression. I want to write about it, I keep typing out lines and deleting them. It all sounds contrived and false, it's probably the most real writing you'd get from me though.

I want to write about how beautiful depression is, about how exquisite it is to float in the blackness, how you breathe it in. It's a seductress, a haunting lover. How it feels like tinkling ivory piano keys or deep black velvet, warm and soft.

How it sings to you, just you, how you're so special, so utterly amazing and beautiful and wonderful you are.

That's what I let it say to me now.

Years ago it was a different story, years ago it tried to kill me.

I used to let the blackness in, I used to let it consume me, to eat away at me, to destroy my soul.

I drank, I tried cannabis, I tried self harming, I tried suicide. Anything to to block it out, cut it out or get me out of it.

Those where the days when the blackness was filled with faceless screaming monsters, when I couldn't look into it let alone look at myself. It filled my being, it drove icicles of fear right through my heart and I made so many mistakes, always running from the blackness that consumed me, emanated from me, was me.

It's broken my heart and torn me apart me than I care.

It's taken up so much of my life and I want it gone. I don't want this hold over me, I don't want this eternal dance of devoid emotion. I won't let it anymore.

So I dance, I put headphones on and I let the music wash over me, let the music wash it out of me. I dance with it, I love it, I don't let it go, I squeeze the life out of.

I'm too young to let this control the rest of my life, I'm going to tear it up, burn it up, blast it out of the universe.

It's not my friend and it's not faithful.

Breathe in more

Take me down
Upon the snow
Hand in hand
Feel the touch

Amber nectar
Liquid blues
Breathe in
Dont leave

Bend the rule
Lovers skin
Golden Hue
Rescue new

Killer line
Trace blind
Please please
Way upon

Swallows fly
Rubbed in
Tore apart
Pencil thin

Take it in

Lovers embrace

Darkness descends across the misty glen

Rest your boots in front of the croft door

Lay your weary body down by the log fire

Whispers of winds play beneath the eaves

Snug inside by a roaring log fuelled fire

Glowing light flickers across cushions

Haunting melodic music plays from shadows

As two close figures sway across a firelit room

Outside rain beats gently against glass panes

Hands touching hands, bodies pulled close

Feet dance together on the wooden floor

All the world fades away into the night

Weaving dreams

Long lazy highways
Cars rumble past
Lines flash in the
Headlights shine

Rolling past towns
And lonely diners
Darkness lighted
Windows down

Breeze teases hair
Arm catches nothing
Hands steer clear
Along the highway

Chasing the moon
Through midnight
Dark open road
Full of promises

Travelling onwards
Climbing mountains
Towards the dawn
Stars light skies

Breaking the morn
Over the road ahead
Straight through
The night slept on

Driving straight to
The open water
Sight catches sea
Journeys over

Running Part 4

The man dived into the bush, beaking branches apart to reach the tiny girl curled up on the undergrowth. He bent over her, raising her limp body up into his arms, sweeping her hair back from her face as he screamed sobs of her name into the air.

The people of the town started to move toward the sound of the wretched wailing, concern and fear etched lines upon their faces. They looked to each other with searching, questioning eyes. They knew something was seriously wrong.

The first people to arrive at the bush saw the limp, ashen girl and called the emergency services. All they could stutter out from the fear clinging to their throats were choked sobs about a lifeless, bloody child. When the police swung into town with blaring sirens and swinging flashing lights, the townsfolk started to congregate in whispering, huddling crowds.

The arrival of a silent ambulance cut through the town like a knife. Faces huddled together looking ashen as the paramedics walked down the hill, one carrying a small body wrapped in a blanket, the other leading a blood covered man behind them.

The police cordoned off the path around the bush and started trying to disperse the crowd. Gently stating to the questioning faces that they had no information to give.

All the people could do was to head back to their homes, cradling their own much love children close to them. As the news of the death of a small child from their own town broke across the tv and radio many fell to their seats, hands held to their faces as their brains try to process the word murder.

That night many parents tucked their children up and lingered close by or held their childs hands as they fell into slumber. The parents found it difficult to find peace that night, the fears for their own children allowed childhood memories of monsters under the bed to mingle with the reality of monsters living and breathing somewhere close by.

The air over the town hung heavily in the stillness of the night.

Running Part 3

Diving as fast as his can, he bolts into the undergrowth drawing the barking terrier into the darkness with him. He sweeps millimetres above the ground and towards the pale girl. The terrier pounds straight after him.

He reaches the girl and dives into the gap between her chin and the ground, coming to a sudden stop once he's behind her.

The terrier sees the girl and starts barking at her. He can smell blood and death close by but senses the an iota of life emanating from the girl. He barks louder and runs back to his owners then turns and runs back to the girl, barking constantly. H e can hear his owner on the path shouting for him. He grabs the girls top and starts pulling her but she weighs too much for him to be able to move her, he growls under his breath in desperation, his hackles raised, he doesn't like the smell coming from her, the smell of dying.

Dropping the girl, he runs back to the path and his owner. His owner sees him and shouts for him to come on. The little terrier barks and growls and runs back into the bush. He heads straight for the girl and starts trying to drag her out again.

He feels so hopeless as the tiny body barely moves beneath him. Desperately ploughing all his strength into his feet he almost stumbles backwards as the girl suddenly moves towards him as though pushed by an invisible hand. he drops his grip again and runs back to his owner. He reaches him and grabs his trouser leg, growling and pulling him back up the path towards the girl, a great fear of need to save the girl powering him on.

He drops his owners trouser leg and runs back into the bush, barking in what he feels is pure terror. He must save this girl.

Out on the path the terriers puzzled owner has turned back towards the bush and is trying to look through the foliage to see what his dog is doing. He has to break the branches open to get a good view, all the time thinking his daft weee dog has caught a rabbit or something.

As a gap opens up beneath his arms and he sees his terrier pulling something, it takes several minutes for his brain to recognise what is lying on the ground.

He takes a step backwards, clutching his hand to his face as he gasps a sob out loud.

"Oh dear god, no, not Jolea".

Running Part 2

She curls up into the warmth of the undergrowth as big, strong arms gentle enfold her. She sighs slowly and snuggles up into the warmth of the body protecting her. A tear rolls gently down her upturned cheek and falls slowly from her chin onto the leaves below.

A hand moves across and with thumb outstretched, carefully wipes away the tear stain from her grubby face. A face leans forward and places a long, gentle kiss on forehead.

As the girl slumbers the presence holds gently onto her, cradling her in their arms.

The sun starts to rise and glints through the broken bracken onto the sleeping child.

She stirs in her sleep, nuzzling herself further into the warmth of the body next to her.

A bird flutters onto a nearby branch and quizzically tilts it's head as it looks down upon the girl lying alone in the undergrowth.

She looks cold and still, blood has pooled around her and run out onto the leafy debris. Her chest barely moves as she breathes. A tiny little broken body.

The bird looks up to the sky and opens it beak to sing out to the world.

A mournful eulogy of pain and fear and worry no one can understand as the world awakens and people start to move around the town. Footsteps upon footsteps walk past the child sleeping in the undergrowth, children laughing and adults gossiping, all going about their everyday business. Just like normal.

The bird moves closer to the street, singing out his mournful cry as he keeps one eye on the barely moving girl. He bursts from the bush singing loudly and dashes to and fro beside the people walking by.

A child running past starts to laugh and point at the funny little bird dancing around. His mother impatiently drags the child away toward the school.

The bird stops and looks down sadly then turns to gaze back at the child laying still in the bush.

Suddenly thunderous footsteps and slobbering breaths pounce upon the bird who flits into life straight into the sky. The dog pounces upward as the bird turns midflight and swallow dives straight into the bush.

Running

She fled down the darkened street, hair streaming wildly in the wind and the rain, feet splashing barefoot through puddles, arm swaying frantically, heart pounding.

She turns to look behind as she runs, forever fearful of footsteps behind.

Rains drives down as the wind howls whilst she flees through intermittent rays of light spraying down from the street lamps above.

Car headlights swim up out of the blackness and rain and speed on past the fleeing girl. She turns off the main street and out of the streets vision.

Hurtling past gardens, of houses sleeping in the night, she runs down by the river, through the undergrowth and falls down upon the pebble shore next to the flowing river.

Laying there, gasping for breathe, she bends over, double up in pain as cramps tear through her body. She holds onto her stomach and raises her hand up to the moonlight to see it covered in blood.

Voices shouting in the night cause her to look around and she scrambles up off the pebble beach and into the trees beside the bank. She presses herself into the blackness of the undergrowth, pulling every part of her out of the moonlight.

The voices grow nearer, calling out her name, asking her to come home, telling her they love her as another cramp surges through her stomach and she bites her own hand to stop herself screaming out loud.

Footsteps come nearer down the path forewarning of the torch light they bring with them. She gently slides back toward the bank, ready to dive into the icy water should the feet find her. She cries silent tears, cascading down a dirty, tired face.

Voices now span across both sides of the water, there is only one way out as she looks wistfully at the moonlit dappled water. The footsteps move past her, they move past her undergrowth. She leans her head back against the tree stump and breathes a quiet sigh of relief, shoulders sagging, arms going limp.

The voices trail off into the darkness.

She pulls her tops off and separates her t-shirt from her jumper. Tearing it along the seams she constructs a make shift bandage across her wound and pulls her jumper back. She rubs her feet to warm them up then slides into the icy water and back tracks her way up stream.

When she has walked for half an hour in the other direction she pulls her near freezing body out of the river and lays quietly behind the houses edging the banks. When she hears no noise she moves furtively forward, hiding behind the coal bunkers at the back of the buildings. Moving quickly now she breaks out onto the street again, once more intermittently splattered with the orange glow of street lamps, glooming hazily out of the rain and the wind. She bends her head into her and walks briskly up the street, taking a short cut through the back of the houses and up on to the main estate.

Hidden out view, halfway up the hill is a den made by the local kids, everyone knows it's there yet no one knows it's there. She crawls inside, where it's out of the cold and the wind and finds a comforting nest of leaves and pine needles. She lays down and pulls herself up into the fetal position, wrapping her arms around her legs and against her stomach to hopefully stem the bleeding.

As she falls sleeps she hopes her friends find her in the morning before the others do.

Rolling up to christmas

Trigger

It's that time of year again, of festivities and familes and friends, where everyone joins together to eat good food and swap presents, where children play with the boxes rather than the toys and grandma falls asleep snoring in the chair after having one cooking sherry too many.

It's a time of glossy adverts and cutesy songs, of films only shown at this time of year. Of turkeys and cranberries and baileys. Of socialising, putting up with the family, nativities and midnight mass.

It's a wonderful time of year, cosy and heart warming.

Hopefully this year will be similar for me.

Albeit, without the socialising and extended family but I hope for the peace and goodwill and spending time with my little family, however small it is.

My childhood memories aren't of the glossy, cutesy, once a year, lovey type of memories. The stark facts of my childhood Christmases were of fear, violence and trying not to be noticed.

And it still goes on today.

Too many children are still living in fear at christmas, too many are going to be spending the day treading on eggshells they can't see, hear, or predict.

Too many will think themselves lucky if they get through the day without a bruise or a tirade or a bloody face.

We need to stop turning a blind eye to this, to stop being controlled by a corporate, commercial brain washing of what christmas should be and start thinking, no, start doing something to see no child, no family lives in fear this christmas.

If it's not good enough for you, it's not good enough for anyone.

Homage

Trigger

I am writing this with a heavy heart while I wait to hear news of whether another survivor who is begging for help is ok, I really fear the worst and wish I could have done more for them so this place wasn't reached.

I have the utmost respect for all survivors. The path we walk is one filled with so much pain. Unbearable, devestating, pain.

When I started to deal with the abuse I had gone through and all the implications of what it meant to me, to my life, to the people around me I endured what felt like insurmountable pain.

I felt like I had been run through by an articulated truck and my entire being was nothing but a raw, gaping, bleeding hole. I was heavily sedated on anti depressants and all I could manage each day was to put one foot in front of the other.

I felt raw and pain.

I felt like I was ripped to shreds.

I felt like I was bleeding out.

I never want anyone to feel like that and I don't know how I managed to survive.

Today I got myself a tattoo, I have never been a tattoo person, it just isn't my thing. It's not that I don't like them, I just don't feel either way about them. I never thought I would get one.

I was inspired though, by the tattoo of another survivor, it was simple, beautiful and full of meaning. So today, whilst I'm waiting to hear if they are ok, I got the tattoo.

The tattooist said I'd regret it, my colleagues made innuendos about it but it speaks mountains and worlds to me.

It is an homage to every survivor, those who are no longer here, gone but never forgotten, those who are still here, fighting the fight every day, even when they feel beyond weary and those survivors yet to face this.

To you all, you are the bravest people to walk this earth, you'll never realise how special you are.

"Strength"

Circles

I've written and deleted this several times now. I don't know what to write. Again, unedited and raw.

I want to say thank you, I love you, I feel alright. I'm being so paranoid about everything, I feel like my brain has lost it completely. I'm reading too much into everything and I feel so alone.

I keep playing Rihanna's Diamonds over and over, my brain is totally addicted to it. I want to have that. I want to feel that with someone. I want to love and be loved, to hold and be held. I want to be something to someone.

More than just a thing, more than just a friend. I want someone to care for me, to want to be near me, to want to share things with me.

I feel whiny and selfish typing that but I'm beginning to realise that the voice inside my head telling me I'm unlovable is the voice of ghosts and not what is true or right to feel.

No one has a guide book to tell me how to get through this, no one knows what damage I have had or how the scars have formed, so no one can start to help me work through it.

All I can do is learn from you guys, is learn what is right and what is wrong and hope that I make the right decisions, move in the right direction, fight for something better, something that is worth me.

I can choose to let the good things in, I just need to fight the monsters out of my head, banish them to the depths of hell and not allow them to control me any more.

I can be happy, I can laugh, I can love.

The ghosts in my head don't have any right to me anymore, I escaped, I got free. I ran as fast as I could away from all of that even though the chains bound me for years and kept me close to it all. Like I was still attached by a bungee cord pinging me back every time I got too clever for myself. That cord started fraying though, with every run too far it frayed and now it's hanging by a thread, remnants of ghosts who never wanted anything good for me, never chose to see me, love me for the person I am.

It's hard to realise that I've never been loved, that all I was, was nothing.

The biggest step I have to take is telling myself that I love me, I want the best for me. I need to love myself.

I've spent the last few years learning how to do that, I've had to learn that it's ok to do that, that I am allowed to do that.

It's hard to do, it's hard to do when all your learned behaviour is rejection and violence. When every instance you've needed love has been met with a turned back or a punch.

It's hard to know that that is wrong, it takes strength to know there has to be another way.

And another way comes from you, from your souls, from your words, from your feelings, from the way you talk about the people you love.

I'm fighting a conflicting battle within and I need you to keep talking, to keep shouting, to keep screaming about how you love, how you feel, how those who love you keep you strong, keep you real, keep you alive.

I feel so scared and alone fighting this but I deserve more.

Unstable

Trigger. I have just written the following passage to try and get some of the anguish I'm going through out of my head. I haven't edited it or read it. I talk about suicidal ideation but I guarantee I will not do that. I have my child to stay here for. I apologise if it makes no sense.

I don't know where I am at the moment. So much has been going on and so many things have changed.

I can't tell how I feel, I feel everything and nothing.

I have returned to work after 5 years out doing hterapy, finally someone offered me a job and the sheer bliss of working with people who knew nothing about me and just took me for who I am has been unreal in such a positive way. It wasn't a perfect environment but it was an environment where I was just me, in my role. I did the work and chatted away, I was just me.

Roll on a few weeks and I don't know what's happened. Well that's a lie, I do know what's happened. Reality bit and she's bitten hard.

I know this is how my life is meant to be, I know when I live in a small town rural area and have a gagging order from a well known business person that this is how my life is meant to be.

I'm so sad and angry.

I spent five years doing therapy not to kill myself, I'm fighting an internal battle against all the conditioning of self hate and loathing I endured during my childhood, all the ghosts of the negativity I caused in the adults around. All the failures of not being good enough, of not being what they wanted me to be. Of being the wrong child, the personality, the one who could never get anything right, could never be right, could never give the adults around me what I thought they wanted.

I fought to beat that and when I reached out for help, no one connected, again. Like when I was a child. I open my mouth and tell my story and there's nothing there in the people whose ears I try to reach. I fail again, I fail to make you hear me. Something about me closes you to me and you don't see me, you don't hear what I'm telling you.

I didn't imagine this would happen. I didn't imagine when I told people that it would set me apart, the first time in my life I'm not running anymore and I want to build my life, to be accepted and I'm still outside.

I fight daily between what I what from life which I see other people achieving and what I actually get. I get that the majority of people are groomed to belive people like me are wrong and hateful. I get that.

But I want to scream I was a CHILD.

I was a child and I went through hell and you failed me.

You didn't see the abuse.

You told me off for not wearing a uniform and gave me detention when the reality was I wasn't given a uniform by my parents. I wasn't allowed a uniform and you you punished me for it. You held me back in school to care for my sibling and you punished me for not behaving properly, you denied me an education to care for my sibling and punished me when I found the work too easy. I wasn't a teacher, it wasn't my job to teach my sibling. It was yours and you left it to a CHILD.

Or how about the police, how about the nights I slept in the office in police station whilst you took photographs of the beatings my mother sustained whilst my step father screamed down the hallway how he was going to fucking kill her. Of the nights you would all turn up to take him away for breach of the peace and you'd look at me staring out of the window, you'd comment there was a child in there and you did NOTHING.

Or the judge, the judge who told my mother she had provoked my step father into hitting her, just another judge in line of judges from the south coast of england to the heart of scotland who told my mother and his wife before that the broken arms and broken faces they suffered were because they had provoked him.

All I can see now is the night I was in the kitchen with him and my step siblings and he flipped into a rage, smashing his own childs head into the oven.

That's what I'm fighting against, that level of violence, that the community and society around us told us was our fault.

Of nights running away and sleeping on strangers sofas because my mother was too scared to go.

Of the night I tried to escape by taking an overdose, of having a tube shoved down my throat, my stomach pumped and in the morning being taken back home.

I learnt from that. I learnt no one would help, no one sees, so I left myself. Mentally, physically I left myself. I woke up and I drank, I took pills, I slept where I fell and I overdosed more times than I care to remember but it never worked. I couldn't even do that properly.

I was a piece of meat, a thing for who ever to sleep with and I don't remember because I drank.

I had no out.

And now, now I'm older and people tell me that I was abused, that that was rape, sexual violence, trauma, wrong.

And you turn your back again, you blame me for being wrong, for not being of the right character, for being........... I don't know.

I don't know why other survivors are more succesful. I don't know why I keep meeting people who blame me for what happened.

Maybe I do know why but that thought scares me and isn't one I'm mentally in a place to process at the moment.

All I can do at the moment is try to stop my brain wigging out with escape plans and fantasy. Of dreams of living in world where people help and support survivors to bring the perpetrators to justice and stop more child being abused.

It isn't going to happen, we live in a country where children are raped and abused and the system still fails. The reality is grim.

I don't have an out.

And now, now I'm in a situation where I have told people before and they reacted badly, they bullied me then put a media gag on me and continued to harass me in my home through rumours and fear and their desire to make it with the celebrities.

But I took a pro active approach with my new job and told them. Telling strangers you are a CSA survivor is the hardest thing to do, especially when they have no experience of it but they know what you mean. Seeing two strangers one with tears in their eyes and the other closed off and thinking inwardly is tough. It's tough to look them in the eye. When they sit around chatting about their own kids and go inwardly quiet when they look at you, when they show their distress for you on their face.

When you know that you can't say too much for fear of ........... scaring them, one word too much and their brain will close off, they are not in a position where their life allows them to think of it.

But maybe I have on hope, one who does actually see me, who maybe won't close the door....

and I'm scared in case I'm wrong.

TW : PTSD, Body Memories and Me

Going through therapy, as a survivor, you learn that all those weird aches and pains you have are connected to the abuse you went through.

I have spent years suffering from neck pain, I have spent years having this investigated from a+e admissions to specialists to scans to physiotherapy with nothing being found to be wrong.

Absolutely nothing, no infections, no abnormalities, no degeneration, nothing.

But, the medics still investigated it, still treated me with care and respect. All because these neck problems stop my breathing.

Yes, you read that right, these neck problems stop my breathing. My breathe is cut off, I cannot breathe.

It isn't asthma, it isn't abnormal swallowing or apnoea or any other physical, treatable condition.

It is a body memory.

My abuser attempted to strangle me, as a kid, when he abused me. He placed his huge adult hand around my tiny child neck and pressed his thumb hard against my windpipe.

Re read that.

I survived that, for some reason. He was disturbed doing it and dropped me to the floor.

That experience I blocked out for a long time. I simply could not remember it. Even when, as an adult, I had moments of being unable to breathe followed by gasping chocking fits. Even when I stopped breathing in my sleep, awakened by the chocking fits.

It wasn't until I had a mental breakdown and started remembering the abuse and learnt about body memories, that I was able to connect all my neck problems to the abuse I endured.

I have had to relive the abuse during therapy. It isn't pleasant to do this. To work through flashbacks.

Body memories are physical flashbacks rather than mind flashbacks and therapy needs to help you understand, cope with and work through both types of flashbacks.

I have spent the last five years doing that and now, when my breath stops I can calmly deal with it.

I look after myself, give myself a wee hug, tell myself I'm safe now, that it is no longer real, no longer happening.

Of course it still causes problems, I still have problems with eating and drinking. Dribbling tea everywhere is hazard but I can laugh it off now. I can wake, chocking from sleep but calm myself and try to sleep again.

I survived

How not to eat people, hatchling level

The Trials of Graduating from Hatchling Level


Here at the Dragonista Academy you have to learn how not to eat people. It is a basic requirement of graduating to fledgling Dragon Level and beyond until you are at Dragon Master Level.

I have failed.

Unlike a lot of other dragons this basic requirement is something I just cannot quite grasp. People are just so tasty and yummy.

You can pickle them, toast them or pop them in a stew. They can be drizzled and griddled and barbecued. You can fillet them, mince them and dice them. The multitudinous ways to eat people make it incredible difficult to concentrate on not actually eating them.

No one would notice if I just sidled up to the back of a group and picked one of them up with my claws would they?

Or I could hide behind a chimney and in the middle of the night, just ever so gently open a bedroom window and pop one in the roasting pot.

With a bit of rosemary and sage.

Woe is this life I lead with some many tasty humans around. All scuttling and rushing this way and that. Oh how to choose the most scrumptious specimen.

I'll just have to try them all.

Apple Farm

Chapter One

Tolly peeps out from between two slightly soggy leaves and sticks her nose up in the air, sniffing left and right and back and forth.

When she smells nothing but earth and grass and rain she pokes her head and shoulders out of the tree and taking a deep breath she dashes out of the tree and darts across the grass towards the gray standing stone.

Arriving at the stone she presses her back flat against it and quickly looks all around. The wind ruffles her fur and whips blades of grass around her paws. Whiskers twitching and ears listening, she leans into the wind, peering hard to see if the big mean crow was slinking around.

Looking this way and that way she senses a dip in the wind, gathers herself up and dashes out across the field.

Her little body streaks across the grass, legs almost a blur, fur slicked back by the wind, eyes barely open, heading across the open patch of grass straight towards the bramble bush.

She spies a gap in the undergrowth and turns her body to aim for it. Her heart pounding, exhilaration running through her entire being, she speeds up as huge, juicy, luscious berries grow bigger in her eye line.

Diving into the undergrowth she leans against a bramble and takes a moment to catch her breath.

She cannot wait too long though as the deep, sweet smell of blackberries permeates the air all around her. Looking up and around she spots a particularly juicy berry almost bursting at its seams.

Gently climbing up to the berry she finds a comfy spot as close to the berry as possible and wiping her mouth carefully she leans in and sinks her teeth into its flesh.

Gloriously divine juices burst in her mouth and down her throat. She tears off a mouthful and devours it, savouring every last drop.