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.
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Sunday, 8 December 2013
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
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"
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"
Monday, 2 December 2013
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.
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.
Friday, 29 November 2013
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.
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.
Friday, 4 October 2013
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
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