There is a recorded version of Open Journal available here
Open Journal #51
This isn’t about abuse I get so bored of it
I was musing this morning and I started to think about things I like and why I like them.
There are obviously foods that hit the spot. I can’t do fake flavours; crisp flavours never taste like anything but chemicals to me. The intense taste and smell of vanilla is a smell that I never tire of. Vanilla ice cream made with real vanilla seeds on a hot summer day just feels like the ultimate in luxury.
Likewise, the sensual feel of Swiss chocolate melting over your tongue is hard to beat. Simple foods like a crisp salad with the perfect oily dressing, or a steak with a good mustard.
The scent of Jasmine on a summer evening is a heavy, poignant perfume that seems to hang in the air as if you are walking through it.
A fast car, the feel of power and the way it can hold a corner, the growl of an engine as it pulls away — that can’t be primeval, that must be a modern thing that man has learnt to appreciate or respond to.
How if you pick tomatoes off a vine you smell of them for the rest of the day, like the plant has branded you as one of them.
The cocky smile of a cheeky boy, one who knows instinctively how to charm and is just understanding the power he has. I like girls who pass you in the street with a waft of perfume and tanned legs and who look and smell like summer.
Beautifully designed anything, a chair with the perfect curved arm, the wood all polished by hundreds of hands that have rested there. The perfect knitted blanket with love entwined into every stitch. A MacBook Pro with its smooth satiny finish, especially in Space Grey, which is just a dark grey but like Farrow & Ball it isn’t a proper colour unless it has a daft name.
I like the bustle of big fast cities that seem to know how important they are and make lots of noise day or night.
I like the way you can be walking somewhere you don’t know and suddenly you round a corner or step out of some trees and the sea is stretched out in front of you, or a view to the horizon that takes your breath away. It’s as if it knows that its job is to make people gasp as it has done for hundreds of years. Maybe it relaxes when nobody is there and just sits waiting for the next visitor, always ready to sparkle or glow and show off the perfect vista it knows it is.
Casually picking up a book and flicking the pages and a waft of eau de words fills your nostrils and you wonder where this one will take you and you settle down in a nearby flumpy sofa and fall into its world.
A newspaper made of news and actual paper that you can fold and turn and curl up with and stretch out and ponder the crossword and growl at the opinion and ignore the screaming adverts and leave feeling informed and sated.
The laughter of children on a sunny day with the occasional high-pitched scream of delight and hands sticky with ice cream and hair tousled with dirt and excitement
all these things and more …
. . .
Open Journal #52
This isn’t a well-thought-out thing, just something I keep bumping against. I am talking with a young person (not on this site), who has recently disclosed and the abuse has only just ended, which means I get a rare snapshot of what it is like to be dealing with someone who is very close to the experience of abuse.
So many of my conversations are with people for whom the abuse happened decades ago — we’re all remembering, unpicking, patching it together. But with someone younger, it’s not memory. It’s now. Still unfolding. Still raw.
And strangely, that’s good for me. Good to be close to it. It shakes something loose. Connects me to feelings I’ve buried or blurred. Things I’ve filed away under “too much” or “not yet.”
It stirs the parts of me I pretended were done. Reminds me how fresh it once was. Still is.
Strange to note how someone young is confused by the feelings of still caring about his abuser. Affection and love still exist despite not liking what he has done to him. Obviously, we all deal with an aftertaste of that, but it is very much in the moment and raw emotion, and it is interesting to see the confusion it swamps everything with. If I go to the police, it means this for him and has these consequences for everyone involved.
It struck me that we probably have in us, us survivors, regret that we are no longer adored and touched and desired and lusted after in the way our abusers did. I imagine those are powerful feelings when we were young and those things were happening to us.
That we probably felt a sense of loss when they stopped. It is something that is rarely, if ever, mentioned, but it might shape us more than we ever admit. To be worshipped in that way for our youth and our bodies to be admired and praised must have fed our ego and our self-esteem in a way that has never been since. Yet we never seem to discuss those feelings. Maybe we should.
Maybe it is also worth noting that it probably contributed to why grooming works so well. If, as I have been assuming, the idea of an unprotected boy is a vulnerable boy, then part of that unprotecting is the element that lacks love and attention. That kind of worship of our body must have filled a gap in our self-esteem.
And yet, there it is: the grief of being adored by your abuser. The grief of no longer being the one they wanted. The grief of matter-of-factly losing that twisted pedestal — even though that pedestal was built out of your own exploitation.
It’s the kind of loss that doesn’t get a eulogy.
It is the part of grooming nobody wants to admit. it feels good. At first. Until it doesn’t. Until the cost is everything. But affection? Tenderness? Even desire? Those were real feelings at the time, and pretending they weren’t just breeds more shame.
Grooming works because it confuses. Because the brain, especially a young one, links being wanted with being worthy. Being touched with being special. Being lusted after with being safe from abandonment. When it stops, there’s silence — and often, the cruelest thought of all: I must not be beautiful anymore.
I am starting to think the most important thing to advocate for is honesty. Brutal, stark, absolute honesty. With ourselves. That has to be the starting point. To be honest about where it leaves us, what we felt and what we feel now. What it took from us and what it left behind. Once we have worked that out, once we know what we are dealing with, then we can tell others about it.
What if I just tell my therapist honestly what I feel and fear and know and don’t know?
What if anyone asks me anything about my abuse and I just answer honestly? What if it shocks them? What if it does? I have had to adjust to their world, turn and turn about.
If we start to stand in the cold light of honesty and just state things how they are, won’t everyone eventually catch up?
There is no one answer. You have to listen, or you won’t understand. It is harsh because it is harsh. It is not easy to hear; it was a lot more difficult to live through.
You might not understand, but that doesn’t make it not true.
I am not over it, and may never be. now: love me whatever it takes.
I am here. In the shadows. Exhaling.
. . .
Open Journal #53
Things I Wasn’t Meant to Know, But Did Anyway
Two completely unrelated incidents, but not.
My family unit was a mother and a father, and three younger sisters.
Nothing had ever suggested otherwise.
I was going away to boarding school, and the organising took weeks. A uniform to buy. All the usual boyhood paraphernalia: socks, underpants, trousers, shirts — each with a name label carefully sewn in.
Books and pens, a wash bag, a dressing gown, favourite paperbacks, toothpaste. “Don’t forget this,” “Remember that.”
A big old suitcase in the days before wheels, the kind you had to lift with both hands. Closed only by sitting on it.
I was reading the checklist of things sent by the school and realised I needed my birth certificate and a letter from my parents to grant permission for the school to make medical decisions on my behalf in their absence.
I went to the bureau to find the large metal firebox where such things were kept safe and unlocked it. Passports and various papers and there was a bundle of birth certificates. I found mine, and the next one in the pile was my parents’ marriage certificate. 1962. Two years after I was born. Odd.
Oh, they must have lost the original, and this must be a copy. I told myself immediately. Not once did I think ‘hang on a minute, what the hell is going on here?’ Or ‘don’t be daft, if they got a copy, it wouldn’t be dated when they got the copy; it would still show the original date of marriage’. I just told myself a perfectly nonsensical explanation and just accepted it.
I never questioned it, or anyone. I put it out of my mind and never thought of it again. Did I at some unconscious level know that it spelt trouble and it was best avoided? Was I already so deft at applying denial to anything I didn’t want to think about that, I just believed anything I told myself?
Roll forward six months or so and I am at school. My friend and I are running across a huge hallway on the first floor between dorms. Two crimes are being committed: we are running indoors, which is unacceptable, and we were also doing that running over an expensive ancient Persian carpet that we were very much forbidden to step on. Boys will go around the edge, stepping on the wooden floor.
The headmasters wife fixed us with a terrifying glare and froze us on the spot. Chastised and reprimanded, we slunk to the edges of the corridor and looked suitably humbly guilty. In the process of telling us what horrific examples of young gentlemen we were, she fixed me with a haughty sneer and remarked, ‘Heaven only knows how your stepmother deals with a young hooligan such as you.’
Time froze. My confusion must have shown on my face, and there was a beat. As she recovered and mumbled how she was mixing me up with someone else, we were released and told under no circumstances to let her catch us doing something like this again.
There was a moment, a few years later. I am told this is not my mother. Mine died not long after I was born. We met, we got married. The rest is history. Now you know.
I had seen in comics how people had an idea or realised something, and a light bulb lit up over their head. Oh, I see. Ahhh, that explains it. It wasn’t a copy; it was the actual, original. She hadn’t made a mistake. Inadvertently slipping out a truth in the heat of the telling-off that wasn’t supposed to be said out loud.
Like Lois Lane missing the bleeding obvious because a man puts on spectacles, I had missed it. Or ignored it. Or told myself not to think about it. One of those things I wasn’t supposed to know but did anyway.
. . .
Open Journal #54
This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours
Families, can’t live with them, can’t bury them under the patio.
One of those things that survivors just have to deal with. Given that the majority of survivors have been abused by a family member, it is hardly surprising that we struggle with navigating the messy emotional minefield that is our parents and siblings.
Obviously, if it was a parent or sibling who has abused us, there is that. I mean, that is enough. I am not suggesting that is a slight thing; the repercussions and complications are worse than a Middle East ceasefire to negotiate.
From the initial disclosure and the disbelief, to the subtle reframing of your abuse as they wriggle and try to find loopholes and exert a little damage control. Like a modern-day agent speaking on behalf of his client in front of the world press. He misspoke, he didn’t know what he was doing, he drinks, it was a different time, I’m sure it is all a big misunderstanding. Well, of course, he denies it.
Then there are the bit players, the ones who witnessed it, or suspected, or understood but denied it, ignored it, pushed it aside. When confronted with the truth, they made a choice to leave it alone. It was none of their business. What could they do? No point in getting involved?
My therapist and others have spoken of being told the same thing, often referred to people in my life who witnessed it. They saw. They heard. They knew. They did nothing. No raised objections. Never reported it to anyone. Challenged nobody. Avoided confrontation. Did not look anyone in the eye. Kept themselves to themselves. Stood by.
Is it not enough what was done to us without us having to navigate all this deceit and hidden truths? Most of us have enough trouble trusting people and their motives without all this nonsense. I often wonder if other people have any idea what it does to us. Sure, we are probably a bit paranoid at times, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get us.
The problem is, where we imagine that what we speak of is enough to shock people and we have a reasonable expectation that it would at the very least garner a little concern, maybe even sympathy, at the very least a modicum of empathy. It can come as a bit of a shock for it to dawn on us that actually in reality they are more worried about what the neighbours might think than how we are hurting.
As long as we are silent, they can spin it how they like. He was always a bit difficult. I have no idea where he gets these ideas from. He always had a vivid imagination, that one. If you control the narrative, you keep control. They don’t like it when we speak uncomfortable truths. Out loud. Any time we feel like it. Can’t we just keep that for our therapist?
There was a point where my therapist started to talk to me about ‘owning’ my abuse. If it wasn’t my fault, if it was done to me, if it was wrong, why would I feel shame or guilt? Why would I feel the need to hide it? What was I doing staying silent? Why can’t I talk about it?
Is it because it makes people feel uncomfortable? It makes them face their own truths. It confronts them with what they didn’t say or do at the time. It brings into focus how even now they wriggle and squirm and try to avoid the issue. They change the subject.
We were taught to keep it a secret. Suppress it and never speak. Don’t tell anyone. From a young age, I was threatened and scared into silence. I don’t think I am the only one. I think it is a shared experience. Is it really something you would ask us to carry on doing?
Ssssh, don’t speak about that.
Doesn’t that make you as bad as them? Isn’t that the same crime? Now that truth probably makes you feel uncomfortable, it touches a nerve, but it is true. Ok at the very least, it makes you an accomplice. If you covered up a murder, you can be charged with being an accessory to the fact, after the fact. Face the facts.
You are helping an abuser. You agree with an abuser. Not only did you not stop the abuser, but you are now asking me not to mention it. You get jumpy if it looks as if I might say something, stray towards it, or mention it in passing. In the end, you give me two choices: absolute silence or shout about it loudly and clearly.
I am talking from experience. I came up with a plan. I listened to my therapist. I understood what he was saying to me. I could see it so clearly. I made some decisions and I took some action. I hi-jacked myself. I did things that meant I could never slip back into the velvet darkness of silence. I slammed doors shut. I might live to regret it. Do or die.
I came home and I posted on Facebook that I had been abused. A lot. Just in case anyone had missed that. Then I explained I had been in therapy. Then I went away and did a bit of work. I had an idea and I wanted to see if it might work.
I resurrected an old WordPress blog and built a new version. Then I started to post this Open Journal to my blog. Only my words, none of the comments or discussion we have. Right from the start. Tracking the journey from when I first arrived. Every emotional twist and turn. Put it out there. Left the sanctuary of MS and went public. I posted the first 20 entries quite quickly, now I just add one weekly.
I have nothing to hide, so don’t hide it. Stand tall. Linked to all my social media. Family, friends, strangers, Twitter followers. I started to do little writing exercises based on WordPress daily writing prompts just to check I could write about other stuff and to not appear completely obsessed with this one subject. I am more than my abuse. This gathered more audience who stayed around and engaged. People subscribed. The audience grew.
The intention was to take this discussion to a wider audience. That seemed to work. Because if things are going to change, the way this subject is discussed, the way we are treated, well, we have to take the discussion to them. No point preaching to the converted. We know, we have all lived it, and we know. They are the ones who need educating.
Then I decided to take it to the next level. It was suggested to me that survivors would rather listen than read. Where the big audiences were now was a different genre. I gathered together some bits of equipment, bought some expensive software, added an old mic that had travelled the world with me, a nostalgic personal comfort twist. I created a podcast. Well, strictly speaking, I am creating a podcast. A kind of audio blog. All of this narrated like an Audible book in neat episodes.
It is all recorded, and I am currently in the production phase. Editing, mixing, adding theme music. Small 15 – 20 minute episodes. Six episodes a season, four seasons. I spend my mornings at the mixing desk tweaking and fiddling, and the afternoons in my garden and having a bath.
My family are not coping very well with the public blog. It presses all the wrong buttons. People will know. Do you have to? How long is this going on for? I suspect they are going to really object to the idea of a podcast. Especially if I start talking about growing the audience, global reach, broadening the discussion.
Thing is, this is what owning it can look like. This is my turf, I know what I am doing, I know how to engage in debate, I understand an audience; communicating is what I do. I tried it the other way for a very long time. I stayed quiet.
I am still working on it. Editing and tweaking. Oh, just to be clear, I didn’t just do a little thing. I am talking Apple podcast, Spotify, everywhere and anywhere. Out loud and out there.
When you step forward and decide to own this stuff, then you very quickly discover there is no limit. You can go anywhere you want to.
You can silence me. In the sense that you can lower the volume. Pause. Avoid. Never listen. I will be out there. Somewhere.
This is my truth … what is yours?
. . .
Open Journal #55
When a Boy Misplaces His Innocence
I sometimes have these stray thoughts and I need to write them down. I want to explore the theme and where it takes me. Sometimes it feels as if they are disjointed and unconnected, but as I write it, it kind of unravels and I see it clearer. I start to understand what it was I wanted to say.
This is one of those things; I may as well just jump in and see where it takes me. I can always throw it away if it doesn’t make sense. Try again another day. Have another run at it. Or put it out there and see if I got close to hitting a nerve.
I have learned over the months that I am not alone; if I feel it, someone else will know what I mean. Someone else will understand, maybe have better words to describe it. It is worth saying, out loud; who knows what we might learn.
There is a moment in every boy’s life where his natural curiosity means he will start to explore. I imagine for the average teenage boy, it is a gentle, gradual process. A little fiddle, a fumble, a realisation that touching there, squeezing that, pulling this feels good; do it a little more and it can lead to all kinds of new and exciting things.
It is a private and thrilling voyage of discovery. This thing that had always been there is not quite as benign and has some other uses. Excellent. Now let’s see what this thing can do. I wonder what it would feel like if I could persuade someone else to play with it. And so it goes.
We don’t really talk about the subtle awareness and understanding but most of us have experienced it. Men tend towards the knowing remark or the slightly risqué joke to reveal their shared understanding of these things.
Rarely do we indulge in intimate open frank discussion about how we became sexually aware. In some respects it is a shame, I am sure we would learn some stuff. Swapping notes, sharing knowledge, maybe we could circumnavigate some of the awkward moments and help each other.
Because we don’t do that, we are often left to our own fumblings and working it all out for ourselves. Learning as we go, finding our own little quirks, what we like, what it does for us, and we gradually work it all out.
Not for me. I probably started that process. I can’t imagine that I had just ignored it completely. I mean, it was right there, under my nose, so to speak. The point where someone decided to play with it for their own nefarious desire was the day my penis became a cock. Instead of a gradual awakening and a growing understanding of what this incredible thing could do. It was a sudden and absolute crash course in what this thing was capable of, and there is no going back.
The problem is, it has the same result. You end up in the same place, feeling the same feelings. Really good feelings. Feelings you want to feel again.
There is not a boy on the planet who has ever reached the eventual end result of all that fumbling and decided that is not for them. No need to go there again. Once was quite enough, thank you. That was far too enjoyable. I think that is best avoided.
We want it again. Soon. Often. Desire has been unlocked and there is no putting it back in the box.
In the same way that I don’t recall my early exploration of this interesting area of my body, I am sure it is something that most boys have little clear memory of. It is just one of those natural things that just happen.
We might recall specific moments of note; being caught mid-experimentation might stick in the memory, our first encounter with the messy moment of orgasm, the shock and awe of what it does to our mind and body is not something easily ignored and forgotten.
But the little steps along the way, the growing awareness and the stepping stones of learning technique are lost in the mists of too many late-night moments of pleasure.
Not for me and those like me. We have shocking and sudden jolts of memory. We experienced the same as you. We get what it can do. We understand the how-to and the why. The difference is we got to put it to good use much sooner. Like taking an intense driving course and then hitting the motorway and delivering the goods all in one quick weekend. Just hoping we don’t lose control or hit the crash barrier, we speed along and never hit the brakes.
Oh, we liked it. Enjoyed it. Hard not to. It’s not like it can be ignored. The difference is we no longer had any control. What we learnt and how often we practised had been hijacked.
For most of us, it is not a blur of growing up and enjoyment and fun and learning what this thing can do. It is carrying those vivid, acute memories into every sexual encounter we ever engage with for the rest of our time. We can’t shake it off or ignore it. Oh, this is like when he touched me, did that, made me feel this, got to do that thing. Excellent. Back there again.
When someone else gets to turn your penis into a cock, you don’t forget that moment. It stays with you. And a cock never forgets.
Oh no. Wait. That’s elephants.
. . .
Open Journal #56
The Storage Unit Of My Mind
I am sure it has been used a thousand times. It might even be that my therapist has used it himself many times. One day he described my brain as a storage unit. I imagined one of those ones you hire like a room with a roller shutter. You throw up the shutter and there is a gloomy, dark room with shadows, shelving, and endless boxes.
Mine was big with endless rows of shelves and ordered rows of boxes all labelled. I can’t see the labels from the door. In the gloom. So we switch on a light and in the stark, bright white, we see it all laid out before us.
He seems to have a map and knows where he is going, so I trot along behind him and crane my neck to see the boxes on the high shelves above my head.
They’re full of memories and emotions — thoughts I have buried, feelings I don’t want to touch. I suddenly realise we are going to open some of these and I start to feel tense. I have no idea which ones he is going to pick, but he seems determined and as if he knows what he is doing.
He grabs a huge box and lifts it down and places it on a big table in the middle of the room. He blows off the dust, rubs his hands with glee. He’s enjoying this. Me? Less so. I have spotted that the label has just the one word on it and the apprehension rises in my throat and as he lifts off the lid I start to wonder if maybe this was such a good idea after all.
He passes me the lid and I place it on the floor out of the way and my eyes flicker on the label. The word ‘father’ stares back at me and I peer into the box. It is crammed full with a pile of photos and the ooze of years of emotions and fear and I am not sure it is a good idea to go digging around in there. But there is no stopping him now and he starts to sort through and put things into piles on the table.
I feel helpless and recoil from some of the contents. There are things here I haven’t seen for years. I approach one of the piles nervously and tentatively and realise that I am looking at all my questions. Why did he hate me so much? What did I ever do to evoke so much violence from him? Was I really that bad as a five-year-old?
There are old photographs of him as a younger man and I wonder if he was always angry and full of hatred or if that was only when I came along.
There are pictures of me and I am smiling and clearly have yet to develop a dress sense. Either that or someone else was picking out my clothes, in which case I can blame the stylist.
Everything has a surreal feeling as if I am looking at things for the first time. As if things I had always thought were slightly wrong and now he is holding up things and asking me if that is what I truly think. What I really see. How about if this was true instead?
I don’t understand how he can know my father when he has never met him; then again, he seems to think he is a type, a type he has heard about before.
He called him a coward and I question the choice of words, and he challenges me as to how he could be anything else. What word do you use for a grown man who beats a small child? He has a point.
I lean forward and peer into the box and he steps back slightly to let me move in closer. He tells me to have a rummage and find something I want to look at, but I hesitate and just hold the edges of the box and breathe slowly as I try to summon up the courage to delve into this messy, over-full container of hell.
I see a small toy car. A model of a gunmetal grey Aston Martin, James Bond car. Without the little missiles that fire. They were lost many years ago in a back garden that probably has its own box somewhere on these shelves. Full of lost toys and memories of playing cowboys and Indians and sunshine and fun.
I hold the car in my hand and flick the rotating number plate with my finger as I remember how much I loved this little thing. It was mine and it is scratched and battered from hours of battling with Spectre and getting away from endless baddies. Rather like myself.
I place the car down on the table and roll it back and forth, and I am pleased to see that an Aston Martin still works after all these years. Also rather like myself. Battered but still functioning. The bodywork isn’t what it was, and there are some miles on the engine, but all things considered, still working and still here.
There are a lot of boxes in this room. We have a lot to look at. My therapist smiles at me and puts his arm around my shoulder and asks me if I am okay. He suggests we go and find a cup of tea. After all, this isn’t going anywhere. We can look at them any time we want. There is loads of time.
As we leave and plunge the room back into darkness, I feel the sigh of decades and prompt myself to return and do some sorting and re-organising. Best to keep things tidy. Who knows what I might find.
Maybe in there somewhere I might find myself.
. . .
Open Journal #57
Unprotected. My therapist taught me that word. It felt like balm to my soul. It was such a healing word to hear. It made me feel seen. It was so true. If I had been protected, my life would have been so different. I would have been so different. If we add this prism and look again, does it shine light on things I thought I knew and reveals the truth hiding in the shadows?
If I hit refresh and understand every way I was wronged as a failure to be protected, does that impact the storyline? Perhaps the harsh truth I have told myself for so long has nuance and details that I have missed.
Unprotected. I love that word so much. I have taught it to other survivors. I will always use it to describe abused boys now. It is so apt and such a good word to use about yourself. I prefer it to survivor because it has the wrong built-in — the wrong that was done unto me. You didn’t protect me. I was a baby, a toddler, a boy, a teen. You never protected me, and that was your job and my right.
Survivor turns the spotlight on what I did to endure, I fought, I lived. It’s strong, but it can also sound like you’re the one carrying all the weight, like you were supposed to be superhuman all along.
“Unprotected,” though — that word drags the lens back to where it belongs: on the adults, the systems, the family that failed. It makes clear the crime wasn’t your weakness, but their neglect, their cowardice, their indifference. It exposes the betrayal.
It also reclaims your boyhood. You weren’t some tiny warrior meant to hold the line at six, or twelve, or fifteen. You were a boy, and boys are supposed to be sheltered until they’re ready. You weren’t. You were thrown to wolves and then blamed for getting bitten.
What happens if you reframe events through that word? If I was unprotected, then suddenly the things I assumed start to wobble. How can it be my fault? I was unprotected. I was left to cope.
When I was six, I thought I had done something wrong and that you were just punishing me for wrongdoing. But your fists hurt too much. Unprotected. I was supposed to be learning to read better and do sums, not worrying about the next attack and understanding how hard an adult can hit a child.
When I was twelve, I started to question your logic and think about fighting back, but these were weak, skinny arms and I could never win that fight, so I stayed unprotected. I learnt to dodge and hold back tears and be a man. I learnt how to stand up but not stand up to you.
Unprotected at fifteen and knew I was never going to win because it defied logic and I was starting to think I might have to kill you. The only way out was to end you before you ended me.
And when you entered stage left and started to claim my body for your own sexual needs, there I was unprotected — naked and available. The plot was different and the script was not quite the same, but the backstage area was oddly familiar and had the same dark corners of fear and uncertainty. Unprotected and adding a layer of damage that devastated everything it touched.
What if protection was a legal right for any child? The most basic requirement for them to get through childhood. If you remove it or damage it, then you pay the price, not the child. What if the child, any child, has the right to have it replaced.
money, therapy, medicine, care, attention, blanket, love. protection. Just hand it over like food and water. Things they need to get them back to where they were.
Laws to protect, families answerable, schools and churches liable for how they protect and deal with a child. If you are an institution, government, child welfare, courts, then you put the child in the centre of protection. If you leave them unprotected, if you ignore their need, if you walk on by. Then you will be held to account.
I am unprotected no longer.
But I will keep saying that word,
teaching it,
handing it like a torch to the next boy,
the next man, who thinks it was his fault.
No.
You were unprotected.
That’s the truth that frees you.
. . .
Open Journal #58
Message in a digital bottle.
i have this odd urge to write to a lonely boy in a bedsit,
a teenager who doesn’t feel understood,
a man alone because his divorce just came through and it all went wrong and he has no idea why but there is something that nags at his soul,
a rising star who has it all in front of him but there is this empty dark part of his heart that he can’t quite see but he knows it is there.
abuse inhabits. it lurks. it stays unseen,
but we know there is something – it just hasn’t been given a name yet.
a message in a digital bottle … throw it into the waves and who knows which shore it will wash up on … but throw it i must. it is just gnawing away at me, say something, because others don’t say, they just stay silent, and the silence kills us all one by one.
you know, deep down you know something isn’t right. You know something happened and you know you should have said something and you never did. well you are still breathing. It isn’t over. You don’t have to live with it, you can put it down and walk away. You don’t have to do it alone. You can speak to someone.
there are people, and numbers you can dial.
or pick a friend, the one who always cared more than the rest, pick them and ask them first, just ask them.please can I tell you a bad thing and please will you help me.
they will say yes because they love you and loving someone means you don’t walk away.
they just need to have two skills, can they make tea and can they listen? oh and hug, three skills, because you may not realise it at the moment but you will need a hug, maybe more than one,
the thing is, and I am speaking here from a lot of experience, every single person who has ever told me their story, they all have one single thing in common, it was not their fault.
i am willing to put a serious amount of money on the fact that it wasn’t your fault. I am sure of it. Every single one of them thought it was, turns out they were wrong. You will be wrong as well, it’s ok because once you realise that it wasn’t your fault it all starts to get a bit easier.
the idea of it, of speaking about it, probably makes you feel a bit sick and you can’t imagine how you would find the words, but you don’t need to start big. you can start with really small sentences. Something bad happened. Something terrible. When I was 12. Or 6 or whatever age you were.
that is a good start. then you can drink some tea, nibble a biscuit. See if anyone has any questions. try another sentence. it was my teacher. my priest. my scout leader. or some other cliche. another sip of tea that was quite a big sentence.
i would just like you to start rehearsing saying those kind of things. trying the words out in your mouth. seeing if you can form the words. then imagine who you could say them to.
maybe every time it crosses your mind, you feel the shame flood in.
you let it happen.
you joined in.
maybe even suggested things.
doesn’t that make you as bad as them?
thing is, and I am only guessing here, if you were aged 12 or 6 or whatever age you were, would you have known about that? maybe you think you did, but without them leading the way you would never have gone there.
shame is the glue that sticks our lips together and stops us from speaking. when shame is allowed to be amplified and fill every corner with a scream it makes us think we have no power. It drowns out our objections and screams, an echo into our head that nobody is ever going to believe us.
i believe you.
i see you.
i hear you
if you whisper in my ear i will hear your truth. if you show me your demons i will understand your pain. if you speak your truth i will walk with you.
pick up the bottle, uncork the bottle, read the message, break the silence.
. . .
Open Journal #59
Trigger Warning!
Seriously, I’m not messing about
I went to prison.
There was a little period of my life where I stole things.
I had no idea why. I know now it’s not unusual for survivors to do this—some twisted attempt at being seen. I never explored it too closely. It hardly matters.
It wasn’t for very long, I stole almost worthless things and because of my inability to lie with any kind of conviction inevitably confessed to everything I had done. All of this was spent many years ago and if I am stopped by the police I am known but not wanted and I don’t have to say why I am known.
Almost any time I was up in court I was sentenced to a short spell in a detention or youth centre. A short sharp shock was the order of the day, it was how they dealt with troubled youth back in the day. I just happened to have the misfortune of having a series of short sharp shocks in a row.
On one occasion there was no room in a juvenile facility and I was sent to an adult male prison in London for a few months. Turned out there was 8 of us placed there on the same day, we arrived together and were processed at the same time. We were issued different coloured T-shirts that identified us as under 18’s. I was the youngest and smallest.
A small group of men targeted those 8 boys. Every one of us was raped and used by each man in turn. I suppose we were on some kind of rota and used whenever they wanted, we had no choice. At the time I told myself it was just men using me and it was nothing unusual and just some more sex. I never spoke of it, I tried to never think of it. I tried to forget about it.
It was the worst of the nightmares and haunted me for decades. Intellectually I suppose I knew it was a different level of hurt and something I should address, but I had skills, this was something I knew how to handle. I knew how to apply a thick layer of denial and how to lock something away in a dark corner and hide it and never look at it and never refer to it.
It is the darkest of secrets to walk with. It feels as if you will never find a way to speak of it. It was a frightening experience and the memory of it leaks out and creates mayhem in my head.
At one point in our sessions my therapist asked me to compile a list of how the sexual abuse had affected me, things I deal with as a result of the abuse. The rape made the list. Then got removed from the list, For days I played that game.
It was something I had never told a living soul. It felt huge and scary to say out loud. It had a lot of shame attached to it. I had done nothing to fight back or stop it happening. The men were all big and scary and tough and I wasn’t any of those things. I had no idea how I would explain what had happened. So I never tried.
One morning I arrived early and sat on a bench to one side of the front door. I listened to music and once more I added the subject of rape to the list and stared hard at the list. I cried a little bit as I tried to think of what I would say and how I would say it.
Told myself that if anyone could help me he could. He could be trusted, he would know what to do. This was it, I should step up and speak words. I put it at the bottom of the list and figured I would see how I felt when we got to it.
I suddenly realised he was standing a few feet away, to one side of me and I had no idea how long he had been there. I wiped my eyes and removed my earbuds and said hello. He asked me what I had been doing and I changed the subject and walked into the building.
He made me coffee and we sat down in our circle of chairs where we started each day and he asked me again what I had been doing. I explained that I was adding something to the end of the list and he asked what it was. I will explain when we get to that bit as I tried to wriggle out of saying, but he insisted we did it now.
So I told him in a couple of sentences and he asked me if I wanted to discuss it in some detail and I said no maybe later. We chatted a bit and we did an exercise and then he said to me ‘now?’ … ‘now what?’ … ‘wanna talk about it now?’ …
So I did, I explained what happened, how it made me feel, what it had been like carrying this terrible dark secret for such a long time. He asked me some questions, made sure I hadn’t been left physically damaged in any way. Took care of me.
Later in the day when we addressed the area of sexual abuse he just walked on into the rapes and we dealt with that as well, as we were there anyway. I struggle with it a little still but it doesn’t hurt me in quite the same way and it feels as if it has lost its power to harm me.
I was raped. A number of times. By a few different men. I am ok with you knowing that now. I understand that it wasn’t my fault and that it contributed to my trauma.
The reason I am writing about this is that I am determined to stand in a place of truth. The more I do that the less power any of it has over me, even this dreadful truth.
. . .
Open Journal #60
If you’re reading this, I’m already gone.
I have written 50k+ words. I have struggled to understand things. Wriggled around on the end of a proverbial hook. Sat in on endless discussions. Learnt things. Went back and listened again. I read things and asked questions.
I came here angry and upset. You were patient and understanding with me. It wasn’t always easy for me, and I imagine I was annoying to have around at times.
Your attention and your care had the desired effect. If your brief is to help people, then you far exceeded that. You empowered me to be able to look at things and walked with me. We had some long nights, you and I.
My aim when I started to write this Open Journal was to be honest. I wanted to discuss openly the experience of exploring everything I discovered and learnt about my abuse.
I have no way of knowing if it helped or hindered anyone. I know it was useful for me; it helped me to process. It encouraged me to hear what people thought. I thank you for getting involved.
I am pausing my Open Journal. Not because I am finished. Not because I have solved anything. I just need a break. I might not come back. It might evolve. I might just pick it up again without any warning.
I am not going anywhere. I will stop posting for now. I think for now I have said enough. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. That’s enough. I will leave the porch light on.
. . .