Open Journal #21 ~ #35

[svf]

Open Journal #21

Traumasexuality

Clearly I am late to the party. As I am with most things to do with all of this. The Mentor mentioned it, he mentioned it in such a way that I paid attention. Thought I would get a copy and have a read. I really don’t do this, you will never see my bookshelf with its own section of self-help books or theories on this or that. Not my thing at all. I like the Malcom Gladwell 10,000 hours/Tipping point shtick so I have a few of his but they are almost pop culture, whatever he thinks he was doing the fact is he become one of those zeitgeist moments at the turn of the century.

I am a novels, literature and autobiographies reader. On the beach, a train or waiting around a hotel lobby I will always have a book to hand. Martin Amis, John Irving, Douglas Adams, Michael Chabon, David Sedaris, Tintin are what I see at a glance across my bookshelves.

I feel duty bound to warn you against going straight to the publishers as I did, maybe it is the only way to get a copy nowadays. It was expensive to start with and then more than that again with postage and import taxes. It’s dutch so the English is a translation so maybe that bumped up the cost. i decided it was about equal to the cost of an hour of therapy so it is probably worth it.

Yes I used to live there and can speak a few sentences but they are restricted to the ordering of the beer and the thanking of the person who brings me the beer school of linguistics.

So this is a departure for me, it is very much an academic book and feels aimed maybe at therapists rather than the casual survivor. I have read it through and I intend to read it again in the next week or so. Just to make sure it is in there, I read a bit fast and have a tendency to skip stuff.

I don’t want to say too much because I do think it is one of those things that has more impact if you read it with your heart open and brain willing to engage type thing, and me offering a watered down summary version is hardly fair to the expertise of the writer. If you have read it or heard about it or you have all chattered about it in the chat rooms when it was released then I am sure you get the general idea.

One second at the start where the abuse explodes in your body and does its damage everywhere. And then a whole book discussing that and the repercussions. Well of course I am being flippant I am hardly going to write the whole book here am I?

I read that first section about the one second thing almost breathless. It just slotted into me like I had been waiting all my life for someone to explain it to me in that way. It is a framework for what I always instinctively believed about abuse and what it does to us. I think because i so locked into that idea I have been so receptive to his ideas and thoughts.

Often over the years, enough that I know I say it, I will comment that I was very lucky I didn’t really notice puberty. No embarrassing voice changes, no acne or spots, hair growth subtle and one day just there. Everything so gradual over time, I assumed, that I barely noticed it.

And then I read this …

Sexual development is accelerated, halted and influenced.
You do not experience or only faintly experience puberty. Your tempo has been raised and as a result you miss the step-by-step discovery of your own sexuality with all its details and refinements that are important for your development.

One line. Now I understand. What kind of harm has that done? Is it a key to some of the other things? Have I ended up in confused places with my sexuality because of that one second, well obviously, but was I always unwittingly describing the repercussions of the one second? I just didn’t know to call it that?

I am very shaken by the idea of his sexuality being imprinted on me which the book talks about. I described it recently to The Mentor as if I had a memory chip implanted in me. In my head it was just the idea that he had taught me sexual things and programmed me to respond and do sexual things. The imprint idea is stomach wrenchingly accurate to me.

It goes a long way to explain my sense of sexual identity confusion. I could never explain it, I could never find words, I knew labels didn’t work and I have always struggled to answer the question what am I. Now I know why, I am not straight, Gay or Bi … I am him.

I don’t like that one little bit. I not only identify with that I feel it completely and utterly. The disgust I feel at that concept also extends and explains the disgust I feel about myself and my sexual feelings and the things I sexually engage with.

Before coming here and talking to you lot, a term of affection I assure you, I was adamant that I had very little use for a therapist. I have shifted slightly on that stance, just a small step to the left, (would never step to the right), if I could find an English speaking therapist trained in the ways of Traumasexuality I would book them tomorrow. Yes don’t worry, I am working on it, I have even considered slipping over to The Nederland’s and spending a few weeks there and doing some kind of crash course.

In the meantime I am happy to wear the label Traumasexual, well to be entirely accurate, if my friends are to be believed my full title should be MetroTraumaSexual, now who do I know with a badge maker?!


svf




Open Journal #22

Six weeks.
I clicked on a link six weeks ago yesterday.
A life changing, line in the sand, never be the same again click.

I have never had so little sleep. I can’t seem to focus on anything else. It feels all encompassing. There is nowhere else I want to be. Nothing else I want to think about. Which considering how little I have said about it for so long feels a bit weird, takes a little getting used to.

I seem to have acquired some friends, I’m not really sure how. I mean I have friends it’s not as if I am unfamiliar with the concept. As a general rule they took longer to achieve and it was a more painful process. I was more cautious and mistrusting of people out there in the world.

Here something very strange occurs. I find myself talking of dark, intense, intimate things that I would never say elsewhere. To people that I have no idea where they live, what they look like, or what they do for work. It matters not a jot, for some reason we just dive right in.

It might be that the survivor thing is a great leveller and we all just start at the same place so it makes it easy to assume certain things. They are going to understand, I can tell them because they will tell me a similar story, there is no shame in our shame and no fear in our fears. Everybody here is the opposite of anyone out there, here they get it, nobody ever got it like they get it, ok I get it, dive in.

I do wonder if I will ever stop adding things to the list of what wrong with me. I have found comments in reports about me from years ago where professionals have all agreed on some of the conditions I have, never told me, I know I was a child but it might have been nice if they had mentioned it at some point.

Talking about all this abuse stuff means I have been triggered, had nightmares and the least amount of sleep than at any other time in my life. I decided not to stress about it as that would just make it worse. I assume in time it passes and things return to normal.

The Mentor is a welcome addition to my life. The dictionary defines a mentor as an experienced and trusted advisor, and I can confirm that both those things are true. Not quite sure how we fell into this relationship, on the face of it just another hello and chat and the odd question. Maybe it is in the way I answer questions, the obvious need for help and guidance or the slight confusion barely hidden in every response.

There is something about this relationship that bothered me for quite some time, on the face of it there are questions and lots of discussion, a lot of emotional upheaval as I face things, a steep learning curve at the start that meant I was battling a bit of panic. It has taken awhile but I think I understand what it is.

There is nothing he has done at all, if anything he is beyond reproach, patient and understanding, he will produce another angle if I don’t quite get something, very quickly understood me and stood right where I was and built my confidence and has kept pace with me. He pauses if I need time to meander and explore and knows when I am done with something for now.

The father I never had. Not in a boy searching for a father figure or some homoerotic sexual twist. Just that, the father I never had. A better version. A patient, caring, teaching, nurturing father. Everything he should have been but never was.

It took me awhile to see it, and slowly it has become obvious what I am doing. I am responding to somebody taking the time to teach me. As I understand something I grow in confidence and start to believe that I can learn about this and it will be ok. I feel nurtured and I don’t think I saw nurture often as a child. It is a new experience and not only am I learning and changing I am enjoying the experience.

It is the inner young teen that is being addressed, it is him that is responding to this person taking an interest, and bothering to help him. It is him that has a need for this kind of attention and care. I pulled on the thread of a thought yesterday and I remembered where I had seen this before.

At my school, in the middle of all the abuse and sex and the trauma and the damage there was this man. He was my English teacher, he wore a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, could fly a plane, drove a fast car, had passion and taught me how to really love books. He sparked my imagination and encouraged and believed in me and taught me to yearn for things and improve and grow. I wanted to do well for him and for him to be pleased with me. I wanted to improve I wanted better for myself.

He would scrawl comments over my essays with a fountain pen filled with green ink and they were always encouraging and florid and full of good things. He was just my English teacher but he was so much more. He fed things in me that nobody else had ever bothered with. Things that stayed with me all of my life, I have groaning bookshelves, I read books and watch films and I want to be the characters and I fall in love with others and all because he taught me how to do that a hundred years ago.

So, you see, I had this once before, I recognise this relationship because I had one like it many years ago. The same boy has the same need, the same desire, the same anguish. Please teach me, please show me everything I need to know, please help me understand so that I can be the best version of myself. For reasons I can’t begin to fathom my mentor just stepped up and started to show me the way



… and so it begins


svf



Open Journal #23

I wasn’t talking about this to anyone, never have, would never, had no need.

I started talking to The Mentor about it, well because that’s what I do now. I think I started to understand that it was at the root of some stuff and keeping this secret was helping nothing. These are some of the typical scenarios that I told him about. I thought maybe if wrote about them in this journal it would feel less like a secret and more like something I needed to deal with and understand.

My father was always tinkering and fixing stuff or putting up a fence etc. A common thing was him fixing the car. He would be underneath the car and my job was to pass tools back and forth. He would ask for the yellow handled screwdriver. There would be three yellow handled screwdrivers, so i would give him the one i thought was best and if it was wrong he would be so angry, so quickly, and call me useless and throw it at me. It could hit my head or body he wouldn’t care and would just demand the right one. Still not giving me any indication which one he wanted. Looking back at it i tell myself he got angry because i was too stupid to ask him which one he wanted but i would never ask him questions. If you questioned him he always got angry that was a very bad thing to do. I was probably about 7/8 but that kind of scenario happened a lot.

One of my chores was to clean and polish shoes, a lot of shoes. I would have to do it in the shed or by the shed door, so if it was raining i could stand inside the shed. If my father was in the shed and i was stood in or by the doorway and he wanted to come out, he would just hit me around the side of the head to move me, wouldn’t say excuse me or ask if he could get by. That generally happened a lot in different scenarios, I was supposed to anticipate his movements and step aside, or pass him something or take something from him and if i didn’t i was a fool and he would hit me, hard. it was always hard, it was usually a punch. I would say i was treated like a dog, except i own dogs and i don’t treat them that way either. So i don’t know what it was like, like i never mattered.

One point in his life his job was to drive up and down the motorways (highways) and test the concrete being used to make the road. He would travel hundreds of miles. Often where possible he would take me with him, it was supposed to be a treat, it really wasn’t. If he got angry, which he would at least once in a morning or afternoon, if i had said something stupid, not passed him something quick enough, not heard what he said (not paying attention), or some other crime. he would just thump me in the arm, or leg, or the side of my head. I used to feel very stressed that he was doing it while driving at speed, i used to worry about us crashing. He would sometimes be angry and telling me off about something and the point would be punctuated with a punch for each point. I hated lists.

For many years my father was the manager of a big DIY Store, like a smaller version of Home Depot, before those type of things existed. It was a long store, the front half was retail, middle bit offices and staff room and the back half was the commercial section, big rolls of polythene and thousands of plastic bags, massive sheets of laminate. School holidays and weekends i would often go and work in the shop, i would travel into town with him and we would go and get some breakfast then return and he would do paperwork, all before staff would arrive and the shop would open.

If in that period of about and hour/hour and a half i did anything to anger him, he would grab the back of my collar and move me with my feet off the floor into the back area of the shop, he would then punch and kick me. He wanted me there so things wouldn’t get broken if he had done that in the shop part.

All these types of moments were just him and I, nobody ever saw them happen. There was nobody i could tell. I was constantly in fear of being hit. i was always in fear of doing something wrong and deserving to be hit. It was my own fault i should have done it properly or listened or paid attention. The pain was real, he hurt me every time he did it. He did it for years. it only stopped when i left home at 15, then years later i realised the fear of him doing it again had never left me. Whenever i was around him i was careful what i said and did.

i was always bruised, on my ribs and stomach, he would punch my bottom so i would have a big bruise on a cheek. Of course years later it dawned on me that it was always places that couldn’t be seen. he was always saying i was clumsy, fell out of trees, tripped over my own feet, typical boy. I didn’t, i hadn’t, i wasn’t, i was beaten is what i was.

I have no idea why I never spoke of it. It was just the way my life was, so even when I spoke about sexual abuse I didn’t see this as abuse, so it was always a footnote. I sort of understood that maybe it had made me in some way damaged and easier for an abuser to get to but that wasn’t thought out, more of a vague notion.

Now I am talking about it I keep dreaming about it and I wake up and think about the dream and start filling in details and where it was and I realise it isn’t a dream it is a memory, something I know, something I remember, something I don’t really remember but now I do.

It is one of those weird things that never really comes up in conversation, now I have mentioned it here a couple of people have told me they were also … what do we cal it? Beaten? Hit? Abused violently? I don’t know the language for this.

What do I say? He punched, slapped and kicked. I have been hit with a variety of items, sticks, umbrellas, shoes, rolled up newspapers, anything to hand that served the purpose. He comes from a generation who believed it was the way to raise children and it was his right to raise me any way he saw fit.

I have numerous nephews and nieces, endless friends with kids, I have been a foster parent to teen boys, never once have I even felt an urge to slap them let alone punch them. I have no idea where that urge comes from in an actual father.

As a child I never understood what I had done to deserve being treated like that, I still don’t. The crime was always small the retribution always huge.

I think it destroyed my self-worth, self esteem, and possibly my ability to trust anyone. I can’t be sure because I have nothing to compare it with. About twenty years ago when making statements to the police i was seen by some professor of something who wrote a report and said that he had diagnosed me with PTSD. I recently took an online test to see if I had CPTSD, I scored very high, so I think that is probably very likely. I think I could put money on where that started.

In which case I have had that for a very long time, I suppose the next step is to work out what I do about it. He is dead and gone so there are no answers there. I think I will walk with it for a while longer, see what else I remember, try to understand, walk around the edges see how it feels.

Weirdly I have started to worry if the dealing with it is going to be equal to the pain of experiencing it, which somehow feels a little unfair, I mean it has already hurt me why should it get another go.

I spoke with a couple of kind people here last night and it felt as if i couldn’t explain what i was feeling, i don’t know it they understood or not, i think they did but it all feels swirly in my head when i talk about it and i have spent so long not speaking about it that it feels really wrong when i talk about it.

Maybe i need to find a different website for this because it isn’t sexual abuse, oh and then one for my fear of spiders.

svf






Open Journal #24

In the interest of balance, I thought I would talk about some good things. I have released my mentor for the holidays. My Christmas present to him, me not whining into his inbox on a daily basis. I will do this and another post then take a break for a bit over the holidays. For all our sakes. I think I would like to see what it is like to try and not think about all of this stuff all of the time. Yes I will probably be in chat on a nightly basis as nothing changes and we march relentlessly on, but the intention was a good one.

I have felt very reclusive since coming here, not seeing people, dealing with a lot of stuff, and feeling emotional. I didn’t have the headspace for anything. The other day, circumstances meant I needed to run some errands and do some things that needed doing. So for two days, I went out into the big wide world and interacted and did the things.

I was very tired and was even worried about driving in case my concentration wasn’t up to it. I was also aware that my PTSD, (just never quite got how to refer to it), has been a bit oversensitive to noise and sensory stuff at the moment, making me a little anxious about being out in the wild. A crisp day, and I love driving and listening to music, so my mood lifted as I sat in the car. I returned to the house to get my phone and did the whole thing over again.

My first job was to get a haircut. Christmas haircuts are a rule. Photos will be taken at random moments, and you can at least ensure that you are presentable and not have to live with odd images of yourself for years to come. My barber is young and chatty. He knows I owned a record shop, so he has things for me to listen to, and we chatter about music.

Barbers do a lot of touching: back of the neck, ears, moves your head, strokes your hair. I know it’s normal, I know it doesn’t mean anything, I know it’s okay. I know it’s safe. And I don’t. At one point, he leans forward and says quietly into my ear, “ I like when you come in, you always make me laugh.”

I nearly cried. I have no idea why. It felt intimate and a nice thing to say. I told him I liked to see him as well. I didn’t mention all the touching; he didn’t need to know about that. My problem, not his. I left tidier and feeling that was a good start to the day.

I ran a few errands and then headed to the Apple Store, which I love. I have visited them all over the world. Full of shiny toys. I had been given permission to update my very out-of-date MacBook. I also had an Apple pencil that wouldn’t charge on my iPad. Secured an appointment for that and passed the waiting time spending too much money.

A funny, articulate, informed young woman, who understood the brief and helped me narrow it down to the right choice. We clicked and had a lot of fun, the kind of person you want to grab a coffee with and find out more about them. Back before dinosaurs roamed the earth, I used to train staff to use Mac’s and if I was to have my life again I would love to have worked for Apple, that or a Barrister.

As we finished the purchase, she said they were ready for me at the Genius Bar and she started walking me that way as if escorting me. I asked what she was doing, she grinned and said, “Oh, I’m not ready to leave all the laughter yet. I thought I would introduce you to my friend who is going to take care of you.” Which is what we did. For ten minutes, we just included her friend and had that coffee without the actual coffee. Good experience.

The Apple Pencil wasn’t working because the iPad had developed a fault on the little charging bit, so they just replaced the iPad. Apple Care+, which we need because of the crippling effect of losing a device halfway across the world at a crucial moment. Or in my case, the moment a MacBook screen went black and turned out to be a known fault with a batch of graphics cards, and they got that as I was about to start a week of hectic work far from home and in a field they needed to sort it out. They fixed it within the hour and saved my life. Which is why it is one of those things we can’t manage without.

I left with the promise they would get a replacement ASAP and I went on my way. Got in a crowded lift and commented to a couple of women with a cute baby in a pram that that was the way to go shopping , just be wheeled around and have a little sleep when you felt like it. At this point, the lift stopped and the doors opened and a good-looking man beside me pointed out the door and said ‘there’s a trolley there, hop in and I will wheel you about for the afternoon’ … lift full of people laughing at my red face. He grinned at me and I politely declined his kind offer. Fun.

The funny little moment the other morning when we took a delivery from someone at our front door and offered a chocolate from a bowl of wrapped Lindt chocolates as a little Christmas treat, the delivery boy mused and carefully took three different ones … I mean how rude … made us giggle a lot that he took his time picking them. I mean you take A chocolate … right?

So I have had a haircut and feel half human, I am sitting here typing this on the most beautiful new MacBook that is all smooth and sexy, and I have a new iPad for nothing. I must have been a very good boy. I don’t actually remember especially being good but I decided it was best if I didn’t say anything about that.

And yes, I know it isn’t Christmas yet, so technically I should not actually have my MacBook yet but the deal was this. My wife hates shopping, I love shopping, if she can’t be bothered to go and buy it and wrap it and make it a proper present then she loses the right to lay down loads of rules.

I think I might write about favourite Christmas music for my next post … let’s face it, probably the only week of the year you can.

svf


Open Journal #25

I understand that Christmas isn’t great for everyone, and maybe here we have a higher percentage of bah humbug than you might expect from your average crowd. We are swamped with adverts and hammered with the message of peace and goodwill until we want to kill with our bare hands, which is, you know, a little off message.

For survivors I imagine it is fraught with difficulty, families gather, all the things we struggle with are amplified and we want to retreat and remove ourselves from all the hullabaloo. Some years the wife and I make the effort and we join in, we might agree to attend a family gathering, we have been known to stay at hotel and pick up the tab for a family lunch (people behave better in public and relax when someone else is paying).

Often we prefer our own company and pick and choose the bits we like to engage with. We try to avoid the excess of presents, food and drink and if we are hosting we try to make the effort to spoil and treat people without it becoming an eating competition.

For years we have established that shortly after breakfast it is best to open a good bottle of chilled champagne and sip it throughout the morning. It ensures the right level of festive feelings and avoids having to drive, use sharp knives, or get into any arguments (you know how he gets when he has had a drink), it is the Christmas equivalent of running with scissors, he has been drinking champagne all morning don’t let him near/give him those/allow him to … hey it works for me.

If you are on your own I say go with the specific things you enjoy, no matter what others might think, it’s your Christmas so tailor it to your likes and indulgences, who is going to know?! Make sure you have plenty of your tipple of choice and your snack selection.

I love Christmas music, so much so that wife has imposed a ban on Christmas playlists until December 1st. I have a classical/jazz/carols mix for mellow background mood setting, a pop/brash/classics playlist for Christmas driving. There is a definitive Christmas playlist that comprises of tracks that I love and Christmas isn’t Christmas without them. Here is a selection of some of those.


The Raveonettes ~ The Christmas Song

A friend pointed me towards this a few years ago and it instantly became a seasonal staple for us. Many a Christmas traffic jam has been spent singing along to this.


Smith & Burrows ~ When The Thames Froze

A different friend declared this one of his favourites a few years back and a load of us jumped on it and now it appears all over our social group. It has the right melancholic tone to appeal to the british sardonic approach to the Christmas spirit. With a touch of northern brass band for good measure.


Darlene Love ~ All Alone On Christmas

The joyous theme song for Home Alone 2 by one of the voices of Phil Spector’s Christmas Album.


Wham ~ Last Christmas (pudding mix)

The video is a masterclass in how Christmas will be when we win the lottery, snow everywhere, log cabins, friends, drink and diamonds for everyone.


Diana Krall & Michael Buble ~ Alone Again Naturally

It isn’t a Christmas song as such, but has that sad undertone that fits the season. A song written by Gilbert O’Sullivan whose songs graced the british charts in the 70’s, great lyrics.


Happy Christmas whatever that means to you … and that’s it for this year ... see you in 2025


svf



Open Journal #26

Happy New Year

I am struggling to be all positive and bright as we start this year. The broken sleep and the endless nightmares are starting to annoy me now. There was a discussion somewhere about how when we nap during the day, we are not asleep long enough for REM sleep to kick in, so we don’t dream when we day sleep. Which might explain why I prefer it at the moment. I have certainly found it to be true. It almost feels deeper and more satisfying, but it does sometimes leave me feeling slightly wooly-headed afterwards.

I cut all contact with The Mentor over Christmas. That sounds a bit drastic, but he just deserved a break from my whining, and I wanted to see if I could try and regain some semblance of normality. I stopped writing this journal and tried to reduce my visits to the chat room. I still hung out there during my night, but I tried to restrict myself to that.

I am not sure what I proved. The sleep pattern stayed askew, and I struggled to keep my balance. I missed The Mentor to bounce things off, and the moment I hit anything tough, I realised the lack of support in my real life. Well, of people who understand properly. Oh, you know what I mean! They are not you.

I decided to download the book The Body Keeps the Score. It kept being referred to, and I figured one more book wouldn’t kill me. It made me think. A lot. It kind of pulled together various bits and pieces for me, sort of half-heard things explained properly, and things I knew nothing about. I was forever putting it down and musing on what I had just read and realising that there was a reason why I did, or felt, or experienced certain things.

It helped me with the whole ‘it’s not my fault’ thinking that I still struggle to hold on to and grasp firmly. If all this stuff is known to occur, if this has been happening to my brain and body, then it explains the last few decades.

It also led me down a thought process that was inevitable from the moment I stepped into this site. I need a therapist. I can’t do the next bit on my own. I have no idea what I am doing. I am a little bit scared of what is there and what I will find when I get there, but I am clear that I have no idea what I am doing.

My starting point is to endeavour to find a therapist well versed in the whole Traumasexuality worldview. Failing that, a good trauma therapist. No idea how or where to start. In my country, everything NHS is long waiting lists and also rather too fond of CBT, which I am not particularly impressed by (just feels like therapy lite). If I end up doing EMDR, I would prefer that to be at the say-so of a therapist that I have a bit of a relationship with and who agrees it is worth trying or appropriate or something. I don’t feel equipped to make that decision, and it feels you need someone to help step you through it.

The cost of going private here is hideous, and while I subscribe to the idea that it is worthwhile, there are two things I wish to avoid. I want to try to avoid making the mistake of trying out a few therapists until I find the right one; that’s an expensive shopping trip right there. I also have no intention of doing this for a long time. I am not paying those prices for years on end; I want a plan, and I want some kind of idea of where we are heading. When we get there, I will cope with the rest on my own.

Yes, I can hear you forming your argument and tsk-tsk-tsk, but there is one factor that overrules all those arguments. I don’t have long left on this planet, and I have no intention of spending a significant amount of the remaining life span talking to a stranger about my problems. Navel gazing has never been a hobby of mine, no matter how it might have looked over the last few weeks.

A comment I read on a post (sorry, completely forgotten where) it was glanced at momentarily, and it stuck in my head and kept coming back …

You do know that he never touched you for the intention of giving you pleasure? He only touched you because he enjoyed it.


Well, that had never occurred to me, and is probably very true.

And why had I never thought that before? Why did I imagine it would be any other way? Why is it that we insist on normalising their sexual behaviour even sometimes to the point of making excuses? We will take the blame before we will get to the point of understanding that there is nothing normal about touching a child, or doing any of those things to a child.

Our starting point should be unacceptable behaviour! … now what was the question?

I have got to this bit in the book where it explains the treatment neurofeedback, and I am fascinated. Attach electrodes to your head, and you watch a screen and can control a game, and you can train your brain. (That is what I heard.) Better success rates than drugs, non-invasive, and long-lasting results. Over here, it is £2k for a course of treatment. I should have asked for it as my Christmas present. Maybe next year.

This entry feels disjointed and is probably representative of my headspace at the moment, so I am going to just post it as is.

64 days since I first walked into this glittery little world, and I might just be more confused than when I first got here. I think it is going really well and worth all the sleepless nights. Members of this eclectic group of men assure me that over time things get better; not one will put an estimate on that.

A myriad of theories. Opinions galore. Facts by the dozen.
Try and find one person who will commit to a time frame … worse than hiring a builder.


svf





Open Journal #27

Someone gave me a link to some interesting stuff for me to read, I was always the kid who read the back of cereal packets, I will read anything. In this case I am finding it thought provoking.

It mentioned the phrase ‘self soothe’, never heard it before. Asked wife if she had come across it and she explained that I was rubbish at self soothing and she spends quite a lot of time soothing me because I had never known how to do it for myself. Starting to wonder if wife is taking the opportunity to score a few points along the way.

We talked about it while I gradually became more and more horrified how hard it must be to live with me. I was under the illusion, now shattered, that I was reasonably self aware. Seems I am not self very much at all at the moment.

I do the basics, music self soothes me. I have a pair of amazing noiseless ear buds that close off the world and wrap me in whatever I want to immerse myself in. As much as that soothes I also use them to cut me off and distance me from the world when I want to isolate myself. Which is probably less healthy

I like long baths with a good book or with the ear buds, Chopin and a cup of tea. I have a thing for sitting in hotel lobbies/bars writing, with an amazing view, I never mind waiting for people, usually my wife as she finishes up something really important. I have no idea what she does, she is like Chandler, nobody has a clue what she does and nobody is brave enough to ask in case she tells us and we don’t understand the answer.

It is the bigger things like anger, rage and panic, they are the ones I have no idea about. They wash over me and engulf me in strong powerful feelings. No idea where they come from and no idea how to deal with them when they arrive. They just consume me. It feels as if it has always been thus but I can’t imagine I was born like it. So like most things I currently ponder over, I just assume it originates in trauma and am none the wiser. A prisoner with no prospect of parole.

One of the other things I read was a definition of the three types of abuse. Physical, Emotional and Sexual. Wife and I reviewed them together, I was pretty clear about the sexual abuse, seemed a bit unnecessary to review but for the sake of completion we went through the list. Never in any doubt really.

The Physical abuse is a new area, I mean I know I was, I have just never discussed it or thought about what it involved. It made me very sad to see it all written down and to think about how I had been treated. I am currently in that mode where the more I think about it the more I remember and the more the memory of it hurts. I have no idea what to do with it all and I fear that somewhere along the line I am going to have to actually speak about it and I am not sure that I have words to describe it.

What I find especially weird is that I have done this once before, this is what disclosing sexual abuse felt like. So in one sense I know what the road looks like and also the problem is, I know what the road looks like. Not sure I want to do that journey again. Maybe I can just say I did but not bother, who is gonna know? Maybe this time I should try it with a therapist maybe that makes it easier. Or maybe they ask difficult and annoying questions like ‘how does that make you feel?’

Then we looked at Emotional Abuse and I almost just glanced and dismissed it, but as we started to go through the list I was horrified to realise that we were adding this as well. Wife confirmed that I clearly had the set. In a rational and adult way I immediately blamed the person who had given me these things to read. Oh they know who they are and I suspect they knew what they were doing. New rule, stop reading stuff!

That was 24 hours ago and I am still adjusting to the idea. It has overwhelmed me and upset me. I was only just coping with the sexual abuse and all that brings. This feels as if I will never get out from under it.

i have these strange chain of thoughts, almost a third of my life was spent being abused in one way or another and that feels significant and important. I start to wonder what chance i ever really had and it crowds my mind that i don't understand why. Any one of the three would be tough to deal with and it feels a little unfair. It explains the dysfunction that i feel about how i relate to people, or don't relate to them. I have a deep mistrust of people’s motives and am wary of anybody trying to befriend me. It takes me forever to trust people enough to confide in them.

I once had the experience of discovering i had a half brother. A black belt in karate as it happens. I flew over to meet him and stayed a few days. At one point i was smoking a cigarette in his back garden and he came out to talk to me, i made some half joking smart ass comment and he grabbed my by the throat and pushed me against a wall and threatened me, i was terrified and it made me very wary of him. I mention it because looking back it feels as if everywhere i turned there were abusive people in my life.

Except here, it is the reason I am so befuddled by the relationships here. How I have reacted to meeting people here is so out of character and confusing. In the real world I would be polite but cautious and careful. It would take me forever to call someone a friend. I’m not an idiot, I am not about to climb into the back of a van to see the puppies. For some reason I have felt comfortable enough to switch filters to off.

My usual assumption that no man is to be trusted had just melted away. I am constantly amazed at how much i learn and how much i laugh with you all. Maybe without my normal shields i am relaxed. Maybe it is the feeling that nobody is here to hurt me.

I am trying to see all of this information as a definition of symptoms and damage that has already happened to me. Nothing has changed I just have some words to describe the damage. The damage was already done, the damage has already done its worst. I have been living with the damage for a very long time. It was just longer than I thought. It was just more than I thought. It was probably just deeper than I thought.

At the moment it feels as if I am more damage than anything else.

That is a lot to think.

svf




Open Journal #28

full collection link in my signature below

Part One ~ Looking for a Therapist

When I read the book Traumasexuality, I felt it would be amazing if I could find a therapist who was trained in this stuff. It clicked with me, so much so that immediately and completely I shifted in my thinking and I could see the possibility of having a therapist.

I had a little look around, the author is Dutch and has a training academy in Holland. I lived in Holland for a few years, in fact I was married there, but never learnt the language well enough to go on a course. You would not believe how good their English is. I could find no talk of therapists and no information anywhere.

Nothing in the UK at all, no mention of the book and nobody applying it in their practise. With Christmas and New Year fast approaching and I decided it was the wrong time of the year to try and talk to people. I left it alone.

I really did not imagine it was going to be possible, but I thought it was maybe worth exploring and maybe I could find someone who would be willing to do online sessions. Then again how would I find them. Lowered my expectations and decided I should settle for finding a good trauma therapists. A problem for the New Year.

After the holidays I decided I would make a concerted effort to see if I could find a traumasexual expert. I went to their website and spent time translating blocks of text to see if I could find any clues. Eventually I came across a sentence that referred to a list of therapists they had trained, but they were not recommending, just listing. Found the list.

The criteria started with was, male, speaks English, is willing to do online, trained in Traumasexual stuff, that I like and feel I can talk to, oh and who thinks they can fix me.

I looked at all the men and read their websites. Kept returning to one, I was drawn to how he wrote and what he had to say. Summoned up some courage and made the call. Answer machine. Hang up. Not sure what to say. Have a think about it.

Ten minutes later he called me, curious who was calling him from the UK. We chatted for about ten minutes or so. He made me laugh five times so you know, done deal. We agreed to meet online in a couple of days. When I hung up I cried and was shaking. I had no idea why. There was something about this first step that felt massive. As an added bonus he lives and works in Utrecht and Rotterdam, both places i have lived and know well.

I was equally excited and scared, i also feel odd that in a few weeks i have gone from absolutely never going to happen, to being on the brink of signing up. I put it down to all i have learnt and realising i need help but maybe there is also a sense of it being the right time.

We are meeting today and i have woken up feeling anxious and a whirl of emotions.

Yesterday i had a day nap and decided to try something, i placed a small speaker on my bedside table and played an apple playlist of sleep sounds very low volume. I slept deeply and soundly. So at night time i decided to go one step further. i wore my noiseless ear buds to bed and played the same playlist. It worked very well indeed. At 1.30am a voice said very loudly LOW BATTERY, i jumped awake absolutely terrified.

So i will need to nap today because i am so tired and so tense. Since agreeing to do this, at least a dozen times i have thought about it and from the centre of my being i start to cry. It feels as if my inner child is relieved, as if inside i have wanted this help for a very long time.


Part Two ~ Finding a Therapist

I have a found a therapist. We met online and talked. Within twenty minutes it felt as if we had known each other for years. I have no idea if it was because I was ready to do this, or he was just very likeable, or maybe just that whole run into someone you instantly click with thing.

I had written a sketch overview so we had a head start when we met, I had explained about my violent father, he told me he thought my father was a coward and i immediately thought ‘well he better not get to hear about that cos he will be really mad with you’. He is dead. I think there is very definitely some work to do there.

He told me he was a father of three boys and from deep inside i had this thought really clearly 'oh good then you can father me properly' and it made me feel so calm.

I told him that i had decided i was going to answer any questions honestly even if it made me look bad or made me uncomfortable. He said, ‘good when would you like to start?’ I said, 'right away'. He then fired a load of questions at me, then after a while he grinned and said, ‘you weren't kidding were you, this is gonna be fun’ ... great i got a funny one !

I was told to take my time, i was told don’t buy the first dress you see, i was given a list of things to do when looking for a therapist. I went with the first person I had ever felt I could tell anything to. I went for the first person I felt so safe with that I could speak the unspeakable. I went for a dutchman, who I had never met and am going to have to fly 55 minutes to be face to face with.

Today i have agreed to a plan, couple of online sessions, then two long intensive days with him in Rotterdam, then some more online sessions. We are going to meet online and finalise our plans in the next couple of days.

My plan is to just put myself in his hands, to trust in the process and to lean into the idea that he knows what he is doing. For the first time in my life i just have to believe that someone can help me.

Ik denk echt dat het goed komt.


svf



Open Journal #29

full collection link in my signature below

A thing happened, short version is, I was faced with a load of new paperwork that I had never seen before. The why and the wherefore is not really important for the point of this journal entry. Suffice to say that I have been reading many reports about me.

Social Workers on home visits and meetings with me, various staff at a children's home, all describing me and my behaviour. Aged 12-15, the eye of the storm of abuse, for want of a better expression. Constantly beaten and sexually abused.

Much discussion about the fact I have been tested and found to have a High IQ but also maladjusted (failing to cope with the demands of a normal social environment). I would quibble that the violence of a narcissistic sociopath and the bed of your sexual abuser are hardly normal social environments.

I can see a point where someone suggested that my behaviour suggests I am handicapped and this is then quoted as a fact for the next couple of years. At no point does anyone bother to ask the question why an intelligent boy would behave like this, is there anything going on, anything that might have caused it?

Social Workers constantly note that my father has mentioned that he has hit me, thrashed me, locked me into rooms for a week at a time, on one occasion locked me in my room then everyone has gone out and has left me there for the afternoon, alone.

They describe how I am taken home one evening and then turn up the following morning for a meeting with social workers with a head injury. Inflicted by my father. At no point is there any reference to the fact that my father has been challenged or warned or in any way reprimanded. Nobody suggests there might be better ways to discipline me. They just take notes and watch from the sidelines.

I am screaming inside but you don’t hear me, you just take notes. It reads as if you approve. I am constantly told that they were different times. I have to understand the past is another country. They did things differently then. I know, i was there. They did things wrong is what they did, and it wouldn’t have killed you to say it once or twice.

At one point I refuse to return home and insist I would rather be taken into care. My chances of survival seem higher if I get away from the man who insists on punching and kicking me. The Court papers from that hearing are in this latest bundle of joy and it states that the reason for taking me into Care is that my parents can’t control me.

That’s right, it’s my fault. I had no idea until now that was the reason given, children are not shown things like reports and court papers. What does it matter what they think about the things that are said about them.

I have such an inner rage about these things. Plus the feeling of it all being a long time ago and I can do nothing to affect anything. The feeling of helplessness is always the backdrop to any of these events.

20 years ago I started this process. I went to the police, there was an investigation and my abuser was arrested and charged and he admitted what he had done. At the time I hired a lawyer and we explored the possibility of taking legal action against the school and against the social worker department that had placed me at the school.

The school had long closed and the individuals concerned were all dead. The social workers we felt were worth pursuing if only that we ensure that we have some effect on current policies and contribute to it not happening again. We were constantly told that they had nothing to do with any of this, that they had no idea, and that nobody from their department was involved. We stepped away and took the decision that as there seemed to be no evidence of their involvement it would be pointless and even a little vindictive.

In this latest bundle of papers are letters between my social workers and the headmaster discussing the credibility of my abuser. Letters between my social workers and my abuser discussing the possibility of him visiting me at a children's home and taking me out. With the only requirement for him to sign a consent form, no actual checks of any kind. In it they specifically mention I am not to stay anywhere overnight.

This was the occasion he took me to a hotel suite for three nights and had constant sex with me and took many pornographic photos. I was aged 15.5 and subject to a Care Order until my 19th birthday,

All those letters have been heavily redacted by current social workers. They are the only documents in a bundle of 192 that are redacted that much.

Everyone involved is dead now. Except me.

Usually these things are expensive and pointless to pursue. In this instance we are suspicious that these documents were kept from us 20 years ago, and also kept from the police, who asked to see all documents as part of an ongoing investigation.

If we don’t at least attempt to try and see un-redacted versions i would always wonder what was being hidden from me. If nothing else legal action might ensure that they never risk doing this kind of thing to a child in the future.

Your job is to care for children and yet when faced with a situation where a child who has been abused, while you have a duty of care to them, comes to you for help in obtaining access to documents that might assist him. You choose to hide them and side step. Not good.

We are just going to see what’s what. Have a little dig around. Kick a couple of doors down. Wave around a couple of court orders. If it yields nothing we walk away.

svf


Open Journal #30

full collection link in my signature below

It has been a week of things happening.

A few weeks ago i called an aunt, my fathers sister and the last one standing of that generation, to see if she could throw any light on my childhood and me being placed into foster care as a baby. She died this week and i was a bit thrown by the timing of our conversation and that if i had hesitated i might have missed the opportunity. I will miss her loving me, i always felt six years old in her company as she would fuss about me and give me extra cake and hug me constantly whenever i was nearby.

The next day, my friend in the mental hospital (let’s call him Fred)(well it’s his name)(well it is highly unlikely you are ever going to meet me let alone him), suffered a series of seizures and had to be sedated for 24 hours to avoid them escalating and killing him.

His brother and i had a tense 48 hours on whatsapp waiting for news. Never met Fred or his brother so that adds a weird twist at all times. Thankfully he was ok and they are now monitoring him to try and work out what is wrong with him. My job seems to be keeping him cheerful and explaining things he doesn’t understand.

He has difficulties, so sometimes he struggles. He asked me to help him understand something, he had removed his monitor and all the heavily taped wires because he desperately wanted a shower. When the nurse checked on him a bit later he told her he didn’t want it back on and she said to him 'a lawn to yourself' … i had no idea what he meant. I had never heard the expression before.

I went to get a coffee and while it was brewing i said it to myself and suddenly realised he meant 'a law unto yourself' … there were no lawns involved at all. Lesson learnt … always say it out loud, sometimes written down doesn't work.

My mother in law has been declining in the last few years with dementia and last night there was a discussion around the fact that it seems we have reached the point where she need to go into a home and be looked after. Wife departed at 6am to arrange all that and help to ease the process.

Gone for a few days at least, maybe up to a week, leaving me with two pining dogs, because mummy is their favourite. A house full of painters, noise and chaos every day. Fending for myself never goes well.

My morning emails contain a note from my lawyers, basically saying that over the last 20 years, if anything, the law has tightened around the issue of making Government Child Care departments, responsible for things that third parties do to children. It seems pointless and expensive to pursue any of these avenues.

I am in a little side discussion attempting to convince my social workers to just give me a little summary of the redacted sections to avoid me taking any legal action over it and i will just drop it. After all, if there is nothing of note, how can it be a problem to just tell me what it is about.

A sensible kind man agrees with me and goes away to persuade his boss that on this occasion they could be helpful and save a lot of messing about. Within a couple of hours he has emailed and explained that he has read all the relevant material and summarises the content and it is nothing i haven’t seen in other documents.

The decision is made to end it here, there is nothing to be done or gained by continuing with this. My lawyer refuses to bill me for any of this, as he reminds me i did him a favour by participating in a training film for his firm a few years ago and never charged him so he feels it is appropriate to return the favour. I had forgotten but i don’t mention that as a free lawyer is a rare thing.

All of this against a backdrop of tension, as each day goes by i get closer to my first therapy session. I am mostly ok with it, it is my choice and I have precisely the version of a therapist that i set out to find. There is just this anxiety and fear around which stones he looks under and what he might find under them when he looks and the impact on me. I keep having this thought, what if i don’t like the person that is left when he finishes with me.

I seem to constantly feel as if i shouldn’t be talking about any of this, that i will be found out, that my abusers will be angry. Which they would be if they were still alive, quite what i think is going to happen i don’t know, but i can’t shake the feeling. It is like a fear, a dread, maybe that has always been with me and i am just very aware of it at the moment. That sense that nothing good is going to come of this.

As i post this, i am 24 hours away from my first therapy session and the only thing i can equate it to is the absolute worst case of stage fright i have ever experienced. I spent most of yesterday fighting the feeling of wanting to cancel and explaining i had made a mistake and that i wasn't ready.

I have given myself a stern talking to and told myself that i must not be pathetic and a coward and just get on with it. Problem is I talk a lot of nonsense most of the time so i can’t imagine i am going to listen to myself.


svf



Open Journal #31

full collection link in my signature below

Excited puppies and wet paint do not mix well. So my week has been spent moving from room to room and staying out the way of painters. Painters we had booked long ago before all this stuff happened. It has been a weird week of broken sleep and naps and writing and hiding away alone.

I had my first session with my therapist. I was so tense before as each day went by it got worse. The run up was dreadful. The day before I was freaking out at the idea of doing it with painters in the house, radio blaring, privacy. I eventually worked out that I was bothered by the fact that the therapist and I had clicked so easily and I felt so connected to him that if we went into this ‘therapy session’ and it felt different or weird I would be so devastated.

An hour before the session the painters cancelled for the day. I was suddenly given a peaceful quiet house. I mean a half painted house but I could live with that. I made sure I had some water, had been for a wee, and waited at my computer for the moment to arrive. I had this weird experience of my mind having a kind of rush of thoughts, a stream of panic mode fears. Quite intense and quite out of control. Most of them illogical and a bit off centre.

Fred (hospital boy) and I have spent time recently talking about why we struggle telling our therapists things. We have talked about it a lot. We know we were trained to keep the secret. Yet we know it is ok to speak about it now. In my case both my abusers are dead. My sexual abuser admitted it. Yet still we both feel this knot in our stomachs if we think about telling our therapist things. He says he gets angry before they even ask him things just because they might. I feel as If I am going to throw up. Especially if I think he might ask me to describe any of the sexual abuse in detail.

We don’t know if that is normal for survivors. We don’t know how to stop feeling like this.

The therapist was the same as he had always been. All fear and panic just melted away. I found him easy to talk to, admittedly we didn’t stray anywhere too scary, but it felt possible and that was better than I had ever thought it would be.

Ten minutes in and I couldn’t understand what my mind had been doing just before he arrived. Why the panic? Why the endless scenarios of what could go wrong or how I could mess it up? The various things I could say or do that would mean he would not want to help me.

I had no plan to go into detail about the in & outs or details of my therapy. I didn’t think it was for public consumption and a boy needs some privacy. The occasional theme or discussion might inspire a journal entry. I mean every and now and then I need to be able to say ‘… as I was saying to my therapist only yesterday … ‘ otherwise what a waste of money that was. Funny things I will obviously mention, because that’s just a waste of good material.

Then I realised it is an extension of my thought process and the kind of discussions we have here all the time anyway. I decided not to make any rules, let’s just see where it goes. By accident we strayed onto the subject of ownership and did I belong to my abuser.

I find these kind of conversations interesting. So many things to do with abuse are multi-layered, it almost feels as if we hold differing views and feelings in a little cocktail of misunderstanding. None of it needs to make sense and all of it feels as if it applies depending on mood or the time of day.

I think there was a sense that I did belong to him. The fact that he taught me everything I know about sex. Taught me what to do, taught me how to improve my technique. Taught me to enjoy it, taught me what I liked. Taught me to be compliant and taught me to obey. Taught me to submit and taught me to respond.

I think there is a sense that I do still belong to him. If he was to walk into the room right now and tell me to undress, I can’t be sure I wouldn’t. It has been forty plus years since he did that. If I have sex I think of him because one of the things being done to me will have been done by him.

He gave me to others as if I was a possession, handed me over to be played with and used and he told others I was available. We strayed into this conversation and the word ownership and slavery was used for the first time and it washed over me as I saw clearly what he was saying.

I walked away from that session and kept thinking about the word ownership. What it meant to me, seeing it in all kinds of ways, seeing it applied to me. Not just the sexual abuse either, my father was no better.

My childhood was about obedience and orders and if I stepped out of line I was beaten in the same way a slave would be. My voice never raised in anger, no disobedience, no stepping out of line, no thinking, no opinions.

I have no idea why we were discussing this, no idea where we are going with it. Not even sure there was a point. Maybe it was just one of those things that came up and we went with it as we were there anyway. Not done with it, keep circling around it. Picking it up, putting it down.

I feel lost in the idea that I was owned and treated however they wanted and then I carried the marks of that for decades. They are dead and I don’t feel it has gone.

I really don’t know how therapy works. I don’t know if I was supposed to do this, walk away with one word and worry it to death. Or if it is just one of those things that has hit me and I can’t leave it alone. Did I ignore all the other things I was supposed to be taking in? How do you know what to do? How to respond or react? It is a complete fucking mystery to me.

It is like being dropped into an evening at an Embassy of a foreign country and having no idea of the language and protocol and just muddling through as best you can. Then coming home and talking for hours about the amazing chandeliers and completely missing what the point of the evening was.

I am the opposite of an over-achiever, I just hope to get through things unnoticed and coping without bringing shame on my family.

I agonise about how to behave with a therapist … i pay him but he doesn’t work for me … we are friendly but he is not a friend … stiff and professional seems too awkward … what is this strange relationship?

One of the problems with this setup is that I genuinely want to hand myself over to him and trust he has a plan for me and knows what he is doing and where he is taking me. The problem with that is I have no idea where we are heading and how we are going to get there. Loss of control, the worst thing you can feel as a survivor.

I have lost the feeling of panic which is good because that was exhausting and unpleasant. I am just not quite sure how I am supposed to be behaving.

I think I have decided a few things, I don’t want to be owned by anybody anymore. I am pretty sure I am done with that.

I think my body should belong to me. I think my sexual preferences should be mine however I learnt them.

I think I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I just hope he knows how to teach me how to do that

because I don’t


svf



Open Journal #32.1

This could be Rotterdam or anywhere

but it is actually Rotterdam
the first time i have ever been here alone
no wife, friends or work colleagues

i was married just there across the street and we lived over the other side of that square

I have a thing about lying, i don’t like doing it, i feel really bad if i ever have to do it and i am sure i look guilty as sin if i ever do. As i approached passport control i suddenly thought what if they ask me why i am visiting rotterdam, i don't look anything like a business man. So i went with visiting friends, oh lovely he said where do they live? Oh i don't know i said i'm staying in a hotel and they are picking me up. I showed him my hotel booking and my return flight (cheek i paid taxes here for years do i look like a migrant …(i did not say)

The plane had landed in a snow blizzard, freezing cold and wind slapping your face. It looked like christmas but felt like a trip to the south pole. I exited the airport to discover that my phone wasn’t doing anything, no signal no wifi, zilch, nada.

I had no cash. I had no cash because my wife had assured me that as we now lived in a cashless society there was no need for me to take some cash. After ten minutes and a bit of fiddling my phone came to life. I managed to find a bus that would take me near my hotel. Tech is wonderful until tech stops and leaves you literally alone in the dark. No map, no cards, no access to information, no signal to call for help.

The hotel is buzzy and people are laughing. Every time i interact with anyone they ask me why i am here. I have never been a tourist here before it is really weird and on some level i object. I stick with the visiting friends story. Well it’s plausible and i don’t think i will be found out.

so why am i here?

in case you missed it i have come all this way to meet face to face with my therapist. Yes i am aware i could have gone to one in my own town and made it a lot easier for myself. Why play it safe?

At some point today a mod commented that i should become a therapist, and i find it ironic that i started my time here vehemently against the idea of getting a therapist, adamant that it would never happen and while i was sat in the airport waiting for my flight to go and meet my therapist it is suggested i become one. Three months for the hunted to become the hunter. I am aware the analogy doesn't really work but it amused me.

My instant reaction was to say 'never gonna happen' …not making that mistake twice … i can't see it myself. I sit in chat and watch some of you support and help people and i am in awe at your patience and care, your ability to walk with people and help them face such dreadful things. I lack the requisite skills and at my age i have no real inclination to acquire them. It’s not like God calling you to be a monk or a nun, i don’t think it could be thought of as a vocation.

I start tomorrow
tomorrow is another day
what will be will be


Open Journal #32.2

i am just going to post a series of little journals as we go along. With a slight time delay to allow me time to write and ponder. i will add them to the main collection later … no time for admin things to do. Otherwise i will forget stuff. This feels very much like in the moment stuff. I slept for five hours deeply and no dreams, maybe i am just in the wrong country. But maybe i shouldn’t upend my life on the basis of one nights sleep.

My memory of Holland is of the strongest coffee imaginable and i am disappointed to find only sachets of instant coffee in my room. i pass the time chatting to some of you then showering and head downstairs in search coffee.

I am oddly calm this morning, nervous but calm. A kind of show about to start nervous energy kind of feeling. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

I just slipped into a chat and it helped to have a little chat about how i was feeling and it focused me on the fact that the most important thing is that clearly i trust him. I think we are half way there, if you trust then the rest can follow. If there is trust then you can step forward.

I am sticking to my plan, hand myself over to him, trust he knows what he is doing, answer everything honestly no matter how uncomfortable it makes me feel. Just truth. No sidestepping and no masks. The time for smoke and mirrors is over.

We have talked together for about five hours in total so far. I have taken a few difficult things to him and he has led me through them and proved he knows what he is doing. I am better for knowing and trusting him. Why would i not want more of that? I am starting to feel hope.

Just going to get my coat and walk across town to his office. It is freezing and raining/snowing so it is gonna be a soggy walk.

I am going in


Open Journal #32.3

The first day

I walked across town and was swamped with memories of living here, old friends and nostalgia is not a bad way to start a day.

I got there early because being late is something i can’t begin to comprehend and found a cafe that served great coffee and was so warm and gezellig which is dutch for cosy/snug but really has no direct translation.

We met and we chatted and it was fine.

It was better than fine it was as good as it could possibly be. We had already built a good rapport and the longer we talked the more comfortable i felt.

We started working together and it got less comfortable, but even though at times it has felt harrowing and difficult i always felt he was in control and knew what he was doing. The trust I had in him very quickly grew.

In breaks i questioned him about what we were doing and why we were doing certain things. At one point he asked me if i was trying to work out what he was doing because i still didn’t trust him. I admitted that not only had i grown to trust him very quickly it was now off the scale. As we had worked through the morning i was relaxing and was starting to feel eager about what was happening.

It is impossible to talk about details, it is so specific to me, it is unique in the sense that the content only applies to me. Particular people, in a certain time and place, behaving in a certain way and how i felt about that and the impact on my life. The ways i have dealt with it and coped with it and what i can do to improve that.

I mean that’s the basics, intense, and work that normally takes weeks all in one very full day, and yes exhausted actually and i need a shower and some food and maybe even some sleep.

We go again tomorrow. Today was about my father and the physical abuse and tomorrow is all about the sexual abuse. I have considered things i would never have thought about. I have no idea if it has gone well, i don’t even know if we did the stuff we were supposed to or if was a bit of a slow client and could do better. I didn’t ask and i am not sure he would have told me if i had asked.

Things changed, sometimes in the moment it was clear that they would never be the same again and even felt so different i was convinced he had a wand somewhere and was using actual spells. Other things felt like building blocks that were going to serve me well in the weeks ahead.

I am feeling so positive about it that i am wishing i had booked him for the whole week.

There were moments today that i will never forget for the rest of my life they were that profound.

I keep asking myself why i didn’t do this years ago, i asked my wife the same question and she pointed out that i wasn't ready and more importantly my therapist probably wasn't born then.

nice!


Open Journal #32.4

I woke up feeling peaceful, no dreams. This won’t last but it felt good to just experience a calm start. I went to find coffee and you need your keycard to operate the elevator. As i used it i noticed it has the slogan on it 'It's time to let me go' … the 'let me go' is in red … a profound and a very on message start to the day.

I went outside to vape and a homeless man started talking to me … he wanted money … i explained that i had none on me as everything was on my phone and i wasn’t carrying cash … i sat with him and let him talk … eventually he wandered off and i have never felt so white and middle class and an elite prick … a cashless society feels as if it is gonna get heartless and bleak for some if we are not careful

Yesterday i evoked a digital silence and switched all devices off for the whole day, my phone had a compete fit when i switched it back on. It seemed very angry at being silenced. I am gonna do the same again today, it created a bubble of serenity and shut out the world which i think i need to do.

I feel calm and positive for the day ahead coupled with flickers of panic. He already told me that we are gonna deal with the sexual abuse today. deal with. like it is that simple. He exudes this confidence that i stare at blankly trying to grasp and go along with but it slips through my fingers and makes me feel a little lost. I just keep reverting to the mantra that he is in charge and i will go where he leads.

Harsh truth … i am standing in a place of honesty of my own making, and i believe one of the main reasons for writing this journal and speaking of these things, is that we all have a shared experience of painful things to deal with. The more we talk about them and reach a collective understanding or our trauma the less power it has over us. Either that or i am delusional and you are all reading this in abject horror, well that’s your prerogative and i still defend my right to blither on regardless.

My harsh truth yesterday evening was being alone in a hotel and being swamped by a mix of feelings and intrusive thoughts. I wanted to go and find weed and smoke myself into oblivion and feel nothing and everything. I wanted to suck the cock of a stranger and feel some intimate connection for a few moments. I was both horrified and fixated and couldn’t shake it off. I didn’t do either of those things. I negotiated myself down to getting a pack of cigarettes and smoked three in a row and disgusted myself, i haven’t smoked in years. Then I locked myself in my hotel room and tried to understand what the fuck i was thinking.

I slept and woke up and went into chat and told the truth like a confessional for this lost survivor who can make no sense of the myriad feelings that keep overwhelming me. They talked to me and told me things i needed to hear and centred me. I think it is fear and panic for the day that lies ahead. I have no idea how to speak of these things and my only hope is that he knows how to circumnavigate that and get me to a place where i can face the things i need to.

I am depending on coffee, my desire to see this through, and a man who seems to know what he is doing

the theme of today is … It’s Time To Let Me Go

svf


Open Journal #32.5

i arrived early because he told me to go get a coffee and have a chat before we started, as if we hadn't done enough talking. The strange thing is we are enjoying each others company and we make each other laugh a lot.

I found today harder and a lot more sticking points, we agreed that for various reasons i had three main abusers and an amount of sundry ones and very definitely without question had been sexually, physically and emotionally abused. Also quite a lot of abuse. So it was good to affirm that and be absolutely sure of just how dreadful it was. He assured me that i wasn’t quite the worst he had seen, and then listed the kind of things i don’t have included in the list and i agreed it could have been a lot worse.

It feels as if i have learnt many things and then forgotten them again, and then a few hours later something clicks and it makes more sense. We both agreed we should have done the full week, we could have got even more done.

I am currently sat in Rotterdam airport waiting for my flight home and reflecting as to whether it was worth it and did it do what i hoped it would do.

I think it was worth it and i am glad i did it. I think it did what i hoped it would, but there is no way of knowing for sure until some time has passed. I do know that the real work starts now, i have to build on what i have learnt and not fall back into bad habits and keep moving forward.

I might need to print some things on mouse mats and t-shirts to keep myself motivated.

I need some sleep
i need to hang out in chat
i need to re-enter the real world

i am sure i will have more to say … when don't i ?

svf


Open Journal #32.6

I want to share a thing. I think it is a good story.

I arrived home last night, grubby and tired from travelling. I slept deeply and wasn't troubled with dreams, for the second night in a row.

Before i left we had a house guest move in for a few days because she was having some serious remodelling done to her house and needed to stay somewhere with running water. So this morning this lovely friend was using our study to do a little work and i fetched her a fresh coffee and we sat and chatted and she asked how it had all gone.

I'm not ready talk about any of it in great detail yet as there needs to be a bit of processing but i talked about it a little. Then she went to get something calling back over her shoulder 'i forgot i have something for you'.

She returned and handed me a box, inside was a presentation case with a Mont Blanc pen. I was a little shocked and asked 'what is this' . She explained that writing was her work and many years ago she had treated herself to a set of Mont Blanc pens as they were the ultimate tools of her trade and that this rollerball version she had never got on with and she had noticed how i loved her pens and thought i should have this one.

I was stunned, to me they are one of those iconic design items that i never thought i would own, they are expensive and beautiful and completely too much. I was overcome with emotion that someone would be so kind and i said i couldn’t accept it. Inside my head was this scrambled feeling that i did not deserve such a beautiful present and i was not worthy of owning such a thing.

She sat and told me how much she valued me as a friend and how kind we had been to her over the years and that it was a pleasure to give it to me and please accept it. I cried.

I own a beautiful Mont Blanc pen.

svf


Open Journal #33

This is going to be a slight change of tone, mostly because i am writing this from a place of rage.

A couple of weeks ago i posted a journal entry and talked about a terrible week of things happening one after the other. I included this …

… The next day, my friend in the mental hospital (let’s call him Fred)(well it’s his name)(well it is highly unlikely you are ever going to meet me let alone him), suffered a series of seizures and had to be sedated for 24 hours to avoid them escalating and killing him …

Only i didn’t call him Fred i used his real christian name. I remember almost using a fake name but i felt it made him kind of unseen and i didn’t like that much, for whatever reason at the time, i used his real name. He doesn’t come here, it made no difference and it seemed unimportant and as i explained unlikely that anyone would meet me or him.

What in fact happened is that somebody here read it and emailed it to him. Someone knew him and sent it anonymously to him. Asking if it was him and did he know it was posted on a public site? No he didn’t but he does now.

i also, by way of contextualising a funny aside, explained the kind of things he deals with, in the context of this site very unremarkable but only as a way of explaining how a funny misunderstanding had occurred.

I have apologised for my error and realise i should have been more careful. Hopefully our friendship will survive.

The person who did this i would like to destroy.

If it was out of friendly concern, then why would you not consider what was mentioned in the post about his current medical condition and not stress him any further. If you are a member of this site why not message me privately and say that you think you can identify the person and ask me to reconsider using his name. I would have of course immediately complied and seen that it was an error.

I am struggling not to think of it as a malicious act, any way that i view it.

It goes against what i imagined the tone and culture of this site to be, one of support and care. I was merely sharing the stress of dealing with one dreadful thing after another. Clearly i had no bad intent whatsoever, and i fail to see what it could achieve other than upset.

As a result i am struggling to restore a sense of trust between my friend and i, a hard earned, years long journey of friendship that helps both of us in our current situations, which you have now jeopardised.

At the very least i am considering making this the last journal post i ever do on this site as clearly this is not a safe and trusted place. I don’t trust anybody who can't even use their own name, any friend who did that out of concern would identify themselves.

At worst i am considering walking away and never coming back. I don’t like the idea of doing that but i am faced with the possibility of one of the people here that i talk to being the kind of person who would do something like this.

Even now i will not abandon the honest place i am trying to stand in, i have just had two very long days of intensive therapy and came face to face with a lot of my failings as a result of trauma. One of the most basic being my inability to trust people and the struggle i have ever doing that. Gotta tell ya this hasn't helped.

I have every intention of showing my friend Fred this post so there is no need to send him a copy. I don’t appreciate what you have done to my friendship and i certainly think you are an idiot for not considering the impact of your decision. I don't even care if you thought you were doing him a favour, i wrote it, talk to me first. Did it read as if i was being mean or in any way negative?

Also consider this, my friend has two people who support him, that's it, two people to help him and to listen to him. Nobody else. I am one of them.

I am also aware that i could post this journal in a private area of the site but i believed it was important to engage with a wider group of people and discuss and debate the subject of abuse. The more it is discussed the more understanding and growth can occur in wider society. We don't help the situation if we hide away and discuss it in huddles in the corner.

I can't decide what to do, i know what i want to do, i am fairly sure that it is a response from the heart of my trauma and my therapist has taught me that there is a new way i can think and act. Just not sure i want to at the moment, not sure i have it in me, not sure this person warrants a new approach.

Maybe i should sleep on it.

svf



Open Journal #34

full collection link in my signature below

A two week hiatus. A pause.

No therapist, time to ponder and reflect and think. Understand what I had experienced and how I felt about it. Process what I had learnt and try to understand the difference it has made.

I had completed the equivalent of 6 months of therapy in a few weeks and my head was whirling from all the different things we had covered. I need some space to feel.

I ran straight into the debacle covered in Journal #33 and I spent the first couple of days seething and talking to my friend. I then experienced a few unpleasant moments in chat rooms. All of this almost had me leaving, just heading off into the nearest sunset and never coming back.

It made me see something I hadn’t realised, I do that a lot. No, a real lot, like all the time. While in Rotterdam in the first couple of hours my therapist said something to me and in a nanosecond I had turned on my heel and left the room. I was halfway down the corridor before I stopped myself and asked what the fuck I thought I was doing. I went back, said sorry and sat down. Something was seriously wrong with me, thankfully I was already in the right place.

Over the next week or so as a little side project I kinda worked away at this. In the end I decided it didn’t seem to have a name, it was if anything a combination of behaviours and feelings that resulted in what I like to call mental self-harm. Kind of dissociation with a slug of inner rage. There is no cutting involved, but there is a desire to try and make myself feel something, anything or nothing.

At a young age I taught myself to just leave, no coat or money, maybe not even a clear idea of where I was headed but away from here where there was hurt and towards a place of safety. Might be a social worker or a friend or a place. Walk miles whatever the weather and however long it took.

Shut down every emotion, never cry, don’t feel a thing just get far away. Glancing back over the years I have done it many, many times. I have burnt in an instant, relationships, friendships, people, places, projects. I have stopped doing things I love, cost myself money, cancelled things that meant something to me. I never felt a thing. I still do it. It is like an instinct. It is what I do.

It is what I nearly did here. Fuck them. So I lose a bit of support. So some friends fall by the wayside, I will cope, I have so far, who cares? Nobody. Shut it down, feel nothing, move on. Pixels on a screen, of no importance to me.

Only it wasn’t and it isn’t. It’s important to me and it matters.

My therapist has been teaching me things, all about neural pathways, how I do certain things because it is all I know, all the things I wasn’t given as a child, all the stuff I managed without, and the fact that there is a new way to do things. So I tried that.

I talked to some trusted people, explained how I was feeling, how I was tempted to react, but could they help me find a new way, ask for help, tell people what I needed. That heady mix of understanding and wisdom, of being heard and validated, the rush of someone caring enough to help. To be loved and to feel loved.

I stayed. I changed how I used chat and stayed away from people who felt toxic. I put a hold on writing this journal and focused on me and my feelings.

I wrote a little version of my abuse story for a friend and realised that the narrative had changed. I had things to add, I didn’t want to say it that way anymore. There was more to say, there was a better understanding of what I had experienced. There were more abusers and more abuse and many ways that child had been abandoned, used and hurt. Things were not the same. There is a new way and I intend to learn how to use it.

I like therapy ~ it changes you


svf



Open Journal #35

full collection link in my signature below


I thought I would talk about the culture of this site. In any group of people with shared interests there is a culture that evolves around them. They develop a shared language, there is a way of doing things, often there are unwritten rules that just become the way things are done and it is an accepted and known fact.

An example of American/English cultural divide, and I see it here all the time, your fascination with and wide extensive knowledge of drugs. You don’t just know the name of a drug but you seem to know derivatives, ones that were developed as a result of further research, you know advised dosages and even what to avoid mixing with them. Often you can even discuss possible side effects and which ones do or don’t suit you personally.

To this Englishman it is quite incredible to watch you all have a chat about drugs. I may as well be in a room full of Korean people talking away in Korean, and I mean the more obscure north Korean dialect. I have sat and watched an hour long chat go by as you all chitter chatter about drugs you have known and loved.

In my bathroom cupboard there is a packet of plasters, some aspirin and the more modern paracetamol, an old box of some painkiller or other from a shoulder injury and some cough medicine. Oh and maybe some Lemsip (other cold remedies from the 1970’s are available).

Just as baffling are some of the things that are just taken for granted here on this site. Without exception, every single time someone enters a chatroom we all say hello, and every time anyone leaves we all say goodbye. It’s ok I understand manners. But it consumes an awful lot of time, I’m just fascinated that nobody has not suggested at some point that we just dispense with the formality.

It can sometimes be a drawback, if you would prefer to just slip into the room unnoticed or leave discreetly, likewise the things that says ‘John has entered/left the room’. Like being announced at an Edwardian ball. Maybe if you want to do the greeting thing you say hello on entry, otherwise ignore me until I speak.

One of the oddest things for me to get my head around is the culture around identity. The majority of people don’t have a picture of themselves, they use a nickname, or a picture of themselves as a boy, in fact the guidelines specifically warn against using your actual name, and never tell anyone your home/email/phone details.

Four months and I still don’t get it. I have yet to hear an explanation for this that makes sense. It is possible that some people do not want to be found or identified, easy enough for them just to use a nickname or fake name and never tell anyone. I am sure there are occasionally people doing things they shouldn’t and it would be wise and prudent to warn people and educate accordingly.

Quite why we all have to adhere to this odd behaviour because of the small percentage of people who want to stay hidden is beyond me. It is like asking everyone in a town to hop so the one legged man doesn’t feel as if he is an oddity.

To tell people to hide their identity, people who are survivors, makes no sense to me. Do not tell people who you are. Keep the secret. Tell no-one.

Nobody ever thinks that this is a little macabre to be telling survivors this? Possibly even unhealthy.

A group of people who mostly to a man have kept secrets they should never had been asked to keep. Asked to conceal their identity when most have felt they have a lost childhood, who have felt invisible and unseen.

To control people and demand that they do not connect with others away from the site, ok they advise against it, but it is enforced and can result in people being banned. Why?

I understand why you say you need to do this. Again it seems odd that you think it ok to control people in this way, not sure if it has ever occurred to you but I for one am not keen on being controlled, it can feel as if, what is the word?, oh yes, abusive.

On a couple of occasions in the last four months I have had good reason to connect with people. A caring, friendly, normal, quite innocent reason for connecting with someone. Once I even asked if it was possible to pass on my email for me to avoid me bypassing or breaking a rule. I was refused.

Quite bizarre, I am 64 years old. I am capable of making those kind of decisions for myself. I do it all the time. I meet people we exchange contact information. I can just touch phones with another for the exchange to happen, that’s how normal we consider it, we have machines to do it for us. If they were to annoy me or drone on and on about trains or politics I am quite capable of not speaking to them and removing all contact.

I am not calling for a revolution, I think of it as an annoying, unnecessary and irritating rule. What I am saying is, how did this happen? How did you become the people who control survivors, silence survivors, ask survivors to remove their identity. There are just some things you do that considering where we are seem … wrong … weird.

If you don’t believe me. Ask yourself this, the most oft asked question in the chatrooms on this site?

How are you?

How the hell do you think I am? Who in their right mind would be here unless they were here for the same reason everyone else is. How am I? How long have you got? Anyone using this couch?

Yes Yes manners, kind of, but also habit, and a social pressure to answer and be truthful, but in a way that doesn’t pull attention or maybe lie and just say I’m fine. Maybe sometimes people come here to forget how they are feeling

On more than one occasion, uninvited and without warning, I have had people tell me what is wrong with me in front of a room full of people. Which where I come from would be considered rude bordering on intrusive. It is one thing to have a discussion with me one to one, quite another to humiliate me in front of others. It is so ill mannered that we have a saying for it. ‘No need to wash your dirty laundry in public!’

Unless I am paying you or we have some kind of appointment you would do well to remember that in society we have etiquette and manners for a reason. So as not to offend people, or make them feel uncomfortable, or even just to be kind.

It occurred to me the other day that people forget that extroverts have feelings to, some are not as confident as their personality suggests and also some of them are survivors and suffer from the same things as you do. Me being an extrovert does not give you the right to talk to me any way you like, just means I am more likely to be robust and not give a fuck what you think about me. Or you might hurt me, it’s the risk you take.

If this piece gets me banned you can reach me on +44 7980 682727 *


svf

* BBC Newsdesk