survivor from the UK -trigger warning
Sossity
Registrant
Hi all, you can call me Jethro, I live in the UK, I’m a 52 year old survivor. I have long history of physical, sexual and psychological abuses, which I thought I had locked away, but after being targeted by a narcissist at work, who’s gaslighting opened more trauma than I had remembered, I was hospitalised three years ago and, now struggling to rebuild and gain control of my mental health, develop some form of self esteem, coping with a verbal and physical tick gained having been retraumatised in hospital and repair the mental and relationship damage cause by the last few years to my family.
As a baby I suffer from neglect, was tied to my bed for hours on end and at eighteen months was scolded and scared to my neck and chest. I spent a great deal of time in hospital and isolated from my family. Being neglected, dyslexic and hungry, in the early days, eating out of school waste bins and off of the floor. I was bullied every day of my school life. From eight to ten/eleven I was abused and raped by a teenaged neighbour, the first time watched unknowingly by my elder brother. My abuser having threatened violence if I did not do as I was told. My brother later teasing me for being gay. Thinking everyone knew what was happening to me I became complicit to the abuse in order to remove the threat of violence. For over two years I can remember being my abusers little play thing. He would offer me to his older friends including a man in his late twenties, just to be rejected for being to young, something that felt like a painful rejection at the time. When I was eleven and having moved to London I started self isolating in the countryside, avoiding contact with my family, I had no friends, I did not trust anyone and learnt to lie to survive. I can’t remember many times as I child I was not hungry and learnt to feed myself by stealing fruit out of peoples gardens and from shops. During this time I would act out with kids my own age of both sexes, the gilt of which can become unbearable at times, even though I now understand this was not abuse in the truest sense. At this point my mother became a social worker, and worked in children’s homes. The though of someone who neglected me, scolded me with boiling water and physically abused me becoming a social worker turns my stomach to this day. I left school with no qualifications as in the eighties you did not have dyslexia you where just thick, or as my school put it remedial.
At seventeen I left home, still wetting the bed and sucking my thumb, and started to build a life for myself, at eighteen my then partner and I lost a baby boy in the delivery room due to genetic issues, we were told at his first scan the outcome, but my partner wanted to let him decide when he wanted to die so she carried him until birth.
I have since this time built a life for myself and my family having been married for thirty years, put my two children through university and built a career for myself. These free people are the only people I let near, touch me. They are my very reason for life.
However, to my great shame, in the time between having my trauma opened up and going into hospital I started to recreate my abuse with male strangers in toilets and local cruising areas, letting them touch and have non penetrative sex with a passive frozen me. As boy I learnt the only thing that would remove the threats and violence from my abuser leading up to my abuse, was to seek out my abuser and offer myself. It is this act of seeking out an abuser that resurface. As I now know, this act was an attempt to hold on to some level of control. But in reality I was recreating the fear, the lose of power and deepening my lack of self worth through these risky acts of self harm, after all this is all I deserve. It was the only way I had learnt, that was effective, at removing pending danger and harm, even though I now know it wider impact on me I fight it’s drive everyday.
The challenges I have to want to stay alive and let go of the shame, I have for letting myself and becoming complicit in my childhood abuse and latterly going back to wanting to be abused again, for good knows what reason is immense. I have to say for the record I am not an abuser or ever have been I have always been passive to the abuse that has been done to me, both as a child and more recently I know I am twisted sick individual but I need help, I can’t deal with this on my own anymore. I just want to be normal, and go back to being the family man I had worked so hard to become.
As a baby I suffer from neglect, was tied to my bed for hours on end and at eighteen months was scolded and scared to my neck and chest. I spent a great deal of time in hospital and isolated from my family. Being neglected, dyslexic and hungry, in the early days, eating out of school waste bins and off of the floor. I was bullied every day of my school life. From eight to ten/eleven I was abused and raped by a teenaged neighbour, the first time watched unknowingly by my elder brother. My abuser having threatened violence if I did not do as I was told. My brother later teasing me for being gay. Thinking everyone knew what was happening to me I became complicit to the abuse in order to remove the threat of violence. For over two years I can remember being my abusers little play thing. He would offer me to his older friends including a man in his late twenties, just to be rejected for being to young, something that felt like a painful rejection at the time. When I was eleven and having moved to London I started self isolating in the countryside, avoiding contact with my family, I had no friends, I did not trust anyone and learnt to lie to survive. I can’t remember many times as I child I was not hungry and learnt to feed myself by stealing fruit out of peoples gardens and from shops. During this time I would act out with kids my own age of both sexes, the gilt of which can become unbearable at times, even though I now understand this was not abuse in the truest sense. At this point my mother became a social worker, and worked in children’s homes. The though of someone who neglected me, scolded me with boiling water and physically abused me becoming a social worker turns my stomach to this day. I left school with no qualifications as in the eighties you did not have dyslexia you where just thick, or as my school put it remedial.
At seventeen I left home, still wetting the bed and sucking my thumb, and started to build a life for myself, at eighteen my then partner and I lost a baby boy in the delivery room due to genetic issues, we were told at his first scan the outcome, but my partner wanted to let him decide when he wanted to die so she carried him until birth.
I have since this time built a life for myself and my family having been married for thirty years, put my two children through university and built a career for myself. These free people are the only people I let near, touch me. They are my very reason for life.
However, to my great shame, in the time between having my trauma opened up and going into hospital I started to recreate my abuse with male strangers in toilets and local cruising areas, letting them touch and have non penetrative sex with a passive frozen me. As boy I learnt the only thing that would remove the threats and violence from my abuser leading up to my abuse, was to seek out my abuser and offer myself. It is this act of seeking out an abuser that resurface. As I now know, this act was an attempt to hold on to some level of control. But in reality I was recreating the fear, the lose of power and deepening my lack of self worth through these risky acts of self harm, after all this is all I deserve. It was the only way I had learnt, that was effective, at removing pending danger and harm, even though I now know it wider impact on me I fight it’s drive everyday.
The challenges I have to want to stay alive and let go of the shame, I have for letting myself and becoming complicit in my childhood abuse and latterly going back to wanting to be abused again, for good knows what reason is immense. I have to say for the record I am not an abuser or ever have been I have always been passive to the abuse that has been done to me, both as a child and more recently I know I am twisted sick individual but I need help, I can’t deal with this on my own anymore. I just want to be normal, and go back to being the family man I had worked so hard to become.
Last edited:
