I wrote this back in 1999 when I was fairly new to therapy, and your post reminded me of it.
We do build walls in our heads, and with the wonderful benefit of hindsight I can see that I built some walls for the right reasons, but I didn't always evacuate the good guys when I built them.
But I have now.
Dave
TRIGGER WARNING
Ill tell you what I want, what I really really want
I dont think theres anything wrong in wanting things, as long as it doesnt stretch to being greedy or coveting thy neighbours ox.
Wanting things, having hopes, desires and ambitions is normal. Never mind the ox, I want the lottery jackpot.
But I am quiet prepared to start with wanting some of the simple things in life. Start at the age of 46?
Yes, I want to start again back at the beginning. But thats a dream, like the big lottery win.
I cant go back to my childhood and restart my life before the sex abuse started, I cant relive my life to a plot that I write and direct. I have to make do with what Ive got, and Im lucky, I have a hell of a lot.
I have a loving wife who understands me, and my problems, and is my main source of support in the process of re-building my life . A loyal and loving family who unconsciously prop up the ragged edges. And my best friend who kicks the bits back towards the centre when they fall off.
Thats a hell of a lot to be thankful for and in one way or another they all help me to regain what I have lost.
So, with a lot of help from them and my therapist, I am going to reach back and retrieve some of the simple things in life that have been denied me. I am going to reclaim the emotions and the life stolen from me, the normal life thats been forced into the back of my mind and held there by the occupancy of my abusers ghosts. Squatters in the back of my mind.
Its all there somewhere, I never lost all my emotions, hopes and fears, I was just prevented from using them fully. And now I am starting to reach back and grasp a little bit at a time, wrench one more piece of my emotional history and framework out of the dark corner of my mind they have made theirs.
If you think thats a bit over the top - making a corner of my mind theirs it isnt.
They were there skulking in the dark corners repeating their lies over and over. Telling me I enjoyed their abuse, encouraged their abuse, their abuse was my fault. They told me these things when it was happening, and I believed them, their ghosts continued the tirade for the next 31 years and I believed them too.
They were there, they came back to me the minute my guard was down. Theyre still there, but now theyre beginning to realise whos the boss. Me !
If someone keeps repeating something over and over you eventually take it as gospel, if you accept the gospel and start repeating it to yourself it becomes carved in stone. Thirty-one years is long enough to have carved the whole miserable story in foot high letters into the hardest granite.
By repeating their lies, and my acceptance of them, they trapped all my normal emotions behind a wall in my mind. A wall they expertly constructed in my mind, using my emotions as the bricks and all my pain, guilt and shame as the mortar.
Occasionally the mortar would crumble and small gaps would appear in the wall as I fought with the memories and scored small and minor victories, I would relish the tiny bits of normality that resulted. But it was just a series of botched D.I.Y. jobs and for a short while the mortar looked good and the wall would hold. Then, just like the rain coming and washing the mortar away, something would knock me back, and it didnt take much most of the time, and the rebuilding would start once more.
Rebuilding the barricade was something I was no good at on my own and without help. I didnt have the right tools.
And as the years went by they became experienced experts at demolishing my flimsy defences, hell, they should be good they had me to help them! I just listened to their instructions and threw away my self-confidence, trust and love the main blocks of the wall.
In payment they gave me guilt, pain and shame. It was a crappy deal.
I just want to catch up on the love I have been given and not reciprocated, the trust that many people have placed in me that I have doubted and also not returned. The trust in myself that I have denied over the years and now need badly. The confidence in myself that was knocked out of me and I am only now starting to drag back.
All these traits that people take for granted and need to get through life have been hi-jacked and I want to salvage what I can while I can.
I didnt even realise what had gone, or was at least badly damaged, my reference points had moved to accommodate my confused and distorted standards.
I saw other people full of confidence and exhibiting their love and emotions, people doing what they wanted to do. People who were confident in their lives and work.
I recognised what I saw and sometimes thought that I wanted it too, but then I thought no, I cant do that. I believed that I wasnt that good, wasnt that clever, it wasnt my style, it wasnt what I really wanted. I would talk myself out of it and settle back into my life of going with the flow, but it was a flow that was getting slow and turgid.
Its time to stir it up a bit.
It would be nave of me to believe that all my problems can be laid at the door of my sexual abuse.
But if I can sort some of these problems out and recognise those that can trace their history back to my abuse, I can start to put them in their place. If I can make a bit of sense out of my very messy past I will be in better shape to think about the future.
If I can alter my behaviour, my way of thinking, my prejudices, my hopes, my fears and my attitudes just a tiny bit in the right direction it will be victory for me and defeat for the ghosts. Any other stuff that can be tagged on the back of my surviving will be a bonus.
Im lucky that the people who count, my close family and friends, are still around. I somehow managed to keep the lid on my abuse, the ghosts, and all the other crap that went with it for thirty-one years and didnt drive anyone away.
And those that know varying amounts of my history of sexual abuse are now closer and more supportive.
But I doubted that support for thirty-one years.
I doubted it because it was hard for me to trust anyone, its taken me 25 years to tell my wife because I didnt trust myself, trust my instincts and worst of all I didnt trust my wife to support me or rather I didnt trust my judgement of her support.
My trust was shattered by 4 years of sexual abuse, rape and bullying by older boys and a teacher.
The one chance that it could have ended was when my rape by a number of boys, an afternoon of abuse and beating, was uncovered by the schools headmaster who did nothing. Nothing except punish me for being out of bounds and being in possession of the ten cigarettes I was given by the rapists to buy my silence and complicity.
The headmaster was as guilty as the rapists, he was no better than they were and might just as well have fucked me himself.
They fucked my body he fucked my mind. One heals and the other doesnt.
I guess hes as bad as they are, if not worse.
I want to escape their influence, I want what was rightfully mine. Its not too much to ask is it ?
15 / 12 / 99
