A Long Way Home

I wish I could write that everything is fine and that I am back to my bouncy positive self. I am not. I am moving in that direction though.

I have worked though quite a bit though. I mistakenly believed I was reliving stuff I had already dealt with. I have not been. This is the first time I have come face to face with these particular feelings. Grief is really much more complicated than one would imagine.

My father hated me. Right from the off. Or at least as far back as I can recall. His hatred of me cost me dearly. It nearly cost me my life on more than one occasion from his violence but also my own self hatred which grew from his hatred of me, nearly killed me.

I had never really addressed this issue. This last 10 years I have become strong. I have eschewed drink and drugs to alleviate pain. I have sorted out my eating disorder. I have to a great extent dealt with the OCD, which in my case manifested itself in compulsive checking of taps and doors and locks etc before leaving the house and then having to back and check again until I decided it was best not to leave the house! I rarely check to that extent now. I also no longer smoke cigarettes.

However, I never lost the fear that I was at fault. That I as not a good person. That I was destined to suffer because I was an evil child and thus an evil adult. After all, those who taught me religion told me I wa sevil and so did my family showed me I was. After all, must I not be evil if my own parents cannot bring themselves to like me let alone love me?

As a result of his hatred of me, I lost everything but my soul. I lost my education. I lost my nuclear family and my extended family. I became the scapegoat. The one upon whom all fault was placed. It is easier for my brothers to blame me than it is to face the fact that neither of our parents loved us. Their hatred of me is the key that keeps the reality of it locked away so that they may lead more peaceful lives, not realising that this is what motivates their constant flight.

When one sees such a look of disgust in the eyes of a parent, or parents, it is all but destruction to the self. If it were not for the love shown to me by outsiders occasionally I would not have survived intact. People like Miss Abbot, my teacher when I was about 7-8 years old. She would take me out after school. I went to her teacher's quarters where she fed me crumpets with butter and jam and tea. She was nice to me. I think she knew my plight. There were others like her, always women. In my ignorance, I thought all who were nice to me were nice people. Hence I did not see the evil in the male teacher who also befriended me so that he could use me in his pornographic films. As far as I was concerned he was nice to me. he was an adult and I obeyed adults. He didn't hurt me or frighten me. He knew the sort of child I was-frightened, desperate to be loved and confused. He knew how to manipulate me and use my plight to his advantage.

I was bullied at school. The same school he was at. I was spat on, punched and kicked and pushed over on a daily basis. My nick name at school was 'shit'. If I was addressed, it was 'hey, shit'. I thought they knew what I did with the teacher. I never thought in terms of what the teacher was doing to me. It was all my fault back then. I got called queer and poof too but had no idea why....or even what the words meant.

I have an above average IQ. I was so disturbed when young I couldn't use it. Any hope of a career was lost to me. I wanted to be a vet-what else? Had I not used all my energies to survive the fear I lived with 24/7 I may well have reached my intellectual potential.

I think I was not boy enough for my father. I was happier playing with girls and my interests lay with 'girly' things though I myself was not especially effeminate. I also climbed trees, was a daredevil and always up to something. I had no malice in me. I preferred peace to war.

I removed the uniform from my Action Man doll and made him flower power shirts and trousers....the symbolism of that is so obvious. (My dad was a soldier).

My two bothers escaped this particular disgust. Though they did no escape emotional and spiritual and physical abuse. Later when I came out, there was no support from my elder brother, not even privately. I was left ignorant of his homosexuality. As later I was left ignorant of my younger brother's. Yes, three sons and we are all gay. Thank goodness we didn't breed, and instead put a stop to the abuse cycle.

The year I spent in a mental asylum, one of those big locked Victorian jobs, I was rarely visited. No one believed my story. The whole family jetted off to Florida for a holiday. A huge deal in the late 70's. I denied my heartbreak. I denied my rejection. I didn't even look in the direction of the pain and anguish. I just carried on harming myself. Unaware that I was in agony, unaware that I was treated appallingly. Only aware that I was bad because otherwise why would this be happening? Needless to say the staff, both doctoral and nursing, reinforced this view with their own abuse of me and of other patients. Yes, I am afraid so. These places are not places of love and care but places or terror and torment and fear and abuse of power. They are no place for anyone in need to love and care.

Concurrent in my life was the spectre of religion. Roman Catholicism first and then Jehovah's Witness and then plain old Born Againism. And unbeknown to me till my 20's, Spiritualism - the only belief system that could have saved me for it is the only one that doesn't have dogma and creed and judgement.

This is where it gets even more complicated. If I truly were to write a book about my life I think it just would not be credible-or maybe because of it's very weirdness it would be more than credible!

On the one hand I was being told I was evil. At home and at church and at school. In several different continents and countries. The evil travelled with me no matter where I was. So of course it was my fault. I was a magnet for paedophiles and bullies. No sooner did I arrive in a country, I was molested and no sooner was I introduced as the 'new boy' in school , the bullies found me.

Even to me it is quite remarkable that I am sitting here writing this. Living a happy productive life , even if I am experiencing a little difficulty right now.

Anyway, as a child and teen I had imaginary friends. At least I was told they were imaginary and if I dared suggest anything else...well you get the picture. Yes, think The Sixth Sense.
As child and early teen I knew things I ought not to know. That were impossible for anyone to know as they had not yet taken place. Adults didn't like it. Other adults did like it and they told me their problems, full grown adults telling me their most intimate stuff when I was 14! I had no clue what I was doing. I was not aware that I saw things others did not. I was not aware I knew things that were not normal to know. Nothing seemed odd to me. It only seemed odd to others or evil to still others.

On occasion, I'd meet an aunt when we were in the UK. She was usually hovering near me. For some reason my mum did her best to keep her from me. When she did manage to get to me, she would always hurriedly say something like this: 'Don't be scared. you are special. Jesus loves you. You have a gift and one day you will use it'.

Now she was the only one whoever suggested God might love me. So I wrote her off as nuts.

Years later, in my early 20's, I came to understand what she meant. At least as far as gifts were concerned. The 'Jesus Loves You' bit still left me thinking she was nuts. To be frank, my aunt was not the full ticket, neither was her husband, my blood uncle, but later became instrumental in helping me on my way to where I am now.

So as you may well be beginning to think, there is much more to me that I have so far let on. Why have I held back? Fear is one reason. Not knowing how to express it is another. Being confused by it all another and not wanting to be a hypocrite a major other reason.

You see, as fear has ruled my life and still does to a great extent, how could I then write about deeply spiritual matters? How could I trust it? Oh, I trust what I say to others, the help they receive thru me. But I didn't trust it in relation to me. I didn't trust I was loved. I am looking at this trust thing.

I have had so much happen this last couple of weeks from a spiritual point of view that I feel I am on the brink of a massive change in my consciousness. I am beginning to see how it is possible that I have been guided and protected all though my life. How the times I was closest to the brink I was pulled back. How I am truly understood. How my inability to trust is understood. I am beginning to see that this is the reason the same message has been repeated over and over again in the last couple of weeks and especially so the 4 times in 4 days this week, through different people, just when it was darkest. It may be the reason that thru this dark time for me, I have received so many emails from people expressing a care and telling me how much I have helped the writers of such emails.

I am beginning to see how I can cease to be afraid, how I can move on, and how I can better put my abilities to use.

I do believe this is my longest ever post. Thank you if you stuck with it this far.