Best Outcome

When we had arrived in Australia in 1971, I had been led to believe that we were staying there. I was relieved. I could not have borne yet another set of losses - pets, friends, familiar surroundings, home. Yet more grief with no where and no way to express it, so I ate it down.

(My eating disorder was already under way and had been for years. It took the form of binging on high sugar foods. I had discovered at around the age of seven, after the death of my friend, that high sugar foods numbed me.)

At school soon after we had arrived, and I had already been victimized by the teacher who was a child pornographer, my elder brother informed me that we were on the move again. I was too upset to know he was teasing me. That same day we had streaming exams and needless to say I did poorly.

Eventually, just like so many times before, over so many different issues, the word of parents came to mean nothing. We were informed we were moving yet again. To the UK. I was devastated. By this time I was well and truly into self harm and anorexia. I was depressed. Unnoticed.

I could have stayed in Oz. I was of an age, 16, where the law would have allowed me had I shown I was not in any moral danger. I didn't do this. I was bribed. I believed my beloved Sally would be coming with me. She was my yellow Laborador. I had two Lhasa Apso which my father sold to the first person to pay him. My feelings about this mattered not a jot. My feelings had never mattered.

My elder brother had already left home at least a year previously and was in the UK. At least I would have an ally in him as he had fled my father. Oh how wrong could I have been? Far from being an ally, he was an enemy.He humiliated me, called me a liar and spent his time sucking up to my parents about how well he had done for himself since leaving home. He had turned into a self centred obnoxious twerp. Perhaps he always had been and I was too naive to see it. certainly he never did a thing for me. Even when the centre of the family's 'problems' became my homosexuality, he kept quiet about his own homosexuality. He proffered help for my parents so they could come to terms with this awful thing by telling them of an organization for parents of gay children. all the time lying thru his teeth and ignoring me. When I was put into a mental hospital, he, like my younger brother, did not come to my aid with the truth. Instead he curried favour by saying he would pay for me to go into a private funny farm. Even in the state I was in, I was disgusted with him for making this obvious ploy which I knew would never happen. He said it only to appear like a good son.

I am well aware that my brothers had the same parents as me and they too deserved their love and respect and that they did what they could to get it. The big difference is they did it all at my expense. They were quite prepared to see me hang as long as they got the approval they so desperately wanted. Truth meant nothing to them and I most certainly didn't.

We arrived in England in May 1075. Within a week I was working at a quarantine kennel. Sally was duly booked in for August 5th. On august the 4th, I telephoned Mr and Mrs T. in Oz to make sure Sally had been put on the plane. Mr and Mrs T did not know what I was talking about. I was so upset, my boss took over the telephone. I was informed that my parents had had Sally destroyed the day we had left.

To this day, I have never been given an explanation. Just denial. Yet whilst I was working in those kennels, my mother said to me several times that I should not get my hopes up as you never know could happen. I did not suspect that my parents could be as cruel as they were. Yes, I know I had had plenty of examples to go by before of their cruelty, but I really did not suspect they would be this evil. Plus my mother was always telling us not get excited or get our hopes up or to enjoy anything really because it would always end in tears. so it did not occur to me that she was trying to warn me about what she already knew-Sally would not be coming./

This period of time was awful. I was really ill and hiding it. In fact i didn't know I was ill but knew my behaviour around food was not normal and I didn't want anyone to know. I was already going 48 - 72 hrs without food. I could not risk anyone knowing in case they made me eat and I was far too fat at 140 lbs. If only I could be thin, I would be loved by my family and liked by others.

I fell in love for the first time. I was 17. So was he. It lasted 3 months. He ended it. I was devastated. It was further proof I was no good. I mourned alone. Even those who knew about my love affair didn't take it seriously. After all, my love was another boy so it couldn't be real could it?

At the end of 1977, (yes I have jumped over other stuff which I will write about later), I wanted to die. I had a clerk job in the City. I lived with my parents. i had no choice. Even if I could have afforded not to, I was too incapable by then. It was normal for me to come home, go to my room and stay there until I got up for work the next day. At least 10 hours on my own. I swallowed every pill I had and I had loads. Sleeping pills, antidepressants, pain killers. The lot. I was so relieved. It was over. I relaxed, put on my music and waited to fall asleep for the last time. Despite my fear of God and going to Hell, I had by that time realised that Hell could not be worse. Besides, I had no choice. I couldn't carry on in that pain.

My parents could not wake me. Later that day, an employee asked my mother what was wrong and she told her that she could not wake me up. It was the employee who called an ambulance.
(Now my mother related this to me as an illustration of how upset she had been. In fact, neither she nor my father could bare the possibility that people would find out about our family secrets.)

I came around in hospital, to hear my parents being told there was little that could be done as the drugs had all been absorbed. I was ill for weeks, about 6. I couldn't hear properly, taste properly or smell properly. Worse, to me then, was that I was alive.

There is more to tell but I can't do so now.

The best outcome referred to in the title of this post is my life now. If I had not come here to the UK I would not have met John. I would not have met the therapist who made the difference. I would not have met and done all sorts of things. In all likelihood I would have ended up dead and alone in that awful outback place I live din where homosexuals were and still are ostracised severely.(According to a BBC documentary about the area I lived in.) Think backwoods southern US state and you get the picture.

It is good to be able to have all this recorded here. As i write things become so clear. One thing that is apparent to me is just how much I minimized in order to survive. As I write it here, I am appalled at what I lived through. It shocks me. It reveals to me a person whom I feel compassion for and not the shame I always did.