A SADNESS THAT WILL NEVER BE CONSOLED

I feel sad. I also feel humiliated. Most of the people who attended our wedding no longer have anything to do with us. I chose those 24 people because I thought they were special and I wanted them to share our special day. As it turns out I was wrong.

My personality has not changed. My disabilities have got worse. My life started with me being abandoned and it certainly is looking like it is going to end that way too. I have two long-term close friends and it is very unlikely that I will see either of them again though of course we talk on the phone. I have one lovely friend where we live. One really special person in 16 years. But we are very close in age.

Yes I fear being alone being surrounded when my time comes by those who are paid to be there.

Two of the people that hurt me deeply because I never in 1 million years would have thought they would have deserted me at my time of most need. They did. One of them when I asked why she hadn't been round at least was upfront and said I have enough negativity in my life without dealing with yours. Now this was somebody who on a regular basis and come to my house to unburden herself, have a cry and a cuddle and a coffee. I supported her through some truly dreadful things that happened but I never once turned her away no matter how much pain or fatigued I was. this was over 16 years and the first time I needed her that was it. The other friend didn't have the courage to tell me why she had distanced herself from me but eventually she did and it was because of my disease.

The others have given no explanation at all. They have just gone.

I have heard other people who have debilitating diseases that slowly get worse and never better, lose the majority of their so-called friends.

You may indeed wonder why I am making such a big deal about this. It is because it feeds into my deepest fear which is to find myself powerless and institutionalised again. No matter how well people think a particular home is run there will always be abuse and neglect. I will not allow myself to become powerless like that again.

I really do not know why these feelings have come up today. Hazel and Anna came to clean and they are lovely and we have a good laugh. Thy paid me a really nice compliment. I was one of the few clients who treated them as equals and used their names.

Something must have triggered it off but I do not know what. Sometimes when John is not here I feel the feeling so dark I just cannot put into words. At least I know he is home on Thursday but what if he was never coming home? I felt this feeling first when I was stranded in Stockholm. I was in agony and I was frightened. This was in 2004 before I had been diagnosed. I wanted and missed John so badly it terrified me and I thought then that I might one day feel this but very much worse.

However, getting back to my original subject. I really am a lousy chooser of friends. I do feel angry and I feel bitter. One thing though that I have learned is that when a female becomes friends with me very quickly and is almost coyish, says I am like the brother they never had, and consistently tells me how lovely I am I know now that this will end badly. They will withdraw, sometimes turn very nasty, and leave me feeling hurt and bewildered.

Most of all, I feel humiliated. How could I have chosen such cruel friends? Why did I not see it?

The one person other than John their lives here and sees me regularly I know is not like any of the people I have been describing. She is genuine and would not think of hurting me. I have never met a person like her.

You know PTSD, survivor guilt, the parts of us that will always be stuck at a very young, toddler age, 5-6, puberty etc. It really depends on when the abuse takes place. With me it was daily all through my life. I am forever a child in a man's body. I am forever vulnerable to those who see it and take advantage of it.

On the positive side there are those who see me as a damaged child and they treat me with such love care it is astonishing. It took me a while to see thay were and then longer to accept it. But they are there. You wouldn't believe how much the people at Tesco feed my soul, nurture me. Even on holiday people will come up to me just to be nice. Sometimes generous with other than their time.

IT IS OKAY TO HONOUR ONE' SELF

Well I don't think I shall ask for your help to go to sleep again!

I woke up at 1:15 PM! But I did sleep soundly and it was only six hours.

John's home today and I can't wait. I love my time on my own because I can do as I please without having to think about him. This entails watching what I want on the DVD player or on Amazon prime and I can also have the music volume as high as I like. I have not lost the taste for my music to be allowed since I was a teenager. We are not talking heavy metal here. No. We are talking female folk singers and male folk singers and things like tangerine dream and Mike Oldfield. I just think they'll sound better loud.

This last few days have got me thinking about the theme which many of you have shared with me: that I should honour myself. Now for a British person this is really difficult because you on other people you hold them in high esteem usually because they have done something great.

Honouring myself seems not quite right. These last three days which are now over and done with have maybe shown me something different.

I am not at all sure about the honouring part that I certainly see that I really need to give myself credit for all that I have done to get to where I am now. I deserve to recognise that feat that I have accomplished regardless of what others might think. I only truly know what I went through and how the recovery process has been excruciating. Yet I am here and spiritually intact and my personality was not crushed. I do deserve credit for this and I deserve my own credit. I have been so hard on myself and was never able to accept compliments or the idea that I have done something remarkable. But I have done something remarkable and I did not have a whole team of experts behind me. I have the loving support of my husband and some friends who are no longer in my life and I'm beginning to see that that is meant to be.

RESPONSE TO SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT MY MUM WAS AFRAID OF MY DAD

My mum was not afraid of him. Once when he his hands were so tight around my throat, I was going blue, she stopped him and he raised his hand to her and she responded with a knife to his chest and said 'you ever touch me and it will be the last thing you do'. I believed then I must be really evil because they didn't love me and I was completely on my own. I now know it was them and not me. However eventually I did break and it has taken much of my life to put myself together as best I can. The neurological problems, most of what is wrong with my body, is the result of years of my fight or flight mechanism being set off with me unable to do anything but freeze and disassociate. All the cortisol did me no good at all. Thus inflammation is now a major problem, including my heart. However, I won the battle to be myself and that is what counts.

I know that many people upon hearing my story assume my mum was a powerless victim. She wasn't.

GOING WITH THE FLOW

I do feel a weight has left me. I had seriously been considering contacting the person I wrote about in my blog post. John thought it a very bad idea. When I thought it through I realised he was right. When he said they had been cruel I thought that was OTT but again he was right. I just was still in denial. Not now.

Denial has got me into a lot of trouble in my life! I was taught well though. I grew up in a family where denial was mandatory. Despite me going into denial through my life, I did eventually break the family rule and thus was excommunicated. Best thing that ever happened to me.

I sit here with my dogs around me, hubby at work until Thursday. I am content again. I know the recent changes are genuine because I can sit and watch tv without being restless, even without knitting, if I choose to. I have never been able to be that relaxed. I have finally let myself off the hook. Accepted where I am. Accepted it all really. No constant battling to force change.

Going with the flow.

I NEED TO BE MORE DISCERNING

I have been thinking a lot about a 'friendship' that went down the tubes some time last year. I don't remember when because I was very ill. This was a relationship with two people lasting about 15 years. I didn't know what I was feeling this last couple of weeks when I have thought of them daily.

Then I was able to recall what took place. I texted to ask why I had not seen her for a long time when she knew how ill I was. I got 'I have enough negativity in my life.' This from someone I sat with, listened to her and her pain and held while she cried. The pain was real. She had much to cry about. It was always at my house because her house was 'full of men' and besides she couldn't share in her house. I understood that.

I was really hurt by her response. My gut twisted. I was so hurt I knew I had to get my wedding album re-done so that I wouldn't keep being re-hurt every time I saw them. I texted this. I can see clearly how it may have come across as spite. It really wasn't.

The man left me a really nasty message on my answerphone. It was clear that the woman had lied to him. He thought I didn't go to their house for a reason he said he knew what it was. He didn't know. She had not told him it was her choice. I was never invited after '07 and besides which we did frequently pop in. He then added that from now on he would be polite but I was dead as far he was concerned. I am not sure of the exact words but the intent is the same. As if he thought my friendship would continue with her. The man never did like me. As much as he tried to hide it, he was not comfortable with homosexuals. Ironic when his work is about reducing prejudice and promoting equality. His discomfort could just have been he did not like me. So of course I was uncomfortable around him but it never stopped me trying to get past it.

Anyway, I had been thinking about letting them know how sorry I was with how things went.

Then, sorting it through in my mind, I realised this: they were both very cruel. The threats and lies. The threats particularly were designed to make me paranoid.

All this done to a friend of 15 years who was extremely ill and close to losing the battle all together.

I am glad I allowed myself to think this through and stopped denying the cruelty with which I was treated. I think I have just been missing the friendship I thought I had. There is no way I can ever have any kind of friendship with them. It never was. It never will be.

Another friend I was really hurt by because I knew they had withdrawn from me and every time I brought it up they swore they hadn't. Yet most contact was initiated from me. I am not daft. I knew their feelings had changed. I did at least get the truth though. They had withdrawn. Why? Because they knew I was getting ill.

I have several females do this. They have were very keen to have a friendship and then somewhere along the line, they cooled and sometimes, in fact mostly, they turned nasty. This one didn't do that at least. However, from my side, trust has been destroyed and I won't get that back.

I have John and perhaps 3 friends who accept me as I am and do not desert me at my most vulnerable. However, if John pops his clogs before I do, none of them are able to be anything more than they are now. I love them and they love me it seems. I am not so short sighted that I can't see how age and disease prevents at least two of them being able to physically help me. Never mind the fact two live far away and only one on my doorstep.

When I die, if John has already gone, I will have no one, except the close by friend, to take care of me and attend my funeral. I am frightened by that.

A whole life time and this is where I am. It is really hard to not think I am at fault. It can't just be my health that has always put people off. Certainly this time, those I lost coincided with my disease progressing really fast to how it is now because I stupidly fought it and denied that I would get worse. If I continued my life as normal, I could stop it. I now know different.

I have had to accept my disabled status and my dependancy. Dealing with pain 24/7 and then a deep depression which came very close to killing me, then a fall that almost killed me too. (I now know I did knock myself out because what I said happened I made up. I didn't know I had. It was only when the cleaning lady who told me what happened , did I realise that I filled in the blank spot.) The fall left me shaken, feeling totally dependent, vulnerable and scared.

I was kicked viciously when I was so down I couldn't get any further down. Friends don't do that.

It has taken me a long time to stop denying what happened and how I feel about it. It makes me feel very sad. 

And scared.

ON SHAKY GROUND

This has been the best day since the fall. I think I know why I have been so shaky since it happened 3 weeks. Once again I cheated death. It was totally different than I thought.I wasn't completely floored until the person who ended helping me told me what I had asked her to do. I had lost a chunk of time. I hit my head several times, really hard. Yet I am still here. Always my damn head. My dads favourite spot. As a boy I also feel about 15ft str8 onto it, was unconscious, spent the night in hospital.

I wasn't completely floored until the person who ended helping me told me what I had asked her to do.The fall also forced me to see how vulnerable I was and I couldn't carry on as if nothing were wrong with me. I look back over the last 3 years of showing. killing myself with pain, putting myself and others at risk. Was I being stoic? Brave? No. I was still showing my dad that I was not the weak sissy he always said I was that he had no reason to be ashamed of me. I saying look dad, despite the agony and fatigue I am fighting it. I will not become dependent and disabled. I. have had quite enough of his fucking shit. He can have it back. Why on earth would I want to please that monster? A Big Man who beat on very young children. Who was cruel, sadistic, and just plain nasty. And a great liar and actor too.

It wasn't just that old tape though feeding what I was doing. I felt it was grossly unfair that I should survive mentally, emotionally and physically only to find I was becoming disabled. No way! This is NOT going to happen. But now? I accept it. I am defeated. In a good way. I just let it all go. I can deal with this too. This too is not my fault. Half a dozen Drs have said that my ailments are a direct result of the abuse. I suppose living for so long with such fear and torment and physical pain from violence and sexual abuse outside the home is bound to take it's toll. The evidence is all there.

I don't understand this. I still think it is grossly unfair. But so is a child being born to starve to death grossly unfair. So is the slaughter of 8000 muslim men and boys 20 years ago by Xians in Bosnia. The Holocaust. One can go and complain it is all so unfair.

Or one can find out one's purpose now. Look for the good in it all. The fall was definitely a demarcation line for me. The end of an era and the beginning of new one about which I know nothing. I seem to being pushed to write and write and write. I am sick to death of that suggestion. So I write and write and write. A book? Why? So I can placed among all the other abuse stories that now have their section in the book shops. I find that incredibly distasteful and I now doubt the voracity of those stories. They are a big money industry. Yes, I think some readers may be helped. I also think there are those that get their kicks from being voyeurs to our pain and suffering and so it is know these stories sell. I don't want to be part of that. I think I reach far more people right here on the 'net. Much more immediate. And much honest too. No editor. No one to say 'change this' 'change that' make it more 'dramatic. 'No, embellishing is not lying.'

FEAR

John is not a rare man. John is not a rare homosexual man. There are many heterosexual and homosexual men who are just as loving and kind.

Homosexual men and women are just as likely to make excellent husbands and wives to their same sex spouses. It is not rare. Homosexual people do not lack the ability to be loving and faithful and loyal. Far from it. Much more likely to be these things, I would guess, because of a life time of abuse and rejection although these same conditions also damage one's ability to be these things-just as it does in heterosexual people.

Times are changing. Those growing up homosexual now do so in a very different world, at least in western culture. Bigotry is not over and it will take time but that of course it could all change.

The Nazi's didn't just murder Jews. The far right here if they had power would not just deal with immigrants! No, homosexuals would be dealt with too. Women also. I'll never understand how supposedly loving caring people end up supporting hatred and death instead of love and life.

Fear is behind the spread of this evil. I understand fear all to well. I have managed not to allow it to become hate. I felt fear when I saw the media images of people from far away brazenly forcing their way onto trucks etc coming to the UK. I wasn't afraid of them. I was afraid of those in my country who lose the ability to think because of the fear they. I am scared of how they will react.

One of them was a 14yr old boy who had got to the Port of Calais all the way from Afghanistan!

Most of them wrongly believe that the UK is rich and there are jobs aplenty. I don't disagree that we have too many people, none in particular, on this island and I wonder why France, a HUGE country with a population less than ours last time I looked, do not help.

This was all bound to happen. People the world over can now see, via the internet, the vast disparity between us and them. They realise how much we took from them. The see how our wealth came from exploiting them. Now we have what we want, we turn our backs, shut our doors, deciding to live with the fear of what the starving masses might do, and denying the fact that no amount of security is going to stop it. We see daily how the illusion that we are protected is smashed.

OH, BOLLOCKS...

Some time before I lost the battle to stay in the comfort of sleep (yes, surprisingly, sleep is good and restful, unplagued by fear), I vaguely saw a man in a dark suit putting stuff on my side table which somehow my mind knew was Pepsi Max and my first lot of drugs for the day. He was trying not to wake me and I wasn't asleep but also not awake. In my memory it is all foggy. I reached my hand out to his, and I think kissed goodbye. I would think it all a dream if it were not for the fact of the drink and drugs next to the bed and John not being here. 

It is but two weeks today since The Fall. It seems longer ago when I think of it now but at times it feels like it was just hours ago. The Fall has irrevocably changed me and my life. I try to ignore tomorrow but it picks at me, like birds in confusion and terror tearing at my skin. I feel it but it is known to me that this is just my fight or flight system firing off and breaking through the pain killers. So much so that John lifts a hand to scratch is ear or something mundane and my body reacts by ducking and beginning to run tho it just starts to fall and John grabs me, effectively keeping me on my feet. He said I should sit and I told him I was okay, that my body just reacted quickly to his movement. I feel bad because he has never hit me in 34 years but my body isn't reacting to John but to events many years ago. And there are still those who dismiss PTSD (I used to be one). I read the other day that muscles do indeed have memory otherwise we couldn't make them grow through exercise. All I know is I jumped out of my skin because of the distant past not because of that moment.

I am afraid. I have been all of my life. I have always had adrenalin and cortisol flowing through me, ready to fight or run but unable to do either. I didn't know any of this at the time. I didn't even really know I was afraid. I just knew I was bad and weak. I didn't know I was neither of those things. I didn't know my brain was doing it's best to save me. As I could neither run nor fight I shut down, disassociated, depersonalised until I was no longer present. I do this still today. Something triggers it and I am no longer present. John has seen it. Only one friend has seen it and I think she found it eerie but she wasn't phased and just waited until I came back. She had heard me tell her these things so I think she knew pretty quickly what had happened. 

Fear, it is said, is the opposite of love. I only know that I did not love those I was afraid of. I also knew by the time I was seven that to love meant to be wounded and abandoned all over again but no matter how hard I tried not to I could not help but like or love others and pets. I could not feel loved. I longed for it and this me easy pickings for adults who violated me and told me it was love and as they did not hurt me and touched me gently, I felt safe. And I blocked out the memories of whatever it was that caused the bleeding. I was in my 30's before this little bombshell exploded and I realised how duped I had been, how foolish. And I knew then what caused the bleeding.

Love and faith and trust and security were all denied me. I had hope to see me through but it was damaging hope. I took the blame and responsibility for it all because then I could imagine myself just getting it right. Right enough to stop the fear and the agony under it.

It was a false hope. In reality I was powerless. I did not know there was nothing I could do, no change I could make, that would stop all of it. It wasn't me. It was them. I was 50 when I realised that. I was not abused because of who I am but but because of who they are.

Now I am in this dark place yet again. I fought so hard live life regardless and I was going to allow my body to stop me. I really did believe that if I kept active and positive I would not get worse, it would not progress. I was going to be happy and successful dammit. 

I now know this isn't true and my body did stop me and there is this hole in my life which is full of fear  and I am naked as I reach out for help from a power I don't understand at all.

I have this awful feeling that I need longer than I have to heal.

DON'T COMPARE

He has lost his foot but he cannot complain because the person next to him as lost half his leg and he can't complain either because the woman next to him as lost all of her leg and she can't complain either because the next two people have lost both legs. So everybody swallows their pain because there's always somebody worse off.

The pain and suffering caused by comparison and the pernicious feeling that only a selfish weakling would complain anyway of us some of us" harm to ourselves by becoming the hero who never complains and who forces himself to live as if his body were not diseased. Sadly, people go to the grave feeling that they just did not give enough effort, that it was their fault. We do this to each other because of our fears of death still believing that bad things only happen to bad people and so those that do die do so because they didn't work hard enough not to.The fact

19:00 GMT Friday 26.06.2015

I awoke after deep sleep not disturbed by tendrils of a bad dream reaching out to pull me back into the darkness where my fear is naked and fresh, despite having always been with me. No, the night had been free of that.

Luque, Mary-Grace and Whitney were all on John's side of the bed. He was up and not there. The room was dark and sultry and I had to call him several times, so loudly I thought I would have a sore throat. 

I bit down on my panic. I couldn't move, my body as yet refusing to awake despite it's obvious presence being felt with shards of pain shooting around my body, as if my body were a gaming machine with various areas competing to see which part could hurt the most.

Eventually John appeared. I wanted to scream at him about how he should have his hearing aids in but I resisted. After all he had entered our room carrying my relief, medication, and a bottle of Pepsi Max.

He found the remote that controlled my side of the bed and he handed it to me so I could raise myself into a sitting position. I am feeling low and tearful, my body trembles as it comes to the full cacophony of it's life.

Slowly I start to swallow my drugs, starting with the small leading up to the large, the final one having to be chewed, once a pleasure now chewed with a plea not to gag.

Now I stayed sitting glad for the slight breeze though the open window and the light brightening my face. I look at John as he stands, side on to me, looking out of the window. I feel a mixture of deep love for him, gratitude for the way he takes care of me without asking and without resentment, and a deep shame toward myself for having become so dependent.  

Teetering on the edge as my tears were, I made them stay put as I told John that all my teenage fears had come true-I was useless and pathetic and the terror of once again ending up being 'cared for' in a home only kept at bay with the knowledge that I know how to make sure this never happens. I assume that my husband goes on that journey before I. I don't want him to live in the shadow of ice that is the cruelty of loss and this only after finding ones way back to the surface and breaking the ice that encases one or there is no fight, no reaching up to the surface in which case I have no idea what would happen. 

I have fought for every breath all of my life and do not know how not to. 

Tiredness brings me to an end. For now. 

LONLINESS-IS LIFE BETTER? The more my disabilities worsen, the less I see of others.Yet I don't talk about my ills to visitors but life, about them, I want to know about THEM!!!

 I think it is a much better idea if I write my longer comments on my blog so that I can get back into the habit of writing on my blog for my own benefit and for the benefit of others as they have told me such.

As you know last year was a very dark year for me.

The show's season has started again and I feel bereft all over again. I have been lonely most of my life. I was lonely in the way only an abused child knows loneliness. I was with John Long time before I began to be able to do things, artistic things, like knitwear design and knitting on machines. I did very well at it and I had some patterns published. So although I was very busy I was still lonely until John came home in the evening because at that time we lived in London and so he was home every evening.

I resorted to friendships, if you could call them that, with people I'd not normally mix with-criminals and dealers. It shows the level of my esteem that I was pleased they took me. It took a long while what I had put myself in line for. I used to take my carless neighbour shopping. I didn't mind, I just wished she would not go to so many shops. One she came running out of a shop and told me to go, get away from from here. I drove home, and when she asked about another trip I said no. I was in all sorts of mess or could have been were I not so lucky.

However, they kept me alive and am from going dolally.

Loneliness seems to be the theme of my life mostly because I was too shamed to make friends. What if they found out what an evil person I was letting those men indulge themselves in me or on me. I lived in constant fear that people would find out.

 I don't ever remember feeling depressed like I did last year. I spent most of my years numb.   I only want seriously kill myself knowing that I would not get caught. I would come home from work grant hello the same as I was grunted hello and then I went to my bedroom and no one expected to see me till seven in the morning. This was more than enough time for the concoction of the hundred or so pills to work.  they should have. I came around just as the doctor was saying to my parents that it was highly unlikely that I was going to survive. They thanked the doctor but more or less ignored me.  I did it because it was the only way I could see of escaping.

I have been driving at the normal speed according to the speed set up. For some reason this annoys other drivers  and survey to their horns at me as they overtake only to be stopped by traffic lights!

 Unfortunately the drugs was still not allow me to swim and I long for the day that I'm able to get into that water where I feel so weightless and where I can go somewhere else. 

 it isn't just the competing of the dogs the I miss but the people and I felt part of it and not excluded. I might well have my talents but they are done singularly and on my own they are not something one can do with other people.

 I have some lovely friends that they live a long way away from me and are too busy to spend time talking on the  phone  or on Facebook because they have proper lives.