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.