THERE WERE GOOD TIMES TOO

I was talking yesterday to John about the way that I think about my past. It came about because I learned that  human beings tend to remember the bad things more clearly than they do the good things.

I also felt that in some way I was betraying the abused me by talking about or even remembering the good times also.

Before I was six or seven I lived in a small English village for a couple of years having previously lived in Germany but with very little memory of that. I love that little village. The lady neighbours were always very kind to me and I had a best friend called Alex and another one called Hiroshima and another one whose name I cannot remember who was often sick and I used to take him round big chocolate bars. Those are good memories.

It is also where I saw Hiroshima murdered in front of my eyes. This is why I know that one can have repressed memories because all I remember is the newspaper headline:   The Boy Who Died of Hate.   according to what I was told we were together and there had been some confusion over who had been killed me or him. I ignored really what I have been told but I do vividly remember being shown the newspaper headline because it was on the front page with a picture of him and I was asked who he was and I said me. I do not remember Hiroshima at al Tto Singapore. It was a very exciting place for a child. And even though I was only 8 9 10 11  I was given free rein.  it was considered a very safe place.  I remember being taken into the houses of Indian people who celebrated the Diwali festival and fed food. There was this also pink coloured drink which was disgusting and I drank it very fast which was a silly thing to do because the sooner my glass was empty the sooner they folded up again. But I was a child and naive and it didn't occur to me to not bolt the drink down!  There were lots of wonderful sites in Singapore. The food was fantastic.

At tame time as I was experiencing all these wonderful things I was being violently abused on a regular basis by my sperm donor and I had also been attacked and sexually assaulted and may be raped by a total stranger in the jungle. The trauma was made worse because the man made me swear that I would not tell otherwise he would slit my throat but when something similar happened to a neighbours girl I spoke up about what had happened to me which when I think about it from my adult point of view I think it was a very brave thing to do. My mother didn't see it that way. She slapped me and told me I was disgusting and how could I have let that happen and why didn't I say anything and blamed me for what happened to the girl next door.

I don't wish to go on with this any more but I have illustrated I think quite clearly that along with the terror there were also these good sunny exciting times. It still feels like a betrayal though to talk about those things, the good things.  I can see another maze saying 'what about me?' Well I think I gave him plenty of attention and I can't look back over my life and only see the dark period Looking back over my life I have only ever seen a big dark cloud but there have been breaks in those clouds  and they formed good memories for me and that me also deserves to be heard.