Life's a bitch

I've been thinking whether I should start off talking about love or life. I've decided life.

My life has not been easy. I know many people say that, and there are many who have had a much harder life than I have. I'm not claiming to be the most hard off.

When I looked at my childhood, I couldn't see anything about it that would make it hard. I had loving parents who were still together, two siblings, a grandmother who adored me. I was a high achiever at school. That was the view from the outside.

From the inside it was a totally different matter. When I was about 20 I identified in myself several symptoms of being abused as a child - but I had no memory of it. When I was 33, and met my husband for the second time (I'll have to document that sometime) he agreed.

I had been really badly bullied, so I decided to re-visit my old schools and stick one finger up in the air at them. I started with the house I had grown up in. I walked from there to my infants school, not that far at all. It was then that I had a really weird experience.

I was stood outside the school, with my hands on the railings. I could see the school, and feel the railings, but in my mind it didn't exist. I was staring at something which wasn't actually there. It really felt like my eyes and my hands were lying to me. I think the correct technical term would be disassociation.

I then went round to where my nan lived, not that far from home at all.

I think I need an aside at this point. I was very close to my nan. I had been born about 6 months after her husband died. I was also ill when I was born (I ended up in hospital 3 times before I was 5 - I still hate hospitals). For a period of time I had to be watched almost round the clock, and my nan helped my mum in doing this. I was also the youngest of 3 children, and came along later than anticipated. There is a gap of something like 5 years between me and my sister. This made for some very strained sibling relationships. So I got close to my nan instead. When my mum was working, my nan would take me to, and pick me up from, my infants school.

So I got to my nans house, taking what I thought was a rather strange route, and looked at it. We turned and started again towards the infants school from a different direction.

It was then that I saw the Road. I use capitals to emphasise the feelings I had. I knew that there was something horrific about that road. I can remember my nan having to jolly me along it, pointing out the house where someone had put some porcelain cats on the wall. I know there were other things, but the mists of history have hid them.

I didn't want to go down the Road. I really didn't. It took a huge amount of courage and sheer determination to turn into it. And there, at the end of the road, was my infants school.

In my mind I knew it was there. I suppose I knew all along that that was where the road led, but somehow my mind had hidden this knowledge to keep me safe.

It was then that some of the horror occurred. The rest didn't come out until that evening, when we were discussing it. It was then that my mother said that my headmaster at that school had abused me, and I just fell apart, and this little girl came out and started saying over an over, "I never said anything, I never told anyone".

I'm talking about this rationally at the moment, and I'm not actually feeling the horror (but I've been through some NLP for that), but I have a few memories.

I can see my hand, I know its my hand, but its my hand when I was young, reaching out towards someones penis. The penis is large, and almost purple. I've got this kind of innocence about the image, as though it was something that happened in a dream.

I think I can remember a large belt buckle, possibly with the compass of a member of the Masons, I'm not sure. I remember a while back seeing someone with that on and being unable to draw my eye away from it, as well as being very perturbed by the situation.

I know that he said "You must not tell anyone or they will get angry with you and throw you out."

That has stained my entire life. I can't stay in a room where there are arguments. I can's watch some TV programs because the arguments upset me too much. I am so lucky that both me and my husband don't do arguments. On occasion we do get angry, but it's not that common, and we normally spend some time afterwards discussion the reasons and working out how to avoid them in future.

The one thing which upsets me the most about this now (obviously the NLP did work), is that I have a really bad memory. I mean very bad. I can remember the big stuff, getting married, but the small stuff just disappears into nowhere. I can't remember the day after getting married, for example. I can't remember what happened last year at this time at all.

I am afraid that in order to get my memory back, I'm going to have to face what was done to me, and to allow my adult self to process it, but that's is definitely not something I'm looking forward to.

So, that is one of the reasons that I had a bad childhood. There are others, but almost all of them stem from this abuse. If this hadn't happened to me my life would have been totally different, but I can't live in the what-if. I have to deal with the is-now.

I'm going to stop now. I don't want to put too much in the blog at one time.