15th December 2009 First Entry

I woke up this morning with one goal: To keep my self alive and to finish the day back in bed knowing i had acomplished what i set out to do.

I am not a writer or artist and don't have any creational flare in me at all - i have lived in my house for nearly 13 years and my sofa is still on the same wall as it was from day one. I decorated my lounge at the beginning of this year with ALOT of help from friends with choosing colour schemes and i chose the most daring colour of all, magnolia! Yep, thats about as creational and inspired as i get when it comes to anything like this :)

This journal: There is no right or wrong, the thoughts are just my thoughts, just my opinions and my view on life. Its a kind of personal journey that i want to record so one day i can look back and see where i started from, the hell that is now, the feelings and thoughts that i have that i may not remember very well in years to come, hell, i'm struggling to remember what happened two weeks ago.

What is this all about? I will keep it brief as i am pretty confident that as the journal entries evolve, you will learn about my life as i start to learn more about it too.

I was sexually abused as a child for a couple of years - i say a couple of years because it feels better than saying i had just turned nine and it stopped the day before my 12th Birthday. The abusers where initially unknown to me, apart from the main ring leader who was "just a face i had seen around". The primary abusers were two men and a woman around their middle twenties - there were over the years others, who stopped by for a while, or others who i was *on loan* to for a period of time.

I had a few hellish years in my middle to late teens and did recieve some excellent counseling in my early 20's. I say that because i'm quite sure i did as i wouldn't have stuck with it, but my memories are really vague and fuzzy of this period of time. I kind of limped through the next few years but started to deal with my shit and things were looking better. I had a job that i really valued, i got a motgage for my house - in general i was more settled than i had ever been - then one day it all came crashing down.

When i say crashing down i just mean total shut down, i have no idea what happened and as far as i can work out it had nothing to do with the abusive past. Now i say that it all honesty because it can be easy to blame every hiccup in life on being abused - that is not something i do because i can normally find the reason behind why i feel or think something. So my melt down happened fast, pretty much with in a day - by the end of day one, i had telephoned in sick to work for a week (told a few non truth's in the weeks to come about where my sick line was), i locked the front door and lay down and waited.

Now i'm not sure here what i thought was going to happen - as i said, i have very little memory of it, and the memory that i do have is so fuzzy its pretty hard to get timescales right. I basically lay on my sofa for a three weeks and didn't move, didn't eat, drink, smoke or wash. I cant remember really thinking anything either, apart from one glimpse of trying to sip water and not being able to swallow, i also know that towards the end i didn't even have to visit the toilet, there was nothing in me.

Somehow and i honestly can't remmeber how/what prompted me/why but i decided i was going to join the land of the living again - like you do! It basically took me another couple of weeks to return to eating small meals, feeling strong enough physically to move about etc. I lost 2 stone and i honestly would not recommend it. I guess looking back it was like a breakdown and maybe if i had seena medical professional i more than likely would have been sectioned - who knows.

Moving on, the next 8/9 years of my life were pretty good, and i say that with feeling. i finally felt like i had *healed* from the abuse stuff, it would always be a work in progree if yoy like but it no longer dominated by days or haunted my nights, it was just a part of me that i lived in harmony with. I put all my energy into work, doing 60+ hours a week and lovin every minute of it. I received a few promotions and i worked my butt off for every one of them. i enjoyed life, had many hobbies, loved sport, riding my bike, looove playing squash and found my absolute love for power kiting and more recently kite landboarding. I have a few really good friends and lots of friends. My career, well lets say its busy, i manage several different services all delivering a various services to predomintantly Adults with learning Disabilities. I have lots of other strings to my bow so to speak, i do some advocacy work, i volunteer on 3 different projects and mostly still do 60+ hours a week - thats not a moan, i am absolutley committed to it and do need to remind myself every now and again that i actually do need some time out. Reminder to self: Try to stick to 1 whole day off a week :)

Current situation. I've crashed and burned big time. I had what are called ( i can learn even though i've crashed - amazing eh) a few triggers, and i triggered big time. If i dig really deep here, i was maybe a little under the weather so to speak before these triggers, but nothing to be overly concerned about, i guess i had neglected a few things and pushing away some thoughts and feelings that i really ought to have been dealing with - but that's life.

So i triggered badly and fell deep into the abyss of the hell that is flashbacks, being constantly anxious, the knotted stomach, i cant concentrate for any lenght of time, thoughts of the abuse are in my head 24/7. i can't sleep, when i do i have nightmares. If you have never been to this place, you have to believe me when i say it is hell, it is the absolute pits, it takes over your life and you become it - if that makes sense?

Everything has suffered as a result, work, friends, family, social life, hobbies and of course, the housework!

So i'm three months into the dark dark place where i currently live - there have been a few days here or there that have been brighter but then i seem to slip back even further until i reached the point i did a couple of days ago. i don't want to live life like this anymore and i have other options available to me, i have never actually been at this point before in my life - i may have come near it years ago but it was so different this time - it was actually a comfort knowing i had the options and saying thanks, but no thanks.

I don't really need to go into any details here, it wasn't a pretty sight, my meltdown. About twenty fours of sheer hell to be precise and a decision to be made. I didn't actually make the conscious decision myself in a sense of, you know kiddo give it another try - it wasn't like that, BUT something did happen, and i think maybe i had to get to the point of being so absolute rock bottom for me to realize something i had denied for all these years, and i think what has predominately hindered my healing tothe point of i get so far and then i drop back again. I admitted to myself that the abuse actually hurt me, and the abusers, they knew that their acts hurt me, and i realised that for near on thrity years i had denied myself that feeling and that acknowledgement. You have to trust me on this one, that is a fucking biggie. I also think that not acknowledging the pain at the time of the abuse also saved me and it was this *shut down* of emotions that actually allowed me to survive the abuse. This one is going to need a lot of working on, it slike undoing thrity years of something and kind of allowing yourself to feel it now.

There has been one positive thing come out of all this ugly horrible soul destroying shit - and it amazes me sometimes how life throws you a little lifeline. Going back about four weeks in one of my darkest moments, i found a website - i don't know how i came across it, i dont know what i was thinking when i registered on the site, and i must have been losing my sanity to post a topic saying i was struggling with a sexual abuse issue (of course, not knowing me you wouldn't know that it's not something i do!). So i sends this post saying i was having a bit of a shit time and talked a bit about what had triggered me - and i got a response from a person who not just listened, she understood, she *got* where i was coming from, she heard what i was saying, she educated me, challenged me and my thoughts, she put similar shoes on different feet (sorry, personal joke there but it made me think :) ) and the most scary unheard of thing happened, i learnt to trust her, in such a small space of time. Years and years of not trusting anyone to hold my shit and she crashes all the walls down with in days. Now there are still days - most days actually when i don't think its fair for this person to hold my shit, but you know, she does and she tells me she's ok with that.

Moving on, so its been two days since i made my decision to live, i am raw, scared and vulnerable - but at least it means i am feeling something. I have taken a massive step of contacting a local rape crisis centre - this is not just massive in terms of OMG i've actually got to talk about stuff now and really got to say how i feel and be vulnerable in front of someone, but also because i'm so stubborn with i can do this by myself and i dont need anyone else' help thankyou very much!

This first post is way longer than i intended it to be, as our most my mails the person i mentioned earlier, it just kind of happens and i need to get better with saying what i need to say in fewer words!

So, my intention, but no promises, is to keep the journal updated kind of weekly after my counseling sessions, there may of course be other entries as and when needed. I write this as though other people are reading it and maybe no one will ever come across it and read it, will be scary as hell if anyone ever did.

So back to the first paragraph, goal of the day = achieved, my bed awaits me.