***TRIGGER WARNING***
Recently I came home from a talk at the local college and it went well…but I was thinking…all the talking I did, the questions people asked, the things I shared…does anyone ever know the full extent of what it was like, can they ever know…can they know how it was to lay in bed night after night listening out for the creaky floorboard on the landing…the one just before the bedroom door…the one which told me he was about to open the door. Can they know how it was afterwards…I mean after he has walked away and you are left half clothed and physically in pain…and your thoughts are scattered all over the place and you wonder how your going to re-gather yourself…but somehow I always did. For all the words I put on a page, all that I share about how it was for me…can people truly know the cost of this epidemic that is child sexual abuse? I feel like no matter how many ways I say it and how many times I share it, I can never convey the full horror of living it…do I even want to? I think that I do want to…I need people to know…know what it does to a young life…what it takes away…what it smashes to bits…what it leaves behind for you to wrestle with for years on end. Recently my mother was reading an article in the local paper about a football coach who had been caught after abusing kids for over 30 years…and she said to me…all those lives he has ruined. Nothing about me…about my life that her son almost ruined…how is that? I have never admitted this before but just every now and then, and really quite fleetingly I think to myself only if I die will they know how much this has cost me…maybe if I died they would have to see what the sexual abuse did to me. See the legacy of living with it for half of your childhood and then living after it for the rest of your life. But of course I know that dying is in no way shape or form the answer to this. I will keep on talking…keep on writing and sharing…trying to convey the true cost of this epidemic…in the hopes that some will be spared from this legacy.

Recently a very common thread has been occurring in what people are wanting to ask…will –it- get better…will I get better…can –this- get any better for me. It seems so many of us are looking for HOPE right now. & HOPE is something that I can give to people…why…because I found it for myself first of all. In finding it for my self at the end of a very dark and painful road when I thought I was through with life completely gradually little by little my life improved…my situation eased…my emotions were climbing upwards after so long at rock bottom believing life could never be good for me. It is a gradual process and how I wish I could speed the process up for all of us! But it really is about taking things day by day, sometimes just living in the moment. I remember on my worst days I broke the day down into minutes or hours. I found if I thought about managing the whole day I felt totally overwhelmed and in a panic…but if I planned my next 30 minutes suddenly that felt achievable. Doing the day…I spent so many months ‘doing the day’ where I felt like I was existing but not living and yet gradually over time with lots of help and support I began to feel better. Without even knowing when it happened hope crept into my mind, like someone drawing the curtains just a fraction and letting a beam of sunlight into my everlasting night in my soul. Our situation can look like the ground under our feet…cold, hard, barren… and yet little by little under the surface a new shoot is working its way to the top…and one day it becomes visible to you and you can nurture it and watch it bloom…that is when you know there is HOPE.

I saw a poster today, it was on a main high street and it said in black and white lettering ‘I can make you happy’ …the poster was advertising a famous hypnotist…I looked at it for a few minutes and thought…wow if only that were true! If we could all be made happy by some hypnosis…imagine the sea of smiling faces! But then reality kicks in and I thought…what rubbish (sorry if you are a fan!) But I don’t believe a few hours with that guy or someone else is some kind of ‘magic cure’. I believe happiness/well being comes from deep inside ourselves, I don’t think its something that can be given to you. Of course people, events, successes etc all these things make us feel happy. But that deeper feeling comes from knowing who we are, knowing we are valuable and have worth, knowing that we are a valid person without having to ‘be’ or ‘do’ to have peoples validation. The same applies I think to people who have lost their desire for life…I believe it is something that cannot be given to you by someone else, however well meaning and well intentioned they are. However much they try…because you have to decide to want to live…you have to be the one to make the choice to survive…to press on even though life has you crawling on bleeding knees sometimes…it is your decision alone whether you stop and say no more or you press on. I can encourage you, support you, help you, shout at you even (unlikely though!) but the decision ultimately is yours. Don’t allow your happiness to be placed in the hands of a hypnotist, a drug, a wine glass, a wrong relationship…’You can make you happy’ …you can –choose- to make you happy because I do believe it is a choice…It took me a long time to decide that I wanted to keep going…but it was worth it…am I happy?…I am a lot happier than I was a few years back…no quick fix…a long hard dark difficult road…but I made a choice…what is yours?

I have had a Mary J Blige song in my head for days now or rather a couple of lines…’No more pain…No more game (no more games messing with my mind)…No drama (no more drama in my life, no ones gonna make me hurt again, no more)’ My childhood was littered with drama, one family crisis to another. I grew up with it, I was used to it and even though I didn’t like it…it was familiar and therefore ‘normal’ to me. So it got to a point where when life was quiet, that didn’t feel right. Sounds crazy I know but I think actually many people are like this. Life feels too quiet, too empty, you feel anxious because you feel like something is missing…your not used to things being just ‘normal’ on an even playing field…not perfect and not terrible. But over time I grew tired of the drama…exhausted with it even…and I began to yearn for that quiet which had once felt so unfamiliar. Far from thriving on it, I try to steer away from it. Life is full of very real challenges without creating any drama just for the sake of it. My life is as much as possible ‘quiet’ these days and that is exactly how I like it…so I guess I am officially a retired drama queen! Mary J Blige has it spot on!

As I write that title the words of the famous Beatles song comes to mind! Anyway I am pulling up my soap box and climbing up onto it to have a little bit of a rant today! So deep breath and here goes!…I have had more than a few people recently telling me how tough they are finding things at the moment…and my first question is often “what help and support do you have”…and so many people tell me they either have none or they have some but it is ineffective or they are not doing what they need to be doing etc etc. & it frustrates me that we have help but we don’t have help! We all at times need help in our lives. I must admit I am one of those people that doesn’t like asking for help and I know a lot of people like that. BUT when you reach a clinical depression or a crisis of another kind you need and deserve help and support. Nothing wrong or bad or weak in needing some assistance, just means you are human! So I want to say to you if your support is not doing what it should be doing…if your doctor should have seen you a month ago and hasn’t…if someone was meant to get back to you and they didn’t…if your waiting for an appointment to be made and have been a long time…CHASE it up…these people are being paid to help you within the N.H.S. You need to look after you first of all and that may mean saying “hey what about my appointment” or “when are we having my review”…please don’t suffer in silence dear friends…pick up the phone and get the help you need and deserve.

I have been telling teens who are sad/frustrated/disillusioned with their lives how much life can change…how much better it can be in the future…how much worth they have as a person and how they deserve so much more than the hand life has been dealing them thus far. & whilst I wholeheartedly believe in what I am saying, as I say it to them I can remember it being said to me and in my head I used to think…Yeah…right! As in…yeah right you haven’t got a clue how bad this is, just how rubbish I am feeling. I can remember at times feeling quite angry with their helpful optimism of what was to me my hopeless and helpless life! What is it that they knew which I clearly could not see? What they knew was probably the same as what I now know…that given time things can change…they can change more than you ever would have dared to dream possible. The challenge remains…how can we make people who are still waiting for the tide to turn see that it will be worth pressing on for? Only time and big life changes brought me the desire to want to live my life. I find I come back to wishing I could impart in someone else what I have learnt in my own wilderness…so that they don’t have to spend so long in their own. How sad that we have young people whose lives are just beginning, feeling like their lives are finished…I will continue to tell them that their life can be so much better & that they deserve so much more because now I have lived it for myself I know that…YES I AM RIGHT!

Being ruled by your head… Sometimes, often time’s life is about being ruled by your head and not your heart. Life is not a picnic, life is like a battle ground many times over, we need to arm ourselves with the tools and skills to overcome the battles which we find ourselves in the middle of. Sometimes we have to do what we know to be the right, best, safest, most healing thing even though its often the last thing we -feel- like doing…choosing to keep our therapy appointment…choosing to stay away from people who are unhealthy for us…choosing to seek help rather than seek instant relief and so forth. No it is not easy…but in the longer term it will yield you a happier, enriched life than settling for the easy options where you choose to just do what you want to do at that moment in time. Sometimes we have to put others first and sometimes we have to put ourselves first. I would urge you to do not what is easy…but to do what is right not just for you but for those you love and care about too. Remember you are not a solo life…you mean something to many other people, even if you don’t realise or always feel that you do…your decisions and choices don’t only affect you, they affect those who love you. Arm yourself with the tools of battle and choose to overcome, its not easy by any means but long term it’s the right thing to do.