(a letter to a friend)

I would like to share with you my path towards healing and hopefully give you an insight to the spirit of ‘me’ that has aided my journey. It’s not an easy thing to write and it will not be an easy thing for you to read. In understanding my words I hope that you will better understand the real me, my journey, and why the journey means so much to me. The journey is just as important as the goal; the journey is the struggle towards a normal life; the journey is a Path of Discovery.

It’s hard to know where to begin. There is so much information, so much life that I have lived, or not as the case may be. There is a paragraph by Charles Swindoll called Attitude, and a text called Mastery by Stewart Emery that are both so very powerful and pertinent messages and have such deep meaning for me, more so if you have been where I have been and seen what I have seen. In my journey towards becoming whole again I have often pondered the meaning of both texts. Now that I am on the other side of the curve I better understand them. It is easy to read the words and know the meaning. It is not so easy to truly understand and feel the meaning, let alone live by it. Any journey such as mine reminds you of that fact.

In the forty something years leading me to ‘here’ and ‘now’, I have been so many people and seen so many places (yes, I meant to say it that way), and I have been in awe of life itself so many times, but never as much or as such as I am right now, right here in this moment that I am sharing with you. It is time to let loose the past and in doing so, embrace the future. It’s an incredible journey to say the least, and it has left its mark.

In late 2004 I began a journey of discovery. My blanketed past had so many jaded edges that I could not understand, memories that didn’t belong let alone make sense, and flashbacks to events I didn’t even know occurred. I knew that my childhood was hard and I knew that it was not a loving time for me, but I had no real concept of what really went on, just many fast and loud memories that would haunt me in my sleep and shadow my life. Not knowing what they were, they remained in the darkened corners of my mind where they ate at my spirit every hour of every day. To understand them I had to wake up to something I had been denying. To wake up I had to acknowledge my past. To acknowledge my past I had to remember, and I did not want to remember.

As I grew weaker through illness more memories came to the surface. These were disturbing images and emotions that I couldn’t quite grasp. The more I remembered, the harder I pushed my body when training, and the sicker I got. Five hours of surgery served to remind me how frail the human body really is. I was also diagnosed with narcolepsy during this time and the only saving grace of that was the ability to sleep within three minutes of lying down. At least that would mask the trail of memories and cosset me from the sharp edges of my past by giving me some rest.

It was a time of reflection, a time of discovery indeed, but in that discovery laid the reasons for my life mistakes; answers to questions I longed to ask and understand, and memories of events that no one should ever see. This was the truth of where I came from. It was killing me, literally and metaphorically.

I knew the past held something I did not want to remember. I knew that something was hiding in my subconscious and had to come out. I consciously chose to face the past head on. I chose to pull the memories to the front of my mind where I could deal with them. I knew that it would be a trying time and I knew that it would hurt me but I also knew that my survival was dependant on truth, honesty and integrity. I could only give myself truth if I was true to myself and faced the ghosts of my past; faced the true reality that was buried in my past. My very limited memory of childhood afforded me no real clues. That, in itself was a clue.

I couldn’t look in the mirror and say ‘I know you, I understand you and I love you’ to myself. I was living in a world that I had subconsciously created to cushion myself from my reality. As I grew up I had no concept of what was supposed to be real so I did something to help myself. I watched those around me and copied the parts of them that I liked. I modeled successful people. I built my life around what I saw around me and I adapted, added, took away and altered what I saw to adapt myself to my current surroundings. I joined the military at age sixteen and served twelve years for Queen and country. I buried myself in my duty to defend my country. I had purpose and was growing and learning, always knowing that my superiors controlled my life. That was the key, not controlling my own life. Was that a subconscious decision I wonder? I built the person I wanted to be from what I saw and experienced but I knew, still, that I wasn’t whole.

For the longest time the coping mechanism I had forged worked in my favor. For the longest time I thought I was happy and perhaps, in a way, I was; but in reality I was hiding from the one thing that should have been important, and that was the real ‘me’. I could feel the past tugging at me at every corner and the weakness was gnawing away at my mind, my body and my spirit. The only way forward was to go back but it had to be the right time, the right place and with the right people.

I told my closest friends of my decision and of my reasoning. I asked them if they understood because I have tried to face this in the past but I could not do this alone. In the past those around me chose to ignore and rebuff me through their own ignorance, their own fear and their own sense of disgust which was aimed at me even though they knew it wasn’t my fault. Therein lies a truth, it wasn’t my fault. Their fear of my past was aimed at me. In reality I should have known that my true friends would stand by me. They are still standing by me through all the memories that I have had to face since deciding to confront this. This being the faceless monster that has tried to kill me, tried to deface me and had taken away my capacity to love and be loved, and had denied me my self esteem. My spirit was dying and it had to stop.

Through countless sessions with a counselor I furrowed into the memories. Each time I saw a little more and my heart died a little. I knew it would get worse before it got better but I wasn’t ready for the sheer gravity of events and emotions that would follow. Each time I remembered I withdraw from my reality in anger, shock and disgust. Each morsel offered me an insight into why I was the way I was and why I reacted the way I did, and then that same reality stabbed me in the back when I wasn’t looking and tried to steal another part of me away. Each memory was an answer to a question on human nature and a lesson in my capacity to evolve, and each memory gnawed at my reasons for living. Through all this my body weakened and my demeanor became stooped and low. My friends still loved me and tried to help, but I withdrew from that reality and lived a daily existence. All this time no-one really knew the depth of my pain, no-one knew the truth, but those close to me tried to support me. I trained harder still to focus myself somewhere constructive. I knew if I could master my situation I could evolve, learn and move on. I knew that to challenge the past I had to master the present. That would afford me the strength to carry on. I just didn’t know how.

Early 2005 I chose to tell my story to some close friends. I chose to not hide the details from them and I chose to ask for their help in my journey. I asked them all to not share any information, knowing that if this leaked out it would do irreparable damage to my foundation, to my being, to my soul, the very part of me that I was trying to regain; or that was how I perceived it. I risked losing them in my insular knowledge of how others had rejected me from not understanding my past, but I knew it had to be done. None of them flinched or judged me. They are still my pillars of support, my true family and they have stood by me through thick and thin. Through all that has happened I have felt a bond that will never be broken.

Now I choose to open my heart to you and let you see the real me. I choose to share with you the reality of my life, past and present. This I do with my head held high. This I do not only for you, but for me. There is no shame, it wasn’t my fault.

Here I am: my father was a leader in the community and someone that demanded and got respect. My mother was a psychologist in a hostel for wayward teenage children. My father sexually abused me for ten long, empty years, my earliest memory being at age three and last at age thirteen. That was when I finally fought back. Once, he threw me in the deep end of a swimming pool at age five and walked away … I couldn’t swim. The look on his face as he walked away burned into my memory and became my nightmare. He knew what he had done. Had a kind soul not pushed me to the side I believe I would have drowned. He knew that, I saw it in his eyes. If I made any noise during his sexual advances I was beaten for betraying him. My mother would attack me in a drunken rage, sometimes for what appeared to be no apparent reason but, as I found out later in life, she attacked me because she knew what he was doing and somehow blamed me for it. There was too much in this for it to be real I was told, and that is what I told myself. I had a vague perception that I must have been very naughty to be punished this way, and that God must not have loved me to let this happen.

The general perception around me was that there was no way that these wonderful parents would ever be capable of such atrocities. I was called a liar by my family and rebuked by anyone and everyone that I tried to tell. I didn’t live, I didn’t even exist, I just ‘was’. I didn’t cry nor love. I didn’t speak much at all. I was painfully shy, very, very sad and very scared. I had a dream world that I had created to focus myself on. No one else mattered there. I had the place [in my mind] that I went when my father wanted to use me and I went there often to hide. To cope I had to master leaving my body behind. I had to take my mind to a place where it didn’t connect to the real world, that way I felt no physical pain. That way I was safe from him. He could defile my body but he would never get my mind. I created my reality as I went along and believe I survived because of it. I would wonder in awe at the size of the universe and immerse myself in the dream world of science. I saw myself from a distance. My body was on the bed but my mind was in a box, floating in space, free from him and free from pain. I still using similar coping mechanisms today, but only to release myself from stress.

My father had made me feel like it was my fault and that I deserved what he did to me. He had told me that he would love me if I let him have his way so I let him, time and time again, because all I wanted was for him to love me. There were days when I begged God to take me away and make me whole because surely he wouldn’t want me to stay there and suffer. If he took me to heaven someone would love me and I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. I didn’t realize the impact of my thoughts. I couldn’t fathom the gravity of where I was. I was too young.

The memories surfaced one by one over an eighteen month period. More and more information came forward and from that, more and more pain and anguish in my heart for that little boy. I hated myself for what had happened even though I knew it wasn’t my fault. I felt used and dirty, even in the memory. There have been times when I wished that I could go to sleep and not wake up because in that sleep there would be calm; the noise, the pain and the memories would stop and I would be at peace. It would be an eternal peace. No, it wasn’t suicide or a cry for help. It was a wanton desire to be at peace, misguided by too many memories that occurred too often, and was offset knowing that the world around me, as I saw it, was based on someone I didn’t really know [me]; and that the world around me watched as I suffered at the hands of my parents and did nothing. Not one person stepped forward to rescue that little boy. He was utterly alone and that thought hurt me so much.

I fought through memories that no one should ever see, in so much graphic detail that I almost felt it again but this time the person being defiled was the adult ‘me’. With the help of my friends, and a therapist that refused to let me give up, I faced the past, I lived it again. Every Thursday morning I would enter a room with a therapist and I would fight for my life. I would force myself to recount the horror and then rebuild myself after it. My therapist would walk me through the things I saw and felt and then gently bring me back into the real world. She would never let me face them alone. She never once judged me.

The honest truth is that I nearly didn’t make it. The gravity of the past was so heavy that I wanted to give up. I couldn’t deal with the emotional turmoil that I felt and I couldn’t hide from any of it. I was at an impasse that had no escape and despite the support I had I could see no end to it. The fibers of my life were being torn apart. Someone literally turned the light at the end of the tunnel off. Suddenly that metaphor meant much more than it ever had. My body was failing and my mind was full of self pity. I had cursed myself by trying to face something that was bigger than me, or so I thought.

Through all this turmoil I had to maintain my career, and kept training and teaching martial arts. My sanity was teaching. My mood would break the minute I entered the floor and I was free, confident, happy, and I felt wanted, even respected. I managed my career as a separate entity to the person suffering the past. That way I could detach and maintain, but it was getting very difficult to stop the memories from intruding to both work and training.
I had to rebuild myself in spite of the memories. Everything that I felt was so raw that I suddenly realized that those were the real emotions, and that I had lied to myself about how I felt up until that point. I was new, like a child in an adult’s body. I was a child with an inner adult. I was starting the growing up process again because all that I was up until that point was built around a lie, and was built by a child to protect himself from the pain that was his life. It was finally time to grow up.

My spirit was tested to the end of its limits through all of the memories. I had an inner strength that I didn’t know existed, stronger than I thought possible that grew stronger every day. My friends have stood by me while I fought. My life has begun again. I am learning to love and be loved and I grow each and every day, and evolve each and every moment that I live. I always knew life was special, I just never thought I would experience it. Even as a child I could see it, I could smell it and touch it and taste it, but I knew that I could not have it. Life makes no sense when you don’t have the tools to work through it, tools that are taught with love and nurturing as a child grows up and touches the reality of life.

I have grown beyond the past now. I see it for what it was. I accept it as a part of me and I am stronger in spite of it. Within me the fire burns brighter and stronger than I have ever felt. I forgave myself for the sins of the past, and in doing so released all those years of burden from my shoulders. I have won that battle. I still cannot forgive him. I’m not sure I ever will. I have been told that to forgive is to finally let go – maybe I am just not ready for that finality yet.

In the vain of mastering the present, I give you these words and in giving you these words I bear my soul to you. It is with great respect that I offer you my journey towards personal mastery. I am who I am in spite of my past, not because of it. I learned that the hard way, but learned it none the less. My journey is just beginning and my life is anew. My health returns slowly and my strength builds as my mind matures beyond the past. I am ready; I am willing; I am free.

It’s all about me. In this post it is ‘I’.

I am not old. I am 45 years old at the time of writing, an executive in a fast paced, multi-faceted, high tech company. My career is trying, extremely stressful but is successful and I have a great salary, a beautiful house and a fast car – ironic isn’t it? More importantly now, I have a caring, loving and committed partner who accepts me for all that I am, and all that I am not. That, in itself, is priceless. That makes it all worthwhile. I know I can love, and I know I can be loved. That is huge!

I write music. I use music as a lever to express what I am feeling. I can lose myself in the music and music can affect me; my emotions; my being. I am self taught; I am passionate in it; it is a reflection of me –plus it’s fun of course.

I am a black belt. The discipline of martial arts helps me to control aggression and release it if need be, not necessarily using violence or force. Teaching martial arts allows me to express myself in a forum of control, and I teach with passion.

I’m a geek! I love computers and tech toys. I am the ultimate child when it comes to technology, never growing up, never wanting to grow up. With computers I can write music, I can design graphics, web sites and can express myself in so many ways. It is a form of freedom that is in my control and I can lose myself in it.

I’m narcoleptic. I was diagnosed only a couple of years ago. Narcolepsy is a condition and not a disease. I wonder sometimes if the narcolepsy developed as a mechanism to protect me from the horrors of my past, but there are no facts to support that. During the process of healing, learning and change it served me well. It takes an average of three minutes for me to fall asleep and I tend to stay asleep. There are other symptoms, some of which can be very trying, but so is life.

I’m hyper-vigilant. Day to day my brain is active all the time. I am constantly thinking, analyzing and multi tasking; running scenarios and occasionally daydreaming. It is hard for me to relax; it is hard for me to switch off but I am learning. It has been said that I hear and see more than most. I see it that I am more aware of my surroundings and it served to keep me alive after I left home. Perhaps that is also a part of creativity, who knows.

The journey. My view is that the journey never ends. Once beyond the hold of the past it becomes a process of learning and growing. It can still be painful; emotions seem new and raw, but it is exciting to be so alive without the encumbrances of the past weighing you down and trying to draw you in. The past will still be there and it will still affect me, but now I know what it is and I am well prepared to deal with it.

There’s a child in me. I still believe I look through the eyes of a child. Sometimes my partner tells me that I have a childish quality, good or bad, in an action or reaction. He sees it as an endearing quality, being able to embrace the child that we all hold inside. I believe that we are in too much of a rush to grow up and be ‘adult’, and that the child in us has to have a voice. Denying all parts of who we are can stop us reaching our full potential in life I think.

This is me – so much more than I was!