life-lessons-i-learned

[life-lessons-i-learned]

7 Fucking Years

Did that time mean nothing? I gave you fucking life, put myself through all sorts of hell because I loved you so much!

You are the first person in the entirety of my life I trusted wholly, You know that not even my family got that, No one but you.

You betrayed it.

When we first met you told me I had nothing to worry about, That I would be the centre of your earth and she was just your best friend. How fucking stupid do I feel?

Now I have to pick up the pieces silently suffering for the sake of our daughter because she will not have a mother who passes her emotional pain on and she will not have a mother who slanders her father to her. She deserves the world and you fucking destroyed that world.

So now you left me with the decision of staying and making sure that she believes everything is stable and that her parents truly love each other with every fibre or leaving and putting her in the position where she comes from a broken home, A two Christmas and two birthday household. She doesn’t deserve that.

So I stay but you just ruined my life, You destroyed my chances of finding someone who really truly and wholly worshipped the ground my feet walk on. You knew I had come from a broken past and I laid my cards bare for the first time to anyone that I couldn’t afford to get hurt and yet you did it anyway, You ruined my last ever chance of trusting someone because you are the one that finally shattered my already fragile heart.

But I won’t break on the outside for her, My whole world deserves better and hope to god she never finds out what a fucking traitor her dad is because she doesn’t deserve to have her heart broken like you did to me.

I am here for her. She deserves everything.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

Self Destruction

Years have passed and I am still truly the worst person, people talk about self destructive behaviour but not on the scale mine was. Im a tale you wish you never heard of because of the darkness I brought to myself. Nobody could figure it out or stop it so they gave up on me and left me, Years later I have so many unanswered questions about my behaviour or how nobody could stop me.

I slept with guys I deemed as dangerous, big muscly men who threw me around and creeps whose bedroom I thought I wouldn’t leave. I let myself be raped and I have seen kinks so dark and disturbed the images are ingrained in my brain popping up on a daily basis.

I covered myself in cuts and cigarette burns and I starved my body of the nutrients it needed and the worst part is I never felt so attractive.

I smoked and took the drugs I knew could kill me in an instant.

I got myself hospitalised four times and lost years of my life still intent on breaking myself.

I became the most manipulative evil bitch and didn’t care who thought what about me as long as I did exactly what I wanted.

Let me be a cautionary tale that years later that the scars you ingrained on yourself as part of a reaction to your trauma may just be part of the reason you are traumatised a decade later.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

The worst day of my life…

People often think that having been through so much trauma the worst day of my life must of been when I was first raped or first being attacked, when I got sectioned or my mental health being so bad they sent me over a 100 miles away from home. It wasn’t if you ask me what the worst day of my life was it was when my abuse and sexual exploitation came to light.

I’d been in a open mental health facility for 3 months voluntarily and every three months you would have a review of your care where your parents and all the professionals dealing with you would sit in a room with you and discuss what was going well and what needed more therapy or any medication changes; they also discussed discharge dates and I was doing everything in my power to seem stable, they was aware I was still self harming and knew that I was hiding sharps everywhere possible to the point they couldn’t really control it.

When my review day came I dressed up smart and was getting antsy as everything seemed to be running behind but I thought nothing of it. When they was finally ready a nurse came to let me through the locked doors to this meeting.

I walked into the room filled with all these professional stern looking faces but there was only one face I knew, my psychologist. I was confused as they introduced themselves as police investigators. Although in this room with heating, cozy sofas and warm drinks the air was cold, the tension was palpable and even 13yo me knew something wasn’t right.

Then the words came tumbling out the police officers mouth…we for months have been scanning through scores of text messages on your old mobile phone we took when you went missing off the streets, we know you’ve been sexually exploited, we know you’ve been raped and we know everything that’s been happening.

It was like being stabbed right through the chest, it was as if the biggest part of me had been revealed naked for the world to see. I was sobbing and I felt as if I couldn’t breath, every sense was in overdrive as if I could of pulled all the flesh off my own body just to feel more comfortable.

I screamed to be taken back to my bedroom, I screamed until my voice was coarse and felt like I might pass out. When someone finally listened and let me back through them heavy locked doors, I sprinted, I sprinted back down the corridor to my room when I curled in fetal position, rocking on the floor screaming and sobbing.

The only way I felt I could realease some of this pain and anger was to self harm, I pulled my razor blades out and starting manically hack at my arms, legs and stomach. A support worker came in and tried to talk to me and get me to stop but I couldn’t hear anything over my feelings screaming inside me. I was bleeding everywhere, my clothes were ripped when I heard the alarm, I could hear footsteps pounding down the corridor.

They all launched on me 8 people it took to restrain my body and I gripped onto this razor blade with a clenched fist I could feel the blade cutting into my hand as they tried to wrestle it out. Once they had the blade they slowly filtered out the room aware that I had no intention of hurting them…only myself.

I didn’t move from the spot they restrained me in I slowly curled up covered in blood and ripped clothes on the rough carpet thinking there was no way I could cry or scream anymore. I didn’t move from that spot until 5 hours later.

At this point they didn’t feel safe to leave me on my own so I was on permanent observations, a person watching and following me round 24/7. When I finally moved from that spot on the carpet I just wanted a cigarette, they walked me through to the hospital garden and the people on the ward looked shocked; these were people I’d been living with for three months who had only seen me maybe 7hours earlier looking smartly dressed and in a somewhat good mood, now seeing me covered in dried blood, my hair matted, makeup all over my face and all my clothes ripped.

When I got outside they only let me into the garden with the person doing my observations, it seemed appt that the rain was pouring down. The person observing me taking shelter under the awning. where as I stepped onto the concrete patio stones and sat down, lit my cigarette and let the rain wash over me, my cuts stung and I was freezing cold but it was as if I had lost every feeling in my body, my body purely in shock from the events of the day.

The staff talked to me softly and they offered me medications but it all just seemed to numb me further. After the fresh air I let them clean my cuts and bandage me up. I thought it was over I thought I’d had enough news for the day but then the nursing team swapped over and the day kept getting worse and worse.

There was always these two support workers (J & D I’ll call them for the purpose of this) that I disliked because they seemed to always offer the toughest approach that I hated. When they came onto the night shift they had obviously been told everything that had transpired and came and found me in the relaxation room laid out, they offered to take over my observations because they wanted to chat. They explained that they knew what had happened and came and sat down very close to me to discuss what I had missed once I had left the meeting room.

The police needed my mobile phone as evidence to track numbers and trace some of these people that had groomed me. They needed my permission to take it off me. They also explained that the police wanted to do video interviews with me where I give evidence on my abusers. It was like receiving a whole other soul crushing blow, these were men that beat me and raped me but had worn me down so much that I loved them, I didn’t want to get them in trouble, they were still texting me and harassing me as J&D talked to me.

These women who I’d once strongly disliked were now softly talking to me and trying to tell me what I should of already known, these men didn’t love me, they were using my underage body for their own financial gain. J&D were treating me as if their own child trying to encourage me to eat and drink, hand feeding as if a small toddler.

After much pressure from them I gave up my phone, regretting it from the minute I’d handed it across to them. I agreed to give the interviews to the police and between the two of them they sat with me all night offering comfort when I finally fell asleep and woke up from my nightmares.

Im not sure if the they ruined my life when persuading me to agree to those interviews; as giving evidence for only 1 man out of hundreds to be locked up crushed me even further and spiralled my mental health way further than it already was. But they looked after me and did their best.

But still to this day it was the most traumatic and soul crushing day I’ve ever had of my life and that was now 10 years ago and I still think about it to this day.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I Was Happy For The First Time.

I was happy. I finally started to love the fact I’d bought a house and that I was doing a job that changed peoples lives. We wanted a baby and we was trying, everything seemed to be coming together.

I knew the pandemic was affecting businesses but because I was healthcare I thought I was safe, I thought we would sail through considering we had worked in PPE and burnt ourselves out. Only to be told all the help I had given would be rewarded with redundancy.

And so the perfect life crumbles...

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I always imagined the darkness inside of me was the worst thing that could happen to me and the saddest I could ever feel.

I moved on and got on with life and forgot about that black hole inside my soul and missing piece I felt inside me. The first time I really realised I was depressed it was already there, there was no build up or big event it was just there.

What I learnt is that the second time is the worst because you can feel it coming, you feel the sadness crashing in and feel yourself detaching. You find yourself in the worst of situations holding back tears and with a perpetual lump in your throat as you swallow.

I feel myself declining and I don’t know how to deal with the detachment I feel from my everyday life that I had somewhat settled in.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

He messaged me again and came into my work last week and I could taste his breath and smell his cologne. Oh what is it that leads me back to you. You was my abuser...the prison sentence confirms it. But something about you drags me back like the naive 13yo who first loved you.

How do you still have that power over me?

Am I destined to abandon my life for my abuser?

[life-lessons-i-learned]

The lockdown blues are getting to me.

I’ve tried keeping myself busy

I’ve tried following a routine

I’ve tried to keep your company which I normally adore.

I’ve tried doing things I normally love.

But it’s so lonely...

Keeping myself busy is hard when I feel so blue,

Following a routine is impossible when you are so mentally exhausted.

The cracks are starting to show being with you 24/7 and the intimacy has dissolved.

The things I love are now things I hate

I’m so lonely, you are only a room away yet we feel a million miles apart. I want you to scoop me up and cuddle me, I want you to ravage my body and fulfill my sexual needs but most of all I want you to ask if I am ok. I want our usual love. I don’t want us to break.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I’m lost

I’m a fraud

I can’t keep pretending

Today we completed on our new house and I’m terrified...I’d follow you anywhere my love for you are the only thing that completes me but my god I’m scared and I’m lying to myself.

We will be fourty minutes out the city we built everything in but it’s not leaving that city that terrifies me. It’s that my only hope that we would be building our home 6000 miles away in my real home is slipping away from me.

I want everything, I want you, I want to be where I really belong. But I don’t think I can ever have both. Am I just being greedy? Does anyone ever feel this way? Am I just stupid?

You’re so excited

I’m not

This is your dream

It’s half of mine

I’m scared and the cracks in my fear are starting to show.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

Are we really going to pretend we care about mental health when the soulless corporations have us running around like robots and not allowing us to have a single problem

Life-lessons-I-learned

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I genuinely think the stress may kill me

This week has been one of the worst of my life and it’s on Tuesday, I genuinely am suffering from the stress and it’s affecting my physical health. My eye has started twitching, my eczema has flared up all over my body, I have chest pains, I feel sick and I feel like my anger may just snap at any minute.

I am so tired; the stress is messing with me big time and I don’t know how I’ll react one minute to the next.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

Did you ever wonder what happened when I stopped turning up?

Did you wonder whether the worst had happened?

Did you ask yourself “did I do enough?”

Did you smile relieved that you didn’t have to cope with my issues that drained you every time we met?

Did you panic and cry thinking how alone I would be?

Did you wonder if you would see me in the newspaper in months having had the worst happen?

Do you remember me?

Do you look me up on social media and see through the happy masquerade?

Do you think of me in a fleeting moment throughout the day?

Do you wish you’d said something differently the last time I cried to you?

Do you wish to see me again?

I would do anything to see you again.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I sat at my desk today and felt my world crumple. I could of sobbed in the middle of a busy business and it took all I had to dry my eyes and hide the lump in my throat.

Working shouldn’t destroy me like this

Life-lessons-i-learned

[life-lessons-i-learned]

Part of my job is being sexually harassed because everyone is too scared to speak up or take a stand against it. That old man that slapped my ass as I finished going through his medical notes... you just said he was old and he means no harm. The guy who you knew would make you a lot of money because he has his own company keeps telling me how sexy I am and how he could imagine what my full lips could do. You ignore that because he has money and status and with his prescription alone you could be $1000 up that day. What you don’t realise that as a woman when I say I don’t want to see a patient it’s not because I’m trying to get out of work it’s because I explain to you time and time again that I don’t feel comfortable and as a woman you should empower that ethic but you don’t because you believe that the imagination of what those lips and bum could do, makes you more profit and brings in return patients.

I care for people so much and meet hundreds of wonderful patients everyday but I can’t survive in a business where my body is the thing that sells and not changing that persons life and health.

Life-lessons-i-learned

[life-lessons-i-learned]

And simply the worst feeling was watching you lose your zest for me, I watched the fire in your belly for me extinguish and the little things you used to love about me irritate you.

Simply the worst feeling was knowing you was slowly falling out of love with me.

Life-lessons-i-learned

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I sit on this soulless corporation train, we are all going to our 9-5 prison but we all look the same. I see you young man with sunken eyes who’s fallen asleep because you drank your pain away last night and I see you wide eyed pretty lady you snorted a line of something just to get up this morning and you sat there in 4b I see your tired and puffy eyes even if you have placed all the glittery makeup in the world on I know you spent the night sobbing your heart out. I know because I’ve been all of you sat on this train, I’ve broken my heart countless times for a life that the outside world thinks is perfect.

Life-lessons-i-learned

[life-lessons-i-learned]

I’d do anything to go home

“Home” doesn’t feel like home, it never has. I found my home two years ago in a quiet town where everything was simpler, whilst I spent my time there my problems dissolved because I got to start again. Everyone welcomed me with open arms even though I was different and from a different culture and for the first time in my life my heart warmed, I didn’t feel as if the world was collapsing at my feet and I wasn’t walking around a concrete jungle where everybody is hurting but nobody mentions it. We didn’t drink or smoke to kill the pain, we didn’t feel the need to sell our souls and we didn’t throw our time away on corporations who never realised our worth. We helped our neighbors and local businesses our time was appreciated and rewarded with not only our monetary value but with gratitude, everyone appreciated each other and you walked out into a sea of smiles.

But now I’m back in my concrete jungle putting myself in poverty just to save enough cash to go back to my real home. Yes my bills are paid on what can be described as the “perfect life” to everyone else in this jungle, but I’m also limiting my food, keeping my heat off and showering in cold water to save on gas bills because I stopped feeling anything in this city and the only way I will feel again is getting back home; my real home.

[life-lessons-i-learned]

If I don’t leave this city I will destroy myself. We are all running round trying to achieve the 9-5 life even if it creates blood, sweat and tears and it tears our souls apart in the process.

Societys-failures