My Experiences of Being Abused as a Child and Teenager

(This article has recently been edited, because my aunt protested that I should not have written about my mum and dad's sexual relationship, as this is a private matter that my dad at least would not want to be discussed in public. Needless to say, that I still believe that bad or unsatisfactory sexual relationships between parents or adults, can be a cause of child abuse).
 
From as young as since I could remember, from the age of about five, and up until my early teens, I was physically, mentally, verbally, and emotionally abused by my mother as a child and teenager. She would violently attack me all the time for no reason, making me cry, and then she would violently attack me again for crying (a psychotherapist I saw some years back, said that whatever emotion I expressed as a child, was suppressed and considered bad or wrong).
 
My mother attacked and terrorised me, and I lived in constant fear of her violence or the threat of her violence. She would often slap me around the head or face, knocking my glasses off, kick me, pull my hair, and sometimes punch me, and she would often throw objects at me.
 
My mother abused me in these ways, whenever my father wasn't around, and my brother was an instigator to some of the abuse, even though he was very occasionally abused as well. My brother would often lie to my mum that I had said or done something to him, and this would then give her a reason to physically and verbally attack me. She would also often come into my room at night, wake me up, and drag me out of the bedroom by my hair, so she could violently attack and abuse me again.
 
Although my mother never sexually abused me, she seemed to get sexual pleasure from abusing me, and on the odd occasion, she would abuse me for long periods, making me cry repeatedly, then she would force me to sleep in the same bed as her at night. This was yet another way for her to emotionally and mentally abuse me, as I slept in fear of her violently attacking me again.
 
There was no escape from her violent rages, and I would often cry myself to sleep at night. She also verbally abused me, often screaming at me that she hated me and wanted to smash my face in, and she often used to call me a "fucking kid!". My brother was also occasionally abused by my mother. She sometimes used to drag him to bed by his hair, and she once threw him out on the streets, in his slippers and pyjamas, on a freezing cold day. I remember seeing him in the street, and asking him what he was doing in his pyjamas and slippers, and he said that she had kicked him out.
 
She also used to threaten me and my brother, with sending us away to boarding school, and which I found very distressing and frightening, as she said that she would phone the boarding school up, and they would take me away from home, and that I would never come back.
 
When I was 15, I started to tell my dad about the abuse when we were sitting in the living room of an evenings, whilst my mum was asleep on the sofa. She wasn't properly asleep though, and she could hear what I was saying to him. This didn't stop her from violently attacking me though. In fact, it made the abuse a lot worse. When I was 15, my mum once came into the toilet after I had used it, and she grabbed hold of my hair and started pulling it. I retaliated on this occasion though, and started kicking her, telling her to let go of my hair, and which eventually she did. I don't regret retaliating, because I had to defend myself.
 
My mum also started to verbally attack and threaten my dad. She would sometimes threaten to stab him and stick a knife in him. My mum and dad were having rows with each other all the time, and one day my dad and me left her for good. When we left my mum, I remember unleashing a lot of anger upon her, with my nan begging us not to leave her daughter.
 
Since the abuse, I have tried to understand my mum and understand why she abused me. I don't believe that it was because she never loved me, although she never in the past showed me any love or affection as a child. I've since learnt about her, that she came from and grew up in a very poor, rough, and emotionally hard background and environment. Also, whilst her father was a very loving and nice man, he was also authoritarian towards her on occasion. My nan suffered from manic depression, and so maybe that's where she learnt that power-relationship from, of being neglected emotionally, or she was rebelling against powerlessness in a way, and in that way associated my nan's powerlessness with me as a child. I've since learnt that wherever violence occurs there is also poverty and powerlessness. My mum was also house-bound and in an unsatisfactory relationship with my dad, but she wanted to work.
 
Because my mum abused me, when I left home with my dad I refused to see her for four years. In hindsight though, this was a very cruel and stupid thing for me to do, because my mum was a changed woman and she was feeling very guilty and crying and grieving over me. She was genuinely sorry for what she had done to me as a child, and I should have forgiven her there and then. I got into Buddhism and learnt that all life was basically made up of suffering, and this made me realise that my mum must have been suffering, at the time of the abuse too. I also think that she was suffering from some kind of hypomania and possibly depression. Hypomania is where a person goes into a rage and can't control themselves (it could be said that they choose to lose control), and it is marked by racing thoughts and constant elation or irritability, and it is a symptom of manic depression. I've since learnt that different people respond differently to depression. Some people become more withdrawn and passive, whilst others can become volatile and angry or even violent.
 
When I was 17 and living in a flat with my dad, my mum came to visit me, and was crying, in a very bad way, and she looked drained of life-force and like she was having an emotional and mental breakdown. I unleashed all my anger upon her, some of the anger stemming from the way that my dad and his partner were nagging and bullying me at the time, and I pushed her over and kicked her, asking her why she violently abused me, and then I threw her out.
 
A psychotherapist I saw some years ago said that I had a right to be angry, but some of that anger involved some hatred, and I always regret violently attacking my mum on that occasion and rejecting her. Again, I was wrong, and should have forgiven her. I don't like anger, because when a person is angry they can lose their thinking faculties and self control. I think that if anger is integrated with love, understanding, and forgiveness, then it is OK, but by itself, anger can very easily blind us and turn into hatred.
 
It was when I left home from living with my dad and his partner, that I decided to see my mum again. I tried living on my own but found it hard. I moved into a bedsit, and then into another flat, but I eventually moved into my mum's house where I have been living ever since.
 
As an adult, my mum has been very good to me, and the way I look at it, she has made up for being a very bad mother towards me as a child.

Stream-of-consciousness

Stream-of-consciousness (SOC) is accepted as a sane, literary style, if it is written, but it is sometimes perceived as madness if it is spoken by people in everyday conversation or communication.
 
Some psychiatric-diagnosed people, use SOC in their speech or communication, because they see life events as being in some way very much interconnected, whether through some religious notion such as Karma, or from some more social or personal notion. SOC is used in a persons speech or communication, because it adheres, in some ways, to how people see life-events, along with their beliefs and values.
 
The interconnectedness and over-lapping of events, plays a big part in our influences, dreams, and subconscious, and can tell us a lot about our present experiences and behaviours. SOC can also be used because a persons life events may seem fragmented, and streaming is seen as a way of linking and reconnecting events and experiences in the mind.
 
In literature, SOC is used to describe a character's actual thoughts-patterns, and their responses to external stimuli in their environment, but it is questionable whether stream-of-consciousness actually represents objective reality, as it is a more subjective approach to expression, learning, and understanding.
 
Another reason SOC might be used in speech or communication, is because if the mind is releasing a lot of ideas in one go, then there may be more possibility of another person connecting to these ideas, if the other person can keep up with the density or pace.
 
A psychiatric-diagnosed person I used to know, would talk very fast in streams, and then if you responded with a word or statement, he would then ask you what that word meant and was all about. This was his way of trying to encourage the other person to think in streams of ideas, and suspend their critical faculties, but he was also anticipating a rational approach being used against his streaming, and so he would anticipate this or assume, that the other person was going to ask him what he meant, as a way of the other person controlling his consciousness, thinking, relating, and communication.
 
SOC is sometimes used if a person is stressed out, and can be a form of so-called brainstorming. Brainstorming is where the mind uploads ideas on a given subject, usually within a group, so a person can get many ideas on paper in a short space of time. This can also be a way of releasing stress and anxiety. Another reason why some psychiatric-diagnosed people brainstorm, is because they may have a problem with memory and connecting their ideas and thoughts together.
 
A person may be half-way into a conversation, and then forget what they were going to say, but by brainstorming and releasing a stream of ideas, the person can then think associatively, and possibly reconnect to what they were trying to say beforehand. This is a way of overcoming short-term memory blocks. On the other hand, the person might just fly off into another direction, and reconnect to something completely different, suspending all rational, critical, and structuring faculties.
 

My Experiences of School Bullying and Neglect

Going to school, was an opportunity for me to escape from the almost constant physical, emotional, and mental abuse from my mum at home. However, after the third year at secondary school, I was bullied quite badly by a gang of other children for about two years, and which meant that I was being abused at home and bullied at school at the same time.
 
Because of all the stress, anxiety, and depression, I couldn't concentrate on my school work, and at one stage in the fourth year for about a year, I was taken out of school lessons, put in a corridor on my own with a desk and chair, but with no books and writing material, and with some of the bullies isolated in other corridors of the school. This meant that I was still near some of the bullies, unsupervised, and they still continued to bully me.
 
When another pupil asked a teacher why I had been isolated, saying that I had done nothing wrong, the teacher admitted that I had no done anything wrong, but he said that I was "not responding to school work". My dad put in complaints about the bullying, and which still continued, and I had to leave school at 15 because the teachers and head would do nothing about it.
 
The school bullying all started, when I had a friend called Steven at secondary school, and who I was also friends with at my junior school. For the first few years at secondary school, I had a good friendship with him, but at some stage he turned nasty and turned on me with other bullies.
 
When we were friends, Steven would sometimes stay the night round my house on weekends, but at some stage I didn't feel comfortable with him doing this, because he wanted to sleep in the same bed as me, and I refused to have him over to stay the night. It was then that he became isolated from me at school, and formed a friendship with another boy, who was like the pack leader of a gang of bullies.
 
What made the bullying worse, was that me and Steven both had the same sexual fantasies and desires about being sexually dominated by women, but he was ashamed of this, and told some of the other boys that I "Liked being bossed around by women". This made the bullying much worse. It was a very rough, poor, all-boys school, and a lot of fighting and bullying went on. I kept out of the way of the fighting, but I saw some horrible fights between some boys, and witnessed some very violent bullying too.
 
Although I was never physically beaten up by the bullies, a lot of the bullying was mental and psychological, and some of it was physical in a way too. The gang of bullies would often pull my hair, take my glasses off of me and refuse to give them back, take off my shoes and throw them around, pull my tie tight into a knot, and pull my arms each side of me. They also used to pin me down and all pile on top of me, and I was given "the bumps" on the odd occasion.
 
The way the child abuse affected me, was that it made me have low self esteem, and made me depressed and anxious, and unable to concentrate on my own emotions and thoughts, because so much time was spent trying to push the experience of the abuse out of my mind, to forget it, and not think about it. The school bullying made me less trusting of other people, and gave me a fear of crowds.

Creativity and Self-Destructiveness

I'm very interested in creativity and self-destructiveness, because many very creative people, usually famous ones, seem also to be very self-destructive, and I wonder what the reasons are for this. This may be due to the fact that we don't live in a creative society, in terms of learning, education, work and family life, or because creativity is associated with self-destruction by society, and so it gets treated destructively.
 
I want to know whether there is something intrinsically self-destructive about creativity, or whether the self destructiveness is due to social and psychological factors.
 
Many very creative, famous people, end up being very much controlled by their managers, family, and the sycophants and yes-men surrounding them. This often leads to drug abuse or even suicide as the only escape from such falsity, oppression, and social control.
 
Another thing, is that creative people often don't talk or write about society, and the social causes of things such as self-destructiveness. The creative arts are often separated from any kind of political or social analysis, and merely focus on poetry and abstract symbolism. This is why a great deal of lyrics in music are not social or political in their content.
 
Very creative people tend to be too individualistic, creating their own individual ideas of work, rather than also focusing on what it means to have a very creative society in terms of learning, education, work, and general relationships. The creative needs to become the social and political, if it is to achieve its full potential.
 
I think that there's tendency for very creative people to become alienated from their family, friends, and wider society, due to the fact that they are not really understood. There's a tendency to believe about creative persons, that the ego needs to be inflated, and yet very much exposed in creative persons, and that they are prone to madness. These are myths in my opinion, as creative people need the same kind of honest love, socialisation, and support that everyone else needs in society.
 
Then there's also the myth that creative people need stress and tension in order to create very fully or effectiveness. On the contrary, very creative people tend to have a vulnerability to stress, due to the fact that they are very receptive and sensitive to what they experience around them.

Abuse Survival, Speaking Out, Professionals and Society

The whole subject of child abuse is a very complex one, especially if one is to come out as an abuse survivor to social work and mental health professionals or to the public.
 
I am a child abuse survivor, but I have now understood and forgiven the person that abused me, because I realise that although they wasn't abused as a child by their parent or parents, they grew up in a very emotionally hard, and a very socially and economically poor environment. Also, since being a very bad parent towards me as a child, they have been very good to me as an adult, and I am absolutely convinced that there is now mutual respect and love between us.
 
Most people in some ways have been oppressed or abused by the system. Whether this involves oppression and bullying by parents, teachers, or from other children, or oppressed and bullied in work, people in general have more or less suffered from some sort of abuse. However, it is still important to make a distinction between actual child abuse, and abuse by the system against people, although I make the comparison because it relates to when and how a person speaks out about being abused, and what responses they can receive from professionals or society.
 
Whilst there are some very good reasons to come out as a child abuse survivor, there are also some very good reasons for hiding this information until the appropriate time. From my experience and knowledge, it can be unwise to come out as a child abuse survivor, to some social work and mental health professionals, as this can make them feel guilty, because they are part of a system that should have prevented the abuse. This guilt can turn defensive and aggressive, and involve the professional insulting and attacking the abuse survivor verbally, or even justifying the child abuse as being part of tradition, discipline, or family values. Child abuse can also be justified as being seen as a form of protest, whilst the child abuse survivors protest for change gets denied and ignored.
 
I spoke to a fellow child abuse survivor recently, and she said that people who haven't been abused as children don't understand. I replied to her, that whilst it's true that they don't understand, it also true that they just don't care, because they don't know the degree of suffering of being abused as a child, and because they also believe that they too have suffered from some sort of abuse by the system, and in a way believe that they have suffered more. Unfortunately, we have no means of measuring who suffers more in society, although experience, intelligent common sense, and knowledge, tells us that abuse survivors suffer more as children from the rest of society.
 
There's also a tendency amongst some abuse survivors and professionals, to believe that only men abuse children, and that all abuse is only sexual. Some women abuse children too, mentally, physically, and emotionally, and in some cases can be accomplices to child sexual abuse.
 
It's important to come out as child abuse survivors at some stage, as we can start to try and change things for the better, and defend children's rights and welfare, and there is less likelihood of ourselves becoming abusers if we don't repress our anger, hurt, conscience, and loving and caring emotions. People who indefinitely hide the fact that they've been bullied or abused as children, tend to become abusers in some ways, like some social workers and mental health professionals who have power over other child abuse survivors.
 
We need to come out about being abuse survivors at the appropriate time, when we can protest and survive together, otherwise it can be used against us by a repressed, misunderstanding, and uncaring society, and by some social work and mental health professionals.
 

Respect and Anti-social behaviour

I just read the government’s website page on the issue of respect. The headline slogan to it reads ‘Give Respect, Get Respect’. This suggests that respect is vertical, and operates from one-direction, instead of being something simultaneously mutual.

In theory, if you give respect, then you should get respect back, but some people in authority aren’t like that. I have shown respect to some people in authority, and had it thrown back in my face, because their idea of respect, is just to have power over you, in order to want to degrade and humiliate you.

They want to have this abusive power, so that you can’t form your own values, beliefs, and conscience, and so that you will agree to whatever they are saying, despite the fact that they are right or wrong. This approach is authoritarian, and it rules out discussion and debate, and consequently rules out any kind of democracy. Maybe this is their general idea of relationships too, and the way their treat their partners, but it is not my idea of relationships.

On the government’s anti-social behaviour webpage, it lists various anti-social behaviours, but it only says that individuals and small groups carry out this, and not also society against minorities, marginalised, and oppressed individuals and groups. It is not just individuals and small groups who can be anti-social, but also societies and communities, fuelled by prejudice and discrimination with things like racism and mentalism. It is stupid and ridiculous that the government’s webpage on anti-social behaviours does not list racism and mentalism as anti-social behaviours.

Another thing the webpage lists as anti-social, is begging. I disagree with the government that begging is anti-social, because if a lot of homeless people didn’t beg, then they would simply starve.

I agree that anti-social behaviours exist, but I think and know from experience that society can be very anti-social too, and I think that New Labour somewhat idealise society.

Rights, Freedom, and Responsibility

In its purely individual context, responsibility is either half-baked, or a very bourgeois concept. It's bourgeois because it often only focuses on individual responsibility, when there is also mutual responsibility, and the fact that we have responsibility for each other in society.

It's also bourgeois, because in its individual context, it is often preached by very middle-class and privileged people in society, who know nothing about being oppressed and powerless, and what it's like to be poor and without the basic rights and freedom to make our own choices.

Responsibility is often half-baked, because it can be used or misused to deny a persons rights and freedom. I would argue that in order for a person to have responsibility, they must first and foremost have rights and the freedom to make choices. Otherwise, it is just a self-righteous and idiotic preaching, and makes no sense at all.

New Labour say they believe in rights and responsibilities, but sometimes this can mean putting responsibilities before rights, when it just doesn't make sense for someone to be responsible, if they also have no rights, freedom, choices, and power.

Sometimes, responsibility is only preached to the victims in society, of things like abuse, whilst those people in authority who abuse their power, are not seen as having irresponsible power and authority. It seems that those who are abused, can be very easily accused of not being responsible for their actions, whilst abusers can get away with abuse, without also being responsible for their actions.