Wow.. it's been over three weeks since I have written anything in here! mainly because life has been so busy with christmas and such, but I just haven't had that much spare time recently either.

Christmas was very busy, we had my friends Mum and Brother over from Norway for 8 days and that alone kept me pretty busy as you can no doubt imagine. The therapy session just before the christmas was a pretty hard one as we talked about christmas's past, the ones I remember as a child were not that good. As my Mum was basically on her own with five children there wasn't a lot of spare money about.. so our christmas's were much like any other day apart from maybe a small gift from our grandparents and occasionally mum if she had the money! I recall waking up early as most children do and finding a stocking on the bottom of my bed with an orange and sometimes a small toy in.. there were rarely any more presents after that. It was pretty hard to recall those days as we chatted in the session, as they are painful memories, I do recall the odd year when mum worked extra hours to get the cash to buy more gifts for us but they were rare. Fights always happened in the house at this time of year as we weren't allowed out to play, so cooped up indoors for days on end we would inevitably fight with each other as our frustrations came out.

This christmas was so different as they have been for me since I grew up and left home, nowadays I get spoilt rotten by my children and friends, the gifts under the tree seem to grow and grow in the weeks leading up to the day. I often go a bit crazy myself buying gifts for others even though cash is tight, but I never want anyone to have a christmas like the ones I can remember as they were horrible!

Now the holidays are over and its back to work and back to dealing with all of this! todays session we talked about what has changed for me in the past year.. it was hard to work out what changes I had made in the past year and what has changed for me because of outside influences.

One major change has been in the writing of this blog, where I am trying to give an honest picture of the damage abuse does to someone many years after the event! By detailing some of what I personally experienced I hope to enlighten people to the extent that they want to help stop it happening to children today! and beleive me IT IS STILL HAPPENING, behind closed doors maybe even next door to where you live? Do you hear children crying needlessly? Do you hear shouting and slapping? are the children withdrawn barely talking to other kids their age? do they seem to be loners? then maybe if you can answer yes to anyone of these comments that child or children need your help! maybe they are being abused? by talking to them and gaining their trust you may be able to stop it happening. I wish someone had taken the time when I was a child!

Another topic we discussed today was how smooth the road to healing was, is it bumpy when things come up? do I have certain dates that are hard for me? I said anniversaries can be hard but some are now getting easier to deal with as time passes, for instance the anniversary of mums birthday and her death used to be really hard to deal with but nowadays its getting easier. The anniversary of May 2nd when I was in Cyprus with my Second Step Father is still hard to cope with, as its only been a few years since I actually told someone about it for the first time. In time I hope to be able to ignore the date and let it pass without any consequences.. but thats not happening as yet.
We talked about what I hoped to acheive this year in 2008 and I said that my ideal is to write my second book and get it out there for people to read, maybe by reading what I went through people would understand why so many survivors suffer years after the events, yes its traumatic but its not something you can just forget and move on from, like you can with a car accident for instance. Abuse stays with you long term, it never goes away as you feel violated and intruded upon as a result. It takes many years of hard work to deal with it all, if you can afford a therapist it helps a lot but many can't, and for them its a long hard struggle to learn to deal with it, the feelings of isolation are so hard to bear that many turn to drugs and alcohol to block it out of their mind, all the time they are high or drunk they are not thinking about the invasion into their private space. To write this second book for me would mean everything, if it helps just one survivor deal with their issues or one partner to understand what its like then it will be worth bearing my innermost secrets to the world. But to do it takes time and although I have some time available to me I need to be alone when I write, and that is the hard part, as I hate being alone it allows me to think far to much about what has happened in the past, and thats painful to relive again and again. But somehow I need to find the strength to do it, my therapist beleives that the book would help others more than even I know, she has said to me that the first book would help many understand the pain we go through when we first reveal the abuse, the pain as we try to learn how to live with the memories as they come back to us, even now some 30 odd years after I got away from the childhood abuse, I have new memories coming up with a frightening regularity. the latest being that I was much younger than I first thought when the sexual abuse began, I remember a certain dress I was wearing and have now seen a picture of myself in that dress, I can't have been more that 8 or 9yr old!! I wish I understood why this happened to me? The Biggest question any Survivor asks is WHY? Why me? Why did it happen? Why is it so painful? WHY WHY WHY??????