make peace with the past

I struggle daily with something that I don’t think I will ever get over. One wrong decision on one day in October 2003.

Everything happens for a reason. Time to move forward.

I am just forgetting all the bad things that happened in the past and my life couldn’t be better

So hurt in my past… The things I went through at the hands of other children (the cruellest children you’ll ever find), and for no reason other than because I was a good kid (they were punishing me for being a good kid by doing some horrific, inhuman things. The children and I were 10 at the time. You’d never think children were capable of doing what they did to me). Through it though, now as an 18 year old girl, I’ve been a Christian for 4 years. In those 4 years I’ve grown so strongly in Christ, and I know He’s healing me at this very moment, in a process of helping me to not suffer the emotional effects of the torment I went through any longer. New York is such a cruel place to grow up as a good kid.

Probably it isn’t a long past because I’m young. But I’ve learned to watch the good things in life, and always, ALWAYS, look forward. Never look back, because what’s done is done, and we get our second chances every day we live.

There’s no point on tormenting yourself, you just have to let go

...this still is a tough one, though my equation with my past is much more balanced now, but every now and then I tend to recall stuff and then fall back into pondering on the how’s and why’s of it :(

may I have the strength to carry on
I hope I get out of this rut soon enough.

Its too much a reminder of stuff I need to put to bed.

I’m by no means giving up on it, but yet to see it on my goals list is a bit of a downer.

I don’t need downers.

This is a tough one that Ive never really understood, yet is there with me like a load on my back. It comes back and haunts me, reminding me yet hiding in the shadows, never willing to show itself completely. It interferes with my relationships, makes me feel needy, leaves me feeling a little lost and devalued.

When I was 7 or 8 my mother decided that she couldn’t cope with us anymore. She had recently divorced my father who at the time was a foolish, beer swilling , bar brawling womaniser. There was me, my younger sister, and younger brother. One afternoon we were taken for a ride in a Police car, we were told we were going to a special birthday party. I recall asking the lady in the car with us “whose party is it, whose party?” excited at the prospect of this little treat in store. We were taken to this place in Stoke Newington and sat at a table with some 20 other kids. There was ice cream and jelly and crisps and cake and lots of strange faces.After the party had ended we were shown to our room. I didn’t understand why we were being taken to this room. I asked where my mum was, why was I not being taken home. I don’t remember their answer which is odd.We were shown to this room and told that this is where we would be staying for a little while. The beds were nice and the room had plush dark curtains with white nets. We were issued with a toothbrush and some pyjamas and shown where the toilets were. My brother and sister were upset and worried. My sister was 6 my brother 4 or 5 maybe.I told them that we were going to be ok and that mum would come to get us soon, I realised that I had to be strong for my brother and sister. I think this was the day my childhood ended.

We stayed there for what seemed like forever, with the exception of a night watchlady, the staff were kind and did their best to keep the children amused and happy. We were taken on our 1st ever holiday and rode on donkeys and participated in fancy dress shows and things like that.

Its taken me a lot of years to accept that this was the day that my mother abandoned us. She came back for us, eventually, but was never the same. She proceeded to make a series of bad decisions, introducing all manner of unsavoury individuals into our lives. The first was a man named Alfie Smith, he introduced me to a punch in my face at 8 years of age. To this day I can remember how stunned I felt. Knocked to the floor by a black belt karate expert. Thankfully he didn’t stick around for too long.

When I was 9 my mother found another. Another arse in some pub. An ex army PT instructor, the son of a strict disciplinarian who’d beat him for the slightest little thing. He bought us sweets and seemed like a kind man. My mother sat us down and asked us if we would accept him into our lives, of course we agreed, he was after all, that nice man who bought us sweets. He moved in, the occurence of sweets lessened and he revealed his true brutal bullying colours. We protested to mum, but she just told us ‘I need a man in my life, I’ll talk to him..’ I recall listening to a heated discussion whereby he protested about the need for ‘discipline’ and all that stuff. He won the day, she was too weak. She put herself 1st.

When I was 12 my mother decided to cancel Birthdays and Christmas. To her and her new faith, the notion of these things was evil. To her nice little friendly sect, it was against the teachings of the bible and wrong to celebrate such things.The tone was set, I ended up rebelling for the next 10 years.

When I reflect and try to put it in context or make sense of it all its always helped to see the world through their eyes and how it all was for them then.

In the case of my mother, I think on the difficulties she had with her own mother, how she felt unloved, rejected, unwanted, how she too was put into a childrens home, how she had to deal with her own abandonment issues. By taking this tack, it helps me see her for the fragile person she was, helps me to see that for whatever reason, she probably couldn’t help herself.She was consumed by a past that she had no way of dealing with. No one ever sat down with her and asked her how she was. She stumbled through life and found my father. Maybe it was a cruel twist of fate that she should meet a man with his own set of problems. A man who had been kicked out of the army for being an indisciplined ass. An angry young man who had joined the army to escape a home full of its own set of ‘post world war 2’ problems.

Ive spent a small fortune trying to repair the damage done and I’m most certainly getting there. Counselling has been difficult. To remove layers upon layers of self protection has not been easy. To relive all the pain or even see it as relevant, has been a very slow process.

For no apparent reason today its even more so, I’m beginning to think that one can be too retrospective, too backward looking. I feel like I need to just put it all to one side, forgive , forget and move on. Live for now, Carpe Diem and all that. Yet, emotionally I’m unable, or maybe I’m just unwilling.

I get myself into all sorts of emotional mess with my GF’s and have difficulty in sustaining too much for too long. I guess that some of this is due to trust factors and my recent divorce.

As shitty as it all feels, I know that its transient, I know that with a determined will and mindset that with Gods grace and a little time, I’ll no longer be hit by emotional buzz bombs. I’ll make better relationship choices. I won’t get so consumed by the need to feel wanted. The need to feel like I matter, like I have value.

I guess I can count my blessings that overall these experiences have helped me to have better insights. I’m equipped to deal with lots of things that might crush a lesser individual.In that sense, I’m proud of the person Ive become.

Cerebrally, I can be as bold and as brash as I choose to be, thats easy. With the hurt child inside its a little more difficult. I just wish it would speak to me in’ language I understand. Somatised pain is not a language Im too familar with.

Today after a very long stressful day I decided I needed to get my life back on track. Although I still have a few mixed emotions, I can genuinely say that I have finally let go of all the bad things that have happened to me in this life. I’m not saying that I hope to forget all these tragic happenings – no – I just want to be able to accept the fact that they’ve happened and learn from each situation but not make it change or determine who I am. All my flaws, all the mishaps in my life have created who I am now, but for the past few months I have been so confused and completely forgot who I truly was. So many people molded me into something else without me even knowing it. I’m finally at peace with what has happened in my life and I fully acknowledge that things won’t stay like this forever. A friend once told me something when I was going through a rough time and it is the most truthful story I have ever heard.
“There was an old man who was about to pass away and he knew that he wasn’t gonna be there for his daughter as she got older and went through life, so he left her something in a wooden box for her to open if a tragic thing happened. One day when his daughter was going through a tragic event she opened the box and inside was a piece of paper that said “It too will pass.” Her father had left her this note with his words of advice for her. That no matter what situation you’re put in everything will eventually pass. =)
Anyways I’m looking forward to this new schoolyear and I’m willing to face whatever situations are awaiting for me. I feel like I can finally breathe and move on.

Throughout my whole life it seems as though bad events were followed by more tragic situations. I’ve been waiting for things to clear up but I realised that the way i’ve been acting, and the person i’ve started turning into are much too negative for good things to ever come out of it. So I’m gonna take some time out to really think about everything that has happened in my life and then just let everything go.
I don’t trust anyone anymore for ANYTHING because of certain things that have happened but I realise that I can’t blame everyone or make other people face the consequences for what certain individuals have done to me. Instead I can only be careful on the few people to trust in.
I’ve started becoming a very cynical person and I hate it but the truth is that I’m too scared to be any different so that’s why this goal is a very big one for me. I need to be able to let go in order to move on and be the person I have always dreamt of being.