Early

So should I talk about the things that are so deep seated in my existence that I allow myself so much pain,

Yeah maybe I should, its been drumming away in the back of my head for a few days, and its time it got out here..

Abuse…

Abuse comes in many different ways, and I think I had most of them at some point in my life.

One of the exercises I was asked to do in hospital after a suicide attempt was to have a picture from my childhood and then describe how I was dealing the time the picture was taken.
It’s quite funny really as at the time, I was in a Halloween costume with my brother and a straw guy fawks that we had made…

All I remember thinking was please don’t let me look fat in this picture. And of course, as a child how could I have looked anything like I imagined.
But the thing was, from about the age of 10 I remember being weighed in the school office by the duty nurse, and at ten I weighed 10st. I was horrified and so was my mum. So there started a battle with my weight, and a major problem at primary school.
My best friend at the time Sally owned up to my mum that I was being bullied at the dinner table, and that the kids were forcing me to eat their dinners so they could go outside to play, instead of eating the stuff and just living with it.

So I then had to take in my own lunch and my diet was monitored strictly by everyone…
It still never altered much, I did lost about two stone for charity but it soon went back on.
So next was high school, and with each year I was there, I put on a stone. I was teased, bullied, punched picked last in everything, which is if I was picked at all.
My friend’s brother used to hit me while we were at their house, and even though I admired him so much and tried to be his friend, it didn’t matter. My mum eventually found out and it cause a lot of problems at school, yet I still even as an adult till I was gone 20 was this guys friend. (I don’t see him now)
On a trip up to the Lake District we went for a ride on a boat in Windermere and I was sexually assaulted by a man I didn’t know, and I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know who to say it too.

In the final year at school, I lost the only person that made a difference in my life. My granddad, passed away, and I was devastated…

My worst offender in my child hood was my brother for his teasing and comments, most of the time he was my best friend, but other times he hurt me the most.

In my room after my granddads funeral, he said to his friend.

How could she do that not cry all day, and how horrible she looked in that black skirt, fat cow…

I had said my peace with my grandfather, he was very ill for a long time, and just before his death, the last time I saw him I asked God to let him go peacefully, so he wouldn’t suffer. It was the only time I had turned to god, and still has been.

I loved him yes but he was in such great pain, even as a child I didn’t want that.

My most recent experience was in 2004-5
in work, you see there I have a friend who I have worked with for the last ten years, and she began to see a married man with in the factory. At lunch times, she used to play around with him a lot sexually, and as I sometimes sat with them I then became a target for this mans advances.
For a man to start getting his penis out in front of two women in the middle of the factory was so much of a shock for me I couldn’t speak, and was mortified. Of course I didn’t say anything I couldn’t, my friend laughed it off, but it kept on happening, and he also started to touch me inappropriately, on the inside of my thighs, and my chest. Any opportunity he got.

I stopped being with them in the end, and sat with my step dad outside, but the damage was done. I had begun to self harm

that led to a break down two months later, when I hurt my wrists so bad, my husband called an ambulance, and I went through an awful lot of psych evaluations again.

I didn’t want to kill myself though self harming is a totally different feeling.
Because I didn’t want to die, I struggled for three weeks to get any sort of help. But then I met a man who my husband hated and I adored. Alan my cpn, and in some ways my saviour…

He helped me open up about a lot of things; I even showed him my online journal and my poetry.
One morning in bed with Paul, I opened up and told him about what had happened in work. He was furious, and wanted to go down and kill this guy, I said NO.

I decided and I went into see the manager who I worked with, he was white with shock and I then went through everything with witnesses inside the factory walls.

When he rang me at home later that day and told me the guy had been suspended pending an inquiry and that he had admitted everything. I was so relieved.

The man was then fired; his wife found out about the affair and kicked him out and now as far as I know he has to have people with him when he sees his children.

I still feel bad for upsetting everything for him. His excuse was he was abused as a child. It was no excuse for me…

I never went to the police although a lot of my friends and family wanted me too…

It took a long time for me to stop self harming. I have a lot of scars on my left wrist, and on my right leg. I turned there so no one could see it especially my husband, and the last time I did harm I made the biggest scar, as it was with a Stanley knife in work. It looks worse than my knee opp from when I came off the bike…

Oh well. I really am getting a bit tired now, can’t sleep though I don’t think… crazy hey…

Dawn

30^th October

Oh my oh my, what a day, after going to bed last night at 230am, I was still looking at the clock at 345am, and when I eventually dozed off our dehumidifier decided to say it was full and it makes a rather loud beeping sound, ahhhhhhhhhh…

So that was it, I had about an hour and a half’s sleep last night, and I am feeling it right now, I said to my friend Kate, today Jestem starra Kobiet. Meaning I am old woman, and boy I meant it, she just laughed at me…

Nothing inside the factory has changed at all in a week; two polish lads turned up and because Steven the manager hadn’t rang the agency up on Friday he had to send them away.

So tomorrow the other two girls, who have been helping out while I was away, aren’t in, so it’s back down to three. Sad.
It has been pretty quiet though so never mind..

I have been feeling quite good today, it was great to tell my friends that Sian and I won the film of the night, for the screening.

Everyone wants to see it now, he he.

Anyways, am off to make tea, having steak, jacket spuds and veg, yum…

Hope you are all well…

Dawn