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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 19 |
October 1999 |
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Sebastian made contact with
Edges. He lives in London.
As I was growing up there was
a lot of abuse. From my mother this was sexual, physical, and
emotional. From my father it was more or less the same, but Im
not so sure about the sexual.
The abuse led to emotional difficulties for myself as an
adolescent. I was always distant from others at school. I couldnt
concentrate in lessons, I was always feeling afraid.
At seventeen I had a nervous breakdown. I felt annoyed that
teachers and an educational psychologist did not do more than they
did. I remember the headmaster telling me that I did not have to
come to school if I didnt want to. I think any other child
would have jumped at the chance of not going to school. I said that
I didnt want to go home, but that I didnt want to be in
class either I felt afraid of being with others. At
thirty-eight nothing has changed. So I went to school and played the
Bechstein piano all day. People were aware there were difficulties,
but did nothing. I could have been moved into foster care, for
example, which I would have loved, because now and then I feel theres
a hole in me, not having a family.
There were two times when I was home that I had a safe feeling
inside me. Once was when a man who worked for the BBC came to the
house to collect his wife. I was about six. There was no reason for
it: I just felt instinctively safe with this elder man and I crawled
onto his lap. He put his arms round me. Children dont have the
same sense of time as adults do they, but I feel like I was in his
arms for about one and a half-hours. He put his arms around me. He
kept smiling at me, not saying anything. There was no violence and I
felt safe. I didnt want him to go. When he did I felt bad. I
used to watch Dr Who every Saturday evening just to see his name in
the subtitles at the end. Just to remind myself of that safe
experience.
The other time was when I went to stay with a family in France
that was known to my family. They wouldnt have anything more
to do with my family after they sent their son to stay with us. He
didnt like the way they treated me. They made me feel very
welcome. Very loved actually. That was great. Jean was in the air
force and I used to wait by the fence at about four oclock for
him to come home every day. I used to help him in the garden. During
the day I used to help Michelle in the kitchen and around the house.
It was not expected of me to do this, in fact at one point they were
concerned and told me to relax. But it was as if I had to earn their
affection, or do something to prevent being rejected. Besides, I
loved being part of it all. When I left, Pascal who was nine then
got up at five in the morning to say good-bye. He was crying because
he didnt want me to leave. We all felt very good about each
other. When I was twenty-one I went to see them when I lived in
France. Jean made me tearful when he said that I was like his third
son. Everything changed when they found out that I was gay. That was
in the early 80s.
I went to university in 1979. That was when things really
started to get bad. Really bad. I was seeing the student counselor.
There are few people who should be in that profession, including
this counselor. As I tried to understand my anxiety problem I just
became more and more involved in the memory of the incidents of
abuse by my parents to the point where I was thinking of nothing
else night and day. The counselor didnt know how to handle it.
Its not really the memory; its the emotion of terror
that was attached to the memories. I was paralyzed with fear. I was
crying all the time. I couldnt even watch the TV because of my
inability to concentrate.
In October 1981 I went to live in France. People ask me if I
have experienced any happiness since I broke down in 1979. I always
say the month of October 1981. It was a new start. More importantly,
it was distant from the emotion of terror that was attached to those
memories. Then my father sent me a note on the back of an envelope.
It said You lack sensitivity, tolerance, humility. That
was the beginning of the end. I ended up seeing a therapist as an
out-patient at a local psychiatric hospital. I battled for six
months trying to understand the note from my father. It culminated
in my being admitted into hospital. I wont talk about
hospital. Its too frightening. Just think Midnight Express.
My parents had always tried to steer me away from people who
might be concerned about me. In retrospect I know this was because
my mother was afraid the social services would find out and take me
away. This had also discouraged me from contact with relatives,
including my Grandmother and my Uncle in the US. In 1979 I did visit
my relatives in California, despite protests from them. We got on,
and in 1982 following my stay in the psychiatric hospital in France,
I called my Uncle John in California. I really needed to belong to a
family. I asked him about moving to stay with him, as he had once
wanted me to come and live with his wife and family. Now it was a
different story. He just said that he would not want me with them as
I had emotional problems. In 1989, my Grandfather died. I had been
very close to him. Nobody told me about his death or his funeral. I
met my brother, by accident in Camden Town tube, not even knowing he
lived in London. In fact he had been living just twenty minutes walk
away from me for some time. He told me that Granddad had died and
that theyd had the funeral. When I began to cry he walked off.
I didnt see him again for two years.
During the 80s there were constant admissions to
psychiatric hospitals and clinics. And they all, until 1985, were an
effort to rid myself of an overwhelming emotion of terror which was
still crippling me. I did the talk therapy, the prescribed drugs,
the occupational therapy, the group therapy, the relaxation therapy,
and it all brought me back to where I was trying to get away from:
Terror.
Lying on my back in a clinic in Birmingham trying to Just
let go and relax and it wasnt working at all, it just
came to me that I had to do something very radical to shift the
terror connected to these memories. I began to think about Germany.
There was no association to my family with Germany. I also began to
think about changing my name. I also had to cut off contact with
everyone who knew my story and me. And I thought about finding a
family that would befriend me. That was the plan to replace the
emotion of terror that was attached to these memories. That was the
most important constituent of the plan. On the 25th August 1985, I
got a one way ticket to Frankfurt and Landed with my new name. I
took £500, which was all I had. I spoke no German. I got my
German up to scratch, then moved on to Munich. I changed my name
officially at the British Consulate in Munich on 11th April 1986
my birthday. Nobody knew. Just Me. Actually, this is the first time
Ive said anything about it. I finally worked in the mail
dispatch department of a Rudolph Steiner shop. One of the features
of this illness is that Ive rarely been able to do anything
but unskilled work, despite a degree in French and Italian.
Germany worked in that I lost the attachment to terror in these
memories. But something came along in its place. I just couldnt
stop feeling guilty about everything I said and did. I was either
saying it wrong, talking too much, or talking too little. The guilt
was more to do with speech and how I expressed myself more than
anything else. There were weeks together when I could not say
anything as a child. Its similar now. Its the only way I
can protect myself from the obsession of feeling guilty. Its a
real shame because people say I have a good sense of humor and that
I do get along with people, its just that I have no faith in
myself and cannot believe that I am OK as a human being. As a
consequence of other difficulties there then followed more therapy
in Munich and more admissions to hospital.
On 29th August 1995 a psychiatrist assessed me. He said if I
had tried many things to overcome my difficulties. He asked me if I
had any further suggestions that might be helpful. I said I had been
looking for a family since 1984. I told him that four boroughs in
London operated an adult fostering scheme whereby you went to live
with a family as part of the family. He said hed look into it.
15th November the psychiatrist wrote back to me to say there was no
such thing in my borough. In January 1988 when I had the strength, I
got an independent organization to look into it for me. They found
that there was such a scheme.
Someone from an independent organization advised me to think
about suing my parents for the damage that they have caused me. They
told me to go to the police and report the incident as historic
abuse to the Child Protection Unit. I did this. They treated
me as if I was reporting a traffic accident. I had to tell them with
my face covered with my arm, looking at the floor, pretending there
was nobody else in the room. I was crying and crying. They asked me
for evidence. I told them that the evidence was at the solicitors.
It worries me most that the most vulnerable are made targets for
more abuse. Havent they suffered enough already? One therapist
has told me that I am not special, another has sexually abused me.
When youre confused because of abuse it is often
difficult to distinguish between what is abuse and what is not. At
one place of work I had been bullied over about eighteen months
because of my sexual orientation. Even when I was kicked in the back
of my leg I didnt recognize myself as being abused until
someone told me I was being abused. I just thought in an odd sort of
way that this was normal behavior. Its almost as if somewhere
in your history your perception of events and how you process them
becomes distorted. After all its hardly surprising when your
parents tell you that what is happening to you at home is what
happens to all children. Violence comes on a daily basis, emotional,
sexual, physical and when youre terrified and ask for
the reassurance that you are loved and Mom says Yes you
begin to equate love with violence. So when someone kicks you, you
think that this is an expression of something positive in the way
that they feel towards you.
I cannot tell you the details of the violence in case it puts
me back in hospital. Im frightened in case it triggers the
terror again, you see. What I can do is give a global picture
involving violence, a place where I got myself up in the morning at
six, walked my dog, got my breakfast, took my mother a cup of tea in
bed and went to school. I would come home and wait on the lawn for
her to come home from work. My father would put me outside in the
street in the middle of winter for no reason at all with nowhere to
go. My brother didnt understand why they would take him on
holiday to the Canary Islands and leave me at home with the dog. He
asked once. He told me that Dad doesnt want you with us.
When I was nineteen my father told me to commit suicide.
Shortly after finishing my degree I asked my mother why she
never had any compassion for me. I distinctly remember the word
compassion. Her response was that boys didnt get compassion.
I feel like Im in a lonely spot. I still feel like I
belong nowhere. When I arrived back from Italy in 1989 I lived in a
squat. On the strength of an office job I did, from 92 95,
where I was able to work as an interpreter, I managed to save the
money for a deposit for a house, and get a mortgage. Having a house
and becoming physically sheltered changes nothing regarding the
feeling of being emotionally homeless. At the end of
thirty-eight years of abuse and subsequent Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder I have no family contacts and have isolated myself because
I bought into the idea that my parents were right in their message
to me: that I was a bad person. I am frightened to socialize in case
I feel I say it wrong, in case I feel I do it wrong. The subsequent
feeling of guilt is unbearable. Its like expecting to be
executed. I shut the world out because of the fear of what it might
do to me, what I might do to myself.
I have hope. I feel fairly confident that EMDR therapy will
help me put back together a fractured life. I am also hoping that I
find the family I have searched for all these years. I have thought
long and hard about that one. I need to find an older couple that
would befriend me. I need to be allowed to show them what I can
offer and make as my contribution to our well being. I believe that
when I can do this in return for some warmth and affection I will
truly feel I belong. I wont feel this hole that
goes with emotional homelessness. I have had experience working on
farms in France, Italy, and Great Britain and the idea of working
voluntarily on a farm appeals enormously because I really get along
nicely with animals, there being no fear. I honestly wouldnt
mind, geographically, I lived. Whether here or abroad. The important
factor being the kind of people I found myself living and working
with. Initially, I feel that it would be best to build the
friendship over a period of time before making a more personal
arrangement. That way nobody feels under pressure.
If there is any interest in the above I would appreciate
hearing from you via Edges Magazine. References from my contact at
Victim Support can also be supplied via the same route.
My name is Sebastian |
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