How to Begin??

This blog has been a long time coming. I’ve played it over in my mind a hundred times, how do I begin and will anyone even care what I have to say? How do I do this without dragging people in that I don’t want to upset or who may be exposed to my journey unless it’s their choice? After encouragement from some dear friends, I just decided fuck it, this is my story to tell and if I can help even just one person along the way then it’s worth it. Also, I knew by doing this it would be somewhat cathartic, help me with my ongoing journey to heal.

I’m not going to mention names because I do respect the people in my life, but this will be a completely honest story, my journey, the highs and all the very extreme and sometimes ugly lows. Most importantly it’s a story about my struggles growing up as a child and also my personal battles as an adult. The emotional and physical abuse I witnessed and also experienced, my life growing up after learning I was adopted, parents that constantly fought and secrets they kept. Also my own struggles in relationships as an adult, suicidal thoughts, becoming a mum who struggled with severe post natal depression and all the shit in between.

I always knew I would start from that point….. I don’t remember that particular moment as a child, I was too young. However, the photo of that moment I’m talking about, I keep it on my wall , it’s a photo I look at everyday, a constant reminder, it’s almost like emotionally cutting, but it symbolises even more than I can comprehend sometimes. It’s a photo of myself and my brother, I was maybe four and he was around 18 months old. In the photo you can tell we both have rosy cheeks, teary eyes and forced smiles, posing for a photo trying to make mum happy. It was at one of those photo set ups they have at the shopping centre back in the 1970’s. Mum always told us that we were both crying that day and didn’t want to have our photo taken, and maybe that is all it was. But that photo, even as such small children, I could see the sadness in our eyes. Neither of us knew the hell that would be our lives, what to me felt like my own personal prison. Something I suppressed and didn’t want to deal with until many many years later when I was in a happy, healthy and secure relationship. Bloody hell, to be honest I didn’t even know I wanted to deal with my past until my future was staring right back at me after I had our son at the age of 42.

My relationship with my husband, well he was my saviour I believe. He was put on this earth to make a difference, and that is exactly what he did for me. He was the man who treated me the way I knew I deserved to be treated, but at the time didn’t think I deserved, and from time to time I have still tried to sabotage things for us. I don’t think my husband really fully understands the magnitude of how blessed I feel to have him as my partner in life. He’s a very humble man, proud, good old fashioned values and sometimes overly generous, but the world could sure use more people like him. I’m pretty sure he thinks I am bat shit crazy sometimes, but he accepts me for who I am, with all the baggage and shit that I still struggle with. He’s my ride or die and I wouldn’t want to do life with anyone else.

Our son, he was the game changer…… he was the reason I was truly put on this earth. But at the time he was also everything I suppressed for so long and all of a sudden it all came flooding back. I looked at this beautiful gift that we had been blessed with and all my thoughts from around the time he was 8 weeks of age went a little something like this… How could another human being harm or treat their child the way my brother and I were treated? Why would you not want to protect your child with every fibre of your being? Why did our father not stand up for us when this was happening? Why why why why???? And these thoughts, they were on repeat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With all these thoughts, I was terrified that I was going to become who my mother was. I shut down, I couldn’t cope, I was paralysed. I was again back in my own personal hell, but this time you couldn’t see it, it was all consuming in my mind. I never slept, because I was terrified of what I may become. I thought I didn’t deserve to be a mum.