fighting for justice,

hi guys,

this week I am writing around the need to feel like you can get justice for all the hurt that you have had to suffer. for me its like trying to get control back from my abuser, be able to think that they should suffer for the years and years of abuse they have put me through. it all makes sense, but I don't think in reality it works that way, even if you manage to get them punished. that's something I haven't managed.

 I had a phone call a week last Monday to say that the second investigation that my abuser was going through because of me wasn't going any further because of lack of evidence (its historical etc so much harder to get forensic evidence and the nature of the abuse other people wouldn't be able to corroborate my story),

trying to get justice in the legal system is notoriously difficult because the burden of guilt is so high. I, like so many other people, were unable to report it until I felt safe enough, but this means that the amount of evidence that the police can gather is reduced, a lot! I decided to go through with this second investigation as in the year between the two so much had happened within society after the reporting of Jimmy Saville and various other high profile paedophiles, I was hoping that because of this, people were more likely to understand that my mental health issues are a result of what's happened to me rather than my "issues" being used against me. it is so well documented how childhood abuse, especially sexual, has a massive impact on someone's mental health right into and through adulthood, and yet my abuser used that fact I am diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder as a reason that HE was innocent....when it actually means (in my case) the complete  opposite is true.

the news of the investigation failing,  has set me back so much (and wasn't doing too well before that. to me feels like that he has gotten away with it again, that because of various reasons I couldn't tell anyone at the time I am the one punished, I'm the one who relives what has happened over a 20+ period every single day. I am the one who is too scared to let mused sleep as much as I need because of the terrifying nightmares that haunt me night after night, I'm the one who struggles to cope and unable to work because of the legacy of the abuse..

I am extremely lucky as I have a group of fantastically supportive friends and professionals involved, and they remind me that the investigation didn't end because I wasn't believed, something I struggle with as I was told repeatedly throughout the abuse that no one would believe me because of his position within society, that no one would think the caring vicar who inflict so much pain on his daughter. I hear his voice even now telling me that, and its taking a hell of a long time to believe that people actually trust what I am saying, realise that my issues arise from my upbringing,

Although I haven't got justice through the courts, I am hoping that I have still saved people going through what I have gone through, and put the fear of being caught into him that he manages to restrain from hurting anyone else. if I have managed that then he stress of the investigation, and how much I am struggling right now is worth it.

a life trying to find control. trigger abuse sh/ed etc

hey guys.

I've been wanting to write this blog for a little bit, but something has stopped me, I'm not sure what, but here we go anyway.

for years my control of my body has been taken away as I said in my previous blog. its like the one thing that you should be able to control is not yours and your left with trying desperately find something to control. I think that some people find this hard to understand, how out of control the world feels even though you may make small choices such as what toothpaste to use.

its felt like my whole life all I have ever wanted is to feel in control of my life, of my body. but when you cant control and stop after years and years of being violated your own body the search to feel that control is so strong. after all its human nature that you feel in some way of control. and for me, as with many survivors' you end up trying to take control in ways that are harmful and destructive, but you get some kind of relief from having that control.

my body is scarred completely from self injury, one of the ways in which not only did I learn to cope with what was going on but it makes me feel I have control over MY body, I cut into the skin and have left permanent markers that in a way is to push anyone who comes close away. this is very difficult for anyone who has never self injured to get their head around. although my body doesn't feel mine, I'm the one who has scarred it to the point that its even more ugly, its my control to keep people away, keep anyone for even wanting to hurt me again. even as I write this I know in reality that it wouldn't stop anyone, but each scar across my body is my map of survival, my map of keeping control. one day I will do another blog into this in more detail.

since I was young, I've had a difficult issues around food. for the years that he had control of what he did to me, I have had control over what has entered my body (or what I have forced out of my body by making myself sick or taking x number of laxatives a day). food is my control, and this is  the one I keep going back to, at any point of feeling that control is slipping away from me, food becomes my obsession. refusing to eat means that no one can make me put anything (well food related) into me that I cant do, the same with binging and purging. its quite ironic that binging in a way is a random kind of control for me, when in essence its being out of control, but its not really the binging that has significance to me, its the fact I can purge it away, get rid of it forever. over the years people have try to persuade me to eat when I am struggling to, but that scares me so much as it feels like they are taking the control away from me, but knowing that they cant ever make me keep it down keeps me going. I hate the medication that I am on, because of the weight gain, for me the number on the scale shows how much I'm in control, how much my life is mine....I never said any of this is rational!

the final thing for me that is around control is sleep, and this is a difficult one for me. I hate sleep with a passion. for so many people its a way of escaping, sleeps no escape for me, sleep is nightmares and fear. I so often do anything to avoid sleeping, the nightmares both true events and fictional seriously scare the living daylights out of me, as while I am asleep I cant control it, I cant control what I am going to dream. I'm no way saying being awake is much better, I live with frequent flashbacks, dissociation and terror, but in my head in some way if I'm conscious I can at least try and control it, asleep I don't have a chance in hell to stop it.

many survivors' use other ways to keep control, OCD, alcohol, drugs to name  few.

all I want is to have my control of my body and life back.

Families

hey guys,

well as Easter approaches, I sit in dread for another holiday where families will be getting together and sharing time, and I'm not, I'm on my own, but the alternative would be far to scary to even imagine. however its made me think, think about what a family is, and whether you can make your own???

I love the saying that "friends are the family you choose" cause whoever choose my biological family was seriously having a joke on me! but what is a family?

as far as I am concerned a family is people who care about each other, that want each other to be happy but are there when things aren't going so great.

thinking about it I think this idea of family, and it being close people around you means for a lot of people that it is their friends that they turn to when they need a shoulder to cry on, or the first person they ring when they get some good news is becoming more friends for more and more people. Society has changed so this is possible and that can only be a good thing?

my own family let me down, badly. but writing this means I have a great circle of friends that are the family I choose. the people I want to spend time with and are there for me, as I am for them.

The last few years holidays such as Easter have filled me with dread, the whole get together ideas, and reminded me how much I have lost because I was honest. and it still does on days where im feeling generally down. but when I think about who I do have in my life I know I have the better deal than those I have lost, and I jus got to keep reminding myself of that.

love you guys...you know who you are xxx

my take on s136

hey guys,

As I am sitting in my hotel room "up north" I thought that I would write a blog around why I am up here. tomorrow I am helping with the "north learning event" for the CQC commissioners' (inspectors) around my experience with section 136 (s136). something, unfortunately I know a bit too much about.

section 136 is a section to a place of safety by the police is they feel someone is at risk (of hurting themselves or someone else). they cannot place this on a person if they are in their own house, and a "place of safety" can be either a hospital (usually a 136 suit) or the police station.

Unfortunately in the 12 years that I have been under the mental health teams in North Wales and East Sussex (and even north Devon when on holiday at one point) I've had too much contact with the police when I have been in crisis, and the response like with anything has been mixed, and even within forces it has been mixed.

There's two main areas to focus on, the practical stuff, and attitudes

The first point is that when I have had any contact with police in the last few years since I moved south I have been sectioned under a 136 without much conversation...yet whenever I have been in crisis elsewhere and the police have been involved they have given me the option to go and get assessed and help VOLUNTARY first (which I took) and therefore there was no reason to force me into a situation where I feel even more out of control as my freedom (even if its only overnight) is taken away from me by people who do not get enough training. I'm not blaming individual officers, or even areas, but its well known that the police do not get enough training. according various blogs and internet sites around 20% of all police work is to do with mental health, and yet they don't get the training that they feel, and I as a service user feels is required. more on that later. I don't know if Sussex police feel that s136 straight away and why they don't seem to offer to the person in crisis to be able to go for a voluntary assessment, or whether the fact that the notorious suicide spot "Beachy head" has been involved means that they take the line that they seem to do. I feel that it would  better for all if being detained/arrested on a 136 is the last possible option!!!

Every single time I have been detained under a s136, the local 136 suit has been closed, and so I have been held in the cells. I will always say that the cells are the last place that someone who is in a metal health crisis should be held. were at a 136 suit the idea is while to keep you safe you should also be as comfortable as possible, where nothing can be further from the truth in a cell. I am a great believer in distraction to calm my own situation down, and I know many other people who have varying mental health issues where this is one of their tactics. how on earth can you distract yourself in a police cell, apart from annoying the custody officers by continually asking for cups of tea! there's no TV or comfortable place to wait for the relevant people to come unlike in a 136 suit. a police cell is just not appropriate as far as I am concerned.

I have often felt a criminal when I have been detained, both by my surroundings and by the way I am treated. I know that the whole reason I am stuck in the cell is apparently to keep me safe, an so they have to check I haven't got anything to harm myself, but I cannot see a reason why I should be left with nothing but a blanket (and I am lucky I know people who haven't even had that). it feels so degrading, unsafe, and vulnerable to be in that cell completely naked when you know that people are watching you constantly. I do have a history of being abused and being in a situation like that reminds me of my past, and likely to make me a lot more in distress and unsafe!!!!

As I am a self harmer, and often this has been part of the reason that I am detained by the police, it is obvious to me that most of them just do not understand. to be far most of the population don't understand why someone would deliberately hurt themselves. self harm in the most part is about coping and survival, and while there is a risk, its not often a huge life and death risk. to me it feels that  the police (as well as many physical health services but that's for another blog) need more understanding around self harm, it is a major issue across the UK, but is also demonised as attention seeking and manipulative, something that riles many people. it seems that a small minority of people give everyone who self harms or has a personality disorder a bad name, but as with any group of people, we are blah who has a PD not the PD!

I guess people want to be treated as someone worth caring about, and treating as if they were human not a rabid animal!

my body - TRIGGER

well I finally have a computer and this means I can blog a lot more.

the last few days things around my body and how I view it etc. has been going around and around my head.

POSSIBLE TRIGGER - abusive past/ed/sh behaviours.

for as long as I can remember I have hated my body, the body that has let me down, has been hurt so many times over and over again. its not MY body its everyone else's that has hurt me, has raped me, has abused me, I have no body.

Im 30 now, yet I still want to destroy the body, whether it be through self harming, through messing with my eating (which has been far to easy to get back into :/ and although I so far have managed to stop myself the urges to destroy the inside through oding.

its not my body, its something that has let me down. that has let people take advantage of me, even when I was little, all I think is if I can destroy IT then ill be free, free from the threat of it all starting again.

but with no body I cannot survive. over the last few years I've realised I want to be someone, I want to do thing, get a job, love someone, and all these need a body....maybe I could transplant my mind and soul into someone new?

my body just isn't mine.

hello

hello! im  new to this bloogging lark, so bare with me while i get used to.it and somehow get laptop!!)amd it doesnt seem to let me start a new line...anyway who am i? it seems such a simple question but at 30 im inly beginning to figure it out! my life up to recently was  not much a life. wanting to destroy my body for it letting me down, from the age of 5 till a few years ago i was used as a sex object by someome close. i couldnt cope with simple lifes up and downs that for me are extreem, i was crying out for someone to help, not realiskmb.i wasnt ready. i think in the last couple of years, ive changed more than i ever have... the catalyst? being able to speak the secret ive kept inside (and even in some ways from myself) and for ur no longer to be the unspeakable. yes i might have borderline personality disorder, but also im a survivor!