I had an accident on my bike, skidded on the gravel. I had a boys bike frame so the middle bar was raised with the gears in the middle. When I fell the gears hit into my vagina. It was painful. I was screaming lying on the road. A neighbour carried me home.

My mother made me lie on the bed without any pants on. I was screaming and hysterical. Trying to cover myself with my hands and she was slapping them away. She said something like “look what youve done” or “you’ve done this yourself” . I didn’t know what I had done or what was wrong. That something looked bad. I thought I had done something really bad. I thought she could see what I had done or what my father had done. I thought everyone could see. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought something bad was going to happen because of what had happened. Kids from the neighbourhood were outside.

Nothing had really happened. It may have been an over reaction. But I was so upset. I couldn’t contain myself.

In summer, and sometimes other times, my father would often take us to the beach after work. Sometimes it was my brother and I, sometimes just me. Though I stopped going as I got older, maybe 12, I didn’t want to be with him and I didn’t want anyone to see my body in swimmers or getting changed.

Thats also when he would stop at the pub on the way home. Waiting for him in the car, sometimes cold because I was still wet. And thinking that any moment someone was going to try to get in the car and ‘get me’. Quite irrational really. I hated him at those times. I knew he was lying to my mother, it wasn’t that, more that I was so scared that a man was going to come and do something to me.

Alcohol worked for him. Made him less angry, less distant. Though I really disliked the smell of it on him. He was more relaxed. Freer. Which was better but he was more touchy with his hands too.

I’m not sure I will be able to excise all the disgust.

But, if I did, would there be anything left of me. Or would I crack. And what if that did happen? I would be nothing. Even less than now. The disgust is not working yet it is holding everything together.

I’m feeling exhausted, with a constant buzzing in my chest and head, like being on the verge of something but not quite. I feel nauseous and anxious and tired. Not sure this is sustainable. I don’t want to talk to anyone – Ingrid, friends – afraid I will not be able to fool them. I’m becoming more isolated.

I welcome death. And often think about how wonderful it would be if a sudden illness or accident were to take me.

Had a dream that I was told I had to go to a drug rehab but I knew them all because of my work. I had to trek there on my own. When I got there I couldn’t talk even when people recognised me and said hello. I was hoping that they didn’t realise that I was meant to be entering the program. Whilst I was sitting there a worker saw me that I worked with in real life, an old bureaucrat that was grumpy but we got along really well and he respected me and I him. He looked at me and knew why I was there and was very kind and gentle even though I couldn’t talk. I felt very comforted by him. He didn’t try to touch me and knew he wouldn’t.

As a kid I was terrified of under the bed, worried that snakes lived they and if I put my arm or whatever over the side it would drag me down. In some way I knew it wasn’t true but I couldn’t stop the fear and the panic when I had to get on and off the bed in the dark.

Holding my shoulder hard. Putting him in my mouth. Crying because I’m in trouble for something to do with staying at the neighbours too long. He’s masturbating. Sitting in his chair in the lounge.. I’m quite upset and not wanting to do this. I’m 8 or 9, it’s before the neighbours moved away so I know how it goes, just waiting for it to finish. I don’t want to be there.

What does it mean or matter

Are you going to lie to me about it? About what you think, what you think about me?

We had an incinerator at the end of the back yard where the house papers and rubbish got burnt off once a week. I think it was a 70’s thing, lots of people did it.

It was a ‘boys’ job so my father and brother did it. I wanted to do it too, sometimes if it was just my brother he would let me be there or even put things in the fire. If it was just my father I would sometimes go there to be with him. He had pornographic magazines there, sometimes I would go there and they were looking at the magazines. I knew it was secret. My brother sometimes showed me on his own telling me not to tell dad. I think it was fairly tame images, but I guess not ok. Seeing people without clothes and seeing their bodies.

My father would stand me against him and make my hands masturbate him, holding his over mine. He had large hands, I remember that about him. Wiping my hands on the grass or the newspaper.

I need to know if you believe what I have said, I just want to know.

Either way what will it mean to me? Something, Not sure. If you don’t, I shall stop trying. If you do, why, how, you don’t know what happened.

I feel so incompetent at this. I’ve lived, why can’t I do this? Not sure I will succeed at this. Not sure my mental health will sustain the barrage of video, or the physical effects.

I have glimpses of an anger that I want to make other people responsible for. Funny, my mother said I was just like my father – all quiet until i wasnt. Then it was bad anger. Hurting anger.

You said it was about him meeting his sexual needs without regard to me. That is hard to hear. That confirms my uselessness as a person, that that is all I am.

I thought it was more than that. I thought he did care for me. He provided something.

I need to be more than that. But I guess I don’t think I am anything but that and what he did.

If it wasn’t me

If I wasn’t there

Would it still exist?

I’ve tried so hard to keep what he did at a distance from me. Not wanting to identify as that, be identified as that or actually be that. But really, that has only worked externally.

I am that. I am mostly made up of that. There is little room for much else. By letting it out, others will see what I am, and that is all they will see. They will confirm what I fear – that I am nothing, contaminated, unlikable. And that will spread by association.

For people who have power or those I have regard for the mirroring has a bigger impact, it carries more meaning. What I am and what I have done by externalising it is so horrible and I feel so responsible for passing it on.

I cannot explain what it is or what it is like to see him in my mind. It is so obvious and there and yet another language that I cannot translate. I want to say it and I can see it but there is a deficit in me that prevents it coming out.

If someone else knows it makes it available for examination and I am on trial. To be found guilty of course. Guilty for  existing, as if that somehow made it happen. And yet I have need to extract or copy the events out, to ask was it ok? And will you still like me. I dislike that I need to be made ok.

And yes, there is the typical they wont believe me, which even if at some level you do, you wont actually believe it. not the detail, or the feeling, or the event.