Broken (audio version)

No single event broke me. The mind is a pressure valve, whirring  thoughts make it volatile. Every issue we dwell on tightens the valve. Something will have to give. Intense pressure may create diamonds in the earth but in the mind it causes fractures, cracks, and splits until …

As a child growing up in the 1970’s we were unaware of predators, other than those in wildlife documentaries. Big cats melding with the environment, waiting – breathless. Sexual predators are the same, hiding in plain sight, moving with stealth until …

There  the similarity ends. The first strike is not a savage pounce, but a gentle tone, reassuring. Simple kind words, ‘How ya doin’?’ ‘Want to be friends?’ Accompanied with open hands and arms, the child is ensnared.

There is no such thing as a minor sexual assault, not to the victim.

They are led down a well lit path, all stumbling blocks removed, nothing to distract. The predator changes its skin, no lunger hunting, they have become a pied piped luring the children.

There is no such thing as a minor sexual assault, not to the victim. The uninvited invasion of another’s person is assault. Period. While the physical side can, hopefully, come to an end the mental aspect remains. Now the problems begin.

I had not thought about those times as anything but the past, history. It was not until I went for counselling to help me through a difficult relationship it all came out. A few innocuous questions opened the cellar door and out came everything. I wasn’t thinking about it all. 

My counsellor wanted me to be angry and call him a bastard for what he had done, say it out loud so I could hear the truth. I couldn’t, it wasn’t how I felt. Sure, he was a filthy old paedophile who had no boundaries and didn’t care about age or gender.

What I did instead was discover healing through writing it all down.  This time too. Seeing your thoughts in words, they become a story, pain on paper. Catharsis in print. No longer inside. It happened to me as sure as it has happened to countless others. Finding release for the mental pressure is at hand. Many studies have shown this, a great example is ‘The Recovery Letters’ by James Withy, a collection of letters written by people recovering from depression to those in depression.

My own experiences of mental health have lead to this thesis. A study of the impact of both sharing our stories, the good and the bad, and measuring their impact on the reader and the writer.

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