I've been feeling depressed lately. Nothing new there, I have had bouts of depression since I was a boy, all connected with feelings of guilt and shame. The reasons for this are long and complex. I had a harsh upbringing in a Christian family, my Mother passed away when I was quite young. I fell into another physically abusive relationship when I was in my twenties. After talking to a friend about the whole mess of my life, I decided getting my problems out of my head and into the open might help, hence the blog.
I don't know if it will work. I don't know if I can absolve myself of the sins I have committed which make me feel guilty. I don't know if I can finally get my head straightened out or not, but I am going to have a try!
My Messed up Life!
My Childhood Home:
I was brought up by my Father, Michael and my Mother, Susan who were both Christians. I have one Brother, older than me by four years. The names chosen for me and my brother came from the Bible, good Christian names, Luke and Adam.
My Father was in the Army when he met and married and continued to be so until a year or so after my Mother's death from Cancer. I was 6 years old at the time.
We moved around a couple of times in my early years with Dad's job and by the time I was old enough to go to school, we found ourselves in Bulford, Wiltshire where I started school at the age of five.
Our house was a 3 bed semi built I think sometime in the 1950's, small hallway leading through to the kitchen and back door to the garden. There was a lounge to the right of the hall and upstairs, two reasonable size bedrooms, a small box room and a bathroom/toilet.
Luke and I shared the back bedroom whilst my parents slept in the front.
Our two single beds consisted of a sprung metal frame on wooden legs which was the base for the mattress, with no headboard. I think these were Military type beds that my Father had gotten from somewhere in the Army barracks. Our beds faced the door with mine being closest, and Luke's under the window. The beds were close enough for you to be able to jump from one to the other quite easily. Between our two beds was a small cupboard, like a wardrobe in which to hang clothes and behind the door, a chest of drawers with a mirror on top.
The house face onto a kind of communal 'green' area and at the back was a small garden of lawn with a shed at the bottom.
All the houses in the rows of Family accomadation looked the same. It was only the road itself that you recognised in order to be able to get home!
An early memory, possibly my first, is of waking up on the kitchen table, having fallen asleep there. My Mum was nowhere to be seen. She had actually gone to collect Luke from school. I started crying as I didn't know where she had gone.
My Father, who must have on on night shift, came running down the stairs after a few minutes in an angry mood. I must have woken him up. His first tactic was to try and sooth me, which didn't work as I wanted my Mother. The next was shouting at me as he wanted to go back to sleep, and when that didn't work, he lifted me up, put me over his knee and gave me several slaps across my backside!
That had the opposite effect to calming me and by the time, my Mother was back, she had a fully hysterical child to deal with!
I don't think my Father had wanted children. After my Mother had died and he was forced to bring up two boys by himself, this became even more apparant. Luke and I lived with his forced 'regimes' through our teens. We went to Church on Sundays, we were not allowed to play with our school friends unless he wanted us out of the house, we had always to be in shirt and trousers at home. I didn't own a pair of jeans until I was able to start buying my own clothes! He would punish us with the slightest provocation, sometimes even looking for a excuse to do so. It was in effect, a form of mental and physical abuse for both Luke and myself.
Luke joined the Royal Navy when he was eighteen and escaped, only coming back for the brief visit. That was in 1975. I had to stay at home alone until 1978 and those years by myself were even worse. I was an inconvenience to my Father.
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