If the Stories you can’t tell have guards, then mine was an artillery full of armour, it had dug a moat, and was employing dragons at its watch towers. 

(see previous post below ‘Silent Stories have guards’)

40 years of wilderness might sound too biblical, but it was forty years of inner desolation that was growing its bleak dead landscape by the month.

Where light failed to grow

Where nothing grew. 

Just barrenness of lost wondering. 

And. 

Then

Trying to mask it all. 

Keeping up appearances. 

Tricky, given that any encounter with her that anyone else had resulted in them being bewildered by tactlessness, taken for granted or swallowed up in her drama. 

Indeed, as an 18 year old, I stood out as having parents who didnt want to talk to me every day when I left home, instead, ‘Just wanting to hear I was alive every two weeks’. I didnt have anyone to ring back home to, when I left. Unusual. Everyone knew. 

Just had to get on. 

Just had to deal with it. 

I ran away, and tried to create a life that didnt involve the story. 

Nothing anyone could do, so what was the point. 

Apart from that it was increasing the wilderness within. 

Living but I wasnt alive. 

But I was used to that anyway. 

Thats what id always had to do. 

I remember aged around 10 realising that ‘I was going to have to make it myself’ – I was going to have to make life work for me, despite my parents. Thats what I thought. Thats what I had to do. I also emotionally divorced them. I couldnt rely on them, in fact, I was more stolen from them, than given, so, I detached, I bricked up, I made myself hardened. 

I won awards in school in the next few years. Thats the level of making it I undertook. I dug deep into every sense of personal determination. focussed. almost unyielding to myself. If my English teacher (the lovely Mrs Nash) had her way I was heading to Cambridge to study English after flying through my A levels with the only A in the class. But I couldnt ask for anything at home. So my savings went on what I wanted to do, and that was run away, and that was follow safety in the institution of the church. 

I ran away. Tale as old as time. And ran away from the story I couldnt tell. 

The one where a dominating powerful woman had stolen from me from birth. 

Because in the bleakness of the landscape was a monster that shed grown there, telling me that it was my fault, and I was responsible. 

Because at the edge of the bleakness of the landscape, guarded by the armies, was a terrified, tiny little boy, who appeared on the rails to the north east England, with a hardened bricked up heart, who was so eager to please and belong, I had no sense of self, or agency – all for Jesus…. ripe for service, ripe to give up everything, for I had very little to start with. Arriving in the tough landscape of the north east aged 18, feeling very small and very alone, and having to poke her angry wound to get there. So, fearful and so on the run. 

And I had eaten my way to comfort since about 10. Sports kept me busy. Sex was also appearing as a coping strategy from 16… and with all this, shame was the fertiliser on which the ugliest of thorns grew in the wild rugged landscape. That I could never feel clean from, however much I prayed. 

22 more years followed. The story stayed in its distant box. Appearing only so often. 

I was me. I was making a life. Family. Kids. Work. Church. Degrees. Pets. all the externals. 

Still trying to win approval that was never going to happen. 

Orientating around the monster. Even at 200 miles away. (It was never closer than 200 miles, safe distance) 

Hiding what was true, not going there. 

Fractures, weeds, thorns growing as time continued. 

Pain spluttered out in so many reactions. 

Pain provoked as only my roundedness came out to play. 

It wasnt just what happened to me, it was also what I did to hide it all away. 

To give myself any ‘endorphin kick’ in the midst of deep unhappiness, that I couldnt talk about. Looking forward to football matches, or ‘time alone’ or eating half a loaf of bread after bed time…. Shame, Fear, Ache, was all extending the wildness of the inner landscape. Sculpting out 40 years of no mans land, now land mines filled the fields. Explosives with hazardous warnings. 

Keep the story away, on a path to self destruction. 

The story, it’ll devour very small you James. 

You can’t go there. 

The problem was. 

The reality of what happened.

As well as…

Keep up falseness. Keeping up the facade

Already had. 

shame

I didnt start ‘my healing journey’ so I could love and integrate the truth of what happened to me. No. Because, so much I had blocked out, it was behind the prison maze walls. No, I started because I needed to deal with it. I started because I needed to grow. 

I knew how much it had damaged me though. I knew how much I was hiding pain.

I started to notice the writing in the landscape, when I wasnt trying to survive in it. I built a very tiny one step platform and could start to see what was now beneath me. 

Realising that so much wasnt my fault. So much wasnt mine to carry. 

So much that what I was doing was coping mechanisms, for wounds. 

Slowly by slowly turning and walking through the wildness. 

Walking in the midst of its guards. 

Walking towards the story. 

That isnt now of what happened to me. 

But how I survived. 

A story I began to write 4 years ago. 

Started to own it. Started to realise

That I wasnt meant to still be alive. 

I survived. I lived. 

And. 

Slowly but surely. 

I realise something. 

I couldnt choose my story. 

I was born into it. 

Thats what the universe meant for me. 

And so. 

Acceptance wasnt an easy pill to swallow. 

Yet. 

As I sit here, reflecting on loving myself, and loving all the parts of me. 

I realise that loving myself, means loving my story. 

It’s not hiding behind the armies anymore. 

It’s not a distant wound thats to be feared. 

It’s not a fracture thats too sore to move. A jigsaw piece that doesnt fit. 

I am my Story. My story is me. 

I can’t say I wanted a life of being ‘an abuse survivor’ 

I can’t say thats what I thought it would be. 

It wasnt on my wish list of 1999, or 2019 for that matter. I was running from what it had done to me. And it held all the power over me. 

But no. Not any more. 

If what happened to me, was what I was meant to have. 

Then it’s now loved, held and included. 

I am not whole without the realising of my survival powers in making me me. 

I am not whole if I hate my story, or hate what it did. 

Fragmented wrestle isnt free. 

It’s time to write a new story. 

Today I write of loving the story of me. 

Today I love the life I have

Where love so hidden

Finds her way abundant. 

Soulful, Fire and free. 

All included. 

Living the ongoing past story, in the present.

And hope, joy and dreams for future me. 

Loving me, aged, 48, means loving my story. 

All of it. 

Learning what words free feel like, where truth is accepted. 

I can choose my own adventure, of a me, thats now finally free. 

And the wasteland, is like an island. 

Warm, wild, and calm. 

Whole. 

Me. 

Thank you. If you have read all 20 parts you deserve a medal, and I am so very grateful. 

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