I am old now. and i just dont know where to write this

[MushyMe]

Gosh there is so much to talk about and i just wish to put it all in words

It started wehn my sister and i where 6 and 5 respectively. One day mom and dad sat us down to explain we will have a new mommy soon. We were kids and too this day i do not know the reason for it. i was just sad that mommy was goping away, early that morning mom woke us and we fled states, too live with gradma.

i had started school by then, but i was always upset after that, i failed to make any friends in the new place, and just fell behind in school. I never cuaght up. Im sure there was legal battles over custady right, and some time in grate 6 or 7 i spent a year living with dad, his new wife and her three kids. This was my year of hell. My step mom just did not plain like me, i never understood at the time, but now i believe that she saw me as some kind of threat too her own security. And she started forbidding me to return home after school, without my father, So at abotu 10 years of age (i think) i would wait around the ferry pier for my dad to return from accoss the harbour at about 6-7pm each night so i could go home

That essentially left me roaming the streets, alone, and very sad. for 3-4 hours every afternoon. It so happened i chanced on a man, who was very kind too me, he would talk too me, play chess with me, and buy me icecreams. But he also did other things too me, things that a child should not experience. And i just, dreading it, went along with it, let him do what he wanted cuase he paid attention too me, and bought me icecreams

I tried to tell Dad, a few times, not about the man, he was my friend. that my step mother never let me come home after school. They would have fights, i could hear it, and her kids would call me a "home wrecker". But Dad just casually passed it off too me as "i thought you just liked greeting me".

So im old now, and ive never talked about this, ive never moved on with my life, its been wasted. I dont have a girlffriend, ive had difficulty keeping a job, and have had long gaps of upto a decade between jobs in my past. Every day is a battle with depression, anxiety and possibly PSTD. Ive seen so many phychologists, even a pychiatic doctor. I just couldnt bring myself to share with anyone any of my history. So after a time, it was all considered "not much concern", and a case generally feeling downtrodden. That is my fualt, i never opened up. I just dont know how too, in person

[Aaronsis]

Welcome MushyMe

You have opened up now and you have found yourself here, we are here for you and can I start by saying how desperately sorry I am that you had to experience such a traumatic childhood, that your need for attention and acceptance was also at the compromise of abuse and this is just so heartbreaking. You were a child and none of this is your fault, how as a child are you expected to "manage" these situations...you needed to be seen. I am so so sorry this has impacted your whole life and to the point where you still suffer today, this is just so devastating.

I think your father probably did the best he could and who knows what was going on in his life for him to take you away from your mother but I do think mostly that people try to do the right thing. He obviously worked hard to provide for the family and the he was probably very unaware of how your step mother treated you, this too is most certainly not your fault.

I am so glad that you have found your way here and that you have spoken up and have seen doctors in the past. This is very good to hear as they do have the tools to help you through these situations and sometimes the pain and damage is so great that it does take support indefinitely.

It is so great to talk to you MushyMe and I hope to chat some more, if you want to that is, we are here to support you and to care for you and as you read other threads you will see that you are not alone and there are so many people here is this BB community that need all kinds of support and together we can be stronger.

Huge hugs

AS

[MushyMe]

Thankyou, im not sure what i want out of this forum. I feel at this stage in life its too late to turn anythign around (im ~ 50yo) I am just so angry, im mad at my father, my step mother, her kids, though i know where my father is. but non of the others.

Perhaps ironically, my father himself served jail time, a conviction of child touching himself (one of my step sisters). I was 17 at the time he went to jail. My step father, whom i still love dearly and who pulled my mother back from a very self destructive path over the years since her seperation/ He encouraged us, my sister and i to keep incontact and write him letters while he was inside. I wanted scribble all the blame and vile i could muster onto those sheets of paper. And for the longest time i could not write too the man.

I felt the man who failedf to protect me, tossed mom aside like old garbage, was the predator himself, How could anyone support him? i begrudely began to write him, short at first, i mean real short.a sentance or two. And he would reply with volumetic encyclopedic responces, and that made me angry. I was growing up then, i wanted to hit him, punch him, blame him for everything. And in a very long, poorly written letter one time, i let him have it, i told hime everything about how we exisited after he kicked mom out, how mom took too drinking in the local with all the food money, how we lived on bread and canned peaches inside a tiny rental caravan, how i got in trouble every day at school cuase i didnt have a high school uniform. how he let his new wife treat me like that, how she never let me in the house, i was livid with rage and all i had was a piece of paper to take out on

Yet somehow, im not a crankey old man,. i have half sisters, who have children and i love my niece and nephew and nothing warms my heart more then when they look upto me, and call me Uncle

[Aaronsis]

Thank you for sharing some more of your childhood MushyMe, it is not easy and the more that you are sharing the more horrific it becomes. I am so happy that you had/have your stepfather, what a man, to stand up and raise and encourage you when you, that is a true man, to raise the children he did not create, and that he still tried to get you to support and be there for your father. I hope that it did allow you to purge and to dump some of the grief and the mud back off to your father when you did write him, as that is his mud and not yours, you unfortunately had to suffer as a result. I am wondering if even today you can still use writing as a way to get out that pain and get out all the feelings that you want to dispose of, get that toxic pain out. You said you are 50 years old...you are by no means old and as long as you have air in your lungs MushyMe, it is never too late, never too late to find happiness for you and even dare i say it, a partner if that is what you want. You sound like you have come so very far in your journey and I also hear you still have this pain, but you are so much stronger than you think.

I agree, even in these few words we have shared I too can tell you are not a grumpy old man. Can I suggest that sometimes these traumas in life turn us sour and make life hard but I can hear how you have not and that is so wonderful. I can also hear how much love you do have for your half sisters and your niece and nephew and you are so right, it absolutely fills your heart when you are shown love from children. I am so happy you have these people in your life.

I am very interested to hear what you think about perhaps having a book and dumping all this hurt and pain in there, it doesn't have to be for anyone to read and you may never read it again, it may not even make sense, and some pages are just a mess of words. This is how I managed through my time of grief and to this day I have not reflected back on what I wrote, I don't need to, that what lies on those pages in my healing and one day I might read it..but I might not...but I feel awesome for getting out what pain I needed to ..and in those pages it remains.

Hugs to you MM

Sarah xx