My story, wanting to understand.

[Cacciatore77]

Hello Beyond Blue,

I hope we are all going great for new year.

Im wanting to share my story, I'm trying to get the free councilling sessions from Victims services, but in the mean time I just want to be heard, I'm a 25 yr old male if that helps. Trigger warning: This involves DV and emotional/psychological abuse as a child. I'll try keep this short

From as early as I can literally remember, my parents had a very rough relationship. I can't count how many times I watched my father beat the absolute fuck out of mum. We lived in a rural area with my grandparents in the nearest house across the paddock. From about 3, when the fighting started, I'd run over to their house screaming for them to help, and they'd go try break it up. My grandparents were my anchor at that time. Often I would cry to stay there because I was scared of the house. Id have this same nightmare over and over, and I'd dissociate heavily when my brain tried to ponder on my fears. So there was the DV, but another thing among others that fucked me up (this may make your stomach churn a little), when I was maybe 3-4, my father would sit me up on his PC, and show me extremely violent pictures and videos on an old website that any 90s/00s folks might remember. This pains me, as I feel my father stripped me of any innocence I had. I get teary thinking about it, what kind of grown man shows a child whos favourite passtime is Sesame Street and the Wiggles, pictures of people committing suicide and people being executed?

The DV went on until I was about 5, my mother had more then enough, my baby brother was not long born. She feared one of them were going to end up killing each other, and I don't doubt her validity. After I was taken away by DOCs, for the remainder of my childhood I had to visit my father every fortnight. Nearly everytime I visited him, there was always something stuck up his arse. If it wasn't him driving my emotions into the ground, it was death threats on my mother, he'd tell me he'd kill her and any man she got with, any baby they would have together. The shit he would say and emotionally do to me is a plethora of absolute pathetic insecure dribble. I swear sometimes my father wanted me to fail, either that or he is a complete moron that thought he was trying to toughen me up, which just did the opposite.

It went on up until I was maybe 13 when I started giving shit back to him, once I got older he calmed down a lot, he realised he couldn't control me anymore so he just gave up. Our relationship has been pretty good over the years, but a number of times we got into punch ups and arguments when we were drinking. I guess that was just me finally releasing all of my pain for him to see. But, some people you just can't change, he even laughed at me one time while I balled my eyes out screaming at him.

But besides all that, most of my childhood was good, you always have to remember the bright side. 

I had pretty bad anxiety throughout highschool, I found socialising extremely difficult. But I'm not bothered about it because I know most people don't go through what some do, so I take it with stride.

A lot of things resurfaces when my mothers partner, who was a paramedic, spiralled into a state of Fentanyl addiction and PTSD. It started back up when he locked himself in the bathroom one day and tried to kill himself by OD. I went into adrenaline mode and started CPR, I watched the life just drain out of his body, it was complete insanity.

After that, a lot of memories and feelings from my childhood resurfaced, I started having the same nightmare I had as a kid again. Months after just before I was to finish yr 12, my girlfriend at the time who was my rock, broke up with me, and that really fucked me up even further. I quit school and wallowd in depression, but not long after, my ex step dad accidentally set the house on fire an we lost everything. Honestly, when it was happening I just dissociated again, the loss didn't really hit me as hard as my mother.

I've tried to keep everything short, theres a lot more I could talk about, but thats the bulk of it.

Just wanting somebody to read my story, and maybe help me out a little. At the moment I'm struck with Anxiety and Agoraphobia, dunno if I suffer anything else but I for sure am pretty emotionally dysregulated. Thank you a lot of you read this for me, you don't have to reply but I'm cool with any input anyone has.