..dear reader..

All quotes from Breaking Ritual Silence: An Anthology of Ritual Abuse Survivivors' Stories eds., Jeanne Marie Lorenze & Paula Levy (1998) 'When you are born to satanist parents, you drink paradox with your mother's milk.' (Jane Solay, p.132) 'And I will write it someday; I will tell. I will tell in words that people will not be able to look away from..' (g & c, p.7) 'By age fifteen, I had been raped thousands of times, witnessed scores of murders, and killed..' (Joy, p.25) 'Killing just seemed natural and matter-of-fact for us. (Morgana, p.61) 'They taught me that everything has life and everything is sacred, then they turned around and forced me to abuse an animal or use one of the elements in an abusive way.' (Two Bears Running, p.41) 'I was an interrogator and an assassin.' Morgana (p.62) p76/77 Dx

Saw my grandad twice over the long weekend.  He said something about someone called Alan and 'I couldnae stand up to them'.  I couldnae help wondering if related to the sense I've started having about going on trips with my Grandad when I was very little, 2ish say, a good bit before we moved to Glen.  There was arguments about it. Incest glimpses, my legs are bended up towards my face, he is on top.  My dad was an obvious bastard but Grandad not so.  I have the usual sense of disbelief when the images and feelings are not ones I have already become accustomed to. My cousin's funeral on Monday.  The doctors have been saying my grandad doesn't have long for years.  I never believed it before but today I lent over his devastatingly frail and angular frame and tried to lift him up against his pillows I knew something big had changed.  Thankfully a nurse saw this and they sorted him out.  Outside in the corner a woman kept crying...

Changed my twitter to profile to just say 'survivor' but I haven't really been feeling it lately.  'Victim' fits better.  I know that's not strictly true of course, I'm not being forced into anything anymore but I find it so hard to really imagine a better life.  There is so much damage, so many abusive relationships for as long as I can remember.  One of the books talks about a silver lining, someone who made you feel human, cared for and loved.  I'm not sure I had one.  I don't have the strength to get beyond it all.  Everything I have gets used up on the day to day, the viruses, the single parent hood, the living with it all. NuShrink said I seemed to be opening up but I know I don't talk coherently much.  Things just evaporate when I start to talk or write and I'm left feeling dumb.  He says I could just do nothing and continue as I am.  I have a long way to go with him.  If I thought like that I would be dead, a dr...

Really nasty dream last night, biggest sis said the jumper I was wearing had been a present from her to me and she wanted it back, she took it off me. I protested back my mum was on her side. Lots of trying to save babies from my mum, pointless phone calls to the police and trying to convince myself that because wee man is four hes safe now. When I first came round, first I had to figure out where I was and after that I felt like there is no fucking way I'm leaving him with them this weekend. At the moment I'm hoping its like the big talking boulders in the Labyrinth telling them to turn back, at their worst when your own the right track. Still scared though. But I need it, I need to move forward but I can't bare the thought of anything happening to him. I don't know if I should go, I know I probably will go though, I'm hard wired to be brave whenever possible. He's so adorable how can I even think of doing anything that might put him in danger.. Saw ...

I read myself back into the footsteps I refused to follow because it might do me good and that makes them right when they said ‘do as your told and everything will be fine’ but as long as its short I give it ago. The child is away so mother plays desperate for views desperate for trouble still flinching whenever anyone thinks my name. I am a survivor and I stand amongst the documents that prove that I was there and he was here but today they are confetti clogging the drains when it rains. I walk on the ground but it feels like wet paper.

If I'm ever to make any serious attempt at writing me I need to know my genres. This is bastarding hard, considering my genres are ritual abuse survivor stories and lets face it the fucking tabloids. Not just all the cozy euphemistic long words of academia. I'm going to have to face up to all those books with the fake handwriting titles and cover shots of kids pulling the same poses I had to. What's the difference of someone taking a photograph of kid crying in order to distress the viewer and doing it to gratify? Part of the same system that uses children as a focus for our difficult emotions. Of course the cover shot kids will be treated differently, but how do they know? How do they know they are not photographing a kid who has made those same expressions but with even less clothes? How would they kid know the difference? I never did and still don't. People who photographed anything professionally, might and did photograph me. It was pretty viral in some a...