Neglect

My family was artistic on my mothers side. As kids, we created plasticine men and made a second world war battlefield out in the backyard. My brother made a plastercast pillbox for the Americans and I made a cardboard tank, with a doweling rod cannon and cotton reel wheels for the tracks. We used darts as representing bullet wounds and shots. Grenades were match heads, wrapped in silver foil. You had to say grenade, before throwing a dart that was supposed to be one. My brother had also made a pretend river with a bridge over it to the pillbox. As the game progressed, it became obvious that the tank was too big to get over it and darts, representing bazooka shells finished it off.

We also made paper men and played different characters with them, including cowboys with guns that came out of holsters and gun belts that were also worn by the figures as well as waistcoats. My eldest cousin also made a robot that was hollow and filled with beetroot juice, to represent blood and had a cellophane panel so you could see it. One year he built a mummy for Halloween, wrapped in bandages, with a hole in its side and a real dead spider in the gap. It also had ping-pong balls for eyes.

Cousin Michael made several firework bombs, including a plaster of Paris hand grenade and bog roll bomb. He also stuck bangers in cow pats or covered them with clay and threw them in the parish fields pond. Him and some others, used to put bangers in their clothes and run around until they exploded. Some of Jim’s mates had a fireworks battle, firing rockets across the Mere.

One year my brother created a home made shotgun as he called it. It was a wooden box construction with a shelf support as the handle. It was two metal tubes, filled with gunpowder from bangers, toilet paper rammed down it and on top of it a load of dried peas. He went down the Rectory Meadow to try it. Needless to say, the back blew off and he came home with a bit of smouldering shirt sticking out of his chest.

We had cats at home and when one died, Brother Jim painted a headstone for it, Dad dug a hole to bury and got a cardboard shoe box to put it in and I bought a big ornamental candle to put on top of it, paying a vigil over the graveside that night. We also had a budgie that I bought at Norwich Market and because it kicked seeds all over the carpet, it got relegated to the little room beside the front door and died of neglect. When a toddler I also buried the goldfish in the garden to see if they could swim but mum caught me and they survived. Plants didn’t fare much better, with me letting a maidenhair fern dry up and die, and I put a cactus into the water butt, which swelled up and fell to bits, drowned.

Nature also captured our imagination. Off to the local pond for frog spawn or newts. Trying to grab lizards basking in the sun or out eating ants (them, not us). Discovering slow worms in the compost heap. Bringing home toads as big as your fist (where have they all gone now?). Going in search of tadpoles in local ponds or out with fishing nets, trying to catch minnow or sticklebacks. Finding a Millers Thumb in the river (not a real one - a fish called that because of its big, flat head). Chasing butterflies across meadows or watching them hatch.

Did I mention how my brother saved a boy’s life? He climbed up a tree, to cut the rope hanging from it and if my brother hadn't thrown a half brick that hit him between the eyes, he would have fell twenty feet and killed himself or had a serious accident as he was hanging onto the rope which he was cutting, suspended in mid air.

My brother also got into a fight with another local lad, who didn't like me. We were cooking eggs in half oranges, with the contents scooped out and mackerel, wrapped in wet newspaper, stuffed into the embers of the fire as per Blue Peter instructions, when this all kicked off.

I remember dragging the sledge home, my uncle Ron made for me, during the really bad winter in the sixties. My soaking clothes had frozen and creaked as I moved along.

I played truant once by hiding in the ditch, until my mother shouted over the fence that she could see me and it was too late to go to school now, so you might as well come out of hiding. Looking across the cornfields at night and watching the light of the trains in the distance or in daylight, seeing the wind turn the waving corn stalks into a swishing see of yellow, then jumping over the fence after the harvest and finding hiding hares to chase or hedgehogs to pick up. Those were the days, that was a childhood worth living, not stuck in front of a TV or computer screen - real life, real experience

Me and my brother had a knitting needle fight once and I remember he stuck his into my arm and didn’t believe it when I told him he’d stabbed me. It was like when me and a cousin when we worked in a fabric knitting factory, near the old picture house. We had a sword fight with cardboard rolls that went up the centre of the material. I tripped and fell over backwards, catching one of my teeth on the handle of a pump up forklift. I told him I’d broken a tooth but he didn’t believe me either, until I showed him the broken parts.

I was never any good at football or any sport in fact. I had two left feet and no stamina, so when it came to picking a team, I was always the one who was left to the end, with the prophetic words 'I suppose we'll have to have him.' I was always stuck in goal or defence, usually the latter, even though my dad was a goalie for Diss Town.

Because I couldn't run and was big (the school photo shows a big grey area and that was me), my cousin Mike named Taff because it was fat backwards and later on Heap after a Mad Magazine strip cartoon, where a pile of rubbish comes to life. Him, my brother and Mike’s middle brother wanted to go off somewhere once, so I was told to look after the youngest brother, killing two birds with one stone as he didn't want me coming along either really.

We were Mods, my brother having A Lambretta and I had a Vespa 150 Sprint. I remember following him along Heywood Road, when he turned down Uplands Way and I missed the turn, slamming my brakes on and coming off my scooter (I did this another time too, coming round a bend that was notorious for crashes I later learned, falling on my backside and shouting my head off in pain, bringing a farmer from across a field and a lady out who lived nearby).

After I left school, I bought myself a black RAF coat. Bad move. It rained disclosing this was a badly dyed grey RAF coat - cue black shirt, ruined by seepage. I had a scooter as did my brother but at some point he bought a Trotter mobile and turned the three wheeler over on a bend, trying to keep up with a mate on a scooter.

We saw Jimmy Hendrix in Dereham pavilion and Lindisfarne at St. Andrews Hall in Norwich. I also ended up somewhere in North Norfolk, watching the Searchers because a gang of us from work went.

Somebody sneaked in a bottle of real scrumpy to a band we watched at college. I had a mouthful and the last thing I remember of that night was passing the bandstand and the noise of the music briefly knocking me back to consciousness as I staggered to the toilet.

At a later date, when I was living in Cambridge, another bedsit refugee beside me, invited me to a something in the Corn Hall, just behind where we lived. He introduced me to Newcastle Brown because he was originally from that part of the country. The next thing I remember is finding myself over a toilet seat in the hall, with everyone else having vacated the place ages ago. The following day I had to ring up work, to say I wouldn't be in because I was bent double and couldn't stand up straight (I tried drinking a glass of milk. Down it went and up it came again immediately. So I thought water might be okay. Down it went and up it came immediately again. Needless to say I have never had scrumpy cider or Newcastle Brown ever again.

I have become so depressed and hopeless, that I just don’t have the strength to care for or about myself. I barely eat, I can’t sleep, but I’m biking myself into the ground as an escape, and I’ve just entirely lost the will to keep myself out of harm’s way. I feel that I’m going to indirectly end my own life if I keep going this way. I’m neglecting homework to game, because I just can’t deal with even the smallest things in life anymore. I can’t get help, I can’t find any way to escape this, and I literally can’t live like this much longer.

(Hand drawing by me)

Winter people are late risers. They are buried in their beds as one day they will be buried in their coffins. Teenagers too are late risers, their roots buried in the ground as they seek the transformative to spring into life with a new, changed, adult body - flowering into their summer self after a winter of discontent.

Winter people are the old, dying plants of yesteryear as children are Spring, leaping into simple, joyful action rather than crushed by the complexity of age. They change like tadpoles or butterflies but not so drastically in form. Like in the film An American Werewolf in London, their bodies are wrenched and stretched into new shapes as their internal chemistry and physique alter and their roles in life swap from the cared for to the caring, children to adults.

The old are like zombies in worn out bodies - slow, forgetful, smelly and falling to bits. They say the old are wise because they have survived the impetuosity of youth but this might be down to good luck as opposed to the bad luck of poor choices.

Winter is like an air raid that leads us to shelter from the savagery of bad weather; the icy tongues that whip us with cold winds or grips us with frosty fingers, slowing our tread with slippery ice and deep snow. Winter is a time for hoarding and sheltering as summer is when we come out of hiding and share what we have. This is analogous to any misfortune or luck in our personal life or the world's (natural or man made disasters).

This is a time of abandonment and neglect, where we retreat into ourselves in a state of hibernation, when everything slows down to a halt or carrying out the least possible activities, in order to stay alive. It leads to avoidance of action or alternatively rushing things to get them over as quickly as possible. Our senses dull and our attention turns inwards in silent rumination as life lays buried and hidden, in a stilled world, prodded back into action by necessity alone.

Come Spring and like bulbs we burst through the crust of hardship and into the light of a new day, a new hope as every year, clearing away the damage of the past. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch resurface too as life extroverts our attention once more, in response to the warmth of the giving sun and the lengthening daylight, which like a searchlight delineates all hidden in the dark of winter’s night and inhospitability..

Winter is a time for reflection (looking back on the past) as summer is a time to get moving again (music and (e)motion). Winter people skulk in their memories of yesterday and it's bitter failures. Summer people are only interested in future hopes , future dreams not past despair. They pursue new possibilities because they have a healthy optimism. They don't cling on to a certain past in fear of losing it but risk each day, in the chance of a better but uncertain tomorrow. They have burnt their boats behind them, instead of clinging on to the floating debris of what was, in the hope it will save them. Winter’s seeds, the concentrated self, gives way to the flowering self that disperses all it is and has, in generous release.

They won't retreat into ivory towers or hide in castle dungeons, afraid of the changing world around them, holding onto memories of past glories. Instead they are willing to leave behind the relics of the bygone era, throwing off the armour of protection and advancing into the unknown future, naked and afraid but having the courage to trust in a new tomorrow and their imagination that will build it.

Our Thoughts predetermine our Feelings - Our Feelings predetermine our Behaviors - Our Behaviors reinforce our Thoughts

So when we come from a place of severe Trauma; Abuse; Neglect; we tend to have Negative, and Reactive Thought processes. This tends to present itself in Negative Trauma Response to our CURRENT situation, regardless of whether we are still experiencing the Trauma...

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps to retrain the Mind back to more Positive Thoughts, which leads to Positive Feelings, and helps us to have more Positive Interactions and Behavior patterns... It takes time to learn and develop the Proper COPING SKILLS to overcome years of Abuse... The Patterns become so ingrained that we are unaware of our Responses or how we are Affecting those around us...

#AutismSpectrum #ADD #Anxiety #behavioralhealth #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #CPTSD #Dyslexia #EmotionalDysregulation #Guilt_Shame #intensemoodswings #MajorDepressiveDisorder #Selfharm #SuicideSurvivor

Hello, how are you today?

Today, I want to share a little bit about my experience as a lost child. This was the role assigned to me by my dysfunctional family: the lost/invisible child. At times, it felt like I didn't have the right to exist in that space. I was incredibly alone and emotionally neglected. Nobody in my family knew, and still doesn't know, who I am. This had numerous consequences for me, some of them quite severe. Today, I am grieving for what was taken away from that beautiful, bright, amazing child I once was. While I feel deep sadness, I am also amazed by the resilience that child demonstrated to survive. We are remarkably resourceful.

Can anyone relate to this story?

Thanks for listening. 🌼#ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #ADHD #Trauma #Depression #neglect image: Jay Castor on Unsplash