The Boy and the Horse

Trauma entered my life by the time I was one. Any stability I ever had dissolved with my
parent’s marriage. The screaming, the accusations of infidelity, the anger and hatred began
to permeate my fragile world where my emotions and needs mattered little amongst the
turmoil of the adult tragedy engulfing me.

Soon I lost the home and father that I had taken for granted as my embittered and hateful
mother moved me half-way across the world carrying with her a burden she resented, and
whose only way of communicating his anguish was through tears, and a loosening of his
bowels.

“Take him” she said to the hospital, “I don’t know what to do with him”, and it being the
time it was, they did. For two weeks having lost my home, my father and now my mother, I was placed in a cot, a white wooden cage, like a little traumatised monkey, to be peered at, prodded and poked by strangers in white coats.

Perhaps resignation, perhaps medication cured the offending diarrhoea, but I left that cage and entered a new one. A static caravan, one living area, one bedroom, one bathroom and one embittered mother whose life would never be the same, now she had not only the shame of being divorced but also of being a single parent, in a world that accepted neither. Instead of being her flesh and blood, to treasure, love and nurture, I was an affliction, a constant visible representation of the ideal that she had once briefly held, but lost.

The violence, both physical and emotional was unpredictable and volatile, I would beg not
to be hit, and plead to be loved. But her needs to vent and dispel her anger were not
compatible with mine, and always won out.

As a toddler I developed my coping skills. Self-Harm, in order to have some control over my world, to alleviate the fear and shame, I would beat my little head against the gravel
walkway, this was a pain that I could inflict and control, on the little boy that didn’t deserve love, my mother watching on, cared only enough to pick the stones from my forehead when I had worn myself out. Suicidal ideation, the little boy that didn’t deserve love, didn’t want to be alive, a thought that, at many times, haunts the adult still, a viable way out then and now. Dissociation, Depersonalisation and Dissociative Amnesia, I found a safe place inside my head, where only I could go, to escape the violence around me, nothing else permeated my safe place, it was just me, no emotions, no people, no time, and when I left, no memories.

In search of ‘better’ things my mother moved us to London, it was the Hippie age of Peace
and Love, ironically conditions that I was still not to experience. I was moved from squat to squat, having no stability and being left to my own devices to spend time amongst the
human excrement, the mould, and the rats. I have no memories of spending time with my
mother during this period, she was absent, I assume ‘partying’ with her friends. Desperate
for love I would approach strange men on the street, begging them to be my daddy, so great was my need to be wanted, anyone would do.

At a squat in Camden town he entered my life it was just the three of us, plus the rats. I
don’t know exactly what his relationship was with my mother, but from the start he made
me feel special, wanted and loved, so much so that I wanted to be with him all of the time,
even at night, and so I would sleep next to him, snuggled up, feeling safe in his embrace.

My mother eventually found us a permanent flat but not with him, he found himself a
bedsit not too far away. The school week over, I would willingly rush to him every weekend
to continue to fulfil my desperate need to feel wanted and loved, and to spend the night
wrapped up feeling safe in his arms.

I don’t know when it first happened, but I woke up feeling him moving rhythmically next to
me with his hand on my crutch. I lay very still, so confused, so scared, and then without
effort slipped into the security of my safe place.

“You’re a good boy, you don’t remember what happens at night do you?”. I distinctly
remember this question, part seeking confirmation, part warning, and part permission. I
must have been about seven. Old enough to know that sometimes you had to pay for what
you wanted, and that from now there would be a price to be paid for being made to be feel
special and loved, the things that I craved and only he was willing to provide.

My safe space protected me for many years, I have no solid memories of the abuse, just
bodily sensations of being touched, of being held from behind and of being penetrated, by
his fingers, at first. Fragments are coming back to me now though, after nearly 50 years. I
am starting to remember the rape, through recovered emotions and bodily sensations
breaking through. I feel the visceral abdominal pain as his man-sized penis penetrated deep
inside my child body, the rough sensations around my anus as it was stretched and grazed,
the sobbing and realisation that this was not right, this price was too much.

I am conflicted as to whether this was the last time I saw him; my dissociative amnesia still
covers most of my childhood. But when I was about 13, he suddenly without reason moved
to America.

While this was going on, and I was about 11 my mother met and later married, my step-
father. He was not a nice person, his main sport was beating up my mother and me in turns,
and after a beer or two he would attempt to seduce the pubescent boy he had inherited by
kissing me on my mouth and attempting to insert his tongue. For the 3 years this lasted my
home again became a place to be feared, although at least this time I was old enough to
have some understanding and remove myself from the situation, at least during the day. I
remember sitting on the doorstep for hours waiting for my mother to come home so I did
not have to face his attentions alone.

When I was 17 my mother deciding she had finally had enough of me put an eviction note
through my door saying I had 14 days to vacate her home, and I became homeless.

That is the story of the trauma that was inflicted on me by the people who were supposed
to love, nurture and protect me, at least the fragmented memories that I retain. I carry that damaged child and his emotions with me everywhere I go. I try to provide him with the nurturing that he never had, I try to reassure him that the fear and shame he feels in all its rawness is not his burden to carry. Sometimes I succeed for a while, taking us to our
shared safe space, he the child, I a horse, strong, powerful, capable, dependable and loyal.
We go for adventures together in our safe space, and when he begins to understand he
does not need to control the horse but that the horse can protect him and fulfil his needs
then it is time to head back to the paddock and part our ways in mutual understanding and
safety, in a treasured moment of respite and peace.

Sometimes for reasons only he can understand the child will reach out and grab the horse’s
reigns and ride us to a nightmare place of intense threat and danger, where neither of us
are in control. My body and mind reacting to huge spikes of adrenaline, swallowed up in
overwhelming anxiety, unable to rationalise, just focus, focus, focus on the threat that is not
there.

This is complex PTSD. While my brain was developing, it adapted, marvellously to the
ongoing trauma of abuse, abandonment and neglect. It did its very best to preserve my
inner being from the constant external threats, changing its structure and function,
acquiring neurodivergence. My Amygdala became enlarged and hypersensitive to any
perceived threat so I was always ready to escape. My Hippocampus shrunk making it
difficult to form memories. My Prefrontal Cortex was impacted causing difficulty controlling
my impulsive actions to escape from or avoid perceived danger. My Corpus Callosum and
Cerebellum shrunk making it hard to regulate emotions which quickly overwhelm and have
to be acted on. This is still the situation now, with the addition of my HPA axis, the stress
response system, being overactive for so many years, it is no longer able to control my
stress hormones leaving me in constant hyperarousal.

Sadly, this doesn’t just impact on my life, those who have come to know and care about me
can often find themselves bewildered by my uncontrolled and impulsive behaviours not
understanding that in my hyperaroused / hypervigilant state a word, tone of voice or
gesture has been taken as abandonment or rejection and sent me spiralling into survival
mode. I am so very grateful to those that have taken the time to get to know and stick by
me, and understand those that wanted to but could not.
I will continue to be scarred from my childhood, I will continue to survive as an adult, and I
will continue on my recovery journey, doing what I can to support those other survivors I
come into contact with.

Text & artwork by Paul The Survivor