The Boy in the Silver Spacesuit

There was a little boy who dreamt of being an astronaut. He made space suits for his sister and her friend from silver foil and fairy liquid bottles, turned the cupboard under the stairs into a spaceship, lovingly built his Airfix Saturn 5 model, covered in glue and paint. Best of all, Mum and Dad let him stay up late to watch his heroes, Neil and Buzz, land on the moon. He wondered what it would be like to float in space, travel on a rocket at over 17,000 miles an hour, to be so far from the safety of home on such adventures.

He grew up with Doctor Who and Star Trek, pretending to be Daleks with his friends in the school playground… “Exterminate !!!!”, fighting the Klingons, hiding behind the sofa from the giant spiders and Cybermen.

In his imagination he was travelling to different worlds but one of them on his adventures became very real that later became so unreal.

In that world, separate and secret from the one he knew, he was special, he was wanted, he was the centre of attention, he had gifts, he was learning what grown-ups do. He was brave …….He was confused, he was scared ,he was controlled. He wasn’t sure what he felt. Maybe it felt good, maybe it felt bad, maybe he was bad. “Yes, I must be bad“ he said to himself, and no one must ever know. If people found out, his friends would beat him up,  he would be sent away, get into terrible, terrible, terrible trouble. He was cutting and hitting himself, he felt dirty….

He was being sexually abused.

He didn’t know those words or what they meant. All of this was out of his world, another world had been created.

He didn’t tell anyone. No one heard for years and years.

Silence

His cries and words could not be heard in the vacuum of space.

The little boy shamed in this other world  floated out of the window and into the sky, looking down on what was being done to his little body. High in the sky he found some safety and he didn’t have to feel what he was feeling. He didn’t know he was doing this to survive and it would be many years to find a name for this “ disassociation “.

Unheard, never held or asked, “ What’s the matter John?” he drifted away from his world and himself, into space. A space created by taboo, shame, lies, ignoring and well, it doesn’t happen to boys. does it!

The Silent Impact of CSA
Shame, dissociation, and survival.

Part of the little boy was alone in this space with no one to save him, not even himself. No knight in shining armour appeared. Another part still played with his friends, riding their bikes, building sandcastles with his sister and Dad on the beach, hoping Dad would drive them home in time for Dr Who. Now he knew how it feels to be so far from home, to feel unsafe.

Whilst another part of him grew into a man, another part was drifting away all alone, withdrawing from his world like other used and abused little boys. He may be there for years and years and some little boys are lost forever never to find themselves again. But the man he became didn’t know this, however much the child tried to tell him.

The little boy was silenced. He didn’t have the words to tell himself, growing up, but he felt him in different ways – with panics, irrational fears, depression from repressed anger, being a people pleaser so no one would know he was bad.

He felt shame. When he told a mental health worker and she said “ You were a child, it’s never the child’s fault”  he answered, “You have no idea how disgusting I was as a child“ He surprised even himself, in therapy, the therapist asked what he was afraid of when they talked of his inner child.  He said, “We can’t be together, one of us will die.“

But that’s in the future.

He grew up, went to college,  made friends,  made a relationship, made a home, taught art to lots of little boys and girls. He was now a man, the grown-up.

It was such fun but inside something felt wrong and he didn’t know what.

He tried to give it word, to make sense of it, hollow, empty, dropping, dropping, always fearing he will drop into an abyss.

Searching with the puzzle ‘who am I?’

He went to counselling, not really knowing what was going on for him.  Something was missing. He didn’t know it was himself, the little boy lost in space alone on another world. Later, when he understood this, he would realise he had known all along. He would in time discover what he already knew.

A Secret, Unspoken World
When innocence is shattered.

One day he found one of his fellow teachers had been arrested by the police. Another teacher had overhead this teacher’s conversation with a boy and told the headmaster. The police were called straight away.

Later, the teacher was convicted of sexually abusing children and went to prison. It split the staff room in two. Some were shocked that they had not known, had not realised and protected the children. Others were convinced he was innocent and these children were lying, they could not envisage the possibility of the truth. How well he had groomed us all. So often it is not just the child that is groomed.

The little boy, now man isolated from his childhood self, fractured, tried to keep running, over-working over-drinking trying to keep going every day, keeping up the mask, fearing himself fearing his shame will be seen. Still like the little boy fearing he will get into terrible, terrible, terrible trouble. Yet still he can’t relate to his own childhood abuse, he is not ready yet, the fears are too great.

He kept going and going, running and running from himself and his past until he could run no more and he curled up into a ball in front of a class of young children. Later that day he found himself in a psychiatric ward.  He was afraid.

Men were coming up the stairs carrying his coffin

His only way to feel any sense of safety, was to stare at the wall for hours. Even a walk with staff outside the grounds filled him with terror.

He learned he was very ill. He suspected he must be mad. He was told he was a perfectionist, he was a disorder, he had a chemical imbalance in his brain. He was disempowered, stripped of hope and sense, medicated and labelled. He was told what to do but nothing worked.

He tried to be Everyday Me but he kept being overwhelmed and returned to hospital. In  the end he never taught again, his creativity and worth for now were destroyed. He had been told what was wrong with him but no one asked what had happened to him. They only saw the man with a beard, they never inquired underneath to the child wanting love but too scared and ashamed to say, even decades later. He remained alone in another world for years to come. No one asked, they only used big words he could not understand and talked of illness.

Emerging from CSA’s Shadows,
Finding the courage to speak out after decades of Silence.

Many years later a mental health worker suggested he read a book on bi-polar disorder. He went to find it in the library but picked up the book next to it on the shelf on childhood sexual abuse, checking no one was looking. He thought this is about me, I am in this book. He dared not take it out but it was a beginning a little step to acknowledge what had happened and acknowledge himself.

Still, he could not say if only someone would ask. He needed permission for someone to say it’s ok to say. When he was a child the drama teacher noticed he had cut a cross on his chest. He didn’t really know why he was cutting and bruising himself, maybe the cross would protect him. The teacher, concerned, asked him about it, asked if anything was wrong or troubling him. The boy kept silent, the teacher kept asking but as the child came close to finding the words the teacher gave up. It would be 43 years before he would be asked again.

Forty-three years later, he sat with Amy, a mental health worker he felt some trust in. She simply said “John, is there something you are struggling with from your childhood?”

 With this safe, compassionate enquiry he was finally able to tell, it all came out, everything that had been held and so diminished him all those years. She was able to listen without judging and be with his tears and distress, the little boy was finally heard and the silence broken. She helped him be with himself and helped him ground before he left the room. The cavalry didn’t arrive, the world didn’t change and he was still on waiting lists for any intervention but this was the beginning of his healing. He was no longer alone in another world. It will be difficult and take time but if done well he will be supported by others until he can support himself, be with himself, including the child he was, the child he is, at peace with himself.

Text by John Slater

John Slater is co-founder of MoMENtum – Supporting Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse.