Tom's Story

I was abused when I was thirteen. It happened when I was playing on some fields near my home by a teenager about five years older than me. He told me afterwards why he did it. Of course I knew what sex was and I knew what Gays did together, but I remember thinking that I wasn’t gay and he didn’t ‘look Gay’ to me.

I remember cycling home and I remember how I felt. I went home and had a shower. I told no one, what could I say? How would I explain it to anyone?

After time you forget things. When you are young you put things to the back of your mind and you just get on. I was bullied heavily at school and there were many other issues I had to deal with that together pushed this further into the back of my mind.

My teenage years were very unhappy ones and I was glad when eventually I moved away and went to college. I got on with life. When I look back now, I realise that I was a complete emotional mess. So much had happened and I was so angry with everyone and anything. I hated my parents, I hated myself and I felt disgusted by my body and sex caused many emotional conflicts, especially guilt.

I felt that I had to punish people and I had a deep need to hurt people emotionally. In my twenties on more than one occasion my moods swings and depressions took me to the edge of suicide. I don’t know what stopped me, but somehow, each time I was at the edge of madness, I somehow managed to take a step back – act normal and carry on.

I had no idea what was going on, I felt that I was an emotional wreck, but on another level I still managed to get on with my life. I had a reasonably successful but unhappy career.

I was doing something that paid the bills, but all the time I remember feeling empty inside. I had a good relationship that meant the world to me, but I constantly felt depressed, like some part of me was always grieving. I could hear a little boy crying but I could never reach him, though I knew he was there and at times hearing him crying in my head was unbearable.

Then one day my life changed. Literally one minute I was fine and the next my world fell apart. All my fears, anger, self loathing, hatred and emotions just spilled out. I had been carrying around this stuff for twenty five years, not telling a soul and then everything just fell out of me. I was in pieces for months.

I got some help, but talk therapy only went so far and I was determined that I was not going to take any tablets for ‘depression’. I found NakedGJ by chance. I was looking for answers to help me put my life back together, mainly after my breakdown to help me with my self confidence at work. It’s funny really, you start down one road, with one objective only to end up on another; in my case where I really needed to go.

I would be lying if I said there is some kind of ‘miracle cure’ in dealing with this stuff. It is not easy. Sometimes dealing with the emotions left me in pieces, but looking back I know now that I was going though a process of grieving, for the boy lost in the fields. But I did find him again.

I was able to rediscover and comfort him and take away his sense of abandonment. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I needed to do it and I will be for ever grateful that I did, because the hardest feeling in the world is to think that somewhere you abandoned a child and walked away and that is the feeling I carried around for twenty five years’.

I understand myself more. Things are clearer and my sense of perspective has changed. I have been able to put the pieces together, to work out why I used to behave the way I did. I am calmer and more positive and able to deal with my emotions without feeling like I am about to fall apart. My relationship is much stronger. My insecurities and fears that used to get in the way are not there any more and I have learned to trust myself and others more, something that was never there when I was growing up. I did decide to change my job – to something that I am much better suited to and one that I actually enjoy and in that respect NakedGJ also helped!
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