Worse...

Perhaps worse is the wrong title for this post...
I can see some good in this..

What happened yesterday evening shifted my world on its axis.
My son told me that he had been sexually abused by some kids in our street.
Bullied and made to feel that he had done wrong.

He felt that he had done wrong because his need for social acceptance, contact and friendship over-rode the recognition of betrayal he was experiencing.

And this is the wound
I believe
That dragged him down into self-hatred, self-abandoning
And to parasuicide.

So...
Here I am again, questioning the drugs based routines of psychiatry.
If he had been sectioned...
In effect treated as if there is something wrong with him....

When actually the wrong is the behavior of his abusers...

How would 'the self' recover from that?
The message he was given: 'if you don't put this drug into your mouth, into your body.
If you don't do what we tell you...'

Same message as the abusers.

OK, well I've been through all the emotions possible.
I feel stripped down to my bones.
Empty and full
Shattered and whole.

His parasuicide (a suicide attempt that is survived) was elicited by the pain of a situation he could not endure. Mentally he had sided with his abusers, and therefore he felt that he is as bad as they. He came to the place where he believed himself to be cold and heartless.

Cold and heartless he tried to extinguish the final part of himself that felt pain
And fell into hell.

I've met with this before
Someone I knew
Abused by his brother
He said, 'it wasn't anything'...
But he too was suicidal...

What I know...

Anger heals when it is directed towards the abuse
Away from self.

It begins with
Recognition of the hurt done to the self.
Compassion for self.
The repudiation of all guilt and blame of self....

Recognition that we are social animals - we care that others are with us, we care that they want to be with us. Therefore what appears to be consensual is nothing of the sort. This is nothing to do with sexuality. This is about friendship with people who are humiliating, abusing and selfish...sexual abuse can seem to a child better than social isolation - hen the child begins to understands that to speak of the abuse will cause the very same social isolation they desperately tried to avoid...

Well I'm glad it has been said
Brought up and into the open.

I told J Trauma's siblings - because they need to process their own feelings before they can really be on his side. It was a kind of 'heads-up'

I didn't feel good about this.
In theory I shouldn't tell anyone.

But silence is part of the problem.

People are too scared to speak in case they say the wrong thing...
They don't want to make it worse
They think - better keep quiet

This silence
Kills.

And I told his ex girlfriend because I knew she would be incandescent with rage and I needed someone I could share my anger and pain with, safely.

I told him this as he lay in his bed.

Skin pealed off his shoulder
Stitches across his brow
Bruises turning slowly from purple to green...