I often feel I have taken on too many new things. I get enthusiastic about something, then let it go. I've finally realised that is the way I am.
I love new things, creative things. Getting something new up and running excites me and gives me energy. Then the pace slows down, the new thing becomes old and I feel like it's time to move on to something else.
This blog though will be something different. This blog is about something that's been with me for as long as I can remember. This blog is about me, what has happened to me and how I've come to accept what has happened. This blog is about a lifelong journey.
The journey from victim to survivor is not an easy one, but it's the journey I realise I was taking, helped along by my creative writing. The human mind is an amazing thing. It works away in our subconscious mind, fixing us but damaging us too.
I began writing creatively at school, not a lot, but every now and then I'd explore something with words. I remember I had a diary when I was about 14 or 15. That diary was where I worked out some things that were worrying me. I wrote some very personal things in that diary.
Then my life moved on, I got a job, began new things and forgot about my diary. I kept the diary though. I felt OK with having the diary there as a reminder. But about 20 years ago, I destroyed that diary, that record of my most personal thoughts. I had a sudden fear that my most loved one may find the diary and feel less of me.
I took the diary outside and burned it. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do. Now of course, I realise it wasn't such a great idea. Yes, I was safe from the danger of those words being read by someone else, but I no longer feared that part of me being known by others. I was finally living in a safe place, with the man I will love for the rest of my life. Things happened to me when I was younger, things happen to all people. I've finally realised things have to happen so that we can learn about ourselves.
My creative writing increased once I had given up paid work and taken on the wonderful task of being a mother. With more time for contemplation, in between feeds and washing nappies, a new theme appeared in my fiction. I began fictionalising things, thinking about things, changing them around and considering the results.
From that period of time I have some short stories that were unlike anything I'd written before. Strong things, dealing with child sexual abuse, and written fearlessly. I have two stories where the victim becomes strong, and deals with the abuser in a way I never could or would have. It felt good to be able to get my revenge in this way, and I feel writing those two stories was an important stage in my journey from being a victim of child sexual abuse to becoming a survivor of child sexual abuse.
Now, I'm many stages further on from then, I feel strong and in charge of my life. I've taken control of my life, and when things go the wrong way, I'm able to deal with it in ways that strengthen me. One of the things gone wrong was my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis last year. It changed my life around again, but my life is now feeling better and better.
Yes, I have a chronic illness, but I'm still me and I'm still able to do what I want to do. I realised last year that what I most wanted to do for now was to put together a collection of my poetry for the first time. But I wanted to do more than just that. I wanted this poetry collection to have a greater purpose. I wanted to use it to help other people struggling with their past.
This blog has been created to let the world know about my poetry collection, and about the terrible things that are done to children every single day of the year. What happened to me was nothing compared to the painful degradation so many children are forced to put up with.
Child sexual abuse should never be accepted in any society and the fact that it still happens in a civilised country like Australia sickens me. There are so many damaged children out there, so many adults still trying to come to terms with their damage.
I want all of the damage to be healed, so we can all be shiny and new, so we can all be Precious Gems.
