Phoenix Rising

The delayed post!

My childhood didn’t only consist of trauma. It also consisted of confusion and blank spots. I thought I was a forgetful kid, who just wasn’t very smart! Adults especially teachers would become frustrated with me. Telling me they had told me information or had asked me to complete a task that I had no memory of. I in turn would get frustrated as I genuinely had no recollections of these interactions. The adults around me never questioned this lack of memory, they instead focused on chastising me for being stupid. As I entered secondary school the problem seem to worsen. I felt out of place at school and couldn’t function there, thus the only way I could escape the madness was to begin truanting regularly. In secondary school I added to my problems by confiding in my best friend my thoughts about my sexuality and being a Lesbian. She broke my confidence and told others which led to severe bullying both in school and unfortunately some of the bullies lived in the next street so nowhere was safe. I grew up in Belfast and being Gay in the eighties was frowned upon greatly. My religious education teacher pulled me aside shortly after the news of my Lesbianism spread around the school. She told me being Gay is sinful and I should not discuss my feelings…EVER. While I am angry at that incident and there really is no justification for her behaviour I will say that Section 28 was in force then, this law strictly forbade the teaching or discussion of homosexuality in schools. The legislation ran from 1988 until about 2000 and forbade local authorities from promoting homosexuality. What angers me more is that my bullies were never reprimanded for their treatment of me, I felt the school deemed it as my own fault. so being a problematic teenager the school conveniently said they had found a legal loophole and due to my problems I could leave at fourteen which is what I did. A short while after I ran away from home. Tensions were running high and my mum agreed that I could stay with an older friend I knew who had her own place. My problems with memory and losing time persisted but I was so used to it that I could present myself as quite capable. I was also suffering severe bouts of depression and my self harm which began at nine years old would fluctuate in bouts. Fast forward to seventeen, now I had a girlfriend and we both got work as security officers at the airport. After a year there we both made the decision to move to England and transferred our jobs to Eurostar. In 2000 I was involved in a hit and run road accident where I was knocked from a 50cc scooter at 40mph. I ended up fracturing my skull and had to have three months off work due to Post Traumatic Concussion. I returned to work and did my best to keep going for another three years. After that I could no longer maintain a front of competency. I was constantly depressed, self harming and hearing voices. My world came crashing down around me. I had no idea at that point that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder or that the voices I was hearing were Alters inside me. So began a long descent into the unknown.