A long hiatus

by Hayley
(Birmingham, UK)

It has been a very long time since I last posted anything, and a lot of things have happened since then. I am more able to talk about what happened, which has landed me in hot water at work. I have now however been passed fit by my trusts Occupational Health with the deal that I can continue to work if I continue with my counselling. Thank Goodness I only have a few weeks left as my counsellor continues to frustrate me. She still fails to see where I am coming from when I compare her to Predictive text on a mobile phone, she tries to guess how I feel, but gets it horribly wrong. At least we have made some head way though, and I feel ever stronger. Even the nightmares don't bother me now, and these remain all too frequent. Thankfully when the sessions are good they are very good, and when there aren't many of my colleagues around, I can get away with updating my boss on my progress. I still talk more to my team mate though, that doesn't mean that the scars will ever go away. Fading is the best I will ever hope for, and no amount of counselling I undertake, will never change what happened to me at the hands of my evil selfish brother, from the ages of 10 to 15, and further physical and emotional abuse after that. Then there was the rows between my parents after I disclosed it to the police, and the recriminations that if I had kept my mouth shut, I wouldn't be feeling so mixed up and confused. The anguish from that merely added to my pain, and the frustration that they must have suspected there was something wrong, I would cry easily, be disruptive at school, and I was horrendously homesick on a skiing trip. Though that could have been down to a nasty bout of flu which the teachers refused to take seriously.

My parents still seem totally unaware of why I distrust anything my brother says, or anything they say about him, it is like banging my head against a brick wall sometimes, and there aren't many soft ones in Birmingham or Kidderminster! I often wonder if they will ever see where I am coming from, and what I went through the whole of that time I was suffering abuse. My mother, herself a perpetrator, will never realise just how she hurt me, telling me I was an embarrassment to the family, and a bone idle slob. My father has an idea of what I went through, and one day in January, we went to get the paper that my parents read, we actually talked properly about how I felt, and how the counselling was progressing. He still doesn't know the full details, but there is a better chance of me telling him than there is of me telling my mum.

I had better go now, my fingers are rather painful from typing so much so fast. It must be a shock to their system! I am still playing hockey and absolutely loving it. Not long now to the end of the season, and then the play offs - to see if we will be able to stay in the Premier League next year, or of we will be forced to drop down a division. March the 22nd a warmish Sunday lunch time in Hull I achieved a goal I never thought possible, and skated away with the player of the game award for my team, the Solihull Vixens. How that has changed me as a hockey player, months ago I refused to take a face off in my own zone when asked to. If I were to be playing a game today and was asked to do that job, I would go for it with no questions asked. Shame I still have my wonderful habit of winding the match officials up!

I'll definitely go now. Heads up everyone, you have all been so brave for so long. Don't let those evil people get you down to the level that they act at.