• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Childhood 3 years locked in a room (kind of) as a kid...then i found booze: my story

Status
Not open for further replies.

Faustino

New Here
So I wrote this up last week as somebody quizzed me as to my motivation for a foundation I've set up. Thought some auto-biography might explain things a bit for them and decided to share it here, too. Feeling mighty anxious lately and thought it probably had something to do with my past, so here goes...(long read, maybe boring so feel free to ignore, obviously):

Over the past few months I’ve been asked a few times about my own background and why I’ve been reaching out to charities and groups helping those afflicted with various social and psychological ills. So I thought I’d quickly knock together what has motivated me to offer these free holidays, in the form of my own biography.

The first twelve years of my life were pretty feral. My mam was a boozer with several kids from several fathers and my dad was the least socially capable person I’ve ever known. Nowadays we’d say autistic and/or depressed; certainly some type of full-on retard. My cousins were all expelled from school by the age of 12 and to the best of my knowledge, nobody ever went to university after having attended my inner-city comprehensive. It just wasn’t a thing (a friend taught there for over a decade and reckons not one of his students ever went on to higher education during that time-just to give you a flavour of the culture) .

Then my mam died unexpectedly when I was 12. One night my dad came in, announced the death and we never spoke about her again. No consolation, no arm round each other, no psychological or social support…we just buried her and then departed into our fractured worlds.

My dad went on permanent night-shift (usually with over-time) which meant leaving me alone in the house from half past five every afternoon. In the aftermath of a bereavement of this magnitude I’d humbly venture to opine that leaving a little kid locked in a house (even with a lock freshly put on the bedroom door as in my case to give me a sense of security lol) is not optimal for his cognitive, emotional, spiritual or psychological development. I was terror-stricken at the loss and perhaps more damagingly, by the abyss that followed the death which unsurprisingly engulfed me entirely.

My terror went through the roof and all predictability and perceived control of life disintegrated there and then. I was left with a 57 year-old autistic depressive who couldn’t muster much beyond “Poor, poor, poor me. Why was I even born?” or another one of his classic refrains “Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of my life” I had to listen to these self-pitying lamentations emanating from the living room while I was locked in my bedroom. I’ve been reading some stuff lately about the statistical differences of words spoken in middle-class and working-class homes and I think on this scale I’ve got to qualify for the super-hyper-uber-lumpenprole championship of the world as these words would often be the only communication in our house for days on end.

My father was an old, socially retarded man who had no ability to look after his family or even himself…so my child’s brain created order and stability on his behalf, in the only way it knew how; by praying to the omnipotent God who had shown His power by taking my mother (was it because I’d been out thieving and generally behaving like all undisciplined kids would in such an anarchic, chaotic world? Was I to blame?)

I think my motivation was based on keeping my weak father safe and the more he was unharmed the more I saw my prayers as efficacious acts and the more the pathological cycle of praying continued. Anything resembling a perceived threat (maybe even a knock on the door as we had no callers ever, so an unexpected knock could be terrifying) was met with more prayers before I answered it and the absence of anything bad befalling him was evidence that my prayers were working so I redoubled my praying until it consumed my entire consciousness; a legitimate OCD.

The praying expanded to fill every second of my existence; while talking I’d be continuing some mantra or incantation internally and this got progressively worse during the following couple of years. A process of self-abnegation was set in motion and it was a brutal time for a developing child. I felt such fear and guilt about everything that I started disavowing anything even vaguely positive in my life. It started off quite innocuously, when I wasn’t allowed to win a race at school, for example, because that was ungodly and arrogant. Then I wasn’t allowed to proffer an opinion because, you guessed it, that wasn’t humble. I’d incorporate all of these oaths into my prayers (remember in an empty house at night or with my suffering father sighing about the damned nature of existence itself, my unhinged mind ran amok) and the proscriptions just kept proliferating at a cancerous rate of growth.

I soon couldn’t even open a book because that was something that would imply arrogance, and anyway all my former pleasures and interests had to be stripped out of my life. Then I couldn’t sit up straight because that was obnoxiously cocky, but I couldn’t slouch either because that was slovenly…I was inhabiting Dante’s inferno, constricting myself with every further thought as absolutely everything could be verboten on some spurious quasi-theological grounds and it wasn’t long before I was residing in Hell. My compulsive oaths lead me to having to stop speaking to other people, I couldn’t contribute anything to the external world as that would be standing out too much and therefore not humble, I wasn’t allowed a new shirt even though my old ones didn’t fit because that was vainglorious and on and on the oppressive oaths went…until I couldn’t breathe for fear of offending the punitive and omnipotent God who I hadn’t been able to shake off for even a nanosecond over the previous months and years.

Surprise, surprise, my mental health spiralled out of control and I developed something so terrifying that I truly believed I was possessed by the Devil himself; a relentless internal Tourette’s that would not release me from sacrilegious and profane thoughts. There was no respite, ever. Going to school and the voice would be roaring. At home, alone in the evening, it would not relent. I thought I had the devil inside me and with nobody to enquire as to my well-being or even to talk to, I just plummeted into increasing darkness. I was terrified and the only way to keep some order on the collapse I was suffering (at the age of 12, remember) was to pray more and more intensely.

Looking back now I see that I seemingly used my father as some form of archetype to be emulated. It was just damn bad luck that my dad was the antithesis of James Bond lol but seriously, I think it was precisely this fact that drove me to copy him knowing that it was an anti-human force, a rejection of all that is good and noble in life. On a profound level I knew that I was doing immense harm to myself but for some reason I felt I deserved it. What for, though? How did I end up believing that looking up at the world, shoulders back, smiling and laughing were heinous crimes? Why did I believe there to be virtue in eliminating all expressive and joyous parts of existence and myself?

I could only take this for so long before a psychological breakdown happened and it was just before my fifteenth birthday when things came to a head. I had an instinctive sense that all this was deeply wrong: the prayers, the injunctions to not live fully, to not do anything that might contribute to leading a meaningful life or create serotonin or dopamine or any of the other essential elixirs of life. In short, all spark had been extinguished in my soul. I wiped away the anguished tears for one last prayer that forsook all previous iterations of “virtue” and embarked on a life devoid of the safety mechanism of OCD praying, into a socio-economic underclass world of long-term unemployment, housing benefit, depression, alcohol and reckless irresponsibility (I had some serious catching up to do, don’t forget and I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice this dissolute lifestyle for anything, even if I could miraculously develop a mature character instantaneously, which of course, I couldn’t). The next decade and a half had its ups and downs during which, through sheer good fortune, I met some people who were to prove messianic in my life with their message of family, community, work, contribution to society and all those other things I had missed out on as a younger man…and that ultimately lead me to where I am today as an old fella trying to pay some generosity of spirit forward in a world that’s often lacking such things.
 
Faustino, I'm terribly sad you went through this but I have to say you're a gifted writer. That was more like reading the preface of a book then reading a forum post.
I can't imagine being locked in a room for YEARS. What a horrible injustice. Of, course you broke down. How could you not especially after losing a parent and being left with someone seemingly so self-loathing and incapable of really providing care? I think it's amazing that you're so eloquent and insightful despite you're terrible upbringing.
Although my father was a socially retarded alcoholic (in a narcissistic psychopath way) our stories are quite different so I don't want to offer any advice because what the hell do I know? I don't even know how to help myself right now.
Anyway, I hope you keep writing on here because I enjoy how you write. If you wrote a book about your life I would read it. Hope you start to feel a little better.
 
Thanks, guys. @frogthroat It was actually literature that saved me early on as, living in a squat with substance abuse problems as a very young adult, I didn't get out other than to booze heavily. The rest of the time I stayed in reading and discovered wonderful worlds composed of kind, thoughtful people...then was able to find such folk in the real world ;-)
Thanks again for reading and you'll be the first person I gift my book to, if I ever write one!
 
Wow. You were one incredible 12 year old to create a world that had rules. Sure - not a functional world but still - that took some amazing creativity and strength. And not surprising at all that it broke down.

I can't imagine how horrible your life was -- and am so happy that you found people that could help you out of that dark place....
 
Thanks Freida! I've just come to realise relatively recently that, as hellish as those years were (and still being afflicted with anxieties from time to time, being limited in my social scope etc even to this day as a consequence of the grooves laid down in life/my brain back then), the alternative was a descent into my surrounding culture i.e. becoming increasingly chaotic and feral. I side-stepped that life of violence and I want to dedicate the rest of my life to working with people to let them see that their vistas are wider than life might be suggesting at the moment. Thanks again
 
Would you be interested in advocating to get research done on children who were locked away without human interaction after they had developed language skills. Most things i can find are on children who were locked away at very young ages and how they were never able to develop language skills.
 
Yes, without a doubt @Fadeaway, I want to get involved doing as much as I possibly can in all realms related to helping folks coming through PTSD, depression, anxiety etc. What would advocacy look like? What type of things could I get going on do you think? Thanks for the ideas.
 
Update 31st March, 2018

I’ve started some EMDR therapy as my anxiety has been out of control. I suppose it always has been so I’ve always relied on creating worlds whereby I got by in ways outside of normal social contexts. Never really having done a 9-5 type job I had a series of enterprises and projects that enabled me to maintain a veneer of normalcy through minimal involvement with other people and now I find myself wanting to rejoin the human world a mere 33 years after pulling myself away/being ousted from it.

A few things I’ve noticed since beginning therapy are the defence mechanisms that I erected and developed over the years to keep away from experiencing any feelings that would immediately lead me into dangerous waters. Feelings were simply too much so I cauterised all psychic wounds; as a kid the OCD praying gave a fascistic order to my inner turmoil because, with the bereavement and ensuing abyss, I could not tolerate the loneliness so I simply diverted these emotions into a safer protective self-defence system. OCD fitted the bill beautifully as it gave me the walls with which to surround myself and I got on with the business of survival.

Funnily enough, I read something this morning that I feel perfectly encapsulated the inevitability of my free-falling spiritual trajectory as a kid:

if you don’t have anyone to tell your story to, you lose your mind. Like hoarders, you simply can’t unclutter yourself. The input of the community is required for the integrity of the individual psyche. To put it another way, it takes a village to build a mind.

My God, so many of us don’t have this (or perhaps didn’t have it during important periods of our lives) and it’s disastrous for us all…

Then in my mid-teens I went into the analgesic world of substance abuse, long term unemployment (did some studies that got me into university where I didn’t really attend, I just did the minimum work to get my degree, drank excessively and played football), some more business deals where social interaction was at a minimum, all the while ensconced in the safety of alcohol and cocaine or whatever it took to keep the hell away from feeling anything… and excessive physical training to keep my energies well away from the world of emotions. And “taking the piss” as us Brits call it- joking about everything because if I reflected on, and articulated, anything serious I’d free-fall into all kinds of disorder; so being the perennial joker was the order of the day.

It’s only now, at forty five, I realise how much I rely on this “piss-taking” to get by. In therapy I catch myself doing it about every 15-20 seconds and have to force myself back on the straight and narrow conversationally. Not an easy task after 3 decades of drunken and drug-fuelled nonsense, I can tell you, with negligible (if any) serious chat during all of that time.

So all of these practices, strategies and tactics I’ve employed have got me to this point but now I feel the need to bring down the dark, extended chapters of my life and through a project I have set up I’m hoping that stage one of my recovery to well-being will include connecting to other folks who have been through distressing times and we can help each other emerge from our respective underworlds of depression, anxiety and whatever other dark forces life has thrown at us.
 
Like hoarders, you simply can’t unclutter yourself.

That is because we clutch everything close to our chest, the more stuff, the stronger the clutch. I relate to this portion of your statement very well. My mother died a hoarder and mentally ill. She allowed no one into her world. Including the world/village into one's own space is very threatening, as horrible as the clutched items may be, it is still one's stuff. It is all you know and identify with. If the stuff is taken away, the open space, light, and unobstructed view is unfamiliar. The rules for coping and engaging in that village now demand new rules and this, in itself, can be threatening. Even having someone walking with you through this decluttering experience takes great determination not to slip back into the old and familiar. It is not an easy journey. But, I commend you for being able to look at your "stuff" and see how it holds you back from breaking through into a better world. Recognizing and acknowledging the clutter is one huge amazing step in becoming free of it, isn't it? And I wonder if many of us use humor to deflect from our hurt? I have used it as a coping mechanism since my early teens. It is a great mask to wear when in social settings. Best to you as you walk your journey to a freer and more uncluttered life!
 
I’m hoping that stage one of my recovery to well-being will include connecting to other folks who have been through distressing times and we can help each other emerge from our respective underworlds of depression, anxiety and whatever other dark forces life has thrown at us.

And here we are! yes- connecting is amazingly helpful. I have made huge strides in my recovery since joining this site - simply because I have found people who can understand.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top