The Bedroom I Never Had, My Life With A Sadist Father by Maurice Cloonan - HTML preview

Chapter 15

Showdown at the Shed

AGE: 6 years old

Verbal abuse, lying, viscious gossip, mental cruelty and emotional abuse.

As time went by and I was somewhat older and my mother must have at some point found out about me staying away from the house at night and started sending me in the evenings after school to different boys houses from my class and staying there overnight in an attempt to keep me from living outside and now I had become very dysfunctional in life after being born into a dysfunctional environment and the dysfunctional way my father brought me up.

I had been falling way behind in school as I had been still going to hospital twice a week for check-ups and missing a lot of class. I could not catch up with what was going on and gave up trying and started to fill my time with trouble, any chance to cause trouble I took it and outside of school it was the same I would cause as much trouble as possible around the neighbourhood.

My father had been still staying clear of me with violence but on every chance he would get he would be criticising towards me and on any chance I would get to stay clear of him I would gladly take it. I would go to mass with him, my mother and brothers and go to my mother after mass and tell her I was taking a lift home with one of the old farmers from the area and every time I would go home with someone of the three old bachelors. I was happy going home with them and although they would stop the car outside my house and tell me old stories that I had no interest in and could not understand, they were very nice people and it prevented me from having to go home in the car listening to my father.

One of the men would turn the key and knock off the car before bringing it to a stop in a bid to let me know he wanted to chat for a while before I got out and I continued to listen to the stories and continue to travel home this way until I started to dodge mass and hanging around the village with friends from school.

Spending this small time after mass with the old men I grew very fond of them and started to spend a lot of time at their houses any chance I could get.

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One of the men fixed bikes and any time something broke on my bicycle I would go to him to fix it and enjoy spending my time there while he fixed the bicycle.

The three old men were farmers and had a lot of land around the area and near my father’s land and now myself and Deane would spend a lot of our time around these areas.

I had been walking down the road where I surprisingly bumped into Deane where he had been in over a wall in one of the old men's field by himself.

He had been where the old man was growing rhubarb and was walking in it, quickly I got giddy and started to jump on the rhubarb breaking the stalks and Deane started to do the same.

We flattened all of the old man's rhubarb and we got spotted by a woman that lived in the area and she had come over giving out like crazy about what we had done to the old man's rhubarb. She called us tinkers and told us we had no respect for other people's property and then said she was going to tell the owner what had been done to his rhubarb.

As she hit off to tell the old man Deane got worried about getting in trouble and said,

'What are we going to do?' and we both quickly thought and agreed on saying that it wasn’t us that did it.

Later that day my father came into the house and started shouting, "Which one of ye broke the rhubarb?" looking to my mother telling her that one of them knocked all of the rhubarb on the old man.

"Which one of ye don it!?" he shouted telling our mother that the old man was going cracked about what was done to his rhubarb.

My mother stayed silent as my father asked again to which one of us had done it when Deane said, 'Maurice done it.' and I quickly replied that Deane had and this had went over and back before Deane gave in and said that we both had done it.

When my father heard this and realised it wasn’t just me and Deane had been involved he calmed down and left the house.

After that, trouble just followed and we had been still put on our knees in the evening for an hours saying prayers but now with myself and Deane made to put on our altar clothes like Declan, Colin and Philip had been doing.

We would start skitting all through with our father going mad with us and this continued in the church while I served mass with friends from school.

We were always skitting and poking each other and we would take bets to see who would ring the bell the longest after the priest gave the signal to stop and this would bring on more skitting that sometimes led to laughing uncontrollably out loud and became a regular thing for us during mass.

Trouble was now in every aspect of my life from school to mass, while hanging around the village to at home and in the surrounding areas.

On the weekend I had two friends from school stay over in the house overnight and during the day we hung around with other kids around the area and came up with the idea that it would be funny to come sneak out of the house later in the night and get a load of bales of 108

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hay from one of the farmer's sheds and put them in his garden for him to wake and see this and go mad.

We all snuck out and met up at the place we decided on meeting and hit for the farmers shed with each one of us carrying a bale of hay each going up the road towards the farmers house in knots laughing, the bales were very heavy and we had to take breaks before carrying them again.

It was exciting and excitement carried us through the torture of carrying the heavy bales.

We threw the bales of hay over the wall and onto his garden and climbed over putting the bales of hay standing up in stacks in the middle of his garden and went home after a good laugh and to wait for the morning to hear about the farmer going mad about the bales in his garden.

The morning came and my two friends had gone home. I was laying on my bed tired from being out late and up to no good that night when I heard my father enter the house hearing the words, "Did you see what was done down at Mr. __________'s house? Well he is saying he's going to shoot whoever don it." he said to my mother. 'Who done what?' my mother asked him. "Come down the road now and you see what was don." he said where my mother asked again 'what was done.'

"Come down and ul see." he said again and with no reply from my mother he said, "There was a load of bales stacked in Mr. ________'s garden and they must have been brought up from Mr. __________'s shed."

'Who done that, I wonder?' said my mother to my father when he said, "Don’t you know fucking well who done it, and when Mr. __________ finds out who it was they will be shot! He going mad down at the house. Now do you see what's going on?" he said.

'Sur none of our lads had anything to do with it.' my mother said, "Well that's where you are wrong." he said, "and they are going to get shot by Mr. ___________"

'And who would have done it do you think?' my mother asked where my father said,

"There was probably a few of them that done it, but sure it was probably Maurice that put them up to it and when Mr. _________ finds out it was him, he come up here with the gun and start shooting. Now can you see what he's caused?"

'Sur it might not have been Maurice at all.' said my mother to my father where he got angry and loud shouting at her that it was me and when I heard this I got up quickly and went into the sitting room and shouted to my father, 'It was me! Have you a problem with that?! And stop fucking shouting at my mother!' and turned around and went back to my room where I heard my father saying to my mother, "You better not let him treat me like that again."

I knew from that moment on if I ever confronted my father or talked down to him it would fall back on my mother. He had made a bigger deal of the situation than it really was just to talk bad about me and nobody got shot by the farmer and it was never mentioned again only in a funny manner by Colin who told me that my mother had walked down that day to see the pile of bales in Mr. ________'s garden and could not help but laugh at what she saw. My father looked for every opportunity to destroy me whether it was cursing at me or telling lies to people about me.

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I had complained on several occasions to my mother about the lambs screeching in the sitting room where my father put the new-borns by the range to keep them warm until they were so many days old but the lambs had to be kept by the fire she told me nicely and I stopped complaining as I knew there was no choice in the matter.

It was hard to put up with it as my bedroom was the closest to the sitting room but I continued to put up with it and soon after that when it was time to sleep in on the weekends after a week of school I was woke by screeching sheep at the back of the house.

I complained again to my mother about the noise of the sheep at the back of the house and she must have went to my father with the complaint where some time later in the morning when I had been up from bed for some time and I had been in my room. I seen from the window my father had brought a sledge hammer, stakes and some fencing and he started to put the stakes into the ground with the sledge hammer.

He worked away building the pen for the sheep directly behind my bedroom window and I knew that he was doing this after my mother told him that the noise of the sheep was driving me crazy in the mornings and he took advantage of this by making sure the noise continued with the sheep now stationary at the back of my window and I could not confront him about it as I knew he would make my mother suffer for me confronting him.

Now that my father for whatever reason was still staying clear of me physically, he was always searching for other ways to get to me. My father loved to see people suffer in life and I was always his first target.

My father had brought a baby calf from the fields to the yard beside our house and left him there on the ground and I had seen that he was lying there motionless making some sort of strange noise and I knew that there was something wrong with him, I started to feel very sorry for him as I remembered back to the nights in the farmer's shed where the baby calf let me lay beside him taking his warmth and saving my life from the cold of the winter.

I went to my mother and asked was the baby calf sick and when she said he was I went back into the yard and started to feed him with grass I pulled from the garden thinking if I fed him he might live.

The calf made an attempt but could not manage to swallow the grass and I stayed there for hours trying to get him to eat the grass but I failed as the calf resisted on each attempt I made to feed him. When I knew he would not eat I stayed there rubbing him and my mother had come out telling me that it might not be a good idea to touch the calf as nobody knew what was wrong with him and I might catch something by touching him and it would be best to not go near him.

I walked back a few steps from the calf and told my mother I would not go close to him again and I stood there for some time watching over the baby calf and for the rest of the day while doing other things I went to check on the calf hoping he would be better .

The calf had still been sick as I checked on him for the last time before I went to bed.

The following morning I got up and went out into the yard to check on the calf to see that he was not there and went to my mother to find out what had happened to the baby calf where she told me that the calf had died over night.

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I asked her why did he die where she said he was sick from some illness when Philip said,

'Why don’t you tell him the truth that it was him that killed the calf.' and turned to me telling me that, 'The auld fella said you killed him by feeding him all that grass.'

Although my father knew that the calf had died from illness he again took this opportunity to tell lies about me and make people believe that I had done something bad.

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Although I was still staying away from him on every opportunity, staying out of the house at night and spending nights in friend's houses there was no escaping the lies he was telling about me when I was gone, and when I was there he was always giving out about the littlest things and this continued to get worse as the years went by and I was now some years older and had been old enough to do some work on the farm where my father had taught me to drive the tractor and had given out all the way through teaching me.

Being older I could recognise that my father was using the tractor lessons as a means to give out and knew that this was probably always going to be the way and my father was always going to be dysfunctional and I was still being dysfunctional in school often finding myself in some sort of trouble.

The teacher would beat me in class and from time to time he would bring me out of view of the class into his office and beat me more heavily but I continued to cause trouble and I had once again done something in the middle of class where the teacher had got up angrily from his desk and started to come down the class towards me and I waited for the usual beating from the teacher.

He started to punch me hard in the shoulder and I had seen this from him on so many occasions it didn’t really bother me and I let him punch me without reacting.

This frustrated the teacher so much that he went behind me and put his hands to my neck and started to chock me and it went to an extent when I was pulling myself forward to get his hands away from my neck the teacher was pulling me back and I ended up pulled back so far that my chair was resting only on the back legs.

Then from the side I seen one of my friends who came from a tough family rush over and start to swing wildly punching the teacher as he choked me and as I tried to get the chair back on four legs again.

My friend kept punching, the teacher kept choking, and I tried to prevent myself from falling back off the chair but after some time of my friend swinging wildly at the teacher he stopped, took his hands away from my neck and my chair fell forward and back on all four legs. The teacher looked shocked, my friend stopped punching him and stood there until the teacher started to walk away. My friend made his way back to his table as the teacher left on his way back to the top of the class. On his way back to the top of the class he looked frightened but still very angry and turned to me on his way back telling me, 'u'd want to watch yourself because your father gave me permission to beat you.' and he continued back to the top of the class. I wasn’t surprised at what I had heard but now I knew how serious my father’s intent on destroying me really was, but I always held a lot of respect for what the boy had done for me.

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In the coming days or weeks I had been taken out of school for the one of the weekly check-ups in the hospital and on the way home after having to drop my pants for the doctors to check where I had taken the hits from my father I began to think about what I had to do as a result of the abuse from my father.

I hated the doctors looking at my private parts in the hospital and I started to think about my father giving the principle of the school permission to beat me and that made me think everyone was out to destroy me and I became very depressed and angry with these thoughts and those thoughts led to me thinking about the night my mother nearly jumped out of the car while it was still moving to avoid getting hit by my father and the promise I made to myself that night, that when I could I would get my father, and while remembering all the bad things my father put me through I could not rest my mind, the more I thought about the past the more depressed I got and I was in a world of my own, thinking, 'Why did he do all of those things?' and 'Why is he still trying to destroy?' me and I felt like I had enough with this life and I did not want to go on anymore.

In the coming days in school I was very depressed in myself and very angry with my father and when the weekend had come I had still been in this state of mind and went to my father’s room where he stored the shotgun.

The depressed and angry state was lodged in my mind as I took the gun and the box of cartridges from the cupboard and started to walk through the house.

I was very low in myself and extremely angry and those were the only thought I had as I came towards the sitting room door without the thought of what my mother would think if she seen me with the gun. I was just in a world of my own and when I entered the room she had been there and started to freak out when she seen the gun in my hands.

'What are you doing?' she said in a huge state of panic, putting her hands to her face saying

'Oh! my god what are you doing? Lord god! What are you doing?'

Although I worried about her and what she might have been thinking I was still going to carry out what I had to do no matter what and I said to her that I was fine and I knew what I was at but the panic still went on with her saying with her hands still clenched to her face,

'Oh my god! Oh lord in heaven! Where are you going with the gun?'

I was prepared to say anything to get away and out of the house with the gun and started to console her, calmly putting the words to her that I knew what I was at with the gun and I would be fine, I'm only going down the road to the Turlock for a while with the gun and I repeated these words until eventually she calmed some bit and then I just walked out of the house with the gun looking to the sheds thinking in deep thought about something for some time before turning and walking out on to the road and going in the direction of the Turlock.

The depressed and angry state of mind came quickly back as I lost all thought of what it had done to my mother seeing me with the gun and what way I had left her mind when I left the house.

My mind was so far gone I did not even think of trying to get myself out of it, what I thought of doing seemed the right thing to do.

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When I got to the Turlock gate I could not open it so I reached over the wall putting the end of the gun on the ground on the other side and letting it rest against the wall as I climbed over.

I had looked to the house across the road while climbing over to see the neighbours staring out the window, they seemed to be watching carefully but I didn’t care and carried on getting over the wall and taking the gun in my hands again.

I walked in some distance and stopped at a big rock, I lay the gun on the rock and took a cartridge from the box and left it on the flat piece of rock picking up the gun again and started looking to how I could open it to get the cartridge inside.

I found a small leaver and I pushed it down and the barrel of the gun opened and I was somewhat surprised at how easy it was to get the gun open but that thought was short lived as my mind was filled with anger and I quickly put the cartridge in the barrel.

I had seen this done on many occasions by my grandfather when he would come to the house and shoot at the foxes in the fields beside the houses and I remembered to when my grandfather would be talking about guns to my older brothers telling them that you needed to put the butt of the gun against your shoulder when you are firing or it will pull back and break your arm so I closed the gun and put it against my shoulder bracing myself for some time thinking, 'I'm so young and small, will I be able to fire it without it braking my arm?'

even though I had the butt of the gun against my shoulder.

'I am probably too young and weak to fire a gun and it might hurt me', I kept thinking but I was adamant on doing what I thought of doing and I was in a hurry in my mind thinking, 'If it breaks my arm, it breaks my arm.' and 'If it knocks me to the ground, it knocks me to the ground.'

I took a step forward with my right leg, and leant forward with the gun resting on my shoulder and pulled the trigger and fired the gun without it hurting me, thinking to myself this is easy.

In achieving this I felt somewhat complete now that I had managed the first part in being able to use the gun and I open the barrel of the gun and let the empty cartridge fall out and quickly took another cartridge from the box and put in down the barrel and closed up the gun.

I took the same position again putting my right leg forward and then my body and pulled the trigger to where the gun did not fire and I quickly got agitated as to why this time I could not get the gun to fire and I pulled the trigger again but nothing and then I started pulling the trigger many times in a short space of time but to my sheer disappointment the gun would not fire so I took it down from my shoulder and opened it up to where I looked with confusion as I could not see anything wrong, even though I didn’t know what I was looking for, I wanted to see if there was anything different from the first time.

Everything looked the same and I got really confused and then I started to think I might be robbed of my plans but my mind was fixed solely on one thing and I justified things in my head telling myself that the gun was not broke and it probably did this from time to time and it will fire again and I blocked from my mind the thought of the gun never working for me again and closed the barrel of gun with the cartridge inside, made my way to the wall, on to the road and started to make my way up the road in the direction of the house 113

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thinking I'm going to do it even if my mother and brothers were watching, I felt like I just didn’t care and I could only think of one person and what I had to do.

There was only one thought in my mind and I could only feel anger, anger mixed with some kind of sadness and relief that it was going to be all over and I never gave a thought to the consequences of what I was about to do.

Walking up the road I didn’t hesitate and my mind never veered, and when I got to the driveway I started to get a very strange feeling about how massive the destruction I was going to cause and the turmoil I was going to put my family under and this strange feeling that I can’t fully describe made me feel somewhat sick. It was the thought of the massive change that was about to happen and the massive change it was going to be for my mother and brothers knowing that they would never be able to deal with it.

I knew I was going to destroy my whole family with my actions and I started to feel that I had become evil, about to do something very evil.

But I carried on knowing that people would not blame me for what I had to do, my father had put me through things that I would never be able to forget and he was continuing to try and destroy me and I was going to end it.

I got to the back door and walked in the house and when my mother heard me come in she turned quickly looking at me with delight in her face when she seen that I had returned with the gun without having an accident with the gun and I continued on past her in the kitchen knowing that I was going to make her delight very short lived and change the look on her face forever with what I was about to do.

Thinking about my mother was short lived in my mind as anger suddenly kicked back in again and took over my mind.

As I made my way to my bedroom I felt very strange in my mind, I was incredibly angry with a type of sadness at what I was going to do to my mother and brothers and how I was going to change all their lives but I felt very calm and ready.

I got into my room and stood near the window with the gun in my left hand resting the butt of it on the floor with all the feelings leaving my mind apart from the anger and I started to concentrate on what I had to do.

All of the thoughts of what it was going to do to my mother and brothers had totally left my mind and I was fully locked in on seeing this act through all the way.

I stood there very determined in my mind and not afraid of the terrible act I was about to commit knowing it was only a matter of time before my father appeared.

I was not nervous of what to do when I seen my father appear as I had thought and planned the act through just as I was taking the gun from the press in his room.

I was so caught up in this distorted and fixed way of thinking I never thought of my mother or brothers coming in my room and asking what I was doing with the gun in my hands looking out the window.

I stood there motionless for some time before seeing my father appear at the back of the house and I started to hope that everything would go to plan and he would go through the yard and to the back of the sheds.

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I had got a bit anxious about things not going to plan as in my mind this had to happen no matter what but I was somewhat confident knowing my father did not spend much time in the house during the day and he was either in the fields or at the back of the sheds working.

I heard him opening the back door and go into the kitchen, I was hoping my mother was not there, thinking that if she was and they started to talk that this might have prevented him from going to the back of the sheds.

My mind started to race thinking, 'This has to happen! This has to happen! Come on go to the sheds, go to the sheds.'

I could not hear any talk from the kitchen and suddenly he appeared walking past my window and into the yard.

Instantly I got a lot of adrenalin thinking it's time to move, I quickly went closer to the window to get full view of the sheds to make sure he went to the back of them.

He was walking quickly through the yard and when I seen him turn the corner and disappear out of sight I got another kick of adrenalin knowing I had to move and move quickly, seeing my father walk fast through the yard had me thinking that he was in a hurry to get something from the sheds and go back into the fields leaving me with very little time.

I got out of my room and quickly walked through the house with the adrenalin pumping, pushing me physically and mentally forward into the yard and ready to shoot my father.

I kept thinking that I had to move really quickly and I became very anxious about the little time I had to play with knowing that my father could come back into the yard from the back of the sheds any second so I walked really quickly towards the shed before slowing down some distance from the corner knowing I would have to sneak to the corner with the gun not letting him hear me stepping on the stones before having him in view and ready to pull the trigger.

As I slowed into a full stop with the gun in my right hand I felt that my mother was looking out the kitchen window, knowing what I was intending to do. I had this feeling that she felt so sorry for me that she was going to let me continue in ending the abuse forever.

I stood there for some time thinking about how sad my mother would be feeling looking at her son having to take such desperate measures at such a young age to put a stop to the man that was supposed to be looking after me. I kept thinking about the things that was running through her mind and about her sadness. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that my mother was looking on but I really felt she was and thought about her coming out and putting a stop to it all but for some reason I thought she was just going to let me continue and I started to lift the gun, putting it to my shoulder, tensing up and fully into position to shoot.

I thought of the gun not firing for me at the Turlock and this worried me somewhat but I was very eager in taking the chance so I justifying things telling myself that it will more than likely fire. I quickly said to myself, 'I'll get to the corner. Hope his back is turned and the second I have him in sight I'm going to shoot and not leave him any chance of saving himself, catching me and then turning the gun on me!'

With the gun ready to fire I was ready to move but I started to think about the distance he might be at when I sneaked to the corner and had him in sight.

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I thought that if he was where I wanted him to be at a close distance I would not hesitate for a second in shooting the second I had him in sight but I knew it was possible that he could be further into the back of the sheds and I would not be able to get far enough behind him to shoot without him seeing me and I started to think that maybe it was not going to be possible and if I was going to take a chance on him being at the right distance I needed to get to the corner and in a position to shoot quickly before he came back around the corner and seen me there with the gun in my hands.

'Will I take the chance?' I kept saying to myself as I got more and more anxious very quickly and with this anxious feeling after setting in, all the adrenalin had left my body and I didn’t know if I wanted to take the chance or not.

I wanted to shoot him but I knew that if I got to the corner and he was too far away and had been looking ahead without his back turned he would see me, knowing that he would more than likely try and take the gun off me and shoot me and if not things would be a lot different living with my father after trying to shoot him.

Again I thought maybe he will be at a short distance but without his back turned and he would see me and I tried to quickly calculate if I would have enough time and be able to shoot him if he had been just around the corner without his back turned and seen me aim the gun at him.

As I calculated I pictured what could happen and I could see me having enough time but I could also see me not having enough time and my father being able to reach me and stop me and I knew in this time calculating and thinking he could come around the corner and see me there and I wondered if he did would he know what I was trying to do or would he think that I was just messing around with his gun.

All of a sudden I slowly started to take the gun down from my shoulder letting it rest on the ground to the left of me holding it with one hand and letting the other hand free with my body relaxing.

Something had stopped me and I stood there feeling very very sad at the greatly missed opportunity of breaking free from my father and that I was going to have to continue receiving abuse.

I thought of my mother looking and seeing that I had dropped the gun.

I pictured her standing there feeling so sad and although she was seeing me retreat I felt the sadness in her was so strong that it made no impact on retracting how bad she felt.

Something kept me standing there and I knew my father could come around the corner any second but I didn’t care and now I think maybe I stood there and wanted him to see me to make a statement to him or I had stood there with still some thought of taking the chance.

After standing there for some time with this sadness that I didn’t shoot my father and get free from him once and for all, I somewhat got rid of some of the sadness telling myself that I still have the option of shooting him at another point in time had the abuse got worse and I felt the need to do so and I turned around and started to walk to the house and to settle my mind I justified things telling myself maybe the gun might not have fired and everything would have back fired on me.

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On approach to the house I didn’t feel the need to hide from my intentions as I was convinced that my mother was looking at me and was not going to say anything, from this I felt calm, opened the door and started to walk through the kitchen, I looked straight ahead walking through as I did not want to look to the left where I thought my mother was as I did not want to see how she was.

I got past the kitchen without any call out from my mother and walked down the hallway into my father’s room. I opened the cupboard and as I was about to put the gun back I thought, 'Did I do the right thing?' feeling like I threw away the chance of having a normal life.

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That evening and the days and even weeks to come my mother had looked very sad and looked very low in herself without talking to anyone, with this I knew that she had witnessed it all from her kitchen window. I never seen her as bad as this and it took a lot out of me to see her like this, it split my heart in two. But I continued to bring the gun out of the house and to the Turlock any time my father was gone to learn to make the gun fire every time with the intention of being fully capable of shooting my father in the future if need be.

As I was pushing on in age my father’s verbal abuse had eased significantly and I had left aside the thought of shooting him for now and I stayed away from him and he stayed away from me with him criticizing me on very rare occasions and I had been doing whatever I wanted around the house and outside the house.

The abuse was near an end but I had been suffering the consequence of it all with routine check-ups in the hospital twice a week which continued into my twenties and I was affected psychologically and had turned wild in school always getting in trouble, and at home I was taking the tractor onto the roads racing it up and down for hours with all the neighbours out looking at what I had been doing but I was living with two personalities living wildly but also in a peaceful way.

When my father had got a new puppy I started to bring him for walks and as he got older I was also feeding him as my father was purposely neglecting him when it came to feeding him.

I had put the abuse into my subconscious and I had started to slowly put it out of my conscious thinking and in the years to come I had been getting on with things and started to sleep at home at night again without my father coming into my room abusing me.

I had rarely thought about the abuse but when I would be out cycling my bike and I would be going past the farmer's shed where I spent the winters I would look into where I had spent my time with a happy feeling knowing that I had been treated well there by the big cow and the baby calf, where they in a way had saved my life and at least keeping me warm in the depths of the winters and sometimes I would purposely hop on my bike and cycle down the road with excitement and I could not wait to get to the farmer's shed to look in and when I would get there and passing I would always look carefully in at the small room at the back of the sheds in the hope to see the cow and baby calf.

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To my disappointment I never seen them again.

Going past I would say in my head, 'That's where I used to sleep when I was young'.

Then and even now I look on that place as my childhood bedroom, the bedroom I never had becuase at home my bedroom was only a place of horror.

In the coming years I had been ten to eleven years and it was so long ago since the abuse, I was convinced and confident that it was fully over and my father would never lay his dirty hands on me again and when I would get in trouble whether it was in school or outside school I never worried about my father turning on me and going back to his old ways.

And that was strengthened after many times getting in trouble without my father saying a word and this enticed me to continue doing what I wanted and I also didn’t care what he thought, I owed the man nothing in life and the trouble got worse and worse, I had been stealing whatever I could every chance I could get around the neighbourhood and this spread to where I was doing it in the local village myself and my friends had started to steal alcohol from the back of the local pubs in the village.

And even though my parents knew that when I was leaving the house it was going to result in some sort of trouble they never stopped me and I came and went whenever I pleased and I had got up on the morning of the weekend without a worry in the world while I fixed the buttons on my jacket as I stood at the mirror on the press.

Everything was quiet in the house, I could not hear a word or a noise from anyone while finishing closing my jacket and then the door in my room opened really quickly to where I seen my father standing looking at me in a rage with his two fists clenched and making small movements into the room and in my direction.

I was shocked but I didn’t worry at all, I was really relaxed with the situation where I turned to him while it looked like he was thinking whether it would be a good or bad idea to attack me and quietly and confidently said to him, 'You can beat me if you want, but I'm getting older and when I do I'm going to murder ya.'

He turned around and left quietly and in the coming days when a neighbour came to the house my father purposely started talking about sons hitting their father and telling whatever neighbour it was that if any of his sons ever laid a hand on him that he would not hesitate in turning the gun on them and shooting them.

He brought this conversation up with the neighbours any time myself and my brothers were there to hear it being said just to let us know that there was very serious consequences if we ever went to hit him. The neighbours would always go quiet and not say a word wondering why he was talking like this all of the time and I would say to myself, 'One rule for one, and one rule for another.' thinking he can give it but he won't allow it to happen to him even though he would fully deserve it and more.

His speeches did not bother me and I knew with my father having to preach this to the neighbours that he was afraid of what I had said to him when he had come in my room the previous weeks and it was the last time my father had ever entered my room again and I had taken my first alcoholic drink which led to the next two decades abusing alcohol to 118

Chapter 15 - Showdown at the Shed.

supress the memories of the past and living a very dysfunctional and unhealthy life physically and psychologically from the effects of the abuse while living at home to protect my mother from my father before I turned things around in the latter years, stopping abusing alcohol and getting my physical and mental health together but in doing so it brought up things from the past.

I had supressed the bad memories for more than twenty years with the alcohol and when the alcohol had left the system the memories were not being supressed anymore and I had started to think about the horrendous things my father had put me through for years of my childhood and now that I had been sober all of the time I had begun to notice that my father had been controlling my mother and even my brothers to an extent all of this time while I lived under the same roof but was too out of it from alcohol to have any understanding of how things really were in the home and I had also come to realise that for the past two decades I had lived with the man that destroyed me as a child and behind my back he was still trying to destroy me by telling huge lies to the rest of my family about me and also to people in the village.

I had stood up to him and told him he would not be controlling my mother or anyone else in the family anymore, and in a bid not to lose control, my father made two serious attempts on my life, but I continued to stay in the house to protect my mother before something told me to get out of the house and away from my father.

I've been away from him now with zero contact for the past seven years and I have become healthier and happier now and realising how dysfunctional and dangerous it was living there. I have not seen any of my family in the seven years as my father still has control and has put a full stop to all contact between myself and the rest of my family.

My father was truly sadistic and abused his own son between the ages of four and six to get his pleasure and continues to destroy my name to this day to make me look the bad one and take the truth from peoples' eyes about the crimes he committed in the past and hide his true identity. I prayed to God a lot as a child and he has got me through so I continue to pray to God to this day.

I dedicate my story to victims of abuse.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Get professional help.

Be strong and you will come through it and expose the perpetrators that prey on victims.

I also dedicate my story to friends that also went through child abuse and suffered the consequences of the unhealthy life it brings and are not with us today.

Everybody has a story, this is mine.

THE END

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