A view fom both sides

I am calling this post a view from both sides because I'm going to start from being the 14 year old runaway girl that i was and share my experience with the final part of my post concluding with my now adult opinion.

Right then i was living with my mum & her new boyfriend who i did not get on with,i hated him,he hated me,it was constant chaos,i was determined to get him out of our lives, so i made life hell for everyone.

Whatever i was told not to do...I done...If i was to be in at 9.00pm...I would walk in at midnight...Told not to smoke....so i started to smoke...you know the usual teenage tearaway stuff but me being the destructive bitch that i was didn't stop at just a teenage phase i went the hole 9 yards and put myself out there on the streets just to piss everyone off.Did it piss the family off? Of course it did and most of all i was causing a rift between mum and her boyfriend...my aim was getting closer...I would bolt & mum would come find me...go home argue and do it all over again..each time getting further away from the home.After several runaway attempts things came to a head and both my mum and her boyfriend was extreme heavy drinkers (that was probably my fault as well)my friends were outside the front door waiting for me and i was in a full blown row with both mum and her man.He struck me just the once and called me a slut...everyone outside heard him and i felt humiliated and stupid so i switched into a complete wild animal ran to the kitchen and picked up a huge long kitchen knife,now i was 14 years old and before i knew it my mum was standing in front of me and her boyfriend who was over 6ft tall and quite a big man was rushing out the front door."Victoria give me the knife"was all i can remember mum yelling at me i remember i was spitting and screaming with temper "I'm gonna kill him"i yelled"i hate him" with this he poked his head back in the door keeping his body on the outside and just his head inside "Calm down" he said really nervously"stop being stupid"he followed to say.

Stupid ,stupid i remember thinking just get the fuck away from me and at this point my mum grabbed my hand that had the knife in it and started to tussle with me.She was screaming i was screaming and then i felt like i had stabbed her,shitting my self i turned ran out the backdoor shouting "no no i stabbed my mum.

Just 4 the record i didn't even break her skin,but thought at the time i had,so i ran and ran and slept where ever i could i begged 4 food,slept under a kebab van,made a little camp in a small wooded area just about 2 miles away from my once so called home,weeks went by and i knew by this time that i hadn't seriously hurt my mum but still she had not tried dragging me back like usual,I was not going to go home if she wanted me back i was gonna wait till she came and asked me to.

I had blown it,I went that step to far,she didn't try to find me this time,i had messed up 4 the last time and now she was giving up on me,that was when i felt the most alone in the world,the game of patience had ended and i lost.

Weeks went past each night was scary in the dark on my own,i still saw my friends but was always to proud to admit it was hell and used to lie saying i was in a squat with people and loving it,having the time of my life i used to say,of course it was all lies it was horrid,i was getting ill,starving,dirty and wanted to go home.

I spent many days and hours thinking shall i jump on a train and go to London,i had seen it on the telly,young runaway girls selling themselves on the streets..I could do that i thought it seems like a cool life and at least i would get money.I have no idea what stopped me from doing the London thing i really cant find that memory,a lot of things in past have huge blanks and that is one of them but neither the less i didn't go and stayed in my hometown.

Several months passed and i was becoming so ill i had no choice but to go to the doctors my chest was really bad i could not stop coughing i was sent to the hospital for chest x-rays,and the doctor knew i was not at home with mum and gave me a big lecture on it,somehow anyway mum found out i was ill and we started to have small talks at the local shop where she would buy me bits and pieces to eat,and give me money,but she still never asked me to come home,i knew it was her boyfriend that was stopping her from asking me home,then after several more agonising days coughing and really finding it hard to breath i called up my mum and begged her to let me back,i told her if i stayed out on the streets much longer i would end up dead i was ill and just wanted to come home.

She said she would need to speak to her boyfriend i was heartbroken when she said that,but did not say a word to her in case she blew me off.Eventually she came and met me at the shops and said i could come home,we never spoke a word all the way back we walked in and he was sat in the living room we did not exchange a single word for days,but that was a turn around for me and him you see i think he realised just how much he was trying to be a daddy and i didn't want that and more importantly i realised just how important being at home was.

Why im doing this blog of my life.

Its a simple enough question with a not so simple answer?Why am i telling the whole world all my darkest secrets,why am i admitting i was at one time a low nasty bitch who did not care who i hurt to get what i wanted,why am telling people that I'm so insecure because of my parents divorcing,why am i telling people that my life at one time was so shit i slit my wrists,and why am i telling people that i was a mother to 3 children and spent most of their young childhood off my face on drugs,Why........Well i guess I'm using this blog to show my past is my past,my life was totally shit when i was growing up,and that people do and can change their lives.

Why has it taken me till my 4Th child and my other 3 children being 11yrs 13 yrs and 14 yrs to admit i was not the greatest mother in the world.Well the truth is it hasn't taken me that long for my children to see me for what i was because i have never hidden the fact that i done so many bad things and my children know everything about me from the self harming and living on the streets to the drugs and suicide attempts,they know that i hate my father for destroying my life and the greatest i gift i got back from my children is their respect,they are the most loyal children in the world,I never beat them or abused them once,but i was a mum that was in a crazy mind trying to pretend i was someone else. They love me for who i am and they have learnt through my past without having to actually go through it that they would never go down that path of drugs and drink,they are so strong and have great family values because they know my insecurity and i know they will all make great parents when they are older and no matter what happened in their lives they will always be there for their forthcoming children and will never ever turn their back on me.

A lot of parents would hide all those secrets from their own children and would say that I'm wrong to allow them to know such things,but the way i see it is My kids are so street wise and they know that life ain't no bed of roses and if you want things you sometimes have to fight hard for them,The world is not nice out their and its even harder if you think its gonna be easy,because its not,

One thing i ever really knew from the start was my children would never feel what it was like to be unloved and unwanted,I may not have been there mentally all the time but not one of my kids ever felt like i did not love them,I'm far from the perfect mother i know,but when it comes to what matters in life everything is material except unconditional love and that is what my family have.

So why am i telling everyone this...because I can... I'm not ashamed of who i am.. and leopards really do change their spots.

A friend of mine said last week "i don't look forward to reading your blog because its sad and depressing" I was so upset that i could make someone upset by my blog,that's the last thing I ever want to do.

The idea is to tell my story, show my fight and let the whole world know I'm here,I'm alive, I beat the odds and I'm happy.My blogs wont always be full of sadness they will show the path i have travelled and show everyone the person i am happy to be now.

But the reality is in life bad things happen to everyone,we all see life through different eyes and I'm just allowing you to see life through mine.

Leaving a Marc on our lives.

As some of you may be aware recently my young nephew

who is pictured here to the left died after having a drug and

drinking binge.He was only 19 years old and had lots to live

for,but as is the sad reality of taking a cocktail of crack,cocaine,with numerouros drinks he fell asleep on his sofa and never woke up.

I wrote this poem for him and our family to keep his memory alive,I read it out at his funeral which was one of the hardest things i have ever had to do,and barely managed to hold the poem in my hands because i was shaking uncontrollably,but i got through it because i knew i had to read it out,i did not want someone who didn't really know him like we all did to read it,Also i often write poems to express my feelings and fears and use it as a coping strategy,its one way i can deal with things without losing my way.Please allow me to share with you this personal poem of the grief we all felt the day he never woke up.

A MARC ON OUR LIVES

You was always the one that would wind people up

You was always the one that would never shut up

You was always the one that was never in the wrong

You was always the one that would go on & on

---

But from always to never is to much to bare

We love you & miss you it just isn't fair

We will never again hear you laugh out loud

We will never again see you run with the crowd

We will never again see to acting real cool

We will never again see you acting the fool

You were hardly a child,yet barely a man

We all want some answers but nobody can

A nephew,a cousin,and to many a dear friend

A grandchild,a brother so many hearts left to mend

And for two broken parents a precious dear son

Who would give everything up just to hear you say

'dad' & 'mum'

No matter in who or what you believe

The death of the young is so hard to conceive

The memory of you will live long past the tears

Even if they are memories of a few precious years

Its a blessing to believe you are now with your nan

And hugging baby Sean when ever you can

No dought Shane will be waiting to have a good time

We know your uncle Kevin will ensure your just fine

Your sudden harsh death has cut like us all like a knife

But we promise you have certainly left a MARC in our lives

Inside the mind of a self harmer

I don't claim to know what goes on in the mind of all people that self harm,the fact being that people self harm for all sorts of reasons,I don't think self harmer's do it because they want to i suspect like myself its a sort of release from reality,and a coping strategy,not a great way to cope with things but a way none the less.

I had tried to pin point when my first encounter of harming myself was but for the life of me i can not say when it started,i suspect i have blocked it out somewhere so deep it knows its better off hiding,i can remember the very last time i put a razor blade to my skin,i can remember many,many times in between but not the first time,I can only say at first it was probably for some kind of attention,god knows i was lacking that in my childhood,but attention it did not bring,I can say that unless you have been in a situation where all u know is to inflict pain upon yourself to believe you are alive is very hard to understand,But to try to help all understand i will proceed.

To see your own blood pour from your body allows the mind to know you exist,to feel the pain allows your mind to believe nothing else can hurt you as much as you can hurt yourself,and to inflict a blade upon yourself allows the mind to believe you are in control,all the symptoms of some one who is lost, alone and knows no other coping strategy.

I never cut myself so that people would see yet i never like some self harmer's cut myself where ever i could.My left arm was the only battleground that i inflicted pain upon i don't know why but i never felt the need to expand to any other parts of the body,many people do as to why i cannot answer,I'm certainly not proud of it and would never recommend it to anyone but for a while if only a short while it worked.For me it would be easy when ever things got so low to pick up a disposable razor and perfectly dismantle it till i was left with the single sharp and very lethal blade and proceed to take all my anger out on myself,To say it hurts when doing it i suppose is true but in a strange kind of way it was also very euphoric to me.

The feeling of invincibility to other pain i was going through,nothing in this world could ever ever hurt me like i could hurt my self,if i was feeling hurt by a person,i would cut myself and believe that person never hurt me at all because i can hurt myself more,the world could treat me like shit,yet with a blade the world could not make me feel more shit then i could by using the blade upon myself.

I would spend much time just staring at the blood and watching it drip all down my arms onto the back of my hand along my fingers and drop to the floor,and with each drop of blood that hit the ground was one less bad feeling in my body,I could control it i would decide if i wanted to cut once twice three times or even fifty times depending on how depressed i felt at the time,i would cut and cut until i felt better.Of course that feel good factor never lasted to long one reason being the pain from all the wounds would really kick in and two the feeling of guilt would rear its ugly head,It is a somewhat nasty circle to be in,feel hurt,cut myself, feel better, feel pain, feel guilt, feel hurt, cut myself, feel better, feel pain, feel guilty........Sadly for many it is all they know all they can be in control of,and the only thing that they may be good at..

I'm 33 now and it was only just a few years ago that i last self harmed and i cant say for surety if i will never do it again,i found something in my life that was to top everything that was love,and all the while i have felt loved i have never felt the need to harm myself,I'm one of the lucky ones ,many people never find a way to control this habit of self harm,and i call it a habit because in a way it is ,when you start it is very hard to stop,like any kind of addiction,but i know that there is more out there for everyone if they don't give up fighting,i bear many many scars and hate going out in the sun because if my arm gets tanned the scars show up even more,my kids know all about it i mean there is no point in lying and they know rather then hurt themselves I'm here for them no matter what ,but even though i deeply regret doing so much self inflicted pain to myself i am what i am and that part of my life has made me stronger and wiser,each scar tells a story of some kind of heartbreak or pain i felt growing up and constantly seeing what i have done to myself only strengthens the passion i have to help anybody never to get to that point.