Of course, I’ll wipe my eyes, and take a deep breath and switch the screen over when my other half comes down the stairs. I type this and bite my lip to keep it from trembling, just so I can go on and get out of my whatever random babble it is I want to say. And I don’t think anyone understand that. There isn’t a day goes by where I don’t think about something … some part of such a giant slice of my life. I wake in the middle of the night, gasping, realising I feel into such a deep sleep. I stand in the shower and a momentary lapse of judgement I realise I have turned my back to the door and suddenly that fear is there. I walk up the stairs at night when I am alone in my house … a house where nothing ever happened, and around the corner I might possibly walk into the shadow of my childhood. It’s very hard for me to comprehend this, because I don’t forget. To realise people were afraid to bring it up with me because hey, I’d forgotten all about it and might suddenly remember and fall apart. I remember someone saying to me, oh sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you about the abuse. They exist as the darkness following people around. No one ever really sees shadows, they’re just there. Sometimes I feel like a shadow walking through the world amongst all the other people who can’t really see me-the real me. Even after five books documenting it, it feels so strange to say.

Not that I had forgotten, but it’s like a dirty sentence, a thing still to be ashamed of even now. It took me by surprise that these worse existed on my page. I have done so for a few years now, and today, somehow, I wrote the immortal words, I was abused. If you follow me on either of my blogs, then you know I journal daily. I mean, everyone wants to prevent it, wants to stop it, and wishes it didn’t happen in the world, but after, then what? Does it just go away? Does the kid just get over it and it’s done with.

Dear Teddy by J.D. Stockholm