You think you know me?

Origins

Born in Nottingham on the 28th March 1991 I know that my parents were having their own difficulty which affected my upbringing. From a very early age I didn't live with either of my parents but with various family members. I don't have all that many memories from this time period, but something that is hard to forget was being locked in a tiny cupboard for no reason other than for enjoyment. An abuse of power from a family member I should have been able to trust. I remember as a very young child the pressure rising as I was engulfed in total darkness unable to move only cry and scream. A momentary loss of self before my brain had even properly formed, or I had any real sense of identity. I don't remember a happy present family. It's important to understand that whilst the responsibility should have been with my parents to give me a strong stable foundation, this is not something I hold against them. As a young adult I understand that life is cruel and difficult even at the best of times and sometimes we make the wrong decisions or we just can't cope.

This early memory represents how I have lived most of my adult life.. mentally trapped in my mind, unable to escape the darkness and sometimes leaves me feeling emotionally unable to cope. Almost paralysed. This was just one of many traumas I experienced as a child. I would often dissociate by playing video games. No matter who I lived with or where I was, it was my best friend... an escape route from my mind as the colourful pixels danced across the screen hours and hours unsupervised.

By the time I went to live with my parents at five, I had found a new way of disassociating through performance and singing, always performing for someone, I would order people to sit down and watch me perform. The child me wanted and needed nurturing. It was my way of asserting myself and demanding the attention I deserved. This was my version of family time, as my family wasn't the type to sit round a table. There weren't Sunday roasts or nutritional diets, as my parents didn't cook. In my teenage years, I would repeatedly eat chips from the chip shop locked away in my room. Now as an adult sitting around a table makes me cringe and of course like my parents, I never learned to cook.

I was a very shy child who struggled to interact and make friends with other children. I became used to being alone keeping all my child feelings and experiences bottled up and in my early teenage years I found a new unhealthy way of expressing myself through self harm. The way I would do this would vary, but I remember as a child just wanting to be heard. This year similar feelings were triggered through fake accounts, being continually ghosted and rejected for unimportant relationships. Throw in covid and the ending of a 11 year relationship as well as reliving my childhood abuse this year became all too much.

It was during these darkest of times I found a new sense of being. I could start rediscover the good, bad and ugly parts of myself I had hidden away for so long. Back in 2002 when I started school, homosexuals were far and In between. In some ways controversial as media and social factor's were not as advanced as they are now. This was another aspect of my life that I decided to face this year which in turn would unlock a whole new ray of skills and creative interests that would lead me to face my fears of social media.