The last of the general posts from 'Homeless' - the next step is to start sharing my story, which I wrote on 'Homeless'

25/10/2011
my teeshirt is dirty with stains on it, my clothes are beginning to smell, I need a good shower and tidy up.
Thankfully I found my nailclippers and brush buried in the backpack yesterday and trimmed and scrubbed my dirty nails so they are neat and clean, and I brush my teeth even without toothpaste.

please tell me if my comparisons in the following ongoing poem are bitter, it's just something I mull over, and it would be interesting for me to see on paper what I think, and I know that those of you who want me to be healed from what has happened might be a bit unsure of this, but healing will take a while yet.

The ongoing differences between Jesus and his teachings and the church and their way of doing things:

Jesus was born in poverty and without a proper home,
so was I,
most people in the churches where I was hurt were born into comfortable homes

Jesus was born  to his parents alone with no medical help, so was I,
the church people have pictures of mothers and babies in hospitals
that is all they know,

what is Christening? Jesus was baptised as an adult without the frills and showers of gifts that the church Christenings demand and the wealthy who have destroyed me take for granted, I was baptised as an adult by someone who emotionally harmed me, with a witness who sexually abused me, and with two other witnesses who upheld them, my baptism was rushed because of their hurry to have me confirmed into the church,
my baptism wasn't the big family occasion with gifts and a party and drinking and dancing, neither was Jesus's, but probably without exception, the party and gifts were what the people in the church had for their baptisms and their children's baptisms.

That is enough of the poem of comparisons for some time.

It will go on to explain the comparisions between Jesus' teachings and the way the church treated me.

I am reminded of how much the church have restricted and damaged me, and it breaks my heart and leaves me in despair.
I am reminded of how I smell homeless and it makes me sad.

I am reminded of the times when I sat in the college chapel, trying to teach myself grammar from a little book before class, my grammar isn't too good, but I am not sure why, I think maybe my eagerness to talk means I do long convoluted and sometimes slightly confused sentences with too many colons and not enough full stops or semi-colons.

My book that I am looking at in between blogs is called 'Louder than Words', it is about a boy with autism and how his mother tries to get help for him.

I am about to continue the London blog, but some of this is cut and pasted from where I have written it elsewhere, so it may be in a slightly different style.

Here I am wanting to do loads of serious blogging and next to me are three noisy teenagers. I can't control my environment so I will just have to live with it. Sigh.
Oh the teenagers have gone and there are just some elderly gentlemen doing genealogy on the computer next to me. oh no, some noisy children have taken the teenagers' place.

I have been at one of the daycentres for several hours, trying to relax otherwise I end up tense with aching eyes and head.
At the daycentre I had some food and sat and relaxed and did some benefits paperwork and looked through some asthma paperwork. It is hard to just relax, and when I try to I am overwhelmed with bad memories.

I have no food or hot drinks until soup kitchen this evening unless I can get two more stickers for a hot drink.

I thought of so many things to write about but it is really hard to actually settle to write anything while there is so much noise and disruption, maybe half-term should be banned? part of my Asperger's Syndrome is sensetivity to noise, which was a nightmare until I and other people learned about it.

What is it like having Aspergers Syndrome? Well it is difficult, because if I try to 'Normalise' too much I make myself ill and stressed, but the general public find me rather odd because I act and react in an an unexpected way to things, sometimes I simply react differently to someone who is neurotypical, sometimes I react to things other people don't react to. I work really hard to tone down my reactions or explain them, but to try and completely 'normalise' someone with Aspergers Syndrome is simply damaging and painful.
I will be misunderstood and squashed for the rest of my life.
http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/autism-and-asperger-syndrome-an-introduction/what-is-asperger-syndrome.aspx

This is a link to the NAS section on Aspergers Syndrome or Asperger Syndrome. I often describe myself as high functioning autistic, as more people know what that is.

Asperger Syndrome for me involves difficulties in communication, understanding social situations and interaction, sensetivities to noise, heat and touch, some autistic behaviours such as rocking, thumb sucking, humming and doing repetetive things. I like a lot of extremely solitary time, and being homeless provides that delightful solitude, but unfortunately the tearing horrifying memories of the church ruin that solitude, so I have to have lifelines such as the Samaritans and Hopeline and the abuse helplines.
One of my Asperger eccentricities is toys, I find it hard to resist toys, hence the toy giraffe hitching a ride on my backpack, another thing that fascinates me is animals, animals of all kinds. I am always delighted with the wildlife that keeps me company as I sleep rough, apart from if it bites me or steals my food!

I speak less than is expected, I am very quiet in conversation, though on paper I can be very talkative and use big words that make people expect more of me verbally.

what more can I say, I am and always will be, slightly at odds with the world, not deliberately, and I will always be hurt by this difference, the church really used my inability to understand and cope when they destroyed me, they used it against me as strongly as they could in all departments, to make me out to be mad when I was distressed, to cover their own wrongs, to make things work their way, I was unable to cope with any of the church actions, from the defence and cover up of abuse and abusers to the attacks on me and my life and character.

There is a nice little book called 'Stand up for Autism' by Georgina Derbyshire, which is about her son who had High Functioning Autism, he was on a similar spectrum to me, varying between quite autistic and quite normal and he got into all sorts of muddles just as I do and have.

The other book that comes to mind when I think of abuse and cover ups is 'Broken', by Shy Keenan, her abusers always got to make out that she was a bad girl and that they hadn't done anything wrong, cover ups while she suffered and suffered.
It is a bit of a harrowing story though, if you ever get to read it.

Anyway, excuse me a minute, I am going to sign out, I can't write anything about the church while there is a noisy fidgety child next to me, I am sure children need to be in school more, I am sure half term is a bad idea.

22/10/2011 titled PAIN

I am trying to write about what has happened to me in order, but sometimes I want to get the terrible things that have been said and done out of my head.

Can I share some things with you in order to help me sleep better?

The person who was supposed to investigate and deal with my complaint of abuse told me that my abusers were 'just Christians who got things wrong', and yet the church leader called me wicked for reporting his friend for abuse.

After the church destroyed me, I managed to re-settle in a new church, until the diocese contacted them and 'told them about me', and the priest came and shouted at me and said he had 'heard about me and what I had done', he had not heard about what I had been through though and when I spoke about it he said he 'couldn't comment because he didn't know anything about it'.
My abusers were not bad mouthed and blackened this way, they were told they were innocent by their friend, the church leader who got away with trying to close my complaint and support them and blacken my name.
My abusers were both accused previous to abusing me, one of abusing his own daughter and one of misconduct in a pastoral care role in a previous church that led to him being sacked from that role, and yet both these men were in positions in the church where they were able to prey on me.

preying, a speciality of the church. A place where vulnerable people go to seek shelter, and a place where abusers go to find vulnerable people and to gain power

21/10/2011

can I just share some things before I have to log off and go out into the cold?

some of the things that hurt and distress me every day (and this is the very tip of the iceberg)

The way church leaders lied and protected my abusers

The way I was called wicked and malicious and a troublemaker and a liar by the church

The way that the church brought false accusations against me rather than accept any responsibility for their actions and behaviours, the way they blamed and criminalised me.

The way they took my whole life from me and pretended that they were only caring and concerned, and made me out to be insane.

That is all I have time to write today, I am now going out into the cold dark world that I live and sleep in.

20/10/2011

http://www.wearesurvivors.org/?p=670

I know someone who tells me she was satanically abused in the church of England.
The problem is that she has mental health problems, problems get labels from Borderline personality disorder to paranoid schitzophrenia. She threatens violence and does very severe things, she is into druidism and spells.

The problem for me is that I know what it is like to be disbelieved, I know what it is like to be labelled insane, and for all I know, her behaviour could be because of the abuse, as my own wild anger and bizarre responses to the pressure from the church was, I am declared free from serious mental illness though, and I don't threaten lives.
what should I do? believe her? It is hard to get any solid consistant details from her, or worry that I am feeding a fantasy if I support her?

19/10/2011
There are things I try not to think about:

abuse
things said and done
my lack of car and driving licence and how the church took both
my lack of bank account, also gone because of the church making me homeless
the terrible things that the church have said and done and denied
the lack of money and lack of future
the fact that the people who have hurt me and the people who have supported the hurters have got away with it
Dad's death
Anne's death - my friend who died after the diocese had driven a wedge between me and her
what G.P. has done - G.P was a close friend of my Dad and family, and last year he was arrested on child kidnap and porn charges, and there is no doubt he did those things but I hadn't known he was that kind of guy, neither had my Dad, I think other members of the family did. (G.P. was a close family friend who was arrested while the Diocese were destroying me).
my family
my background
the millions of repercussions from what the church have done to me
how useless and ashamed and worthless I am, especially with the church labels
Thats enough for now.

19/10/2011 extract

If the church see this blog, I can imagine they will try to close it down, even though I am writing it in a way that does not overstep anything legal as far as I know, though I have been mistaken about that in the past.

18/10/2011 Memories - this appears to be the first post written on 'Homeless' -previous to that there was the paper journal.

Memories:

Every day is full is memories, I try not to let it be, I live in a stupor where memories are not allowed, but they break through anyway, flashes of memories, memories of my brothers tormenting me, my sister sneering at me from her position of a year older than me and not autistic, memories of the endless trauma and violence and abuse and stress of our childhood on the move and outcast from society, memories, memories,
 memories of the beautiful fields of my homecounty and the wonderful agricultural and horticultural work that I did, memories of being cuddled into my adoptive mother's arms, and her jealous husband's violent temper and abuse of me, memories of my efforts to be a good and useful person in the community and the church,
memories of my former counsellor, the steadiest and most insightful and kind person I have met, memories of struggles to look after myself and make ends meet, and my failures and debts, memories of being back in college and back to working on farms, memories of the days when I began to see a future, memories of the sea and the boats and being surrounded by friends and beginning to have quality of life, memories of abuse and collapse and the whole world going dark, the memories I try hardest to drown out, the memories that are hardest to drown out.

please save me I am falling here, I am lost and alone.