Running away, killing ones self and Runaway Love

As I said yesterday, it gets worse. I have a brief interlude here that's related but the first time I heard Runaway Love by Ludicrous and Mary J. Blige I almost cried. If you haven't heard it or seen it you can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJWtR2KlMwg and I would recommend you watch it and listen to it a few times.

That video could be the story of my life except I'm a guy and my abuse started much earlier than that. I'm sure the girls abuse started when they were born too. Yes, I'm getting to the point of all of this.

The first time I ran away from home I was four years old. Imagine that, a four year old running away from home for real. It wasn't like the shows where the kid can't leave because he can't cross the street or his mother refuses to pack a lunch so he doesn't leave. I ran away and my mother couldn't find me for hours and hours. Of course at four I couldn't fomulate a very good plan so I ran away to my grandmothers house which was about 8 blocks from where I lived.

In retrospect not a good plan but hey, I was four and I did have the balls to leave home and try to find a better place for me. Eventually my parents tracked me down, came and got me, took me home and beat the hell out of me until they got tired of it. That was how life was for me. While my maternal grandmother cared about me she and my grandfather just kept letting the abuse happen. Yep, I've probably been depressed all of my life.

After thinking about my unsuccessful attempt to runaway from home I came to the conclusion that the only way to make things better for myself was to die. So naturally I tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Obviously I wasn't successful or I wouldn't be writing this. The bad thing is I still which I had been successful.

It's kind of embarrasing for me to be writing this stuff as most of the people in my life don't know any of these things happened to me. I also never knew that my life was that much diffeent from any other kids lives. I didn't know there were good parents in the world or that there were kids who weren't abused. Except for one of my cousins I was close to. I always wished I had her parents but her parents and mine hung out together as our two dads were related. I'm not so sure now that her life was that great either but she didn't get the beatings I got so it made it look better to me.

When I was around 40 or so one of my wifes friends was at our house and she was talking about how the social services had taken her neighbors kids away from her for abuse. She was telling me that the parent had left them alone overnight and someone had turned her in. Now her kids were fed well, dressed well, not beaten or anything like that and in my mind an 11 and 9 year old were old enough to be alone over night.

She went on and on about how bad it was that the mother had left them overnight and I finally snapped on her and told her she didn't know what the hell she was talking about or even what the hell abuse was. I asked her if she'd been an abused child and she said no, that she didn't even know anyone who had been badly abused. I said sure you do, you know me.

She said what abuse, you got spanked now and then or what. Now I not only snapped but I really went off on her with a major rant. When I finally stopped yelling she asked me how I was abused so I told her a very little of it but included the running away and the trying to commit suicide at the age of four. Much to my disbelief and amazement she started crying and so did my wife. I truly didn't understand why they were crying so I asked.

We talked about it for awhile and I tried to explain that I'd never talked about it because I had assumed every kids life was like that and that it was what I knew and what I had lived thru so it was normal for me. It was the only explanation I could come up with and when she asked me if I still thought it was normal I said yes.

Then she asked me, if I read about a four year old running away and trying to commit suicide, in the paper or saw a tv story about it would I think it ws normal and I said no. That's the first time in my life I realized how abused I was and how bad it really was. Here I am a 40 year old man thinking my running away and trying to kill myself was normal for that age.

I know better now and I will talk more openly about all of the abuse that happened to me but there are still things no one else knows and I'll eventually put them on here, someday. when I get brave enough. I know it wasn't my fault I was abused and I know the responsibilty wasn't mine. I KNOW THAT yet it still feels weird to talk about any of it.

So yes, I now know that I have been depressed all of my life and to this day I don't give a damn if I live or die. It just doesn't matter to me in any way, shape or form.