House
Part of the place has yet not met my eyes, it is a diamond-edged County plunged in a bath of rich yellows which are the rapeseed fields, which in a summer season strip themselves of a green patchwork hoop skirt with defined seems. If the place was a human creature then brown fog that trails behind the tractors tail and stitches along the ploughed mud would be like a fabric comb through the locks that are a thick knotted Earth.
I see forests like patches on her dress by the streams that form great clumps like dermic moles. Towards the spots in the shadow clusters like a patch of 1000 terracotta huts ache as the eye of the storm overhead approaches.
Would it be a system of nerves, taking turns to thread wormy roads roping down urban Tabernacles with spires that to an unreachable end, kiss the Sun.
Such twisted stitches beneath the armpit lift the roofs and each of them have a different view but the survivors who live here will not be able to reach alone, therefore they are left a stones unturned; mysteries:
In the east there are blackbirds and in the south above the den of foxes who are the workers with cleaning jobs, but the air is of retail therapy. Dopamine shops yearn for comfort, regulars to pharmacies and cafés are crowned upon the tips for the staff on minimum wage.
It was also the west and north which I grew up in. I was a witness to a chorus of gardeners arms armed with rakes fighting the war on leaves and the sobering wind which brings tears to the eyes.
My name is Elliot, I have always believed in God, I am a spiritual human being, a Jewish boy who is skilful with stringed instruments, of poetry and of dance particularly the movement of ballet and contemporary dance and I am honoured in Oxford as distinct comedic actor, I like clowning but I was a child when I survived being sexually abused.
Standing on the potholed tarmac, as I change to a high gear uphill, a cobweb on the sign for the village neighbourhood watch scheme rustles. It twinkles in the dew as the early sun scatters upon every surface and the daybreak like a flagship makes flee
all the nightly shadows.
I open my ears to my surroundings and I hear clock that ticks in the classroom in the visceral of villages. I want to feel useful, helpful and understood.
My abuse didn’t happen at school: that was a place I escaped to; where the climbing frame appeared like a mountain. It was where I spoke with the God to whom I believed, where also I had wrestled the wind not letting go until it blessed me.
The gentle breath of my teachers adored me on their laps, so as I pretended it was my birthday for bumps and they knew me more than once a year by the bumps I was looking for. We were supposed to get one for each year of birth and one for luck. I was popular with them and teddy bear - who stayed to keep watch.
Then I peeled my face away in the corridor from the graph of this English city affectionately known as town which is what everyone who are townsman call Oxford here, A very old fashioned place. Oxford. It is like a coat of arms having both sinister and dexter. Such polarised sides are divided yet complimentary.
Though it is a difficult task to obtain a right to hold a British passport, I am still getting used to the English culture and I know more about being Jewish then I do with being Anglicised that is to say more then I desire to be English is to be a citizen of heaven and saved and rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And we have been brought near; by the shedding of his blood which speaks a better word. A man who knew what it was to be abused. A man who was humiliated according to his righteousness and crowned upon the head with thorns. A man who was betrayed by his own kind, by his closest friends. Learning his way I feel useful helpful and understood.
Therefore I am one who is confident, predominantly a servant who is in the doorway of the house of God.
Riding along in cars
As a passenger during this time of my first and second school, I occasionally smelt menure in the air.
I was a toddler and I lived in the farmland of the eastern boundary of Oxford. My earliest memory is of the inside of various driven vehicles.
Riding along, when I was in the car of my rapist, the window rolled down in enjoyment in the front passenger seat, a winding window device was controlled by my left hand, the car was pulled over anyway and the window was wound up for me. Before pulling over, he chewed a tablet of gum looked at me and charged “Elliot can you wind up the window please?” and I kept a silence.
In my head I imagined that he would not believe that I was punishing him as a five or six-year-old toddler.
In my head I thought that he may overlook the thing and give over control of the window because it moved in a way which was cute but I felt hard pressed that my abuser switched every now and again. One part of the day happy and then the next moment enraged. But I thought it may be reasoned by perhaps he was uncomfortable wearing a certain outfit - but I was proved wrong. There were days when he wouldn’t wear those clothes and I was still subject to these childhood adverse experiences.
That is why a game of wind up became a prank I invented that I sometimes won.
He was a balding builder, a family man who made himself welcome, he had brown eyes and very dark hair.
When he told you what he thought the world laughed.
They laughed the way that boozers laugh when they guzzle down a table filled with vomit.
In the 60s he had eloped from India with his girlfriend my grandmother despite persecution from whom I believe were Zoroastrian or perhaps Jewish believers, these were not accepting my Grandad who was a fan of Elvis Presley and they persecuted him for being a follower of the king. They prevented my grandmother from dating my grandad for religious reasons. Therefore while in London where they lived in Oval they married then moved to Oxford. My grandmother who was ethnically Jewish knew how he would do it, in private, did nothing.
When I was alone naked and wet. Beforehand, he led me into the bathroom we were outside and he always held my left hand across the road and walked me into the toilet inside the bungalow.
Running the bath with warm water he looked down at the water and tested it with his finger he told me to take my clothes off, pressingly, he told me to take my clothes off. I was a television and he was the remote.
My left hand exchange with his hands on my body and I stepped into the water and soaked in it and then he came over and asked me to stand up and he molested me.
The both of them did the best that they could do since it was the same way they had also been treated. A habit or pattern of incest made my grandad a homosexual paedophile so this is how when I approached the police about this crime at the age of 27 years and they quickly initiated the question of standing in court with what I had reported to them as sexual exploitation and abuse. The investigation was treated with dignity but they could not proceed until I’d given consent to them and my response was to say no because I chose to forgive and step away from the police investigation. So to pursue helpful closure by way of seeking the kingdom and his righteousness. I felt brave and peace came as a reward. That day many police cars were parked in the police station carpark because little or no crime had been reported at the hour I was to the station. I walked away from the police station alongside the officer that had interviewed me that day and shook his hand, I looked at him and said that everything is going to be alright.
I never saw justice, by reporting it to the police in the UK.
I don’t understand the appeal of sexual exploitation of children, what about a child is so attractive, is youth worthy to be jealous of? It’s also that he was doing it with boys but when my little sister was contacted by him on her birthday she didn’t at all like the gift and gave him a big kick in the leg! May she be made safe.
The routine touching and talking with me naked in room, was like the booting up of a PC, or the annoying repetitive wheezing of a pigeon on the tip of the chimney that was too far up the brickwork to frighten away.
I didn’t ever think about choosing to ask for help because I believed that what was happening to me was normal. Washing up was not just for plates of food because after dinner and before cartoons and bed from a young age I was lifted into a sink naked to be washed humiliated by him.
The rain reels like a lamented sky which is on my side baptising the earth and broadening the air that stinks of manure.
After I was old enough to attend upper school I experienced still bullying tactics such as intimidation, name-calling, physical assaults from him, then he made me sign in pen a contract of sorts on multiple occasions to document an agreement that I would respect his home and that my behaviour would be monitored and this resulted in me doing something about the situation. I ran away from not home, but a house when I was 18 years of age.
He was inviting himself to every birthday Christmas and of course he also babysat so that his abuse continued.
At the time discipline was the word, but it later became disciple. This is my Dutch heritage which is how I know to get to the point quickly. It was also distinct to be in touch with Hollanders at home, it has remained distinct in my life and it was for my grandad also. We also had in common that the house where we lived was also distinctively working-class in our identity, since when my grandad moved to the UK my grandparents had no money and the only jobs available for him were to work in construction of the London Underground network.
What’s my grandparents gave me was love, kindness, financial security and knowledge when my parents had failed they became my guardians, however it was not enough to justify his sexual predatory behaviour towards me and my little brother.
What he did was wrong for those who are themselves witnesses as I am of childhood adverse experiences, the following of what he shared doesn’t make him more important than Gods righteousness and the law which brings knowledge of sin.
In the spirit of revelation I have received for his life compassion and understanding because my poor grandad was a man who suffered insuring a culture of abuse at school by catholic teachers at an Indian boarding school in Mumbai for it is that hurt people hurt people therefore with such an environment as spiritual physical emotional abuse for many survivors like my grandad during his early developmental years
By older man it comes as no surprise that this pattern of circular pain in his life was left on broken;
I see forests like patches on her dress by the streams that form great clumps like dermic moles. Towards the spots in the shadow clusters like a patch of 1000 terracotta huts ache as the eye of the storm overhead approaches.
Would it be a system of nerves, taking turns to thread wormy roads roping down urban Tabernacles with spires that to an unreachable end, kiss the Sun.
Such twisted stitches beneath the armpit lift the roofs and each of them have a different view but the survivors who live here will not be able to reach alone, therefore they are left a stones unturned; mysteries:
In the east there are blackbirds and in the south above the den of foxes who are the workers with cleaning jobs, but the air is of retail therapy. Dopamine shops yearn for comfort, regulars to pharmacies and cafés are crowned upon the tips for the staff on minimum wage.
It was also the west and north which I grew up in. I was a witness to a chorus of gardeners arms armed with rakes fighting the war on leaves and the sobering wind which brings tears to the eyes.
My name is Elliot, I have always believed in God, I am a spiritual human being, a Jewish boy who is skilful with stringed instruments, of poetry and of dance particularly the movement of ballet and contemporary dance and I am honoured in Oxford as distinct comedic actor, I like clowning but I was a child when I survived being sexually abused.
Standing on the potholed tarmac, as I change to a high gear uphill, a cobweb on the sign for the village neighbourhood watch scheme rustles. It twinkles in the dew as the early sun scatters upon every surface and the daybreak like a flagship makes flee
all the nightly shadows.
I open my ears to my surroundings and I hear clock that ticks in the classroom in the visceral of villages. I want to feel useful, helpful and understood.
My abuse didn’t happen at school: that was a place I escaped to; where the climbing frame appeared like a mountain. It was where I spoke with the God to whom I believed, where also I had wrestled the wind not letting go until it blessed me.
The gentle breath of my teachers adored me on their laps, so as I pretended it was my birthday for bumps and they knew me more than once a year by the bumps I was looking for. We were supposed to get one for each year of birth and one for luck. I was popular with them and teddy bear - who stayed to keep watch.
Then I peeled my face away in the corridor from the graph of this English city affectionately known as town which is what everyone who are townsman call Oxford here, A very old fashioned place. Oxford. It is like a coat of arms having both sinister and dexter. Such polarised sides are divided yet complimentary.
Though it is a difficult task to obtain a right to hold a British passport, I am still getting used to the English culture and I know more about being Jewish then I do with being Anglicised that is to say more then I desire to be English is to be a citizen of heaven and saved and rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And we have been brought near; by the shedding of his blood which speaks a better word. A man who knew what it was to be abused. A man who was humiliated according to his righteousness and crowned upon the head with thorns. A man who was betrayed by his own kind, by his closest friends. Learning his way I feel useful helpful and understood.
Therefore I am one who is confident, predominantly a servant who is in the doorway of the house of God.
Riding along in cars
As a passenger during this time of my first and second school, I occasionally smelt menure in the air.
I was a toddler and I lived in the farmland of the eastern boundary of Oxford. My earliest memory is of the inside of various driven vehicles.
Riding along, when I was in the car of my rapist, the window rolled down in enjoyment in the front passenger seat, a winding window device was controlled by my left hand, the car was pulled over anyway and the window was wound up for me. Before pulling over, he chewed a tablet of gum looked at me and charged “Elliot can you wind up the window please?” and I kept a silence.
In my head I imagined that he would not believe that I was punishing him as a five or six-year-old toddler.
In my head I thought that he may overlook the thing and give over control of the window because it moved in a way which was cute but I felt hard pressed that my abuser switched every now and again. One part of the day happy and then the next moment enraged. But I thought it may be reasoned by perhaps he was uncomfortable wearing a certain outfit - but I was proved wrong. There were days when he wouldn’t wear those clothes and I was still subject to these childhood adverse experiences.
That is why a game of wind up became a prank I invented that I sometimes won.
He was a balding builder, a family man who made himself welcome, he had brown eyes and very dark hair.
When he told you what he thought the world laughed.
They laughed the way that boozers laugh when they guzzle down a table filled with vomit.
In the 60s he had eloped from India with his girlfriend my grandmother despite persecution from whom I believe were Zoroastrian or perhaps Jewish believers, these were not accepting my Grandad who was a fan of Elvis Presley and they persecuted him for being a follower of the king. They prevented my grandmother from dating my grandad for religious reasons. Therefore while in London where they lived in Oval they married then moved to Oxford. My grandmother who was ethnically Jewish knew how he would do it, in private, did nothing.
When I was alone naked and wet. Beforehand, he led me into the bathroom we were outside and he always held my left hand across the road and walked me into the toilet inside the bungalow.
Running the bath with warm water he looked down at the water and tested it with his finger he told me to take my clothes off, pressingly, he told me to take my clothes off. I was a television and he was the remote.
My left hand exchange with his hands on my body and I stepped into the water and soaked in it and then he came over and asked me to stand up and he molested me.
The both of them did the best that they could do since it was the same way they had also been treated. A habit or pattern of incest made my grandad a homosexual paedophile so this is how when I approached the police about this crime at the age of 27 years and they quickly initiated the question of standing in court with what I had reported to them as sexual exploitation and abuse. The investigation was treated with dignity but they could not proceed until I’d given consent to them and my response was to say no because I chose to forgive and step away from the police investigation. So to pursue helpful closure by way of seeking the kingdom and his righteousness. I felt brave and peace came as a reward. That day many police cars were parked in the police station carpark because little or no crime had been reported at the hour I was to the station. I walked away from the police station alongside the officer that had interviewed me that day and shook his hand, I looked at him and said that everything is going to be alright.
I never saw justice, by reporting it to the police in the UK.
I don’t understand the appeal of sexual exploitation of children, what about a child is so attractive, is youth worthy to be jealous of? It’s also that he was doing it with boys but when my little sister was contacted by him on her birthday she didn’t at all like the gift and gave him a big kick in the leg! May she be made safe.
The routine touching and talking with me naked in room, was like the booting up of a PC, or the annoying repetitive wheezing of a pigeon on the tip of the chimney that was too far up the brickwork to frighten away.
I didn’t ever think about choosing to ask for help because I believed that what was happening to me was normal. Washing up was not just for plates of food because after dinner and before cartoons and bed from a young age I was lifted into a sink naked to be washed humiliated by him.
The rain reels like a lamented sky which is on my side baptising the earth and broadening the air that stinks of manure.
After I was old enough to attend upper school I experienced still bullying tactics such as intimidation, name-calling, physical assaults from him, then he made me sign in pen a contract of sorts on multiple occasions to document an agreement that I would respect his home and that my behaviour would be monitored and this resulted in me doing something about the situation. I ran away from not home, but a house when I was 18 years of age.
He was inviting himself to every birthday Christmas and of course he also babysat so that his abuse continued.
At the time discipline was the word, but it later became disciple. This is my Dutch heritage which is how I know to get to the point quickly. It was also distinct to be in touch with Hollanders at home, it has remained distinct in my life and it was for my grandad also. We also had in common that the house where we lived was also distinctively working-class in our identity, since when my grandad moved to the UK my grandparents had no money and the only jobs available for him were to work in construction of the London Underground network.
What’s my grandparents gave me was love, kindness, financial security and knowledge when my parents had failed they became my guardians, however it was not enough to justify his sexual predatory behaviour towards me and my little brother.
What he did was wrong for those who are themselves witnesses as I am of childhood adverse experiences, the following of what he shared doesn’t make him more important than Gods righteousness and the law which brings knowledge of sin.
In the spirit of revelation I have received for his life compassion and understanding because my poor grandad was a man who suffered insuring a culture of abuse at school by catholic teachers at an Indian boarding school in Mumbai for it is that hurt people hurt people therefore with such an environment as spiritual physical emotional abuse for many survivors like my grandad during his early developmental years
By older man it comes as no surprise that this pattern of circular pain in his life was left on broken;
until now.
A toy car filled with plastic people is pushed along a staircase a train carriage tumbles down the stairs all the carriages contents spilled out our people and they are utterly dismayed.
In Isaiah chapter 29 verse 13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.
The presence of authority was mistaken to come from men when my Grandad regarded them in his certainty and through a strong drink. This idea becomes in the end the surface for a whip and the dread for many who are running away from being rescued by Jesus is that we returned to being dust in the end.
One afternoon in the neighbourhood the riding along in car journeys helped as God the creator of the universe and all things intervened dramatically, when I was alone waiting for him.
“I’ll be just a minute” explained Dad and he shut the car door electronically looking from the outside.
A toy car filled with plastic people is pushed along a staircase a train carriage tumbles down the stairs all the carriages contents spilled out our people and they are utterly dismayed.
In Isaiah chapter 29 verse 13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.
The presence of authority was mistaken to come from men when my Grandad regarded them in his certainty and through a strong drink. This idea becomes in the end the surface for a whip and the dread for many who are running away from being rescued by Jesus is that we returned to being dust in the end.
One afternoon in the neighbourhood the riding along in car journeys helped as God the creator of the universe and all things intervened dramatically, when I was alone waiting for him.
“I’ll be just a minute” explained Dad and he shut the car door electronically looking from the outside.
I felt the safety of the presence of my dad stripping away like strings of mozzarella on pizza as minutes went by.
I was six years old my very best friend J was leaving town and I was desolate, I began to fear that I will die alone and knew so that I would miss him terribly therefore I was quite anguished in my spirit, and he was a boy my age who I felt safe with, one who I wanted to be like and he had had healthy relationships with his parents, he let me tell him stories which I improvised and there was joy and a beautiful blessing of comfort and of trust.
I was lead in a vision provided to me by God when he left our school, there was a man hanging on a cross and he was in glory in the clouds with spiritual beings ascending and descending all around him - However I did not know this was the Lord Jesus, whenever I feared death I saw him on the cross.
My dad was a Jewish boy a good lover with lots of dating partners a hard worker determine dark-haired he had a filthy mouth and talked emptily about most subjects apart from being catholic and being a mother’s son and he was a the son of a Jewish southern Indian Persian lady and perhaps a Dutch American Northern Indian father, he was a terrible driver who used the brakes to choke me in the seatbelt. He was enraged during many times riding along in the car.
There was a spirit of play in the house with our dad. We lived with him after our parents separated and I don’t remember when they were living as a couple.
He coloured in our bedroom walls with our favourite cartoons he papier mâché a beautiful wire mesh structure made with twisted wires which he mask taped to the ceiling and painted it creating the underside of a boat and ducks legs. So that when we looked up at it it was as if we were deep down underneath a river.
Around the time when he made our bedroom light bulb green instead of tungsten he spoke of the Lord as though to put this to sleep mentioning him as father and he talked to us both, my younger brother included, telling the words of Jesus it was greatly interesting to me that even though my dad was simply trying to get us to sleep faster, God provided me a heart ready to receive from him a blessing that I believed in God because of the following words.
Matthew chapter 6 verse 9
In this manner therefore pray:
our Father in heaven
hallowed be your name
your kingdom come
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven
give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
and do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil one
for yours is the kingdom the power and the glory forever amen.
Don’t try, perform!
In every way my dad was affectionate and a playful one. My father was a hurt man and tried to beat me during times when I was most vulnerable like in the bath or getting ready to go to sleep and loved as a favourite my brother rather than me because I was quiet. He forced me to write lines when he was punishing me for bad behaviour, he didn’t teach me to be real, but, he did however teach me to perform and there was therefore a platform to be genuine within the performing arts craft.
Whether it was martial arts or reading, show in towels, show and tells, a magic trick or acting on the stage my dad gave me everything I needed to be a performer and it was very effective.
I was six years old my very best friend J was leaving town and I was desolate, I began to fear that I will die alone and knew so that I would miss him terribly therefore I was quite anguished in my spirit, and he was a boy my age who I felt safe with, one who I wanted to be like and he had had healthy relationships with his parents, he let me tell him stories which I improvised and there was joy and a beautiful blessing of comfort and of trust.
I was lead in a vision provided to me by God when he left our school, there was a man hanging on a cross and he was in glory in the clouds with spiritual beings ascending and descending all around him - However I did not know this was the Lord Jesus, whenever I feared death I saw him on the cross.
My dad was a Jewish boy a good lover with lots of dating partners a hard worker determine dark-haired he had a filthy mouth and talked emptily about most subjects apart from being catholic and being a mother’s son and he was a the son of a Jewish southern Indian Persian lady and perhaps a Dutch American Northern Indian father, he was a terrible driver who used the brakes to choke me in the seatbelt. He was enraged during many times riding along in the car.
There was a spirit of play in the house with our dad. We lived with him after our parents separated and I don’t remember when they were living as a couple.
He coloured in our bedroom walls with our favourite cartoons he papier mâché a beautiful wire mesh structure made with twisted wires which he mask taped to the ceiling and painted it creating the underside of a boat and ducks legs. So that when we looked up at it it was as if we were deep down underneath a river.
Around the time when he made our bedroom light bulb green instead of tungsten he spoke of the Lord as though to put this to sleep mentioning him as father and he talked to us both, my younger brother included, telling the words of Jesus it was greatly interesting to me that even though my dad was simply trying to get us to sleep faster, God provided me a heart ready to receive from him a blessing that I believed in God because of the following words.
Matthew chapter 6 verse 9
In this manner therefore pray:
our Father in heaven
hallowed be your name
your kingdom come
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven
give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
and do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil one
for yours is the kingdom the power and the glory forever amen.
Don’t try, perform!
In every way my dad was affectionate and a playful one. My father was a hurt man and tried to beat me during times when I was most vulnerable like in the bath or getting ready to go to sleep and loved as a favourite my brother rather than me because I was quiet. He forced me to write lines when he was punishing me for bad behaviour, he didn’t teach me to be real, but, he did however teach me to perform and there was therefore a platform to be genuine within the performing arts craft.
Whether it was martial arts or reading, show in towels, show and tells, a magic trick or acting on the stage my dad gave me everything I needed to be a performer and it was very effective.
Nevertheless I wasn’t allowed to trust or talk or feel when I was living in a house with my Dad.
My mum was my childhood hero who I saw as an underdog. Someone like a superhero who are a secret identity like a Mexican wrestler masked but ferociously Celtic in her demeanour. I loved her and she didn’t have to reveal her identity because I was her baby.
There was another ‘big lady’ in my life my best grandmother my dad‘s mother who was a Jew by herself she paid no interest in the history of her family and relationships were not valued not encouraged but instead seen as an impromptu hassle.
Therefore the focus was on the quality of life that my dad received and this became a pattern for my dad. Work family and a home was all about essence but along with sickly selfishness that I apprehended even as a young boy. I wasn’t allowed to speak when I wanted to and I enjoyed playing guitar music as a way out if it.
I adore my parents and I love their souls because God loves them and they deserve gods love who made them bustling to be saved like me.
As the air became hot under my breath I noticed that in the car my mothers house was 50 m away in this East Oxford suburb called Blackbird Lee’s yet this day we did not visit my dad drove there to choose not to go but to visit his lover my mum‘s neighbour my parents had parted ways dramatically by this time and there was no fear of the Lord. My family were secular, so that is why the vision that I received was so epic, The presence of his spirit lifted me high and I found rest from my anguish and I forgot the chafing of the seatbelt and saw this crucified man as often as I felt afraid and it got me through the grief of saying goodbye to J whenever I felt fair I found this vision happened had I been born by the spirit? I did not know Jesus was the name I just knew there was more.
Moving to live with grandad
Gods finger omit calamity in the life of my poor dad meant that he would need childcare as he looked for stable work in the early years this was right before upper school.
The easy option in our care was to be left at buggery bungalow forever.
My grandad was eager to do things like childcare but I saw it as a normal persuasion for him, though my grandmother protested initially, there they had worked out that we would stay in his old office.
I am aware that there have been times of serious prolonged abuses in many other children’s lives to namely the human trafficking in India where children are grotesquely blinded, in a brutal effort to make it look more attractive for begging.
Where I was abused in a more covert way in the UK during times of private parts and sharing a bed with my grandmother. I believe my brother also was undoubtedly sexually abuse to but I did not see any of the abuse in the bedroom where he slept with my grandad.
Only I remember I could sometimes hear in the other rooms the laughing and moaning of playing yet the obvious clues were when my brother started to complain about his Butthole itching when he was a little older he had done it in a grandiose manner to let everyone know that his Butthole was not off-limits in sharing about. May the Lord have mercy.
He shared a bed with grandad. So sometimes remember the safety of playing in daycare centres noone was ever open to talk to me about Jesus and shared this vision one long summer day during a break from our school dad moved into his parents house and my brother and I lived there with him.
So it was that one long summer day during a break from our school dad moved into his parents house and my brother and I left there until I was 18 years of age.
Then what happened was dinner
Dinner is served
A dreadful apartment
A second house
Bath blood
The schoolhouse
House take 3
My mum was my childhood hero who I saw as an underdog. Someone like a superhero who are a secret identity like a Mexican wrestler masked but ferociously Celtic in her demeanour. I loved her and she didn’t have to reveal her identity because I was her baby.
There was another ‘big lady’ in my life my best grandmother my dad‘s mother who was a Jew by herself she paid no interest in the history of her family and relationships were not valued not encouraged but instead seen as an impromptu hassle.
Therefore the focus was on the quality of life that my dad received and this became a pattern for my dad. Work family and a home was all about essence but along with sickly selfishness that I apprehended even as a young boy. I wasn’t allowed to speak when I wanted to and I enjoyed playing guitar music as a way out if it.
I adore my parents and I love their souls because God loves them and they deserve gods love who made them bustling to be saved like me.
As the air became hot under my breath I noticed that in the car my mothers house was 50 m away in this East Oxford suburb called Blackbird Lee’s yet this day we did not visit my dad drove there to choose not to go but to visit his lover my mum‘s neighbour my parents had parted ways dramatically by this time and there was no fear of the Lord. My family were secular, so that is why the vision that I received was so epic, The presence of his spirit lifted me high and I found rest from my anguish and I forgot the chafing of the seatbelt and saw this crucified man as often as I felt afraid and it got me through the grief of saying goodbye to J whenever I felt fair I found this vision happened had I been born by the spirit? I did not know Jesus was the name I just knew there was more.
Moving to live with grandad
Gods finger omit calamity in the life of my poor dad meant that he would need childcare as he looked for stable work in the early years this was right before upper school.
The easy option in our care was to be left at buggery bungalow forever.
My grandad was eager to do things like childcare but I saw it as a normal persuasion for him, though my grandmother protested initially, there they had worked out that we would stay in his old office.
I am aware that there have been times of serious prolonged abuses in many other children’s lives to namely the human trafficking in India where children are grotesquely blinded, in a brutal effort to make it look more attractive for begging.
Where I was abused in a more covert way in the UK during times of private parts and sharing a bed with my grandmother. I believe my brother also was undoubtedly sexually abuse to but I did not see any of the abuse in the bedroom where he slept with my grandad.
Only I remember I could sometimes hear in the other rooms the laughing and moaning of playing yet the obvious clues were when my brother started to complain about his Butthole itching when he was a little older he had done it in a grandiose manner to let everyone know that his Butthole was not off-limits in sharing about. May the Lord have mercy.
He shared a bed with grandad. So sometimes remember the safety of playing in daycare centres noone was ever open to talk to me about Jesus and shared this vision one long summer day during a break from our school dad moved into his parents house and my brother and I lived there with him.
So it was that one long summer day during a break from our school dad moved into his parents house and my brother and I left there until I was 18 years of age.
Seeing the sights
On the way to the annual town fair in Oxford the one with lots of loud noise, bright lights and the big rides like a ghost train.
My little brother and myself were singing in rounds in the backseat soulfully in gibberish - a made up language.
“I will turn this car around if you don’t stop you yap both of you”. Grandad told.
In the driver seat he wore a sports coat and a cherry red polo shirt and flashed twinkling eyes above repeated movements of masticated airwaves to crash into party even the smell of candy floss and the brooding essence of occasional manure filled air.
Okay - preservation of the self is not interesting to me but a sense of humour is and to survive you see in Oxford is by a blessing of requisition from the Lord.
He gave me the foundation of love and relationship and that was what I missed out on certainly at this age but the one thing I had an abundance was the command understanding quickly and imperative instruction not only in workmanship and labour but also in preparation to walk the vast hilly Earth of countryside you need firm ankles.
At the bottom of our legs are those Bendy tools he designed to complement the Achilles tendon and the skeleton offering sure physical alignment and balance.
It was the physical intelligence to use these ankles now it seems to me to be the key to why the majority of people in Oxford England speak with a melody which balances the peaks and troughs of life and even so when there are those with lives with more mountains, with more valleys than flock of blackbirds that overwhelm in their multitude. The words of Jesus I never knew; we are more valuable than many blackbirds.
Taking after hero mum
The earliest time I remember with my mum happened this way.
The deflated wheels balanced with bubbly anguish and the souls totter inside the hatchback. A group of friends belted themselves tightly to the seats. An overheard conversation and I was reclined in the boot of the vehicle laid as flat as a pancake, as a young boy shifting his weight to the comfort in the raucous bends of town.
“I want to go in the boot with you!”
A man who gripped the wheel adjusted his mirror and stroked his smoky grey stubble.
“Next time Trev” - he swerved. “Are you alright in the back?”
My family is big my mum was now pregnant with my little half sister, it was this day inside the boot of her new boyfriends dads vehicle - with no seatbelt! I was adventurous, I imagined I was him driving because I thought he was a cool guy to start riding along around East Oxford.
“We’re nearly there! I just - just don’t move into the forward seats - why would you? while I’m driving. Okay? Keep low and still because the police will be looking! Hold onto while I go over these bumps, otherwise, your turn out like one of my pancakes on the kitchen ceiling”.
“I will do” as my voice, crackled.
Then the car pulled up to the grey, grainy curb.
With mum I was always rocking up and it was a completely different world. She told me to enjoy the snow and to not only express but to lament before God so being a male and wanting distinction from her I learnt to go with the flow because she was a little bit more lenient in her role that my dad. She knew it was more fun with her then with my dad.
I believe that my dad was physically abusive to my mum and that she was coping with similar problems to me in this regard. So we became emotionally connected about injustices. But the crisp autumnal colours had also covered that connection and it would only ever be allowed to happen on her terms.
Taking off her beret, her habit to changing at the swimming pool remained in the same room as her new boyfriend and us.
That was the earliest memory I have of her naked and I remember that both of her privates turned and faced her man, like turrets on the Bismarck, it felt like he was a shame to be present with me.
It was such a political lead driven absence of boundaries that caused a lack of growth in healthy relationships with many people that I encountered, for the fences were never mentioned in such a way that I needed to grow but I reasoned as a child does.
Here in Cowley behind a traditional chip shop called Symons with international owners. The road set aside for pedestrians has planted trees at aqua distant from each other and the autumnal shush of crisp sycamore Maple leaves a shoot in a pre-is hailing see it that way when seats are carried and they were tossed onto a plastic pram which had a see-through covering And bluely grey double castor wheels. The little house with a veil for the rain, I felt that it was a great thing to have been rained on. The healing droplets are from God.
As the car and it’s diesel engine to pull out onto the road to another destination, onto the curb stood my mum in her late 20s with blonde and blue eyes partly dyed light reddish brown. A Saxony nose, pink lips and loud broad stocky shoulders.
Appeared behind her hiding a little boy who is my little brother - let us call him Trev for the book. Led by footballers fists, defined features which he unveils to the world, poking backward a childishly flat chest, the rest of his weight sputtering behind him.
In the chair that I helped my mum on fold was the shape of a sitting patient boy and that was me.
You could see our ribs through our skin and many days we were poor and couldn’t buy food.
Inside the pram with two seats one for me and one for my little blonde brother.
The fastest form of communication is non-verbal through the eyes and the cool of your name and in these ways I comforted my beautiful brother Who could only use tone to speak until later on.
The house on the corner of the street like one of the trees set just writes had black trim the edges and the inverted tile roof shelter white roses were growing in the front porch and a wooden gates. Then pushing it as it was hinged inwards like a stiff guard making an honourable salutation and defending the interior. She let us into a brand-new house. I believe that she lived there for a time after my mum separated from dad but I do not know for sure.
On the way to the annual town fair in Oxford the one with lots of loud noise, bright lights and the big rides like a ghost train.
My little brother and myself were singing in rounds in the backseat soulfully in gibberish - a made up language.
“I will turn this car around if you don’t stop you yap both of you”. Grandad told.
In the driver seat he wore a sports coat and a cherry red polo shirt and flashed twinkling eyes above repeated movements of masticated airwaves to crash into party even the smell of candy floss and the brooding essence of occasional manure filled air.
Okay - preservation of the self is not interesting to me but a sense of humour is and to survive you see in Oxford is by a blessing of requisition from the Lord.
He gave me the foundation of love and relationship and that was what I missed out on certainly at this age but the one thing I had an abundance was the command understanding quickly and imperative instruction not only in workmanship and labour but also in preparation to walk the vast hilly Earth of countryside you need firm ankles.
At the bottom of our legs are those Bendy tools he designed to complement the Achilles tendon and the skeleton offering sure physical alignment and balance.
It was the physical intelligence to use these ankles now it seems to me to be the key to why the majority of people in Oxford England speak with a melody which balances the peaks and troughs of life and even so when there are those with lives with more mountains, with more valleys than flock of blackbirds that overwhelm in their multitude. The words of Jesus I never knew; we are more valuable than many blackbirds.
Taking after hero mum
The earliest time I remember with my mum happened this way.
The deflated wheels balanced with bubbly anguish and the souls totter inside the hatchback. A group of friends belted themselves tightly to the seats. An overheard conversation and I was reclined in the boot of the vehicle laid as flat as a pancake, as a young boy shifting his weight to the comfort in the raucous bends of town.
“I want to go in the boot with you!”
A man who gripped the wheel adjusted his mirror and stroked his smoky grey stubble.
“Next time Trev” - he swerved. “Are you alright in the back?”
My family is big my mum was now pregnant with my little half sister, it was this day inside the boot of her new boyfriends dads vehicle - with no seatbelt! I was adventurous, I imagined I was him driving because I thought he was a cool guy to start riding along around East Oxford.
“We’re nearly there! I just - just don’t move into the forward seats - why would you? while I’m driving. Okay? Keep low and still because the police will be looking! Hold onto while I go over these bumps, otherwise, your turn out like one of my pancakes on the kitchen ceiling”.
“I will do” as my voice, crackled.
Then the car pulled up to the grey, grainy curb.
With mum I was always rocking up and it was a completely different world. She told me to enjoy the snow and to not only express but to lament before God so being a male and wanting distinction from her I learnt to go with the flow because she was a little bit more lenient in her role that my dad. She knew it was more fun with her then with my dad.
I believe that my dad was physically abusive to my mum and that she was coping with similar problems to me in this regard. So we became emotionally connected about injustices. But the crisp autumnal colours had also covered that connection and it would only ever be allowed to happen on her terms.
Taking off her beret, her habit to changing at the swimming pool remained in the same room as her new boyfriend and us.
That was the earliest memory I have of her naked and I remember that both of her privates turned and faced her man, like turrets on the Bismarck, it felt like he was a shame to be present with me.
It was such a political lead driven absence of boundaries that caused a lack of growth in healthy relationships with many people that I encountered, for the fences were never mentioned in such a way that I needed to grow but I reasoned as a child does.
Here in Cowley behind a traditional chip shop called Symons with international owners. The road set aside for pedestrians has planted trees at aqua distant from each other and the autumnal shush of crisp sycamore Maple leaves a shoot in a pre-is hailing see it that way when seats are carried and they were tossed onto a plastic pram which had a see-through covering And bluely grey double castor wheels. The little house with a veil for the rain, I felt that it was a great thing to have been rained on. The healing droplets are from God.
As the car and it’s diesel engine to pull out onto the road to another destination, onto the curb stood my mum in her late 20s with blonde and blue eyes partly dyed light reddish brown. A Saxony nose, pink lips and loud broad stocky shoulders.
Appeared behind her hiding a little boy who is my little brother - let us call him Trev for the book. Led by footballers fists, defined features which he unveils to the world, poking backward a childishly flat chest, the rest of his weight sputtering behind him.
In the chair that I helped my mum on fold was the shape of a sitting patient boy and that was me.
You could see our ribs through our skin and many days we were poor and couldn’t buy food.
Inside the pram with two seats one for me and one for my little blonde brother.
The fastest form of communication is non-verbal through the eyes and the cool of your name and in these ways I comforted my beautiful brother Who could only use tone to speak until later on.
The house on the corner of the street like one of the trees set just writes had black trim the edges and the inverted tile roof shelter white roses were growing in the front porch and a wooden gates. Then pushing it as it was hinged inwards like a stiff guard making an honourable salutation and defending the interior. She let us into a brand-new house. I believe that she lived there for a time after my mum separated from dad but I do not know for sure.
Then what happened was dinner
A go sleep pale dinner cloth laid out inside the house with plates and cutlery on top and then some fruit.
A table was being set for a feast!
Then I heard the faint voice of mum speaking in the other room so it’s happens that the table was generously filled with smiles of women most of who were old people who volunteered at this house, all these ladies dined with us that day.
There was One lady who I spoke to many years later and I believe she met me this dinnertime she asked if she could have me. She adored me more than my mother did, because to my mothers wisdom we were ornamental and products of her to be considered commodities. That means that we were really told how to be equipped to take care of ourselves away from her and her leniency was a welcome atmosphere in contrast with dad but it lacked the useful discipline which can save time in the long term, they praise God for his divine nature everything has been provided in due season, what the devil snatches away in his evil works God purposes for good and he permitted this equipping to come during my late teens when I shook hands with my parents for I no longer desired to be at the house.
Dinner is served
The aroma of toasted muffins and I mean that marinated under the door and straight through our noses was on so many of our minds it would be coming was particularly late that day and the waiting became a special occasion. As the birth of a child, our meal was left in suspense but there was no shortage of hospitality, even though we ponder French etiquette inside this unit of social housing for women in the recovery of insurance through affliction through poverty. It was of a working-class persuasion mash up!
I began to bang fork handles and other cutlery and sang a song. Two or three others delight, joining in, there we chatted hymns of the hungry and all of us together made total sense to include God in this waiting period!
There was a feeling of being held by God, supported by these unnamed faces it was like being defended by angels. Which were imprinted carefully onto my heart forever.
“Are you hungry?” I pressed to one of the women living there.
“Yes, you must be hungry too”, she rebutted.
Isaiah 55
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”
Isaiah 55:1-2
Isaiah 55:1-2
A dreadful apartment
One day my little brother and I couldn’t go back to the house with the white roses anymore I’m not a moment before we each wave goodbye to the guardian gate, which had greeted us so carefully and consistently. I remember I was with dad instead, what replaced it locked us out until the postman came looking over the shoulder down the gallery.
The front door was built of metal. It was called steel. Encrypted, the decrepit room door chain wags like a barking handbag Shih Tzu as to keep at strangers.
Father in those days was a thin short man with thick long hair, a clean shave but a long dreadlock perm. He played with the fashion of self ripped jeans and he was wearing a cheese hold T-shirt and doing his accounts at the table he counted a leaning tower of ground copper pennies, therefore this time song time and table visits were out.
It was times like these when I remember every day was playtime or bedtime. Every penny was counted like slowly eroding towers of cancerous copper. That was having no connection to boundaries of space in his bureaucratic and social circles.
Between the three of us, he fed us with a shared plate. Sundays after we had moved, a guilty feeling kept me from going into the fridge where I knew Would be a favourite cereal in the morning. I did long for food where I remembered back in the other house and it was not clear to me that this is was neglect for such a late meal could simply not be taken once a day and there was nobody I knew to hear me and I didn’t know how to ask for help.
For a game, I want to play piggy in the middle inside the flat with my little brother. Something I learned at school was three players, his throat was that of a mighty man, a playpen picture, and he gripped his hand and threw for speed rather than aim.
“Trev!”
The ball was tossed in an overarm way and it bounced against the wall hitting the handmade shelves and knocked a TV that smashed onto the floor sending crazy shards of plastic and glass window onto the rough green carpet but it was not cleaned for many weeks.
A second house
Before the first days of school, my dad would walk around the house and search for projects to work on, madly painting characters from cartoons in acrylic paint on the wall, building the three-dimensional models of the underside of a boat on the ceiling which I described before I saw each process of wiremesh and how it caused me to have nightmares.
Waiting for the papier-mâché to dry with ducks legs and ripples from water reflecting off the fishing rod lightbulb it was exposing the fragments of dried bogies and snot that my body produced and which a little bit I worked on to the wall. The brand of paint was visceral and at night when I imagined monsters could get me, i felt overwhelmed with responsibilities because it would be safer if I behaved certain ways to avoid my parents upsets. Therefore it was better if dealing with the monsters came second and father came first, if I dealt with them first where I was sleeping, I would be asking to think on the world of pain that dad was working with second because he was supposed to paint this wall and to live on a copper coin budget but it was all a mistake.
Daemonic beings are very real and Satan prowls around like a roaring lion seeking him he may devour. Yet they know the sovereignty of the living God.
Bath blood
There was a limit on water and it was clear that there could be no waste. We was sharing everything and told to be very careful. At the house of my dad, every bath was shared with dad and as I grew older I still shared with my little brother when I was 11 years of age.
He was the one he would plead for bubbles. Beautiful pops of air. My little brother flicked his eyes towards captain/. He likes that splash of water that cause them to our start without words. In the same way, Trevor would try to get me to ask for him as though I would have more authority being an old boy and sometimes I did.
Other times I would rather buffered the balls of my grandmas feet but I didn’t offer news of No to him to be polite.
This time I sat in the water and played on my own, pretending not to notice the boy opposite me so I’ve close. Dad went to a and let us both in the bath both playing because we were small enough to swim underwater and 6 inches of Bath tub and is also quietly surprised to see my dad go. Then moments later The sound of shuffling feet on the stairway our voices immediately became uplifted. The shrieks intended to cheer the man on. Like the force of a buoyant blue plastic bucket, a favourite bath toy of mine, I liked the way that it popped up out of the surface like a big whale when it was submerged and let go.
If there was one image to portray the problems growing in my early childhood it would be betrayed by a blue bath bucket, baths, they had a large portion of boyhood joy but also suffered terribly there was good water and bad waters. Namely the separation of mum and dads marriage which was never really explained fully and baths were a total escape.
On the other hand, it is only a thought that’s why I think they were also the place where I suffered the most harm was because of the water theme. There was a sexual immorality and nakedness that I didn’t understand until my late teenage years for the sexual abuse happened at bath times. To be able to read the Epistle to the Ephesians and believe that I have been adopted right now into a family where Jesus is king makes me feel like being a Christian is so very important.
My dad had a temper and what started with pushing and name-calling developed and escalated over time and he Was angry one late evening he took the Blue bucketThat I like to play with and hit me on the head very hard and there was blood so we went to hospital and he made me say that I slipped and I spoke so genuinely I almost believed a lie myself that I was at fault.
The schoolhouse
The one fearful experience at our school was when there was a terrible gas leak. We were evacuated and there was a day long break time. A public service announcement that instructed every child to play until the end of the for seeable future was great. Still like playing at our nursery even similar faces in the village was seen and it was comfortable, the nursery was down the road, black and white wooden Victorian thatched roof cottage that double as the Village Hall.
At primary school, the vicar came in to explore the word of God in Friday and Wednesday lessons on Christian faith. I rebelled, honestly, it is something that we didn’t do at the nursery and it laboured me superlatively. I felt like an anticlimactic whale in a bellyflop.
I did not persevere though going through the motions of the ocean it was at least interesting to hear that the words of God was being read like a storybook.
Yep that was all that remained of the Bible until I was 24 years old.
A large concrete playground that embraced the hilly ground The sky a canopy above like a TV set because of the clouds with shapes like Giants getting dressed in the morning and eating breakfast whenever they wanted to. Fighter jets zoomed and shredded turning the atmosphere into weeds like farmers they called themselves ‘The red arrows’, I chased them in the thought that they were beautiful angels protecting the Earth and making peace in the heavens.
Army reserve us trucks drove past the windows of the school and young adults that had left school came back to hug teachers during the assembly hymns. It was a Church of England government funded state school with enough money to buy PVA and print stick.
Also, if it was home time, the school had a bell monitor. On the headmasters desk was A dusty brass bell with a wooden handle, it weighed like a hammer and it was usually somebody like him, a student he was given the job to ring that bell as loud as you can! So when I rang the bell, I rang it!
It was part of the school life which meant it was time to go inside or leave at the end of the day. Lines of hats and white cotton uniforms brush past bricks as small eyes pier fishing into a murky pond and dive out to wave to best friends who have probably stayed friends but now walk through the walls and the wire fencing that is built to Peter off into fascinating directions. Jump rope and cones. Squiggles in spots. Collected after the break. Close after the head crack day, the day when my head had cracked because of the fight at bath time that day, when I was coming home from school. Was the day I was met outside by a man approaching. He knew me and drove me home. Driving back to dad‘s house and then the car the man said:
“Elliot? Your dad is very upset”.
“Is he crying?” I asked him because I knew that upset people cry.
“we’ll see when we get back to the house.”
There was a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and nothing about this felt right. My 12 year old self simply lead back to the house like a sheep and there was nowhere else for me to go, this was my family but I had felt responsible for them even as young as six years old.
Then as they went up the stairs into the bedroom where I slept, dad was distraught. Mum and dad had been separated for at least three years and the stress I saw in dads life was something very powerful and dark.
House take 3
He was a building Indian man who was paying a mortgage on his second retirement home. His eyes small, leathery skin forehead and dermatological beauty doubt him an undertone of talcum powder and chewing gum mints.
The little green tyrannical smell that windows rolled down felt to bring relief. I hear his teeth masticating, he crouched and adjusted his seat occasionally for fear of putting out his back.
“ it’s your nanny that gives you the love, I am a taxi driver.”
I was made to sign a contract of approval to stay later in my teenage years and it was handwritten and signed. Now it is clear that the measure of neglect and abuse which was given to me was clearly due to a long-term hurts with my grandad and as time went on I decided to forgive him through Jesus Christ who strengthens me every day, but at this time, sadly tragically I was trying to do what I was told - to honour him but it was harmful to do some of the things I was told to do.
The conversation that happened, was probably what made the choice easy when the summer came, we moved into this retirement house - the buggery bungalow.
Which meant for now sharing beds with a nuclear family. Still radioactive from the look of dads face that day of mental anguish due to moving again.
I did feel stressed and it was difficult to sleep in the first weeks but the responsibility that was facing at such a young age simply overtook any feelings of grief and I lived it out bravely.
I am no angel, at school I was approached by a friend, his name is J and we became fast friends because we would talk together and we laughed together well. He lived with his mum and dad healthily and they created for him a ginormous treehouse on the lawn. There are Hills without a ne way to see over them and a Cowgate acted as my landmark. Thick spiky stinging nettle forests grew tall.
Dad would let me come and visit even before we moved so that I would spend long hours in the afternoon telling stories to J and in return he would tell me where the secret spots were and he lived next door to his very best friend L. At school we made a gang together called the good SS. Secret service of the playground. We professed in our mission statement that our gang would stop fights in the areas of play but most of our activity consisted of spying on the girls! We had staff meetings in hiding places under the trees.
I was beginning to practice running away to school; how I thought of School as a trapdoor, using poetry to escape from life at home. When adults would ask me if I enjoyed school I would say yes and I meant it one day J moved away and I never saw him from when it was time to go home one day and ever since then I thought about the gang and the trees and the stinging nettle forests and the Cowgate and the barn and the treehouse. All the way through the long summer.
The bath is still going on up until year six at school with my grandad in the room with me he would sit on the toilet seat and come over and begin talking and touching and it went on most days until I was around 12 years old. I shared baths with my brother and this created an unusual level of play when it was time for bed, with Trev it started in the previous house where we shared beds often and in the new house we shared a bed in bunks, but we had already begun touching and kissing but we did not try to penetrate each other but even as children touching one another using our mouths to kiss one another on the lips and on our privates, it was normalised because of being sexualised so young. My little brother even gave it a name and it was nicknamed sex nights I think that he enjoyed it and played out the feelings with imaginary characters as if it was again like playtime the way I did also.
For many years it continued and I believe my family knew it was going on, I was very ashamed until now to have taken part in touching my brother and kissing my brother the way that I did but I really didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t know why I enjoyed it, I am told by talking to professionals in sexual abuse counselling that the skin is sensitive and it’s designed to feel good when it’s touched.
I am glad that I made a move and decided to stop and I told my brother that I did not want to continue anymore when I was 12 years old. It had led to a distorted experience of sexuality and I did not have a foundation for the godly and proper purposes that sex can provide strength between couples in a covenant union of marriage which is provided with integrity between a man and woman in Christian faith.
My spiritual life therefore suffered and as one bedtime melted into the next, my eyes caught shadows that swarmed around the edges of the moonlit curtain nets. It was the first that experienced demonic presences or spiritual attacks. The distant star, a red dot on the tip of a radio tower was a lullaby warning of unseen oncoming traffic and it was the last thing I saw before I slept.
I regretted that I did not experience the love of Jesus inside the house, and yet I believed in an unknown God. Dads upbringing was Roman catholic so any time the gospel was brought up I said I believed in God but I wasn’t sure so sometimes I would say that I did not believe in God just a test if the words held water and they never did. My dad was not a Christian and he also was not sure who God was because he believed in salvation through works based righteousness.
The vision that I described earlier was a way that I knew that there was more and that life in the pursuit of truth though it was a tough cookie was a journey that I was willing to see through to the end.
Christmas was celebrated as a pagan tradition with a bearded man in the red suit mysteriously eating food and drinking milk always by the chimney leaving gifts in his name but there was never any mention of why Jesus was born.
I became a runaway for the following reason.
I tried to run away a few times because of some lies and accusations I saw without any grounding and the escalation of the arguments and conflicts I experienced made me see a pattern emerge so much that my heart was becoming sorrowful and callous. I decided to do something to protect myself no one tried to sit down with me and ask me about leadership because I was bright and no one would’ve known that under the service of use at home meant I could not great no teacher at school was critical of my performance at school because I did moderately well and I got a good standard of access to university accreditation.
A breakdown of communications at home led to the breakdown in communication at school, I became very rebellious and insubordinate and finished A-level exams leaving school without honour. I tried to get work and made an application to sign on, then I quickly found a job as a charity street fundraiser.
I met a member of staff signing up people to cause people to think about charity, and she nicknamed chugging or charity mugging. So I was more concerned about leaving home. I signed up to work and obtained a position quickly.
Then this was the first job I ever had so I was eager to please.
An opportunity to move out of home and earn money gave me distraction from the morally excellent living God who is everlasting and ever present.
I discovered that I could be confident and I could use my gifts to receive the praises of men, I had the gift of the gab and I was great with people and I enjoyed the feeling of meeting someone new in public and having talked with them getting paid as a bonus but didn’t have the wisdom of Jesus to separate truth from lies. There was a lot of drug abuse in the team, usually alcohol and marijuana. I abuse drugs with them and I was motivated by lost and greed. I had only these friends the people that I worked with and in the end, I was asked to leave after a year of working all over the UK the manager shook my hand and I walked away with integrity but was dismissed due to a serious customer complaint.
My mum picked me up from Swindon and drove me back to Oxford but even the drive home with my mum was difficult and I asked to get out of the car I took half an hour went to a pub and bought a drink.
I was interested in music and the life of an Esta Che Guevara. I then spent hours searching online for famous people who had left home and made amazing accomplishments living solo and had invented something useful instead of searching for eternal pursuits so then I scraped off the Blu-Tack around the walls of my bedroom, and I looked up at the finish on the ceiling which was a sea of Sellotape to photographs of artists, singers and Polaroids of teen idols.
A guitar that Lentz half out of the case. The hinges of the wooden cupboard broken and hanging. It was a room that felt stuffy and there was no Boundry that my grandad and grandma could make me feel like it was a room that would be private for me they could come into the room because it used to be their office and the room became a place of a builds up energy and tension without my parents.
I was interested in communism now and considered anarchism To be exciting because it gave a smooth image of freedom. My heart became better and I developed borderline autistic selective mutism.
“Nanny and I have given everything to you. We gave you everything, changed your nappies when you were babies. Drove you both to school. This is what I get in return? It’s a *explicative* joke or what?”
Altogether it was the Jewishness of my grandmother that always found me expediently hilarious. She helped me to enlarge my heart for God. She was a dark haired woman who was little and wore airy clothes of soft silk and velvet and she had a kindness that lifted the world around her. Paragraph I saw her dancing with grandad in the kitchen one day. Enveloping a smile which elevated you and made you forget yourself because all the selfish desires and deceitful thinking that we naturally make for ourselves we’re not as important as wanting more of the joy she knew and felt - Though without God how utterly meaningless our relationships are, my father in heaven used the evil that was intended by my family and for his good purposes showed me that I can have a relationship with him and receive joy as a strong tower against all my enemies.
On the runaway day, I packed clothes in a hiking backpack. Then I rode off on a bicycle.
“Never go back.” Three words I said to myself like the words of Sir Philip Astley in a book I read written by Nell Stroud. The inventor of the circus. Such as the stags on hills I made peace with God. Chanting like a lone wolf stalking a tribe I tabernacled with God sleeping outside where I found a swimming pool, the vents of which radiating the soft grass by the poolside. Until the next step was obvious.
