How I got to the state I am in today

[Bashful]

Everything was going fine up until the age of 12, once I entered the final year of primary school things started to go downhill.

I started getting bullied by the other students there after being beat up by a girl who I would not hit back as I have always been brought up never to hit females and never would. This bullying lasted throughout high school, I only fought back once early on and hated causing harm to others and became (unaware of it then) a pacifist. I wanted to stay on in sixth form but some of the bullies stayed and I felt I could not do so but when I left the bullying never ended and everytime I saw these people in the streets it continued on and spread from them to their friends and then their friends etc. This then got worse when I got my own flat.

I was living there for a few months without any problems and then the people downstairs moved and some drug abusers moved in. I am always polite and like to treat others how I like to be treated and when I first saw them, not knowing who they were, I said hello. A week after they started knocking on my door between 2 and 3am, one night I did not answer and they must have listened for me leaving my flat. They came out as I was walking down the stairs and threatened me saying that if I did not answer the door to them again I would be caused some serious damage leaving me scared not to answer to them. Then they found out I was gay and things got worse. they started coming into my flat and stealing my things, I blocked the door one day and one of them pulled out a knife and threatened me that if I did not move they would stick me with it. Not long after that they started beating me. They broke my jaw on 2 seperate occasions and broke my ribs also. I kept what was happening from my family until one day they beat me so much that I almost looked disfigured, that is when I left the flat for good. I tried to report this to the police but they warned me it may be best not to considering who I was dealing with who was well known to the police and highly dangerous. During my time at the flat the only way I could cope with what was happening was with alcohol and I became an alcoholic. On December 23rd 2001 just before 4pm I had my first Anxiety attack and I thought I was dying, the Anxiety, although not as bad but still unmanageable is still with me to this day.

My nanna had been in discussions with my Aunty in County Durham for me to move there and I did so a few days later however the alcoholism was already spiraling out of control. I stayed with my Aunty about 6 months before she could no longer take me drinking everyday and my selfish attitude only caring about where the next drink was coming from and nothing more adn I became partially homeless. By this I mean I was allowed in the house by day but was made to sleep in a tent in my uncles back garden, this was because I was drinking so much I was wetting myself in my sleep. I had no bladder control at 23 years old. I was put in a b&b by the council due to homelessness and was told in 30 days a flat would be available to me however it was a dry b&b and being an alcoholic I was sneaking drinks in. These were found and I was asked to leave after only 3 days. Alcohol was the only thing that stopped my Anxiety attacks coming on.

I finally got the flat the council promised however once again the bullying started. I was at the flat for a year and it was only about a month after moving in and this happened on an almost daily basis ranging from a few punches to a proper beating. There were 2 main people who used to do this, the physical beatings were from a friend of a friend who once again abused drugs and only never hit me when he was on a 'come down' and my cousin who never beat me but mentally bullied me, always threatening but never hitting although he did have a baseball bat with him one day and threatened to hit me in the head with it if I never let him have my tv and my money. My front door was never secure, it only locked with a yale lock and people kept smashing the window of the door to unlock it. I reported this to the council and asked for a proper lock and they refused. The letterbox also was not secure as all you had to do was put your hand in and you could unlock it, this was outside of the building so I had no idea when people were tampering with it. I was on the sick through alcoholism and recieved giros however these stopped coming and everytime I phoned them up they said it had already been cashed. This happened for around 2 months and I was called in to be interviewed by the social and it was recorded also. It was at that point I went to the post office that they were being cashed at to find out what was going on and they shown me footage from the cctv of who had been cashing them, it turned out to be my cousin. I told the social and they took it from there. One night there was loud banging on the door to the flat opposite and then my door flew open with a kick and that was the night I had to endure 4 hours of on and off beatings from a couple of men I had never seen before. I moved back to my Aunties after that. One day she sent me to the supermarket to get some shopping for food and my cousin was in there. He saw me and threatened me, telling me I had to give him all the money I had to compensate him for having to spend a night in the cells for stealing my giros. I did this, went back to my Aunties and broke down in tears about what had happened, she phoned the police who came out and I gave a statement to. In the end I was asked to leave my Aunties a second time due to my alcoholism and I moved back to Doncaster.

In 2002 I lost my nanna in march and my grandad in July.

It is now 2004 and I was kicked out of my sisters due to a silly argument about her wanting to get rid of her cats that my nieces and nephew loved, she told me a couple of years later she never got rid of them now so it turns out I was right on that occassion. However I was now homeless yet again and turned to Doncaster Council who put me in a B&B and seemed to forget I was there. It started ok but yet again it only took a month for two of them and the landlady to turn on me. The two did the bullying both emotionally and mentally and told the landlady that I laughed, which I did not and would never do, when it was announced that she had had a miscarriage. I do not know whether it was the alcohol or the stress or both but now I had started to hallucinate, mostly seeing rats but on one night I thought I heard plotting outside the door to do something to me that night so i pushed the wardrobe against the door and would not even let my roommate in. The next day I thought I was told I had to leave and this was extremely vivid. I got my belongings and left but only an hour later I saw the landlord in town, the man I thought asked me to leave, and he said he never did so would I consider going back. I hallucinated for around a year on and off, wasn't daily just came on when it wanted. I even thought there was a gunfight happening outside at one point, I could see and hear it. I finally left here once the bullying got too much and moved back in with the sister that threw me out roughly 8 months before.

The doctor finally decided to give me an alcohol counsellor who finally got me a proper detox in a proper 'dry house' establishment. I was given an appointment with Doncaster Alcohol Services, can't praise them enough, who told me if I did daily Breathalyzer tests to make sure I was staying dry from alcohol they would get me a bed in one of their residential houses and I could stay there for 2 years as long as I stayed dry and they would give me all the help I need. I did this and I cannot fault anything over these 2 years, the best 2 years ever although the first year was hard. I started to gain control of my anxiety and depression, joined the local amateur theatre as acting has always been a passion of mine and even started college doing performing Arts. Then in 2008 I left that place after seeing many people succed and fail during their time there. Against the advice of the staff I rushed out to try and find another place and took the first one I saw and my housemate, someone who lived in a similar residential building but for drugs and had succeeded his stay there, moved in also. We were there for less than a month as someone over the road who I had never spoken to before decided to beat me in one night as I was walking with my sister and 11 year old niece, had to have stitches in my lip and yet another broken jaw. I was concussed and slept the majority of the next three days but my housemate, it seems, was busy looking for somewhere else to live. We moved, I was still not fully with it to be honest as I was still full of tiredness and dizziness from the beating, and this should have been a new start but it was just a new nightmare.

In December 2007 the Aunty who I lived with in County Durham had died and she was still my favourite Aunty despite her throwing me out as it was my fault it happened. I had to decide whether to go to the funeral or to not let the other cast of the panto down and perform on stage. I decided the latter as I only had literally 5 minutes to make up my mind and did not want to let anyone down.

It is now September 2008, I have had the main part in a few shows and had started college and yet another house. The beating had not put me off living and I still maintained control of my depression and anxiety, still suffered but controlled. In november we were rehearsing panto at college and the tutors turned up and told us all to sit down. She then went on to tell us that one of our 16 year old classmates was involved in a car crash the night before and had died. The following year in september we got into college and another student annouced to us that one of our 18 year old classmates had died with 'swine flu' I put them in quotation marks as it was never fully realised why she died but that is what the papers say. Between this time things started to go downhill once again at home. My housemate had started smoking weed again and he started being mates with drug abusers and I had no say in whether or not they could come into the house as he was also on the tenancy agreement. We got burgled in October 2008, I was on stage at the theatre when this happened and got home and discovered the mess. The police were not very compassionate and just continued to take the mess out of me for being a performing arts student. My had started to lose control of my anxieties again and the only way I could stop them now, since alcohol was not longer the answer, was to put on singstar and sing at the top of my voice. I could be doing this for 4 hours straight. Not too long after this I threw another party and one of the students phones went missing out of her bag, it was never seen again and I felt so bad and responsible for this happening and I know it was one of my housemates friends and that was the final party I had. My housemate started to act suspiciously not too much longer after that and I suspected he may be taking more than just weed now but he kept denying it saying they drug test him at the hospital and they would not give him dialysis if he was on any hard drugs. I accepted this but still had a strong gut feeling about it. His behaviour became more erratic as time went on to the point that he even told me to stay out of the room whilst he and his mates 'discussed something'.

Now to the worst day and the day I lost control of both my anxiety and depression. It is May 29th 2009, four of the students from college came over to celebrate my birthday on 28th may and they left around 5:30am, I was tired and went straight to sleep. It was 3pm when I heard loud banging on the front door, I ignored it because my housemates friends used to do that if we would not answer to them. Then my housemate walked through my bedroom to the window getting ready to tell them to get lost and it turns out it was actually the police. He got out of the bedroom as fast as he could and it was left to me to get dressed and open the door to them. They came in saying they were looking for someone who had severly beaten someone up and put them in hospital, they were looking for one of my housemates friends and it turned out he was a drug dealer. Also a minute after these walked in another policeman walked in with a massive bag of weed that my housemate was suppose to have thrown out of the window to get rid of it from them. The weed had a street value of £1500+ they told me. I never knew it existed otherwise I would have made him take it out of the house and never bring it back as I hate drugs. The police did a search of the place, gave my housemate a caution and a fine and then left. I was not happy at this point but it was to get worse about an hour later when the person the police were looking for turned up at the door. I did not want him in but my housemate let him, he was so nervous and the more he got this way the more scared I felt. Finally 2 hours later his wife comes, calms him down as he is in a state at this point and takes him home. I had had enough and wanted this day to end and was considering moving since my housemate was mates with these people. Then that same night another one of his friends came, one I had never seen before and within an hour an almighty argument breaks out downstairs and my housemate shouts up to me to stay in my room. I started to get panicky at this point but could not do anything. His 'friend' marches upstairs searching both my housemates room and my room then goes back downstairs and argues some more, a lot of threats flying about. He carries on up and downstairs and I asked him at one point 'Are you going to hurt me' He says no as it's got nothing to do with me but he has to search my room as well, 'it just has to be done' he said. I put a warning on facebook telling my friends to never come to the house again as it was not safe here anymore and text my mum and my sister to phone the police, they took about an hour to get to the house missing the person doing this by no more than a minute. I came downstairs in tears but could not 'grass' in fear of what would happen as they were supposed to catch him in the act. I went and stayed with my mum for a couple of weeks after that telling my housemate if he did not get it sorted I was moving out for good.

I went back home and my housemate was nowhere to be seen, the back door was smashed in and the T.V had been stolen. It turns out this was the man from that night taking the T.V until my housemate paid him the money for the weed that the police took. My housemate was missing, not seen him to this day either, and his 'friend' even phoned me up and told me not to worry as he was not going to hurt me. It turns out he had my housemates phone as well and would give everything back once he had what he wanted. I could only stay there for a few more weeks as I had them coming to the door everyday and one of my housemates friends even moved himself in to keep an eye out for my housemate turning up. He asked me if he could use my computer to commit fraud and I told him in no uncertain terms that he could not but when I was out he was letting himself into my room, he ruined my mattress and my trainers through burning them and I set little traps like clothes on and around the computer which had been moved in order to use it. I also had another one of my housemates friends come around to tell me that my housemate had actually been taking crack cocaine as well. I could take no more and moved out.

I started to struggle with being around people after that, people I had known for years became strangers to me. I started to become a recluse, my final year of college suffered and I passed with a lesser mark than what I should have due to the fact I could not leave the house a lot of the days. Luckily I had understanding tutors who, without their understanding and help, stopped me from failing completely. I was supposed to go to uni after that but could not cope being around anyone. My time at the theatre came to an end, after being in many shows I could not longer attend rehearsals due to not being able to get passed the front door and could not cope with being around anyone. For the most part I was stuck in my bedroom not wanting to leave, not wanting to interact with anyone at all. I started uni september 2010 but left december 2010 due to the problems I was having, everything was suffering.

I am not going to keep on through to now as this has been long enough but a lot of other stuff have happened between then and now. I will say I lost my mother to cancer 28th December 2012 and this has being weighing heavy on me, I have been going further downhill ever since 2010 and to be honest I do not know how much more I can take. I thought actually writing this will help get things off my chest but unfortunately it had just sparked off my anxiety even thinking about it. I find it really hard to be outside by myself, hard to outside more than an hour with my partner and to top it all of he cannot understand why I am like this and thinks I am just lazy. I cannot deal with reality, only escapism, playing games most of the day everyday just to take myself out of the real world. I cannot commit suicide as it is against my beliefs but I would like to... The real world is too hard and not a world I can live in. I now am awaiting results of an atos medical to see if I can carry on getting benefits, if I fail will it be the straw that broke the camels back. I feel like I am close to a complete breakdown.

I know there will be others out there that feel like this right now, just know that you are not alone. I feel it too as well as many others out there. This is hell but one day we will beat this, we will look back and reflect on how we are now compared to how we were then. The best that can come out of this is we will be stronger and we will have compassion for those who go through the same thing and not just think of them as lazy as some others think. It may seems like a long way to go, I cannot actually see it ending right now, but it will come and it could be closer than we think.

We will beat this.

Bashful

(sorry for the really long post)

[jj]

Hi Bashful

Im sorry to hear all that you have been through, you really seem to have had a tough time with all these bad people around you and im really sorry for your losses. I just wanted to say i read your post and feel great empathy for you. Im glad you still have hope, we can get through this and we will. You'll always have support here in the forums and in the chat room and i hope we can help you

Big hugs

jj