| LIFE
THROUGH BONNIE'S EYES |
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You
become regarded as a mental illness, not a human being, and that feeling of
being an outcast is overwhelming and excessively isolating. I knew while taking
my medication I was balanced, and yet by being on it I felt like I was carrying
a billboard around my neck saying ‘out of order’.
From early
in her life, the author suffers shocking physical and emotional abuse, leading
to health-threatening illnesses as well as psychological devastation and
crippling issues with low self-esteem. Yet Bonnie is a courageous and determined
young woman who survives and – more importantly – is healed.
I feel
that I was born as a loving light, a bright flame, blown out soon after birth, a
candle locked away in a dark drawer, useless in the presence of sunshine and
electricity.
I wait
until someone can find me useful. During a power blackout, I am found in the
drawer. I feel important for a while, I glow, but then the power comes back on
and I have outlived my usefulness. I am put back, alone, in the dark, in the
drawer.
A deeply
confronting book, Life Through Bonnie’s
Eyes provides hope, compassion and healing to other victims of abuse. At the
same time, it is a powerful resource for counsellors and other professionals who
work with victims of abuse.
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In Store Price: $AU28.95
Online Price: $AU27.95
ISBN:
978-1-921118-68-5
Format: Paperback
Number of pages:
295
Genre: Non Fiction
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Author:
Bonnie T.
Publisher: Zeus Publications
Date Published: 2007
Language: English |
About
the author
Born and raised in
Victoria Australia, the author suffered at the hands and minds of multiple
predators and seriously disordered people over a period of approximately
twenty-five years, beginning when she was about four. She began her healing
journey at the age of twenty-three, and with stops and starts finally learned to
be content with herself by thirty-three. The best news, however, is that she did
attain complete recovery and knows that it can be done. She had a fabulous team
supporting her over those years including ASCA, Community Mental Health and
Sexual Assault support workers, psychiatrists, psychologists and a series of
fantastic doctors who shut up and listened.
She lives her life now to
inspire others, offering them hope, support, friendship and encouragement to
achieve their full potential in spite of being abused. She works with them to
make peace with their histories and themselves.
Bonnie runs an
international online support group, which now spans eight countries and has been
operating for two years – although she has been involved in other support
groups online for the last five years. She volunteers with the Red Cross, ASCA
and the Empowering Families Group Program where she is currently in training to
become a group facilitator to take this program to abuse survivors all over
Australia
and hopefully the world.
Bonnie and a remarkable
team of supportive friends and volunteers have recently founded the Queensland
S.A.F.E. Network (Survivors of Abuse for Friendship and Education).
P.O.
BOX
3078
Burleigh
Town
Centre Qld. 4220
BOOK
I ~ IMPRESSIONS
This
is a true story, my story, about my search for the truth, my search for myself
and how it was lived through my eyes, my perceptions and experiences.
To protect those that I love the names
have been changed. I wish I could put my full name to this, just as I wish to be
able to name those who violated me, but unfortunately it would also expose the
innocent who would take upon themselves guilt, anger, frustration and shame that
does not belong to them. I believe there has already been enough pain.
I believe this story needs to be told
even though I do not know and never will know who it has helped or could help.
There will be those who will never be able to comprehend what happened to me,
yet there are so many others only too aware that abuse happens. Others may pity
me, yet this book was not intended to create pity in your, the reader’s eyes.
This book is meant as a guide for you so that closed eyes might finally be
opened, closed minds might finally believe and most of all, for those of you who
felt that no one else could possibly know or understand.
More than anything else, I want to be
able to reach out to those like myself. I want you to know you are not alone
although you may feel it, and that there is hope for a better future as long as
you are willing to fight yourself for it. Yes, that is right, your greatest
fight in life will be with yourself.
It is more common than not that the
conflict inside of oneself is far more destructive than that which happens
outside of ourselves. It is the inner self that we have to live with every day
and every night of our lives. It is what is within that we have to nurture
throughout troubled times so we can help it escape the wall of fire and stone
that eventually smothers the will of the heart and sometimes ceases it beating.
It is the broken dreams that we must
piece back together and the forgotten that must be found, for without these we
are less than a whole being. What we strive for is what was taken from us; it is
that which we must regain; the ability to be at one with ourselves.
From what has happened we can learn to
let go of the pain. For what is we can gain more knowledge of ourselves and
decide with a clearer heart and mind that which is yet to come.
W
W W
All
children are born with the right to feel loved and protected,
All
children are born with the right to feel secure and cared for,
All
children are born with the right to feel respected and valued,
All
children are born with the right to emotional nurturing
Until
they can emotionally cope on their own.
Written 1995
I
was born on 29 November 1968 in a small suburban hospital in Victoria Australia.
I was a sister for Elizabeth aged ten, Leanne aged eight, Anita aged six, June
aged three, and a brother Dean aged nine. My mother was a housewife who had
retired from the air force to raise her children. My father Ronald, also ex-air
force, was a teacher/professor/lecturer as well as a politician for what was to
become one of
Australia
’s leading political parties. However, at this stage it was in its infancy in
Victoria
.
I was a petite child with thin,
straight, white-blonde hair and china blue eyes, both of these being a genetic
inheritance from my father and mother. I was tall for my age, not particularly
pretty but thin, pale and hopelessly uncoordinated, a continuing saga for my
entire childhood and adolescence.
To everyone outside, on the surface
ours was a very normal loving family, religiously Protestant. We attended the
local Church of England. It was only in my latter years that I discovered my
father was born Catholic. My mother was the Sunday School teacher and in her
footsteps followed my sister Elizabeth. I was christened in this church, a
beautiful church made out of carefully selected random-sized rocks cemented into
perfect placings. It had high cathedral ceilings and triangular windows with
beautifully designed red and blue stained glass. Between sitting on pews that
sent anyone’s behind into paralysing numbness and the bruising to the knees
from kneeling on the floor in prayer, both of I became accustomed to after years
of attendance, I’m sure on the day of my christening my mother prayed for a
few miracles and continued to do so throughout most of my life.
In less than four months after my
christening, Mum for the first time was to find herself very much on her own.
Although Dad had previously not come home due to political and educational
seminars, this time it seemed he wasn’t coming back at all. The fighting and
arguing behind closed doors had been going on for quite some time. From what I
found out over the years, some of these fights became quite physical until the
time came when Mum finally agreed with Dad that it was time to separate. I was
only six months old.
Depending on whose story you listened
to, there was some discrepancy as to what the fights were about. Mum believed
that Dad was having an affair with Julie-Anne, a lady who was very interested in
the success of the political party that Dad was a part of. They did spend a lot
of time together, of that there was never any argument. The only doubt was how
far the affair actually went before Mum and Dad separated. Was it just a very
compatible friendship that Mum felt threatened by? The only people that really
know for sure were Julie-Anne and Dad, and I don’t believe they ever got a
chance to tell anyone or even if they would.
Although I can’t actually remember
these events they are still extremely relevant as to how I was to be in adult
life. My father was to return to the family home, although briefly. When I was
three, he left for the last time and moved into a house with Julie-Anne. Mum was
again very hurt and bitter, but against all the odds she would see her family
fed, clothed and warm.
Mum had to work full time, at times
double shifts. These were the days before the pension was available. Whether my
mother lived in denial for her own sanity or because when she was home she was
always busy washing, cooking and cleaning, she never acknowledged what was
happening to me. For all but the essentials, she was consistently invisible.
Even as I grew older and she finally had the time to talk, I decided not to. Mum
finally seemed to be enjoying her life and I didn’t want to take that from
her.
I’m thirty now and I feel that all
the guilt and pain is not my mother’s to carry. Although she is responsible
for ignoring the abuse inflicted upon me, it does not belong to her. The
majority of the pains, torment, tears, shame and guilt that I carried with me
belongs to the predators and abusers that inflicted the emotional and physical
scars upon me, and I gave it back to them. The greatest power that I found is
that I remembered everything in detail and I let them know it, at least the ones
that I could.
Forgiveness was my greatest trial and
torment but I believe I have now managed this. However I will never forget
because to do that would be to deny who I am. Everything that happened to me
during my life made me who I am today and I am now proud of who I have become.
It took a long time but I found ‘me’ and I can now live with ‘me’; that
was my greatest challenge.
Where
do the children go?
They
wander in their aimless games,
Their
minds in worlds of their own,
Proudly
they call each other names
And
at times they sit alone.
Sometimes
you will see them cry,
From
feelings deep down inside,
Unspoken
words and bitter ties,
Where
are the parents to confide?
Can
somebody let me know,
Where
are the bubbles that they blow,
They’re
forced to grow up so soon you know,
Where
do the children go?
And
so as the young grow older,
In
a world they can’t understand,
And
the children become much colder,
No
one there to hold their hand.
But
can somebody let me know,
Where
are the bubbles that they blow,
They’re
forced to grow up so soon you know,
Where
do the children go?
W
W W
Life
for me as a toddler was great! Full of exciting new things to learn. Everything
seemed fine through my eyes, and my parents’ arguments were not something that
I was really aware of or understood.
Before long, my parents’ marriage
broke down, my father left the family home and Mum, a deeply emotional but very
practical woman, was left to manage six children on her own. The opportunities
and events that were to arise due to my father leaving would cast my life into a
very different reality. No one could venture to guess if I would have been
better off had my father stayed. Under different circumstances, maybe life for
me could have been a lot better if he had stayed, but with the fights and
accusations of affairs I don’t know what would have been worse in the long
term.
I do know that the traumas that were
soon to happen to me would not have happened. I couldn’t save their marriage,
their counsellors couldn’t save their marriage and so fate dealt me a nasty
blow.
With Dad always ranting on about his
political aspirations and Mum telling him how much washing she’d done that
day, Dad trying to save the Australian people from themselves, “If only
they’d listen”, and Mum talking about the price of potatoes and her
children’s daily proud achievements, they no longer had a lot in common. It is
not that Dad didn’t love us, he did, but he believed that he alone had to
change the world to make it a better place for us to grow up in so he alone
tried, without Mum.
Julie-Anne, although childless, fed my
father’s ideas and supported his wild notions. Who knows? They may have worked
except for two things – it cost him his family, the very reason he was doing
it in the first place, and it caused him a nervous breakdown, a one-way ticket
on a holiday into the local, or not so local, mental health facility. I don’t
know if it was worth it for him but it certainly wasn’t for me.
When my mother did find work, it was
with a clothing factory in a nearby town. Working as a seamstress and on the
ironing press she worked hard and extremely long hours just to keep us, her
children, alive. My older brother and sisters sometimes looked after me after
school but generally I was left with the babysitter from hell nine hours a day.
Sally was a woman with grown-up
children. She was a short, plump woman with greasy, short, dark hair that looked
as though it had never been touched with shampoo or soap. She had a cackling
sharp voice that inspired fear, like sharp icicles with needle points piercing
through your body. Add a wart on her nose and a black, long-tipped hat, and she
would have been the embodiment of a fairytale witch. At least in a child’s
view of things.
Sally was raising her granddaughter
whose mother had died of snakebite. The child, Janice, was around the same age
as me and we girls would spend every waking hour together except weekends when
my Mum was supposedly at home.
Their home was a small, battered,
weatherboard dwelling with a moist cold feel to the air inside. The air was
always musty. In summer, it smelled like lemon ironing starch that made you
choke. In winter, it smelled like drying out a wet towel that hadn’t been
washed in a month, mixed with damp wood smoke, briquettes and lemon-scented
ironing starch. What a treat it was, I don’t think.
Even as an adult I went back to that
house and nothing had changed except Sally had grown old and alone. Her husband
was dead. The smell was still there. In those walls I could still feel a little
girl who was so afraid, her fear and dread still impregnated in those walls, and
I’d come back to take her home.
Sally was mostly on her own with we
kids; her husband Darren was always doing something on the farm and spent many
hours away from the house. He was a contented, solitary, quiet, shy man and I
always looked upon him as having a heart of gold. On Mother’s Day, he’d pick
the most beautiful chrysanthemums for me to give to Mum. They were always
beautiful big white blooms and I always felt so good when I gave them to her. It
made me feel lighter when I saw her smile of appreciation; I didn’t feel such
a burden on her for that short moment and I thanked him dearly though silently
for that brief blessing. The flowers that he nurtured and tended so lovingly
gave me a fleeting moment of happiness; for just that moment I saw my Mum
acknowledge me and that bought a smile to my face. I may have only been four but
I can tell you that I blamed myself for my mother not being home and not being
happy. She was always too busy, too burdened, to smile and I believed I was that
burden.
Janice was a plump child who suffered
from diabetes. Shorter than I with mousy brown hair, round facial features and a
mind full of mischief. Quite often, almost daily, she would break the house
rules.
On one occasion, Janice and I had been
playing in the yard and had decided to go inside and get a drink. We went into
the kitchen, up to the sink, filled our cups and drank fitfully the cold tank
water, gulping it down so quickly that some spilled on my clothes. That didn’t
worry me too much though. Sally was in the lounge room doing the ironing using
that pungent lemon-scented starch, pretty much ignoring us, watching her daytime
soap operas on the TV. While she was doing that, we were relatively safe for a
while.
Janice opened up the top kitchen
drawer and started to rifle through it. She found some chewing gum, said it was
Sally’s and that she wouldn’t mind what she didn’t know. Janice took two
pieces for herself and gave me two pieces. We popped them into our mouths, the
flavour bursting our tastebuds. Janice then placed the remainder of the packet
into the drawer just as Sally came into the kitchen to see what we were doing. I
have always cursed TV advertising breaks but never more so than at that moment.
I could not even begin to explain the dreaded fear I experienced right then
knowing we had just been caught. Sally stormed across the kitchen, fire in her
eyes, screeching at us both. She grabbed me with one hand across my face and
squeezed my cheeks so hard that the sides almost touched. Sally then leaned
forward and smelled my breath, hauled the drawer open almost tipping it onto the
floor and removed the remainder of our insufferable crime.
Continuing to scream at us, I
couldn’t tell what she was saying, as I couldn’t hear her through my own
fear. All I could comprehend was the muffled ranting of a crazy woman. She
stormed outside to the woodpile; my body was cemented to the floor with a terror
so strong that I was unable to move an inch. My mind was screaming to get out of
there in dread of what I knew was going to happen next.
Sally burst back through the door; I
had tears streaming down my face and I was shaking so violently my legs nearly
collapsed. With a plank of wood clasped firmly in her hands, Sally swung it back
and I felt and heard that sickening impact again and again and again. Janice
shared the agony with me. I was left crumpled in a corner of the kitchen trying
to fathom what had caused such an onslaught of violence towards me, and then to
witness Janice get worse, to the point that the plank of wood actually snapped
across her.
This was not an unusual day at all; it
was the norm. Sally’s psychotic rage was not drug or alcohol induced; I doubt
that inhaling high concentrations of ironing starch in a confined area would
have been the cause of it. This highly respected woman of the community, my
babysitter, who was responsible for my day-to-day care and who was doing my
mother such a great service, relieving my mother of her burden while she had to
work, near beat me to death. What was even more bewildering was that my mother
was told my bruises were from my own clumsiness, children just being children,
and my mother believed her.
Yet another vivid memory from the
house from hell was one day when Janice and I were playing outside again and she
asked me if I wanted to go into the bird aviary. It was a three-by-two-metre
enclosure about two metres high, alive with the brilliant colours of budgies and
canaries and other duller but more interesting quails. I knew the flogging we
would get if we were caught, and refused to join Janice inside the aviary.
Janice had her mind set on going in regardless. She opened the door and climbed
in. She was chasing the birds around, and being little girls we were laughing
and giggling until we heard that voice of terror. I looked up only to feel
myself lifted from the ground and swung around with incredible force. It made no
difference to Sally, with her cold indifference and short-fused temper that I
was not in the aviary or tormenting the birds.
The shattering, overwhelming feeling
that filled me was so great my legs could not support me and I needed to go to
the toilet. A woman who was pure poison was holding me. I could feel my heart
pounding, awaiting the milliseconds that seemed like hours to pass before the
plank of wood made impact again and again. Knowing there was nowhere I could go
or run to … knowing I would be back tomorrow for more of the same.
No four year old should ever have had
to live through this, but I did, week after week.
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