WE BRING OUR MEMORIES WITH US ANONYMOUS
SuAndi: Sometimes not even rose-tinted glasses have the capacity to disguise painful memories brought about by poverty and related abusive life circumstances. Revisiting the past can bring into the present heartache that has lain dormant. Memories can evoke emotions ranging from discomfort to a sense of shame and often this is not from the actions of the person remembering. It is for some of these reasons that these contributors have requested to remain anonymous because for them privacy and family is their priority The first time I left home I think I was about sixteen or seventeen. I had plenty of trouble with my father. He ruled with an iron fist, an iron fist. He threw me out one time, I think it was Christmas, I had nowhere to go so I went to the men’s accommodation. Do they still have them these days? I think it could have been Walton House. I knocked on the door because I was chucked out, but they wouldn’t let me in, and I am knackered. I got really, really, really abused; so, abused. My father was a drummer and he had drumsticks. One time, I had done something wrong and he had come home from work in the afternoon for his dinner, because we all had to come home for our dinners and then go back to school. I had done something wrong – and he got some drumsticks and started to beat me with them. But I was so fast that he couldn’t get hold of me. So, he made my brothers hold me, then he laid in to me. I had welts on my back; really, really bad welts. That was grievous bodily harm, he could have got years for that. Later I had to go to hospital I think it was with pneumonia, so I had to have some check-ups. I still had
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