I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them. I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back. I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust and only seconds to destroy it. I’ve learned that it’s not what you have in your live, but who you have in your life that counts. I’ve learned that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes, after that, you’d better know something.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself to the best others can do, but to the best you can do. I’ve learned that it’s not what happens to people, it’s what they do about it. I’ve learned that no matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides. I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you’ll see them. I’ve learned that you can keep going long after you think you can’t.

I’ve learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences. I’ve learned that there are people, who love you dearly, but just don’t know how to show it. I’ve learned that sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel. I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow even over the longest distance same goes for true love.

I’ve learned that no matter how good a friend is, they’re going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that. I’ve learned that it isn’t always enough to be forgive by others, sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself. I’ve learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief. I’ve learned that just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other and just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they do.

I’ve learned that sometimes you have to put the individual ahead of their actions. I’ve learned that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different. I’ve learned that no matter the consequences, those who are honest with themselves get farther in life. I’ve learned that your life can be changed in a matter of hours when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

I’ve learned that writing, As well as talking, Can ease emotional pains. I’ve learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon. I’ve learned that it’s hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice and not hurting people’s feelings and standing up for what you believe. I’ve learned to love and be loved. I’ve learned.

This is distinctly uncomfortable for me to write, but i’m going to write it. Its been on my mind lately.

There is a taboo around sex crime (sexual abuse and rape) that means it isn’t talked about or understood at all. Its the most horrific form of abuse that a human being can endure. We’re going to bust some myths and look at it, because ignorance is its gatekeeper. Victims of abuse are survivors of it, and they suffer a stigma of being labelled weak or somehow damaged, even subconciously by the people they reveal it to as no-one knows quite what to say or how to react. Believe me when i tell you that these people are not weak by any stretch of the imagination - they are the strongest and most powerful of our kind, survivors that withstood and faced unimaginable horror to be the people they are now.

All forms of abuse are about power. Abuse is not just doing something to someone, it can be not doing something (i.e. neglect). It can be intended and wilful, or accidental. Either one is abuse, as the net effect is the same. It can be physical harm, humiliation, absence of care or perverted doctrines and prejudices. The abused end up abusing others themselves because abusing is a learned template, attitude or mindset of behaviour that is passed onto them, but the type of abuse can vary - someone who is sexually abused often end up physically abusing. The behaviour and programming are the same and they are embedded in the mind of the victim whether they like it or not.

We can start by looking at what we know about children. A child is an empty vessel that is entirely dependent on its mother and father until the late teenage years. As kids, our sense of confidence, worth, personal boundaries and esteem is given to us by our parents exclusively - what they fill us up with, what they say to us, what they think we are worth, what they think of us or what esteem they hold us in makes up what we feel about ourselves. Mother is God in the eyes of a child. When we get to teenage years, we become self-aware and begin to develop our own self-esteem, which is usually then wrecked in school by our peers. Because of that wrecking process, its essential that we have a strong support system to guide us through difficult times. If your parents didn’t show you that you were valued or loved in the way a child would understand, you grew up empty.

What we also know is that an adult mind is not formed properly until the late-twenties, which means that up until then, a young mind is still in formation rather than complete. How we saw things as a child is completely different to how we see them now, or how we look back on them. Our minds are immature even until the time comes to separate from our parents. No child is born bad; a child reacts to his or her environment and the way its parents behave. Children are entirely reactive, and being dependent, don’t have the same sense of initiative as an adult. 80% of a child’s emotional programming is accumulated by the time they are 8 years old, which is which the Jesuits have a saying thousands of years old “Give me the child until he is seven and i shall give you the man“.

An important understanding is that children do not have the emotional maturity to understand what is going on around them. They assume guilt and responsibility for things they experience when it is not theirs to assume. When a child sees mummy and daddy fight, they always assume it was their fault. If one of them left, it was because of them. Their understanding is that they are to blame - its the way a child thinks and doesn’t make sense to adults who are emotionally mature enough to know otherwise. Confrontation must always be followed by a deliberate act of resolution in front of them to demonstrate they are not at fault and disputes are made up. Its for this reason that saying “it wasn’t your fault” has a massively powerful emotional reaction in adults, which almost always comes as a surprise to them.

If your father left, your mother cried, if either were emotionally unavailable, you were hit, you were undressed inappropriately, the message you receive as a child makes its foundation in your tiny brain. You weren’t good enough; it was your fault; they didn’t want you; you were a burden; you weren’t loved; its ok for other people to hurt you or do as they please with you. These things went into your head because your mind was too immature to correctly process them and nobody took the time to consider how you felt or how it would have affected you. Only taking the time as an adult to explore the deepest beliefs you have allows you to change them. They may seem little or nonsensical now, but they weren’t then.

Every man takes on your father’s mould and features, and every woman takes on your mother’s, whether you like it or not. The relationships you experienced as a child are what you believe all relationships are and will be, at the deepest level of your mind. People with similar backgrounds and pasts seek each other out unknowingly. We seek out the relationships we saw at home (”going home”), often to resolve them.

Children mimic what they see, hence the argument about violent movies and video games. They learn everything from their parents and automatically assume they are intrinsically correct, which is why abuse is so evil because children do not know they are being abused or witnessing abuse. If they see manipulation, they learn to be manipulative. If they see emotional games being played they learn to play games. If they are not given affection, they do not learn to be affectionate. If they are beaten or intimidated, they learn to beat and intimdate others, that their bodies are not their own and someone else may do what they want to them. Love becomes associated with pain, loneliness or abandonment. They do not know their rights are being violated, and assume what they experience is normal as they know no different and have no conscious choice in what to believe.

It there’s one thing my friends know, it’s that you don’t joke about rape in front of me, even in a small way. I don’t take too well to it at all. In fact, I’ll go for you viciously regardless of where we are, the jovial mood I’m in and how many people are around. The idea of joking about something so abjectly horrific is totally abhorrent and beyond offensive to me. It’s utterly repulsive and unforgivable.

Sexual crime is about power, not sex. It’s very badly named. The same act means different things in different contexts. It’s a taboo that desperately needs talking about and a darkness many people live in. People who have suffered evil at the hands of others are not victims per se. They are people who survived it. There is no weakness or shame. The sexual act may be the same, but the intention behind it is malelovent and violent. A knife is not good or bad - it can be used to cut a cake or stab someone. What differs is the responsibility with which the knife is held and used. The same goes for our bodies.

It is alarmingly common and doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes we associate with it. Sexual abuse and rape are overwhelmingly committed by people who know their victims well - up to 95% of all known incidents (and probably only 10% are ever reported) are where the offender is a family member or friend (Home Office). The rapist isn’t a man that jumps out of a bush with a black balaclava, he’s round the dinner table - up to 30 years ago, it was legal for a man to rape his wife. The paedophile isn’t a man outside a playground with a mac on, he’s the drunk father coming home from the pub or the schoolteacher who presides over PE classes.

The behaviour expressed after having been abused can last decades and is strange to someone who doesn’t recognise or understand the psychology of it. The universal reaction is a perverted sense of guilt or shame, which to normal untrained eyes seems bizarre and irrational. As a child, they will always feel it was their fault. As an adult, just being there and somehow being involved as “part of it” is enough to carry the burden. The shame the abuser is supposed to be feeling is induced in their victim in the same way electric current is when you place 2 metal coils near each other and run a charge through one of them. The second coil takes on the electrical charge, and the victim takes on that shame as their own. It is not their shame, it is someone else’s.

In the case of rape, victims immediately feel the same shock in exactly the same way as anyone who has suffered violence does, coupled with a sense of being “dirty” or like they have a layer of filth “under their skin”. And it is an act of the extreme and horrid violence. Its the reason most bath and shower relentlessly and vital forensic evidence is lost. The physical damage subsides, but the emotional and psychological damage stays for life. Over 70% of sexual abuse victims go on to be victims of rape in later life. The effects of rape manifest in unusual ways - wetting the bed, fear of the dark and so on. The response in sexual behaviour is usually one of two polar opposites - that they have a pathological aversion to sex of any kind (asexuality) or develop an obsession with sex itself, becoming prostitutes or highly promiscuous.

Sexual abuse is even more evil, because the victim doesn’t know that anything happening to them is actually wrong at all, as its usually committed by someone who they implicitly trust - because it was that person it couldn’t have happened. Indeed, most have very vague memories of it and are scared silly that they are going mad, or of thinking it or mentioning it in case the perpetrator didn’t actually do it and they got ir wrong. Children’s minds are so immature that they cannot possibly understand, so they adopt a range of coping mechanisms like blacking out and floating above themselves to survive it. We black out memories as a defensive measure to avoid the effects of trauma, until they emerge years later. They usually emerge as a memory of one or two specific incidents where the person remembers an unfamiliar sensation they experienced.

Victims of abuse all harbour massive and uncontrollable rage; the anger is unchannelled, righteous and entirely justified. Intimacy is difficult if not impossible. The act of putting something in your mouth (like food), eating in front of someone or shaving bodily hair to appear more childlike are common. Drawing sexual pictures is often the first sign anyone has. Victims tend to form extremely intense bonds with one or two people. All become highly sexualised at a young age, having an understanding of sexual matters, biology and feelings that is greater then they should have for their years. One of the most shameful and distressing parts is that the sensations themselves were enjoyable and somehow because of that they “brought it on themselves” or were a willing participant. Luckily its patent crap - our bodies were built to function from day zero and the same sensations can be experienced as a child or adult, like pain or hypothermia.

These things are often unnoticed, hidden, buried or locked down so deep that you’ll never know the person suffered them or is still suffering from them. The only way it can be dealt with is professional help, with the aid of trained medical personnel. The ultimate healing environment that allows the feelings and memories to surface is a relationship of some kind, be it a close confidence with a therapist or being in love and secure with a partner. Its only then that it shows itself, as its impossible to shut down the bad if the door is open to let the good in. Pandora’s box will always open itself, and its a matter of time. The battle is ongoing and life-long, which is why if you meet one of these people, you don’t pity them. You stand in admiration and reverence for their strength, courage, dignity and sheer purity of character that has got them to be standing in front of you at that very moment.

People die from these things. These crimes murder emotionally and often physically. The more i learn, the more i become convinced that the empty hole and violent damage wreaked upon the innocent is spiritual, not emotional. Hospitalisation, therapy, drugs, stable emotional environments and all the other conventional treatments only go so far but never seem to reach what is destroyed deeper. Love conquers all but the battle and mystery is found in the soul. By spiritual i mean understanding our place in the world, the bigger picture, our direction and purpose, our contribution to our wide society and ultimately our relationship with our creator.

It wasn’t your fault. You’re not dirty. It’s not your shame, its theirs.  You survived it.

A lot of you may have missed something that happened today that is incredibly important. Iran announced to the world that it is now able to produce nuclear fuel, and considers itself a nuclear power. In case you didn’t realise, that’s really fucking bad news.

There is only one reason a country develops nuclear capability - power. Countries with nuclear weaponry don’t get invaded or fucked with by bigger countries that could threaten them because if they are, the chances are they could respond with an atomic bomb or missile and do what the US did to Japan in the second world war. In case you haven’t put two and two together yet, the 2 countries in George Bush’s “Axis Of Evil” that haven’t been invaded so far, Iran and North Korea, have stepped up their nuclear programmes and political rhetoric. They know they are next on the list, but if they have nuclear capability, they’re not going to be fucked with.

Therein lies the stupidity of Bush’s strategy - they only become a threat once they are threatened. If you’re a cunning little shit, you do that so you can invade in the first place as you know they’re going to get uppity.

Why should you care about Iran? Well its a bit of a hotspot out there and getting worse. Last week they kidnapped a load of British soldiers. They’ve been supplying weapons and financial resources to people in Iraq to kill Allied forces, supporting the systematic genocide of Sunni muslims (Iranians are mostly Shia muslims), publicly saying they want to see Israel “wiped off the map”, openly defying the UN, providing supply routes to drug traffickers and a lot more. Israel developed nuclear capacility covertly many years back to secure itself when every Arab neighbour it had spent their time declaring war on the young 50-year old country. The pressure’s building, and they’re picking a fight with the west to ward offthe threat of invasion and/or sanctions.

We call our atomic weapons (Trident) our “nuclear deterrent” and Parliament recently voted to renew them. Its a deterrent as anyone thinking its a good idea to start a scrap with us could very well end up getting nuked. We have ours in submarines so we can fire them from anywhere in the world at anyone. If we got attacked with one on our mainland, the chances are that we would have difficulty firing back, so popping them in ships gives us flexibility. Once one country fires one, another fires back - you don’t respond to a bomb with a firecracker, you give it to them in kind. That’s called MAD - mutually assured destruction.

Anti-Trident protesters frustrate me, as liberal as i am about these things. Nobody really wants nuclear weapons hanging around, but they are unfortunately essential. We hope we’ll never use them, but to give them up is give away power. That’s not something we, or any other country wants to do as it leaves it vulnerable. As long as someone else has them, we need them. The only way we could disarm would be with the rest of the world as a class action, and that just isn’t going to happen. What we can do is reduce our arsenal with others doing the same, as they cost a lot to make and maintain, which allows all parties to save face. Saving face is what politics is all about.

And if all that goes over your head, then consider this. The 5 biggest arms dealers in the world are the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.

(And yes, this is what i tend to think about in my lunch hour.)

Two women came to King Solomon and stood before him. The first woman said: “My Lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while with her in the house. On the third day after I gave birth, she also gave birth. We live together; there is no outsider with us in the house; only the two of us were there. The son of this woman died during the night because she lay upon him. She arose during the night and took my son from my side while I was asleep, and lay him in her bosom, and her dead son she laid in my bosom. when I got up in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead! But when I observed him (later on) in the morning, I realized that he was not my son to whom I had given birth!”

The second woman replied: “It is not so! My son is the live one and your son is the dead one!”

The first woman responded: “It is not so! Your son is the dead one and my son is the living one!”

They argued before King Solomon.

King Solomon said: “This second woman claims ‘My son is the live one and your son is the dead one, ‘and this first woman claims ‘Your son is the dead one and my son is the living one!“‘

King Solomon said, “Bring me a sword” So they brought a sword before the King. The King said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to one and half to the other“.

The second woman turned to the King, because her compassion was aroused for her son, and said: “Please my Lord, give her the living child and do not kill him“.

But the first woman said: “Neither mine nor yours shall he be. Cut it in half!”

The King spoke up and said: “Give the second woman the living child, and do not kill it, for she is his mother” All of Israel heard the judgment that the King had judged. They had great awe for the King and the woman was rightfully awarded custody of her son.

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Our question: How do you know when someone is telling the truth?