The memories of sexual abuse never fade

No two are the same

Each case of sexual abuse is different and unique. The age at which that abuse first happened can be life-defining. However, one thing you cannot discount is the personal memory of the abuse to the individual, to the person and to the child.

Following a blog written about friendship early last year, the write-up went viral and by happenstance ended up in the readership of my father.

He had a perspective and an expectation of who I was supposed to be and where I might have been lacking, in another conversation from over a decade ago, it was one lacking responsibility. That comes with all sorts of connotations, but I challenged it.

Stand up for who you are

My response was, “If after all this while, you think I am irresponsible, that is unfortunate.”

He replied, sensing my hurt and disappointment, that was not what he meant. As I shook and trembled, I was not backing down when I said, “I know what you meant, I speak English too.”

Even to our parents, we have to come to a point where we are ready to stand up for who were are, regardless of who they expect us to be.

Soon, we continued our conversation on other topics until I received a text message of instructions to follow and respond to last August, following his knowledge of that blog.

The memories well up again

I was a few months short of my 52^nd birthday when my father learnt that as a child under his roof and where people employed to care for us, were on the side, taking sexual favours.

It was not my intention to share certain dark episodes of my early life that my parents were completely oblivious of, but occasion warranted the need to talk about it at that time.

My memories of these events over 40 years ago are keen and vivid, they are not insignificant and for all that I have written about abuse in well over a decade, I have been fortunate not to consider myself a victim or be victimised for the experiences I have had. I have been blessed and lucky.

I know how the loss of sexual innocence consequently affects relationships, healthy choices, trust and confidence. This is always on my mind when people talk about their experiences of sexual abuse. We would prefer we never had to recall and recount any of it, and whether or not anyone believes us, one thing they can never do it consign us to irrelevance and relegate our lives or history to obloquy.

Your father is on Facebook

Yes, it is him and no one else

This question came from my sister this morning.

“Morning (or whatever), Is your father now on Facebook or one of his sons is impersonating him?

To which I responded, “Your father is on Facebook.”

Even I was surprised that he was on Facebook, but the story goes back to some time ago when I was trying a get a laptop over to my dad. The last few months have involved a lot of impromptu travel related to work that it has been impossible to plan anything.

Time, space and wherewithal

On another note, I sometimes contrast my professional life to that of my father, he was a corporation man with assistants and people he could call upon to do the somewhat important and mundane things. Almost 23 years of my working life has been as a self-employed and freelance consultant, maybe, if I had entered a partnership of consultants, we would have employed an office manager to handle affairs like that.

Then, in arranging to send the laptop, he also asked for a phone making the point that he wanted to have a go at technology before he departs.

An unexpected response

As it transpired, I took a few pictures yesterday evening and posted to Instagram with a cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook, I also included a short poem.

The absence of bright lights,
Does not diminish the clear sights,
My face showing the provenance of my father,
Especially now that I've refused to lather,
The unshaved greys are proof of a youth,
Before you say I am long in the tooth,
For many times I was addressed as young man,
I laughed for that was just another fan.

On Facebook

Shortly after it was posted, I received a message with two pictures of my dad from my brother, who then informed me that the pictures were my dad’s reaction to my pictures and poetry. And there was my discovery that my father had joined social media to be engaged under the tutelage of my brother.

Welcome to Facebook

Obviously, my sister is concerned that she might have to temper her views because of the scrutinising pair of eyes of her father. However, I am of the view that if he did not know we were opinionated, forthright, controversial and frank in our postings, he would soon find out on Facebook, and that is a good thing.

He would be proud to know that the privileged education we all had has not gone to waste, we can discuss, debate, argue and banter, with grace, erudition and dignity.

My father is 78, he lives an active life pottering around on his farm or being actively involved in the community. Now that he has the added occupation of Facebook engagement, all I can say is welcome.

For all who care to know, our father is on Facebook.

Thought Picnic: Am I just being silly?

This, I have desired

All my life, I have always wanted to be a positive influence on the people I met in different walks of life. In social and formal settings, at work and at play, I have hoped that any encounter would be enabling, encouraging, inspiring and building.

In many ways, I hope I have a good sense of self, some awareness, the ability to reflect and take a long view. There is a backstory that is full of events and episodes of life that I am grateful to have been able to review with the knowledge that tough times pass, and tough people laugh.

Yet, there are people I have been unable to influence in any way towards a better self and direction. I get to a point where I begin to regret and find fault in places that bother me in not sometimes enabling, encouraging and acquiescing to the demons that afflict the lives of others.

May I never burden you

By terms, I am an easy-going person who grants latitude and scope to explore and express, my entreaties and advice would always veer towards realising great potential and I see a lot of that in people, long before they see it in themselves.

My hope invariably is to steer people towards what I believe they can achieve whilst not driving or urging them but giving them a clearer vision of possibilities that they can work towards if they so wish. In most cases, I have achieved between limited to glowing success, however, I fear that some have become abject failures.

What I have desired my example, my conduct and my deportment to convey to some by proximity and observation has made no impact. Some people are quite set in their ways that I dare say have become impervious to persuasion.

Finding perspective beyond ourselves

Now, it is no desire of mine to create clones of myself, I would hate that I am mimicked, copied and mimed. That is never my intention when I am involved with people. There are in my view certain things I still hope to impart, the ability to handle responsibility, the ability to face adversity with a sense that one would not be overwhelmed, having function and bearing to manage situations that the avoidable does not become a disability, the practice of moderation even in your vices.

Beyond that, I hope there is humanity and empathy, the knowledge that the world owes you nothing, nor does it revolve around you. The ability to be grateful and full of gratitude for all things, recognising the need to count your blessings and by that fill your mind with an appreciation of the good things in life.

Some of this is probably too much to ask of some. They are selfish and self-centred, navel-gazing and full of self-pity, constantly complaining of others without any inkling of how they might well be complaining of themselves, by which they lose perspective, direction and focus. If by then I have found a way to extricate myself from the negative influence, I find myself burdened with issues I could well do without.

I am just being silly

I do wonder if I have had expectations that have crashed into disappointment, high hopes that have left me despondent and a deluded sense of influence that has left me feeling responsible for what is heading for the rocks and a shipwreck.

Maybe, I am incapable of tough love, the point where my liking a person beclouds my ability, to be frank, and honest about the truth of a situation. I am slow to wrath and sometimes my patience holds for longer than is necessary to retrieve a situation.

Then I think, why do I even think that I can influence anyone either way? What hubris has infected my sanity to suggest I can help anyone to any end? Whilst it is possible by some accident of circumstance, someone somewhere might have benefitted from knowing me and I knowing them. I do wonder if I am just being silly.

Hotel life: Habits and loyalty

On loyalty and benefits

I would be the first to tell you that loyalty schemes and customer loyalty matter. This especially when you are a frequent traveller for business and for leisure.

Now on holiday in Gran Canaria, as is my custom when I have the time and the means, which I did more frequently before my encounter with cancer, I see that benefit even more.

On a broader note, it is only in exceptional circumstances that I fly on airlines outside the SkyTeam alliance, usually when there are no connections or I really want to save time on travel, as travelling out of Manchester always included a stopover in either Paris or Amsterdam. Being a SkyTeam elite member by reason of frequency of travel or the class one chooses to travel grants privileges of access and service that takes the humdrum out of the travel experience.

When it comes to accommodation, most of my bookings are through Hotels.com, with them, for every 10 nights spent in hotels, I get the average cost of the 10 nights as an award to use for another stay.

A hotel to show and tell

However, back to Gran Canaria, I cannot stay anywhere else but the Hotel Riu Palace Maspalomas, which sits as a white colonial-style edifice backing onto the dunes of Maspalomas. I first came here in September 2007 and I have probably spent over 200 nights at this hotel altogether, which a number of stays were up to 3 weeks at a time.

Too many things set this establishment out as unique, exquisite, exclusive and one of the top hotels to stay at in Playa del Ingles. On service, on location, on comfort, on friendliness, I feel so much at home here. I walk into the hotel and there is always someone that recognises me at the reception and I am known by name. I have never had to introduce myself after my first visit.

In all, I am welcomed, like family, well beyond just a returning guest. Firm handshakes, the banter, the laughter, and much else, signals to the new recruits at the reception or the restaurant, that this is a guest that is also family. The refrain is almost always, “Welcome Mr Akintayo, to your second home.”

Just what service is about

On the quality of service, I will just leave this here, I was last here in time, November/December 2016 with my best friend. Once we had dispensed with greetings, the Chef de reception went into the inner office and brought out an envelope containing a USB key that had been forgotten by my friend.

There are many observations to follow this, that they kept a seemingly insignificant thing that even my friend had no idea had been lost at this hotel, that they believed sometime in the future, I will return and that they immediately had the presence of mind to present the lost item even before I was checked-in.

Then, upon being given a room, I was not satisfied because it was on the first floor and the view obscured by palm trees. Without insisting, I just asked if it was possible to change my floor. One of the newer receptionists recognised I was a returning customer and had a chat to her manager. The next day we were moved to a top floor room with stunning views.

Whilst, I may have noticed some changes to the service I have been accustomed to, the quality remains high and the number of returning guests still maintains a high percentage. People might say hotels usually have a high attrition rate of staff, that is rarely the case with this hotel. I know staff that have been at this hotel since I first came in 2007. That is life at this hotel and a little homage to loyalty.

God bless Aretha Franklin

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All respect

As the world bids farewell to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, the tributes are many from far and wide for the sensational person, artist and figure she was.

Yet, for most that mourn and also celebrate her wonderful life, she will be remembered mostly in her many songs. What is so amazing is the number of songs that she covered that she brought a life and an interpretation to that went well beyond the original.

Respect was written and first recorded by Otis Redding, with the man, the husband, pleading for respect when he gets home, Aretha Franklin took it and sang it from the perspective from the woman, the wife and the rest is history. Two Grammy awards and the induction of her version into Grammy Hall of Fame.

The salvation of talent

There are many other songs that people have come out to sing in charted a literally 7-decade-long career.

A difficult childhood, she had, parents divorcing when she was 6, her mother died of a heart attack just before she was 10, having 2 children at the ages of 12 and 14 respectively, she was a preacher’s daughter, but it did not save her from a cruel world out there. Her talent did, and it did greatly.

However, the song that registers the most to me as delivered by Aretha Franklin was written by the Beatles, she again took it and rendered it in both a haunting and a somewhat uplift tempo, the words of the song, full of meaning that made you think. It isn’t Think. She wrote that with her then husband, Ted White.

Eleanor Rigby was written in 1966, first by Paul McCartney and completed by the Beatles, but credited to Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

Remembering the lonely

Between the version written by the Beatles and the version that Aretha Franklin performed, she basically took a fictional person with a life story of a nobody, about whom nobody cared except for what needed to be done in burying her after she died.

The Beatles – 1^st verse.

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice
In the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

Aretha Franklin – 1^st verse.

I'm Eleanor Rigby
I picked up the rice in the church where the weddings have been
Yeah I'm Eleanor Rigby
I'm keeping my face in a jar by the door
If you want to know what is it for, Well

The juxtapositioning of being unknown as a nobody and the reality of being a lonely person is a haunting and fearful thing to think about. Yet, there are many, unknown, unsung, unseen, unheard, untouched, unloved, and more that have a life and then a death that would speak like that of Eleanor Rigby.

When Eleanor Rigby died, she died in the church, Father McKenzie whose frugal life is noted in darning his socks, having written an eulogy, a tribute to Eleanor Rigby, to the hearing nobody to the fact that in the Beatles version, nobody was saved by what may have been a moving tribute, but who can tell?

Making a person real

Aretha Franklin takes the abstraction to the involved, creates a person and speaks in the voice of that person. This is deep empathy rather than plain sympathy.

This is where Aretha Franklin made Eleanor Rigby somebody, a person, a story that began in the first person and then it became a story told to many. Eleanor Rigby took a place in our minds, the minds of many of us seemingly lonely people in many ways social, emotional and much else, with the promise that we would be left unsung.

When I first heard Aretha Franklin’s version, I thought Eleanor Rigby was someone who lived at a certain time and after her death was recognised for something. I had not heard the Beatles version before that.

Eleanor Rigby is almost a premonition, a niggling anxiety, yet, whatever happens when one is dead is really for the living to take care of, and that is a hope of sorts.

Aretha Franklin herself is definitely no Eleanor Rigby, she did not have to pick up the rice where the weddings have been. She died surrounded by family and will be eulogised by the high and mighty, along with millions paying tribute. She, however, has given a voice and life to the lonely people and at the end, she said, ‘God bless, yeah gotta love some lonely people.’

God bless you, Aretha, you made more than a difference.

Thought Picnic: Damn, I was so into you

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Like you used to do

The thought started with, ‘Like you used to do’, the sad reality of loves that I once had and have lost for reasons I have not fully understood. I reflect and wonder at what could have been, yet we never really got to explore that unity of mind, of soul and of life.

The moments are collected as memories, each reminder a cut to the heart as the search of real and true love continues in a resignation to fate rather than a determined yearning for it, even though the latter is a deeper feeling than the former.

My life appears to be crowded out with exes, lovers who became dear friends, lovers who passed on, lovers who became fleeting acquaintances, lovers, long forgotten with the pain that they brought and the baggage they refused to shed.

I’m ready, you’re not

However, what is most striking is what I was ready to invest and what they were not ready to put much faith in. It is no doubt that I bring a challenge to certain lives and with that optimism that upsets the sedentary with new possibility. Elements of my personality, though introvert can provoke either the positive or the negative.

Reactions to it also can inspire or tire me out as the balance and stability I seek is in finding refuge in person, place and situations. Arms to embrace, shoulders to lean and the absence of inhibition to be free with each other.

Writing about this does not make it easier, for I have been blessed with means and ability well beyond those of partners that there was rarely any thought given to sharing of that abundance in everyday life, the pursuit of happiness and the pleasure to be derived from it. Just like you do.

Damn, I was into you

I have had those fears before, that where you could have taken then leap but hesitated, vacillated and procrastinated until time and tide took away all the options and left you with regret. Anticipation is also another thing on the part of both partners, I have plans and I have dreams, they can neither be executed nor fulfilled in an instant.

There is a process of growing and knowing, flowing and glowing, sowing and owing to the point where the stars are aligned and destiny takes the wheel.

For all that the heart wants to do, the head must review and assess, lest, in the end, we become as fools. For the few, I really could say, ‘Damn I was into you’, I can only wonder when did it go astray.

Young men need to calm down

Kicking the bus in the balls

He was shouting and probably remonstrating about something when he got off the bus and without catching his breath, still in a tirade, he proceeded to kick the bus. The bus winched and groaned at being kicked straight in the balls.

Not exactly. Whatever might have started the altercation, he was really ejected from the bus, in his anger and petulance, he began kicking the bus to make a point. Meanwhile, the bus rolled away from the bus stop and he was left there to kick a bin and then the bus stand.

It is not the end of the world

Young men need to learn to calm down. Take control of their emotion and exercise a bit of self-control. Whilst, a lot can so easily escalate, that same situation can be tempered down to irrelevance. It all depends on how a person decides to react.

He missed a bus journey he probably could have enjoyed and had to wait probably another 15 minutes before another bus came by. It is quite likely, he would have simmered down by then, rather than have fire, smoke and steam coming out of his mouth, nostrils and ears in that order.

As I pondered on this matter walking back to my hotel, at another bus stop, someone asked me a question in French that I did not understand. Before I could explain myself, he began swearing and cursing at me, he also kicking the bus stand. I was exasperated, saying nothing, I kept walking along, now wondering about the many angry young men who lose out just because they cannot calm down a bit.

Maintain composure and perspective

This brings me to an event in the news a few weeks ago. This about two young men who by my reckoning could easily pass for my son, if I had by happenstance had issue. They were fledgeling models building a profile in their professions when the one said to the other than he had slept with the other’s girlfriend. [BBCNews]

By the time you knew what was happening, they had met up for a fight, one side armed with dumbbells and the other armed with three knives including a machete, over an unsubstantiated claim of one having slept with another’s girlfriend. The young man who took umbrage at having his girlfriend in the arms of a rival got stabbed and he died.

What needless, senseless and careless loss of life over what by terms should be a trivial matter. Egos and personalities without capacity or inclination to contemplate consequence. A gross lack of apprehension for the future, by living only in the present and now. Respect has become a precious commodity, linked with a feigned sense of honour and dignity that everything is sacrificed to maintain that status after which all is lost.

What if they decided to reflect for once and step back from careering down the road to perdition? A silent voice that spoke into the consciousness of one that suggesting, backing down does not mean a loss of face, defeat or person.

Calling me chicken doesn’t make me one

I know the number of times I have been called a chicken, in the desire of that person to get me to do what I have decided not to do. A chance encounter could define an entire future, but that encounter alone when veering towards the negative is probably the best sign to disengage.

Walking into a park one sunny afternoon and seeing a friend, I went to offer greetings and pleasantries as one of his acquaintances urged me to sit on the grass. I had no intention of sitting on the grass, so I stated, I would rather sit on a bench. At which point he called me a pretentious git and asked if I thought I was better than those sitting on the grass.

I responded, everyone has made their choice to sit where they want to, I have decided, I prefer to sit on the bench and I don’t care for whether he accepts my decision or not. We parted company, not in the friendliest of terms, but I knew that only that circumstance would have put us in the same space. There was every likelihood, there would be no other encounter between us.

Take a time out and take it easy

I take a laidback approach to things, I hate to be in a rush, I make time for activities I have planned, I would step out of the way of those to whom time has become the most expensive commodity. I can take offence yet refuse to be offended or slighted. This all comes with a keen sense of self and the ability to brush it off.

The quest for respect is not a goal, it grows out of conduct, comportment, demeanour and stature. There are cases where respect needs to be demanded, it is never with brawn. We have reached a level of civilisation where conversation, ideas, knowledge and wisdom should suffice in settling issues. We can agree to disagree without becoming disagreeable as we aspire to a greater level of gentlemanliness.

I do hope that young men begin to realise there is more to life beyond that momentary hot-headed where the absolutely regrettable becomes an ever-present possibility. There is more respect, honour, dignity and integrity to be had in the future if you can walk away from a volatile situation now.