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A hug is just what I need..human contact is something I dread yet ache for every day. My trauma has messed me up so badly that I'm only now coming to terms with all its consequences.

 I grew up in a comfortable upper middle-class English family. My dad had served in the British army and seen active combat. He was probably in the special forces, although he never actually confirmed it,  based on the tattoos he had and by piecing together all the things he used to tell me when i was growing up. He was extremely domineering and authoritarian. He would regularly tell me that his role as my father was to put food on the table, teach how to be a man, and educate me.

There was never any question of having any emotional contact with me... in all my life he never once told me that he loved me, gave me or a hug or even said that he was proud of me. I was starved of love and affection by both my parents. My mum had run away from home at 16 to escape an abusive family situation, joined the women's Royal navy and worked her way up to petty officer. After leaving the navy she became a model and beauty queen ( she actually started during her time in the navy since she appeared in the yearly calendars and did promotional work). She even took part in Miss England and was in demand for modelling swimwear ( back then she was one of the early bikini models) and evening dresses.  She ended up meeting my dad when she was working as my dad's  secretary when my dad worked in private communications/global information gathering.
She always wore pretty dresses, high heels and perfect make up around the house and never spoke before my dad spoke first, lowered her head and never looked him in the eye, and only started eating at the dinner table when my dad told her to. It was a weird surreal atmosphere during every family meal. I don't remember her ever showing me any love or affection, no kisses, cuddles or words of love, support or affection.

My dad would constantly denigrate anything i did at school or at home. I won the school short story competition several times and dad never congratulated me... in fact he would tear my room apart looking for evidence of my story writing and if he found any i got the leather belt, and was forced to sleep in the cold attic in an army sleeping bag.

He would take me to museums, air shows and historical sites but would never allow me to ask questions or even talk to him about what we were seeing. If i ever said anything whilst he was talking he would slap me around the head and tell me 'shut up boy. When i talk you listen.' I was confused... why take me to all the places but never want to hear what i had to say or allow me to ask questions?

Every Friday evening he would take me and my sister to the local public library. We were given exactly 30 minutes to choose our books... any longer and i got the leather belt.
I would sneak into his study whilst he was away at work and borrow books several times a week. I had a voracious appetite for reading anything i could get my hands on. I read all the classics, loads of non fiction, but my favourites were the action/adventure thrillers where i could escape into another world and where i was the hero.

I ached everyday for signs of love and affection from my parents... i never got any. I became very needy and rebellious at school, getting into fights, explosive outbursts of anger ( due to the  brutal sexual abuse i was enduring every day).  I would drink alcohol in secret until i lost consciousness. I compensated for the lack of love at home by binge eating. Everything i did was impulsive and revealed my addictive personality.

I couldn't express any emotions even if i had an uncanny knack of 'seeing' what other people were feeling. I was always on alert for signs of abuse and i constantly looked for the slightest show of affection from other people towards me.  I withdrew into myself. I was the school loner. No one wanted to be with me because i was always shifting from one extreme emotion to the other... moody, isolated, extreme anger and violence. I shut down during lessons and dissociated all the time. I was put in every bottom class because all the teachers thought i was just plain dumb. No one paid any attention to me except to jump me in the boys toilets and kick the * out of me. When i was 15 that stopped when one day i just snapped and broke one boys wrist, snapped another's ankle like my dad had shown me, and repeatedly stabbed another in the face with a pen! It took three adult male teachers to get me out of the toilet.. they thought i would end up killing several of the boys.

I was sent by my dad to see a 'shrink for my nutcase son' but he just ended up sexually abusing me along with a senior doctor.
I hated medical professionals... i was abused by my sports teacher, his wife, and they regularly invited their friends to take part, a local policeman, a family doctor, a lawyer and another science teacher at my school. I never told my parents. Why would i? When i first told me dad what the sports teacher had done  to me in the boys changing room at school he punished me by making me cut the back garden lawn with a pair of scissors.

My mum never once said anything to console me even when she saw me pulling my hair out, scratching my back till it was red raw and bled, or even when she saw the holes i had made in my arms with a maths compass. She just fed me more cake and pudding.

I've been emotionally handicapped all my adult life. I just can't connect with anyone. Theres a terrible painful emptiness inside me like i was never given the chance to learn about love when i was a child. I can't feel what other people can feel. That makes me incredibly sad... like my life was taken from me and i'm not really human. I can love my cats, i can love my two children but i can't love a woman. i don't know how to. This is difficult for me to understand. I don't trust other adults. I ignore everyone else around me when i'm in a public space like i'm walking around enclosed in a transparent bubble. Sometimes a woman might glance at me and i stare straight into her eyes until she breaks off eye contact. Maybe its freaky for them but when someone does catch my eye i never break eye contact... i can look at them and literally 'feel' their emotions.

I haven't even  mentioned the event which has triggered a flood of childhood memories...
I had met someone in an online chatroom. We exchanged mails/texts for two weeks before I agreed to meet up with her for coffee. She  became unwell in the café   so i helped her back to her flat. After inviting me in she gave me a drink, but it was drugged... what followed was 5 days of psychological/physical abuse ( water boarding/electric shocks/Russian roulette / burning/sexual abuse and rape).  She wanted revenge against a certain type of man,  a Dom. Two other couples took part in my suffering. 
I was repeatedly drugged during the 5 days.
They cleaned me up and dumped me in the countryside outside Paris. I flagged down a passing motorist who took me to hospital. I wasn't treated.. the hospital was overwhelmed with COVID patients.
The ET was non existent!
I called an Uber to get home.
The police refused to take me seriously even when I showed them my injuries.., I was accused of being a 'perverted homo ' and warned not to take part in bdsm activities!!! They accused me of wasting police time!

That led to long buried nightmares from my childhood re emerging .  See above.

I have 3-5 flashbacks every day. Nightmares, insomnia and mood swings.

Since then I've had daily flashbacks. I went to the police but was accused of being a perverted homosexual ( btw I have no sexual prejudices), and they refused to investigate. I couldn't get any treatment at the ER and I still have physical symptoms ( nerve damage/ tendinitis/joint pain).

Thank you for your support.

Hello everyone. This is another step for me but it's huge one. I've never revealed what happened to me except to a few therapists and this is the forum i've been looking for.

TRIGGER WARNING for abuse/violence.

From the age of 11 to 15 i was systematically abused by the sports teacher at my school. I was a bit stocky so always finished last when he gleefully told us to run three times round the school playing field, i was built for power not endurance. I was the last in the shower and the last to get changed... i told my dad that my PE ( sports) teacher was touching me in strange ways. My dad being ex British military, who loved explaining to me in graphic detail how he could kill someone in less than twenty seconds with his bare hands ( or any other household object), told me to 'man up and stop whining;' I was punished by having to cut the grass on the back lawn with a pair of scissors.

He thought i needed 'toughening up' so he dropped  me off every Saturday morning at a gym owned by the same teacher and his wife. After each workout i'd wait for my dad, but because he was always working on Saturdays ( he had a high powered executive level role in a private communications  company) he left me there till the late afternoon. The teacher, his wife and other adults turned up on a including a local policeman , a solicitor, and a science teacher at another school participated in sexually abusing me.  I learnt very quickly to simply 'zap out', like i was just switching off my mind and imagining i was somewhere else in a dream like/fantasy world.

I never told my dad. Why bother? I had a capacity to learn very quickly that opening my mouth would only lead to more pain and suffering.  My mum never said anything.. she just looked pretty for my dad, spent all her time home cooking, never looked him in the eye, or began eating before he did, and once a month they'd leave me and my sister with a neighbour  whilst they went away to spend time with other couples ( 'wife swapping' it was called back then).

My dad loved to belittle me, denigrate and invalidate everything i did or did. He never once told me that he loved me or gave me a hug. My mum didn't communicate her feelings for me either. Consequently i grew up not  knowing  what love, compassion, were. All i knew was pain, humiliation and suffering.

I remember going on a family pre-Christmas shopping trip to London back in 1983. I was 16 at the time, full of teenage angst and rebellion. I put on my ripped jeans, black leather jacket, and heavy metal T-shirt. Consequently, i wasn't allowed into a large well known department store. I waited for my parents and my sister outside but i got fed up so i wandered off. I didn't realise that they'd  already come out and on my dad's instructions had left me behind. No one forgets what a car bomb can do, if you're unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. I wandered dazed and disorientated along the street, images of a being in a war zone.  Surprisingly my brain shut down and i just ended up aimlessly wandering to a place where i knew my parents would be waiting to have lunch. My dad gave me a clip around the ear, told me to shut up when i tried to describe the scene but no words came out.

The awful flashbacks started a few months later. My dad kept telling me to 'shut up boy. I've been in as many war zones as you've had cups of tea' followed by a physical abuse so i got the message. I wanted to hit him back but couldn't find the courage. He would've killed me in under a minute if i had attempted that anyway. He'd seen real combat and loved to frighten me with his stories. He had a cold, calm, lethal glint in his eyes. 

The neighbour was also a psychologist, or 'a shrink for my nutcase son' as my dad used to say. My dad paid for several sessions with him ( it wasn't covered back then). The psychologist liked it when i had to show him what my sports teacher and his wife were doing to me every Saturday afternoon... the psychologist soon started to play out his own sick perverted fantasies with me as well. 

My parents never understood why i was behaving strangely at home. I would self-harm and each time Dad found out i got punished. I'd be locked up in the garden shed at the bottom of the field that was our back garden, or made to sleep in the attic with just an army sleeping bag. I stopped eating so the same cold veggies kept appearing at every meal till i ate them. Dad would use his slow menacing hypnotic voice to scare me into doing things.

I never knew love when i was growing up. i was afraid of my dad and found solace in the delicious home cooked food my mum would make even day.
I would dissociate and simply play dumb. It didn't matter that i could read 2/3 books from my dad's personal study every week, or that i would write short stories every night in bed when i couldn't sleep.

i learnt to swim at the age of 11 and 12 months later i was school freestyle champion. My dad banned me from going swimming. I won the school creative writing competition three years running and each time he's take his belt to me and tell me 'writing stories is for girlies. Learn to use your hands and be a man.' He would check my room every day, turn over the bed, look in every  nook and cranny to try to find my stories. If he found them, he'd rip them up in front of me then id be forced to sleep in the garden shed/attic with no bath or food.

One day when i was 14 i went cycling to the limits of our housing estate and got ambushed by a gang of local teens from a rival school. They beat me up and two of the older boys raped me. I was so frightened of my dad's reaction i fled into a nearby forest, dumped my bike and climbed up the tallest oak tree i could find. I stayed there for three days until i was found by the local police. i collapsed in front of my dad blurted out what had happened to me...my dad punished me for breaking my bike...i got the leather belt, cold icy showers for a week and cold food scraps. I learnt another lesson... never show pain or suffering.

I couldn't connect with anyone on an emotional level. I didn't know how to do that. I never went near girls. I was obsessed with sex, but sex was taboo; Sex was shameful. Sex was something only a strong, masculine man did like my father.

At school and later university i couldn't  connect with anyone. I spent my three years at university getting drunk every night and doing drugs. I worked several jobs so I could pay for someone to show me love and affection. I wanted to forget, but i couldn't. The images were always there. 

I married the first woman who showed any real interest in me. She was French. I gave up my career in England to follow her. We had two beautiful children together, but we were incompatible. She eventually left me and i brought up our two children. I began to realise that I was pretty resilient,  I'd survived being knocked down by a speeding motorist, people dying in Paris in 2015, a girlfriend I'd met shortly after my divorce sadly committed suicide because she couldn't handle what she'd seen with me in 2015. I was happy with her. She was also an adult survivor of child abuse and our connection was strong.
I've never got over that. I buried it down deep inside me just like everything else. If i show emotion i just suffer the consequences. This is the lesson i learnt when i was young.

I tried therapy but every psychologist reminds me of the one who abused me when i was young. I can't open up about things that happened to me either.. i was attacked and raped in London when i was 25 in a red light area. I got too drunk so i guess it was my fault. I have a very addictive personality... sex, alcohol. It helped to numb the pain. Forget everything.

I don't bother to talk to other people in public places. I just automatically zap out when they start talking to me. I'm there but somewhere else. i feel safer that way.

I have a lot of guilt, shame, anger and sadness about what i endured as a kid. I always felt that i was different. I wasn't normal like all the other children. No one cared for me when i was in pain and suffering. They just took advantage of me and made it worse.