You didn’t realise what damage you were causing when you cut me.
You probably thought it made clinical sense, to clip the end of my penis with scissors.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Once a wound like that has been made it mustn’t be allowed to heal, but you can’t tell an 18 month old that, so my mother got the job of reopening the wound at bath time every day.
Yes I was old enough to scream, and to shout NO!
But it turns out that wasn’t the worst of it.
That while I have successfully supressed those memories, of being given an impromptu circumcision by the trusted family doctor, and being given amateur post-ops by my parents.
What remains is the worst of it, the training that was achieved by all of those agonising assaults on my penis while I was an infant.
The paralysing fear that I still have to overcome when touched there, sixty three years later.
I have been asked to write this letter by someone who cares.
To vent my anger at you and start to heal.
I am angry that this had to happen to me.
I am angry that until recently mental health wasn’t a thing that could be helped, until it was too late.
But anger seems futile, what can be remedied by it?
Approaching 65 the worst effects of this aren’t such a big issue now, not like it was when I was 20 or 30 or 40 or 50.
The only thing I can wish for by way of restitution would be to somehow communicate these events to all my past lovers who never knew why I was so bloody difficult. It wasn’t them, it was me.
note: this daylog is used to write the neversend letter that my therapist advised me to write when I finallly plucked up the courage to describe these events that took place in South London in 1960. So not so much a neversend letter as a neverread letter.