I woke up about three hours ago, needing to use the washroom, fairly normal for me, as I have a weak bladder.

What isn't normal is what happened when I tried to go back to sleep.

To put it bluntly, I started remembering things that happened when I was a child, specifically things that occurred during the eight years of my being adopted. The memories wouldn't stop, and I came very close to having a full-blown panic attack while crying for nearly two hours.

To put the whole thing into a proper semblance of order, I need to describe my memories of my childhood.

The actual fact is that I only remember two events from my first seven years, both were nasty, and the physical and emotional harm caused by them still affects me now. Any other memories I have from that time period are due to scrapbooks I received just before I was adopted.

The first is that I was male-to-male raped when I was 4.5 years old, by the boyfriend of the foster mother I was with at the time.

The second occurred seven or eight months later, I am technically epileptic, although I haven't had an actual seizure for many years now. I had one at home one day, and a male person shoved me down a long straight flight of stairs simply because he didn't want to see it. I can't remember if the male person was the father, an older foster child, their real child or someone visiting them, just that the person was male.

Another thing that I remember, although this is from the scrapbooks/info I was given just before I was adopted, was that I was diagnosed as being gender dysphoric at age four. My adoptive father's response, when informed of it, was "I'll beat it out of him, I'll make him a man."

The last thing that you need to know about my early years is that I was constantly getting in trouble just to get ANY attention.

That last part is key, as it precipitated the events that became my "life" during the adoption years. See, I didn't know what love was, I'd never seen it, and the early days in the adoption might have clued me in if I had actually been paying attention, but I wasn't. As I said in the previous paragraph, the only way I knew to get any attention at all, from anyone, was to get myself into some form of trouble.

About three months or so after the adoption, the bastard known to the world as my adoptive father decided he had had enough of it, and from that time on, I was the recipient of his 2" wide, 1/8" thick leather belt across my back and butt on a nearly daily basis.

This went on for several years, but the next part of this tale occurred when I was ten, a few months before my eleventh birthday. I can't remember the exact cause, but I was put into my own bedroom at that time, and from then on, only went out when the family did.

I spent most of the next 4.5 years or so with no interaction with the family unless we all had to go somewhere. If either my adoptive mother, my bastard of an adoptive father, or my elder brother or sister could be present, I was restricted to my room, with one of them watching.

That continued for a few years, as did the beatings, which steadily grew worse, sometimes two or three times a day. By the time I was fourteen, I was going to school wearing long sleeves and full pants no matter what time of year it was, simply to hide the bruises. I was so terrified of him that I would do everything I could to dress or undress away from others, again simply to hide the bruises. Life was not fun.

I finally had enough myself, and in August of 1980, I told my adoptive father that I would kill him if he ever laid a hand on me again. He saw the expression on my face when I said that, and I guess it scared him, because he never spoke to me again unless it couldn't be avoided.

Nine months later, I'd just turned 15, and I found out that I was going to be sent back into the care of the Children's Aid Society of Ontario. In that entire time span, I hadn't left my room unless I had to use the washroom or to go to school, that was it, except for very rare occasions.

The bastard I knew as my adoptive father just casually threw me away as if I was so much garbage to be removed from his sight. His decision to kill the adoption landed me in a group home less than five months later, not that he cared, as I was now out of his hands.

When I arrived at the group home, I found out that I was the second smallest boy there, this did me no good at all. Within six months of being sent there, I had been male-to-male raped three times, all by boys much, much larger, only once was anything done about it.

That gives a history of my childhood experiences, or at least a fair bit of what I remember. It may seem like I've gone into a lot of detail here, but the honest truth is that I'm giving you the barest bones description I can, as I have a hard time dealing with these memories myself.

Well, I wrote this blog because I started remembering a lot of this shit when I woke up a few hours ago, and I started crying, something I do very rarely. What was odd was that, part of the time that I was crying, I wasn't producing any tears, something I'd never experienced.

If it had only been the crying that I had to deal with, I think it wouldn't have bothered me very much, but that was only part of what happened tonight. The other part is that I came within a very close margin of going into a full-blown panic attack while I was crying.

What is even odder about the whole experience is that I spent almost TWO HOURS crying, when I cry, it's usually for a few minutes.

I'm still feeling pretty screwed up by this, and I'll be calling my medical clinic later to see if I can see a psych sometime today. But that will have to wait for a while, as they don't open until 9 AM, and it's only 6:58 AM now.

Damn, now I'm crying again, I'm very glad that the bastard lives where he does, as I want to return some of the hurt and hate he gave me. I know better, though, and as I said, I'm going to try to see if I can meet with a psych later on an emergency basis. I'm hoping they do have psychs there, as I would prefer to keep my medical services in one place if possible, but if I have to go elsewhere, I'll do that.