All My Fault: The True Story of a Sadistic Father and a Little Girl Left Destroyed by Audrey Delaney Page B
Authors: Audrey Delaney
Tags: Child Abuse
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to do something with my life.
I enrolled in a full-time IT course with Anco on the Jamestown Road in Finglas. Computers were just getting popular around that time. I learned word processing, electronics and programming. It was all very new to me though and to be honest I hadn’t a clue about what I was doing. I sat in on the electronics class all right but most of it went over my head. I loved the word processing though.
That course was one of the best things I ever did and it certainly stood to me in the future. You got a small training fee for attending too—it wasn’t a full wage but it was enough to get by on. I used the money to go on and do an evening typing class. I put a lot of effort into the typing and bought myself a heavy steel typewriter to practise on in the evenings. So during the week I focused on my studies and at the weekends I let my hair down and went mad.
I was still trying to block out memories of the abuse but the more I did this the more emotional and angry I got. When I wasn’t practising for my course, I was out of my head on drugs.
I thought that I had managed to put all the abuse behind me and I was now a normal, functioning young adult who had taken charge of her life. The demons were never too far away, though, and my mask would slip when I least expected it.
One of my supervisors in the course asked me several times if I was all right, or if I needed to talk. I had no idea why he was asking me this. Was he referring to the way I sometimes cried in front of people in the class? Or did he notice how out of it I sometimes was? I always had a made-up story at hand to justify my tears. But then more questions were asked and cracks would begin to appear in my story. The supervisor was genuinely concerned. But I didn’t even know what was wrong with me myself, so how could I tell him.
I was just trying to lose myself in my relationships so that I wouldn’t have to face up to my own problems.
By now I had pushed everything that happened with Da so far to the back of my mind that it was like I no longer had a past. I had blanked it all out. I still had the empty feeling I could never explain but drink and drugs solved that one for me. So long as I had a constant supply of both, I could function.
*
I finished up my typing course and got a job as a receptionist in a gym on Eden Quay in Dublin. I was naturally well-mannered and polite so customer service came easy to me. I took the job very seriously and I found myself plunged into a completely different world to the one I had previously been living in. The gym attracted people from all walks of life. You had shop assistants, students, guards, builders, solicitors, doctors, professors—a whole cross-section of society. But when people got changed into their gym gear, they all looked the very same to me.
I discovered that I was excellent at sales and it wasn’t long before I was earning good commission on top of a decent wage. Slowly but surely, my lifestyle was changing. I started socialising with people from work and I found that it was nice to have nights out that didn’t involve drugs. It made me realise that I’d had enough of them. Before I’d started working in the gym, I’d used drugs the whole time.
Around the same time, my manager Joseph used to walk me to the bus stop every evening. Maybe it was the chivalry and the fact that I was feeling so vulnerable at the time but I found myself developing feelings for him. It was a very physical attraction. He would only have to walk by me in the corridor and sparks would fly. He made it clear that he felt the same way and we went on a few dates.
*
But I spent my early twenties feeling exposed and raw. I felt like the bubbly me that I’d once been able to present to the world was fading away and now my dark inner feelings were on show.
Around this time, a friend of mine told me she was depressed and was going to see a psychiatrist. My overwhelming feeling was one of
I enrolled in a full-time IT course with Anco on the Jamestown Road in Finglas. Computers were just getting popular around that time. I learned word processing, electronics and programming. It was all very new to me though and to be honest I hadn’t a clue about what I was doing. I sat in on the electronics class all right but most of it went over my head. I loved the word processing though.
That course was one of the best things I ever did and it certainly stood to me in the future. You got a small training fee for attending too—it wasn’t a full wage but it was enough to get by on. I used the money to go on and do an evening typing class. I put a lot of effort into the typing and bought myself a heavy steel typewriter to practise on in the evenings. So during the week I focused on my studies and at the weekends I let my hair down and went mad.
I was still trying to block out memories of the abuse but the more I did this the more emotional and angry I got. When I wasn’t practising for my course, I was out of my head on drugs.
I thought that I had managed to put all the abuse behind me and I was now a normal, functioning young adult who had taken charge of her life. The demons were never too far away, though, and my mask would slip when I least expected it.
One of my supervisors in the course asked me several times if I was all right, or if I needed to talk. I had no idea why he was asking me this. Was he referring to the way I sometimes cried in front of people in the class? Or did he notice how out of it I sometimes was? I always had a made-up story at hand to justify my tears. But then more questions were asked and cracks would begin to appear in my story. The supervisor was genuinely concerned. But I didn’t even know what was wrong with me myself, so how could I tell him.
I was just trying to lose myself in my relationships so that I wouldn’t have to face up to my own problems.
By now I had pushed everything that happened with Da so far to the back of my mind that it was like I no longer had a past. I had blanked it all out. I still had the empty feeling I could never explain but drink and drugs solved that one for me. So long as I had a constant supply of both, I could function.
*
I finished up my typing course and got a job as a receptionist in a gym on Eden Quay in Dublin. I was naturally well-mannered and polite so customer service came easy to me. I took the job very seriously and I found myself plunged into a completely different world to the one I had previously been living in. The gym attracted people from all walks of life. You had shop assistants, students, guards, builders, solicitors, doctors, professors—a whole cross-section of society. But when people got changed into their gym gear, they all looked the very same to me.
I discovered that I was excellent at sales and it wasn’t long before I was earning good commission on top of a decent wage. Slowly but surely, my lifestyle was changing. I started socialising with people from work and I found that it was nice to have nights out that didn’t involve drugs. It made me realise that I’d had enough of them. Before I’d started working in the gym, I’d used drugs the whole time.
Around the same time, my manager Joseph used to walk me to the bus stop every evening. Maybe it was the chivalry and the fact that I was feeling so vulnerable at the time but I found myself developing feelings for him. It was a very physical attraction. He would only have to walk by me in the corridor and sparks would fly. He made it clear that he felt the same way and we went on a few dates.
*
But I spent my early twenties feeling exposed and raw. I felt like the bubbly me that I’d once been able to present to the world was fading away and now my dark inner feelings were on show.
Around this time, a friend of mine told me she was depressed and was going to see a psychiatrist. My overwhelming feeling was one of
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