Who Is Steve Gray?

I have never blamed anyone for anything that has happened to me because in order to blame someone there first of all has to be an explanation and a reason, and reason without blame is something that can’t be questioned and there is no real explanation for the series of events in my life so I have to accept what and who I am. I have nothing but worn out knuckles from dragging myself on in pursuit of understanding why the things in my life happened to me.

I hope my life can be an example of the importance of family and how important parenthood really is, because as I found out years later that my father had put me in the home when I was one year old when my mother died. My father was an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler but I think he must have suffered a great deal at having to put me as well as my brothers and sisters in a home because I found out years later from him that he used to turn up at the home as late as ten o’clock at night very drunk demanding to see me.

In the first home, sometimes I was taken out for the day with strangers and sometimes I went for holidays to people’s houses. One I do remember was the family who wanted me to come and live with them for the summer holidays and I will never ever forget the feeling of excitement when they said I would be able to go swimming and I would have my own room and also they had a large family who all wanted me to come and stay with them.

Going there and living with the family was an amazing experience and they looked after me so well. I think I went there at least three times and things could not be better but something happened that stopped all this. I was caught stealing from a shop in town and sent back to the home and I can’t remember what the punishment was but I was told I wouldn’t be going back. Within a couple of days I was taken in an office and told I was being sent to a boys school where I would be very happy and they played lots of sports. At the time I didn’t realise I was in fact being sent there as a punishment and the social service people who were going to take me away tried there best to convince me that I was going to be very happy in my new home.

Almost from the moment I arrived at there I knew this was not a nice place to be and my first day was a reminder of what lay in store for the next five years of my life...

There is a general pattern of people seeking compensation for things that have happened to them in these places and situations but money is totally irrelevant here, it really doesn’t come into it. Whenever I read about people seeking compensation for these things I always ask what good will that do …how can money possibly cure the wasted years or the horrors that will live with me and these people all our lives?

Victims of abuse of this kind spend all their lives running from the horrors of these memories looking for some kind of normality but the fact is that during that period for however long it lasted it actually felt normal because it was my first ever feelings.

It has taken me years to work through what happened to me and I am still trying to do that through writing about it. A few years back I went on a trip. That trip taught me that life is about giving love and helping each other in this world. When I came back to Scotland I had great difficulty dealing with how we are so wrapped up in our own needs without thinking of others. I myself am no different. I came back to a house full of bills that had amassed, but nothing I had seemed so important anymore, life was no longer about what I had but who I was. Materialism is our biggest trait because we are all looking for something and most of us have no idea what that is. I am glad I found a peace within myself and a realisation that I am not a bad person and I have plenty to be grateful for. On my trip I lived with people who have nothing but the clothes on their back, but they were so happy to be alive and so full of life and love. I still live in this existence where sometimes I don’t feel part of anything and I live in the hope that we can get the help we desperately need.

I don’t know the answer and I try not to think that maybe there is no cure but what we must all try to do is make sure that nothing like this happens to any of the children that have been put in the trust of others in these homes now and I would do anything I was asked to do help with this.

I have turned my life around and life is good for me now. Yes I do get very lonely and of course I wish things could have been different but I am stronger now and I know right from wrong which is very important. I have learnt to face what life throws at me and as long as I can get by without hurting anyone then I know I will be fine. I have learnt to live with the loneliness and the fears and even though I cant get too close to people I am able to hold on to friendships albeit from a distance. I still cannot settle down in one place to long and i always live in the fear of losing everything I have but this is not as bad as it has been in the past.

I am now working for a leading national company and I am living in a lovely little village. I have no idea where I will be this time next year. I yearn to find a way to give all this love I have inside me to someone but relationships are still too difficult to get involved in. I know that I am different from everyone else and I also have to endure ridicule when people get to know me because I still cannot stop “living the lie”. All I can do is try my best to be the best person I can. I have a totally clean bill of health and I don’t drink or smoke and every single morning I wake up and in that split moment of sleepiness and awakeness I think I am still living rough on the streets of London and I think to myself, am I safe? Then I think to myself have I got my drugs for the day? Then I think to myself have I got drug dealers after me? Then I think to myself have I been attacked then I think to myself hold on a minute I am in a warm bed! Then I think to myself hold on a minute I am in a warm house, then I think to myself hold on a minute I am perfectly healthy. Then I think to myself hold on a minute I have a job, then I wake up and I have all these beautiful things that belong to me and I get out of my bed and I put my flashy suit on and a clean shirt and tie and I drive into work and someone always says to me. Hey Steve how come you are always so happy and I say. Sit down and I will tell you...