My Tormented Mind

My Tormented Mind

Author: Rocky Troiani

Copyright © Rocky Troiani (2022)

The right of Rocky Troiani to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First Published in 2022

ISBN 978-1-915492-56-2 (Paperback)

978-1-915492-57-9 (E-Book)

Book cover design and Book layout by:

White Magic Studios

www.whitemagicstudios.co.uk

Published by:

Maple Publishers

1 Brunel Way,

Slough,

SL1 1FQ, UK

www.maplepublishers.com

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated by any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

The Baby Steps into Life 6

My Journey into Adulthood 11

Desperate Measures 18

My Trusting Heart 24

The Tears of a Heart Broken Mother 36

The Echoes of the Prison Walls 50

The Discovery of Me 61

Freedom to an Uncertain Path 71

I’m Just a Soul whose Intentions are Good 83

Discovering your Purpose in Life 99

You have my Heart in your Hands 110

Let me bring you Every Kind Smiles 121

Pride of Britain 130

Sons are the Anchors of a Mother’s Life 145

The Devil came for me Again 156

Laying your Demons to Rest 169

The Final Word 182

Acknowledgments 195

Preface (Introduction)

From the moment we are born into this life, the very moment we take our first breath and the very second the umbilical cord is cut, life, as we know it, is down to us. Our parents aid our path as guides to our journey in life. As the duty of any good parent they guide us with the hope we succeed. We may have brothers or sisters with us as we grow into this world and live to love one another and bond as a family. As children, our minds are computers taking in a wealth of information, good and bad, which moulds our character into the person we learn to become. During the seventies mental health was not in the forefront, hardly talked about or recognised. From children to adults we just got on with things, whatever the consequences which could lead to catastrophic results as you will read within this book. The results of this almost brought my world to an end.

Your childhood plays a massive part in your forthcoming years. It determines your outcome in many ways. Your childhood computes your path. This can stem from your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your cousins, your uncles, your aunts, your family and schooling. They are the teachers who feed your path in later life. Child mental health can sometimes go unseen from spending too much time alone subjected to raging temper tantrums, bullying from all angles from school to family members. For the children of today’s world, it’s worse than ever, to the point of suicides at a young age. This is the true story of a journey from my childhood right up to my later years. I cannot push forward enough that this story may just help another person that may have suffered child abuse. Mental health is a very large subject in today’s society, however, I’ve lived to tell the tale. I will share my experiences, share my tears and fears, share my smiles and laughter knowing deep down in my heart and soul, that despite being convinced I was a bad person from childhood, I managed to reinvent myself and re-programme my mind to who I really, deeply am, later in life. When we are born none of us are born horrible or nasty; it’s our surroundings and the people around us that dictate our character. We are the seed of life, the creation of a journey ahead, one that’s filled with experiences from every emotion from sadness to happiness, to live, love and laugh, and to fulfil a life with a purpose which can be destroyed by those we love, too. Many years ago, I wrote my then life story on paper whilst serving seven years for conspiracy to commit armed robbery on a drug dealing nightclub in Kent. For three years I wrote an autobiography. This autobiography was my therapy. It was my escape from my concrete room with my AM FM radio, my small table, my windows that only opened an inch or two to the stale smell of a concrete room which was mopped with a stale mop. The echoes of the convicts, the keys rattling, jingle, jingle, along with the slop out pot under the bed. I had time to think. So, it was pen to paper. For three years I put my feelings down on paper, how I felt inside as a person, as a friend, as a son, as a human. Was I this person I was made out to be? Was I the person that I was told I was? Prison gave me discovery.

The autobiography was never published, it wasn’t the right time. I hadn’t lived the life that was coming, it had only just started, the journey had just begun. We all will go through life and live experiences, good and bad. It moulds who we are. Life had certainly tested me to the limits of contemplating suicide. Years of torture of being told how horrible I was by a family member. In the end I was convinced I was that person. This short introduction is just an insight into my journey of life which is why I would hope this book gives an insight into ‘Hope’, and that there’s light at the end of that dark cold tunnel and gives emphasis into how important a child’s upbringing really is. I’m going to share with you my experiences of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Follow my journey within this book and the outcome which potentially has saved my life and the beautiful people that never left my side. Learning to talk and open up deep, dark emotions that need addressing is truly essential for healing the soul and moving on in life.

Finding a spiritual ground and using nature and faith as your guide whilst taking in the beauty of life which is there; we just have to stop, look and listen. I found counselling (Life coaching) a valuable true path which has helped me open my heart and learn to talk about my darkness and learn to live again. As I now reach the 52nd year of my life, I finally find myself and fill the blank pages of my journey that was destined to be my purpose. Now I live my life to bring hope and help others to smile in the darkest times of their lives. Never give up.

Chapter 1

The Baby Steps into Life

The baby steps of life, the beginning of everything in life. I was born in a very small, terraced house, a two-up two-down property, small and cramped, but home. My father worked as an iron caulker in Chatham Naval Dockyard. Generations of our family worked in the Naval Dockyard. My father’s surname was ‘Sands’ which I inherited.

Life during the 70s was fun. People cared about one another. Your neighbour would bring a dinner around for you and people smiled and people laughed. There was no internet, there was no Facebook, no Instagram, no pretending to be something you weren’t, no mobile phones; very rarely heard of suicide and very rarely heard of mental health issues. Life during the 70s was beautiful, lots of pubs through Chatham, full of happy people. Smoking was allowed in pubs, bat and ball in the garden, and you could go and play outside without the fear that we have today. I loved the 70s flared trousers, Marc Bolan platform shoes and real music. In my opinion, my generation had the best decades within the 50s, 60s and specially for me the 70s and 80s. Life was real. Growing up in the 70s was great. I would love to turn the clock back and live those decades again, the reason being because they were the most secure and easy times of my life, thanks to my lovely mother and father.

My father used to talk about the days of Sugarloaf Hill in Chatham which was a Romany gypsy site. Chatham had its fair share of Romany gipsies, good people, kind people and some very hard people, too. My mother was originally from Italy and came to England in 1952 and lived with her sister. I loved the Italian way. I loved the food, the strength of a family bond, the unity, and most of all, the love from family members.

I loved my nana. She was amazing. She used to sit with me when I needed to sing songs, and smiled at me and loved me. It was beautiful. My mother had two sisters and one brother. One sister and brother lived in Italy, which we visited during the 70s.

My mother had a daughter from a previous marriage, in which her husband was an aggressive alcoholic, and violent. She was brought up with this image and this way of life during my mother’s first marriage. My sister was almost ten years older than me, my sister was present when I was born in Luton Road, Chatham. As the years went on up to around seven years old life was so beautiful. I have images of memories that will never leave me. Specifically, as the years went on, unbeknown to me, my mental state of mind was developing and also, unbeknown to me, I was developing mental health issues that I never even knew of, at that time.

I was approximately seven or eight years old when I discovered I was hated by my sister. The resentment was extremely strong. The resentment was anger and jealousy. Every negative emotion that you could possibly think of, was present within my sister. During those years, specifically, around seven and eight years, something happened to me that has never left me and would stay with me throughout my adult years to the present. I will refer to the name of this person as ‘Miss Evil’. I was taken to a bedroom with her friend where the door was locked behind me. I could see that face that she used to have when she was going to bully and intimidate me. It gave me that worthless feeling. To tell me I was a horrible little boy and nasty little boy, spoilt little brat, intimidated more and more and more. But on this particular day whilst being locked in a bedroom with herself and her friend, the bedroom shared with two single beds, on either side of the room. ‘Miss Evil’ got in her bed and her friend got in the other and I was made to get in bed with her friend.

I can remember turning around not sure what was going on, not sure about what was about to happen, but smiling as I thought we were playing. This person and her friend were approximately ten years older than me which made them around eighteen years old, they were no children. The sneering face is still vivid in my thoughts, the sneering face of anger and intimidation and bullying, and telling me to take her friend’s clothes off. At this point I still thought we were playing. I was a child, I was a baby, I knew nothing of the wrongdoing of what was happening at this point. Sexual assault took place, of which the rest of the assault was a blur to me.

I can remember being told to take the girl’s bra off and looking around at this person with her aggressive face taunting me, go on, go on. Whilst this assault was taking place. my mother was banging on the bedroom door, shouting, Let me in, let me in. What’s going on what’s going on? Unbeknown to my mother a sexual assault was taking place. She knew something wasn’t right, she could not enter the bedroom because this family member had locked the door. The rest is history, and the rest of this history affected me for the rest of my life. Flashbacks to that day are still very apparent. Images of the aggressive face of ‘Miss Evil’ have never left me and to this day still live with me which changed the rest of my life and took away all the trust, all the belief, all the faith I had in any woman. How could someone that you love so much want to destroy you so badly?

That aggressive sneering face was a continuation of bullying, intimidation, fuelled with alcohol and drugs that this family member continuously gave me. I can recall many occasions where she would set out to turn the rest of the family against me - my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my mother and my father; her goal was to destroy me and destroy my soul, take my sanity, steal my trust, and kill my belief in anyone that I loved.

As a child your mind is a computer. The most intricate part of anything in this life is your mind. Once you have seen something, once something has happened to you that never leaves you, good or bad, and traumatic events will always stay with you. As a child, any child, whatever happens to you will reflect in your later years as a person, as a character, as a human being. Your childhood events will reflect in your later years. These events that took place in my childhood reflected in everything I did which made me aggressive at the age of seven and eight years old. Ten years old and onwards I used to lose my temper, punch doors, punch walls, kick things, smash things up. The aggression was immense.

This unnatural character of mine was developed as a result of being bullied, intimidated and sexually assaulted, instigated by a family member. How could this be done to me when all I wanted to do was love? As I reached my teens the aggression got worse. My mother and father were afraid of me, terrified of even saying the wrong thing, but deep down I was a caring soul, I just wanted to be loved. My sister left home at eighteen years old for some crazy reason. I actually missed her. She was my half-sister from my mother’s first marriage but she was my sister despite what she did to me. At my age of seven years my parents purchased a dog from our local pet shop. I can remember the day as if it was yesterday, when I chose this little black bundle of fluff. I named her Blackie. She became my soulmate and my world of unconditional love which I learned from an early age was beautiful, kind and unconditional. When I reached fourteen years I started boxing. I loved it and had a couple of fights. It taught me discipline and respect, but boxing was not destined for me; weightlifting was. I was inspired from a young age by the Rocky films. I love them. The Rocky films were so inspirational. I loved the way Rocky was portrayed, coming from the deep, within the dark streets of no hope, to becoming a champion; so inspirational.

I bought myself some weights from Argos, just some simple plastic weights and a barbell. I wanted to feel strong as a person. I wanted to feel Powerful. I wanted to feel in control of my life. I needed to be somebody. I wanted to be loved, even as a visual look as a bodybuilder, weightlifter, whatever you want to call it. After years of being made to feel worthless, small and insignificant, I needed to feel strong in heart and soul, and weight training was the start for me. But with weightlifting, knowledge began to grow and with that, the introduction of steroids.

Bearing in mind the aggression that was built in me, the steroids fuelled the fire within. The anger within me, within my heart and soul from childhood, was bad. For years I’ve been bullied by a family member. Intimidation made me feel worthless, small and unimportant. That was how I felt inside and this was about to come out in a bad way. This is where the story really begins.

Chapter 2

My Journey into Adulthood

My late teens were a great time in my life, especially when I passed my driving test at seventeen years. I was blessed with a father that bought me my first car. It was a Ford Escort Mark one in Sahara beige and I loved this car. It was only £250 but it meant the world to me for my first taste of freedom as a man, or nearly a man, and I loved it. When you’re young you feel indestructible. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can come near you, you fear nothing ahead of you and you think life is forever. You think life is eternal that it’s never going to end and that the people that you have around you and the ones that you love are also there eternally and there is no end to life. After my teenage years, I stormed into my twenties’, hormones raging, fuelled with steroids, training daily, pumping the blood with sports enhancing drugs; getting bigger and stronger, and life was exciting.

You don’t realise when you’re in your twenties’ that life could change any second. Like I said, it’s eternal, it’s forever, nothing is going to end, but one thing is sure for me - my past, my childhood was going to play a big part in the journey ahead in my life. Everything that was inside me, unbeknown to me at one point in my life, was going to come to a boiling point. And another thing that was for sure - at that particular moment in time nothing mattered, nothing at all. I used to love driving around, listening to my tape deck in my car, mainly the group White snake, loved the tune, ‘In the Still of the Night’ blaring out loud with my Harvard speakers placed neatly on my rear parcel shelf of the car.

Life could not have been better. My mother, my father, my family were all present and beautiful. For a little while I worked for a company called Bradley and Reeds who were running a fine limit sheet metal workshop in Chatham. My time there was limited due to a heated argument with a workmate. I was only seventeen. This was something my sister had said which fuelled this argument. The man I had an argument with was probably fifteen years older than me, a grown man. I was just a teenager. He grabbed me by the collar on my overalls and threatened me, so I grabbed him by the collar of his overalls and shoved him back whilst picking up a Stanley knife, and swiftly sweeping it across his chest, thankfully missing him as he stepped back.

This was my first encounter with a man and my first encounter of who I was and what I had become. I quickly realised there was something else inside me. Violence was no problem, where had that little innocent little boy gone, where had he gone and where did this animal come from? I realised there was no in-between with my temper, there was no discussion when that Instinct within me was born, the programming of my childhood from being bullied, intimidated, made to feel insignificant, made to feel small, that screwed up face I saw in that man was the face of this family member; the taunting, the aggression in the eyes, the anger was all very apparent within a split second. But this time I could hit out, I could deal with it, violence with violence. I was removed from the company. The police were not involved and my parents never found out what had become of me and where was it going to take me.

Girlfriends slowly came into my life. The interest in sex was strong. I had no interest in having children. I was far too young, too much to live for, too much to experience. To be held down by children - it wasn’t what I wanted but it happened to a girl I was seeing. She fell pregnant and before I knew it, I was a father. The relationship was destined to fail. We had nothing in common at all but it was my stupidity of not taking precautions that caused a pregnancy and I felt it was my duty that I should see things through, bearing in mind I was only twenty-one years old, still a child and she was just eighteen; we were kids.

She already had a child of her own which was from a previous relationship, that was already two years old, but I thought it was the right thing to do to stand by her. My mother and my father were looking at finding a flat, a ground floor flat as my dad’s health had deteriorated. We realised he had heart disease and lung problems. It probably was a result of working in Chatham Dockyard for almost fifty years. There was no protective clothing back then, there were no respirators, there was no Health and Safety. After fifty years of working in Chatham Dockyard his health took a decline so a ground floor flat was required. At this time, we were still living in the house I was born in, along Luton Road in Chatham. My mother and my father found a flat which they proceeded to move into and let myself and my then girlfriend and children live within the house and for me to take over the tenancy of the house I was born in.

I struggled with life’s commitment to be a family man but it was my duty and I could not walk away from my daughter that had been born. I found a job as a labourer on a building site and hated every second of it. I would argue regularly with other workers due to that feeling once again as if I was as a kid to be pushed around and intimidated; something I didn’t take too lightly.

Things were about to take a turn for the worst. My father one day was sitting in the flat they had just moved into with my mother, and my year-old daughter was on his knee. As I walked into the room I saw my father smiling happily, my mother laughing happily, my daughter just smiling, happy sitting on my father’s knee, but I had no interest in this. I had a car that needed fixing which was outside the flat and I needed a pipe for it, so I asked my father, Would you go to the shop for me, Dad, and pick up this pipe for the car so I can start driving again as I’ve got no car? His reply was, What for, bloody cars! He reluctantly placed my daughter down onto the floor to play with her toys, reluctantly stood up, reluctantly went to grab his coat and reluctantly walked outside with me where I could show him the part that I needed for the car.

I walked my father to the car and explained to him, Dad that’s the bit I need. Nev Andrews motor store is open. If you wouldn’t mind getting it for me that would be great, as he looked up at me in disgust and said to me, What do you think I am – batchy? These were the very last words he said to me as I saw him walking down the alley with his raincoat on; the last vision I had of my Father, the very last words that were said to me and the very last image I had of him walking down the alley to obtain