Lining Up

by Kevin Bergin

This is a snapshot from my childhood. I am never sure of my age so I placed it at seven in the story but it's somewhere between five and nine.

I grew up in an idyllic place between the Sussex Downs and the Sea and for me it was hell and torment. The journey has taken me from severe sexual abuse to drug addiction, starting at thirteen and finishing at twenty four.

In London, I discovered computers and spent a few years designing Arcade games for which I wrote a series of books. Then I met a Melbourne lass and we came to Melbourne to live; my beautiful daughter was born shortly after and I started a computer software company which was very successful until I relapsed in 1994.

After another eleven years I asked for help. By then I was broken in spirit, mind and body but this time as I got well I looked at the underlying issues. I came out of denial and sought a therapist to help me unravel the abuse. I had no idea that would be such a journey.

Now I am whole, I know who I am and understand what happened to me. I have a beautiful Grandson who is 4 ¾ years old, and is being raised with care attention and love by his parents.

The trauma I experienced has not gone, but how I am with it has changed. The boy who was sexually abused is part of me again, vibrant and alive, no longer cowering in fear and together we are making a beautiful life.

We love writing, take photographs, designing software, singing and dancing like nobody is watching.

I love the creative process. Whenever I sit down to write there is that voice that tells me I have so many other things to do and then, "What's the point you're not good enough." Those messages from my family and my childhood environment have been carried in my body and repeated in my life until I turned around to face them and got the help I needed. So when I hear that voice now my inner child and I say thanks, then sit down and write. I am so amazed and enthralled at how much I love writing. Just as I am now. My editor asked me to write a blurb and instead I have written a story.

Thanks for reading. See you Soon.
Kevin

31 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 31, 2020

About the author

I wrote my first book in the early 80's, it was called Commodore 64 Games. It was published in 1984 by Duckworth's in London and was followed by 10 other books mostly to do with games creation and a couple of them were far more technical.

From 1979 to 1987 I was involved in the creation of many games and wrote the books mentioned here as well as writing for all the Computer periodicals in the UK and the USA. I also wrote for many daily papers (computer reviews) and had a column in two of them including The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald.

didn't consider myself a writer at all in this phase, it was more of a side issue. So when I came to live in Melbourne and started designing 'business' and commercial software I was surprised to discover how much I missed writing.

Since then I have started writing fictional books many times and never followed through. More recently I started a story and was supported by a friend who is an actor and writes screenplays, we helped each other. I completed a short story about six months ago but have not edited it or tried to get it published, but what I have done is taken the original idea which was a day in the life of a few different characters in the 60's in and around London and expanded that idea to be a day in the life of several characters told from three times. I love writing, I still work as a software designer and would love to write another game as I have some wonderful ideas.

I have lived in Hobsons Bay (Newport) on and off since 2001, love being near water and love the community. I was born in Sompting which is on the South Coast of England near Brighton, so the continuity for me is the community and the sea.