“Wounds are where the light comes into you.” ~ Romi
I grew up in a council house in the 1970s in a world where children were seen and not heard.
We were evicted in the morning and told to come back when the lights came on. On the surface it looks normal. But what was happening behind closed doors did not feel normal at all.
At that time, I did not have words, but I always felt different.
People thought I was shy. And I did. But it goes beyond that. Surrounding people feel overwhelmed as I am constantly stuck scanning for things I can not name. I did not feel safe, even though nothing was clear.
When I was six, my parents divorced.
My mother left and started a new life with my sister. I was in the back with my dad. I did not fully understand the picture at the time, just that things changed overnight.
Before she left, my father told me that if I went with him, he would kill himself.
I believed him.
As a kid, you didn’t ask those questions. You take them for granted. So I stayed with the weight that no child had to hold – believing that someone’s life depended on me.
Looking back, that’s when the fear stuck.
My father was devastated by the breakup. He drank heavily and did not work long hours. I did not understand his pain at the time – just how it turned out.
Anger.
I became a place where anger subsided.
Some days he would come and wait for me when I came home from school. If I was a few minutes late, I would be beaten. It is not a one-off. It has become a model. Something I learned to anticipate, even when I did not realize I had done something wrong.
You start living differently when you grow up like that.
Always alert. Always be careful. Always try to get it right.
And always feel like you did not.
My dad is not a bad person. I can see it now. But he could not become a father the way I needed to. No warmth, no guarantee, no sense of security.
I was not allowed to sit in the living room.
For days I stayed in my bedroom with nothing to do but look out the window and imagine a different life. I built the whole world in my head to escape where I was.
I have friends, but I am always outside. I can not go out as often as they do. Gradually I left.
At night, fear will come out in ways I do not understand. I wet the bed until I was about twelve. I was ashamed of not knowing why.
There is something in me already … wrong.
When I was eleven or twelve, I found my first escape.
Butane gas.
I used to steal water and electricity from local shops. The owner opened a small window at the back of the house and I went in to catch them. I would shoot it into my jumper and suck it up.
For the first time I was able to leave my head.
It did not stop there. Glue. Gasoline. Then marijuana and amphetamines at the age of fourteen.
It is not about climbing. Not true.
It was about not feeling what I was feeling.
That has been my life for the next twenty-five years.
Getting out of my head was not just what I did, it was what I needed. Substances became a daily habit and eventually they took over everything.
I lost a friend. I lost my direction. I lost the sense of who I was.
But strangely enough, I also discovered something I had never experienced before.
Own.
The people I work with have become my world. In that turmoil, I felt understood. There are no expectations. There is no pressure other than what I have.
At first I did not feel strange.
And that made it harder to leave.
Because how do you walk out of the same place you used to be?
Then, in the late 1980s, something changed again.
Ecstasy has arrived.
And with it came something I had never experienced before – something that felt like love, an open relationship. For the first time, I felt close to people. I feel part of something.
It dominates in other ways.
Clean. Strong. Addicted.
I do not want it to end.
But it’s not true – not the way I need it. It was a chemically generated version of something I had been searching for all my life.
And when you feel even artificial, it’s hard to go back to emptiness.
So I stayed.
For years.
It takes a long time before something starts to change
There is not a single time that changes everything. It’s slower than that. Soft. Almost unnoticed at first.
But somewhere along the way, I began to see that the life I was living was not the only option.
Maybe… maybe… something else.
And more importantly, I ignored it.
Life has been trying to show me a different way for a long time. But I was not ready to listen.
As soon as I do, things start to change.
I started to change.
Leaving that world is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Not because of the substance, but because I had to face everything I had spent years trying to avoid.
Fear. Loneliness. Feeling I have ‘Run out of gas’ emotionally.
And the fact that I was on the road made people who care about me
That’s something I have to sit with.
But I do not regret it as I used to.
I practice awareness.
Because something unexpected happened when I stopped running.
I began to understand myself.
I began to see that I was not broken.
I have adapted to an environment that does not feel safe.
Anxiety, withdrawal, the need to escape – it all makes sense when I look at it through that mirror.
My body tried to protect me all the time.
That realization changed everything.
Because when you stop seeing yourself as a problem, you can finally start working with yourself instead of fighting against yourself.
Now at fifty-six, my life looks like nothing in the past.
I live on the other side of the world. I have a family that I never believed I had. I created something meaningful from an experience that I once thought destroyed me.
But more importantly, I felt something I did not think was possible.
Feeling safe in myself.
That does not mean a perfect life. It is not.
There are still difficult days. There are still times when the old pattern tries to get in.
But now I understand where they come from.
And it changes the way I respond.
If there is one thing I have learned, it is this:
What often looks “broken” is adaptation.
What we judge ourselves for — the anxiety, the mechanisms of resistance, the way we try to escape — often begins as a way to survive.
And survival is not something to be ashamed of.
It’s something to understand.
My story is a success, but not because everything turned out perfectly.
It was a success because I can now see the path through.
And if you are in a place where it feels like there is no one, I want you to know this:
Yes.
Your life can improve as you begin to understand yourself and take small steps toward change.
And when you do, something starts to change.
You start moving.
You start to heal.
And eventually you start building a life that feels like yourself.
About Matt Little
Matt Little is the founder of Pesona Jiwa, a private health center in Bali that focuses on neurological and trauma rehabilitation. After overcoming decades of addiction and emotional struggles, he now helps others reconnect with feelings of security and self. Find out more at pesonajiwa.com/nervous-system-regulation/ Or find out more at pesonajiwa.com/
