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In an articulate and heart rending introspection, PEADER ORDERLEY from Belfast, talks of the physical torment he suffered at the hands of his father for 17 years. Usually, he points out, there is a legacy passed between father and son, only he was 'handed the legacy of abuse'. Although his father was materially generous, Peader says that he would have given everything back in return for a little affection. The punches, which he expected and received every day, soon resulted in a psychosis which manifested itself as a recurrent dream. Peader found himself wishing his father would die in a violent death and would frequently plot his murder. Then his father began to drink, which only increased his aggression. Peader once saw him from the top of the stairs. 'He was on all fours in the hallway, looking up at me and barking like a dog, foam coming from his mouth.' To deal with these spiralling conditions, Peader learned to 'split' his mind from his body so that the abuse was being committed to a shell.
At the age of 17, he fled to Australia where, with space to consider his upbringing, he believed he might make sense of the past and his relationship with his father. 'But the more I tried to deal with my problems' he says, 'the more my problems attacked me'. He started drinking himself and would unleash his frustration as violence upon his lover. The circle of aggression was closing: he realised he was turning into his father. Therapy helped him to release his demons and he believed he might be able to do the same for his father but he never got the chance. In a bizarre fulfilment of his childhood wish, his father was murdered in an attack on a bookmakers in Belfast.
'That really made me unhappy' Peader concludes 'to think that he had died with this monster inside of him'.
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