John Fleming

“There’s this innate desire in me to find my truth. It’s a compulsion. If I achieve nothing more in this life – and I don’t say this flippantly – than to know my truth and who I am, then I have achieved all the dreams and aspirations I could have.” John Fleming is a counsellor, coach and psycho-social educator from West Cork. Having spent the last sixteen years of his life in and out of therapy, learning about, and challenging himself, and leaning into the uneasiness that is the complex make-up of his emotions, he describes his ongoing journey towards a place of greater self-love and authenticity. 

Content warning: this story contains discussion of trauma and abuse.

Following a childhood without positive male role models nearby – an absence which affected his ability to relate to other men in an open and positive way, John navigated adolescence and early adulthood by way of a cycle of problematic, abusive romantic relationships with men. Devoid of intimacy, they were marked by his recurrent mistreatment, be that by his own hand or by those of others, and a battered sense of self-worth; all bound up in a feeling of abandonment, the root of which he could never truly pinpoint. 

That was supposed to be the substance of our conversation when we first met, and of this piece: his entry into, and negotiation of that life, and that omnipresent but unexplained yearning. After speaking, we left each other that day without a sense of conclusion or resolution.

However, months later, John contacted me with news: the revelation that he had a twin brother who died when they were both in the womb. “[It] made sense,” he says. “That left me with this sense that something was missing. A sense of loss, and not being able to understand where it came from. Finding out really helped me to overcome that. It offered freedom from a trauma that had surrounded me.” 

Denied his identical twin, who should have been his playmate and his companion, this pre-birth trauma that could never be verbalised found expression in John’s relationships with men: “I had been looking for my twin and that companionship in my romantic relationships without knowing it. It’s interesting because I used to always get ‘friend-zoned’. I think what I was looking for was a best friend. I was looking for him.”

The deep feeling of knowing something was wrong, missing or ‘off’, but not knowing what that something was, quickly dissipated. A feeling of complete freedom soon followed, facilitated by a newfound opportunity to grieve, to heal, to adjust and “to relate to the world in an easier way.”

It was short lived. ”That sense that something wasn’t quite right came back. I trust myself enough to know when I’m ruminating and making something out of nothing, and when there is something there. And there was, but I couldn’t figure it out," he says. Three months later, following flashbacks and gaining access to repressed memories, John realised that he had been sexually abused by a visiting international student who had previously lodged in his home. He was eight years old. 

Devastated and disgusted by this second revelation, and stripped of his recently discovered sense of agency over his own self, he nonetheless persevered through the pain, reaching for some semblance of a silver lining. Remarkably, he found one: “I’m so empowered now by knowing. I can make sense of why I am the way I am; of the oddities of who I am; the things that always really deeply bothered me but I wasn’t able to deal with because I couldn’t put words on them. I was suppressing it so much that it went over my head.”

John is acutely aware that a lack of positive male role models to help inform his relationships, and his experience in the womb, went some way in allowing him to understand his approach to men. He is certain that these factors caused him to return time after time to harmful relations in which his need for, and rightful entitlement to respect and care went unmet. 

However, learning of his abuse explained so much more. “The fact that I was sexualised so early, before puberty, meant my relationship with sex, and my boundaries with sex, and my understanding of what sex is, and how it exists within me, around me and in relation to others, is really blurred. I grew up with the belief that you have sex with men, men do things to you and that’s okay because what they want goes.” 

That experience found expression in an adversity to men, and a fear and insecurity around those he does not know, particularly those who are older. “It took finding out about the abuse for me to put those words on it. I didn’t even know ten weeks ago that I was afraid of men. I just had this ‘ugh’ thing about them but that’s what it is, that’s the underlying emotion.” 

He continues: “My behaviour and the way I have conducted myself, what I have been involved in sexually, the amount of sexual partners I have had, and the lack of self-respect I’ve had for my body, and for myself comes down to what happened to me. Finding out about that has given me a lot more power to take care of myself and to know what I want.”

He says he treads very carefully when talking about “hedonistic, ‘acceptable’, potent sexuality [and] doing what you want to do and doing it safely; doing it in a way that is okay with you and the other person or other people.” However, based on his experience, he recognises how “deep seated trauma or shame or internalised homophobia can push you towards being involved in things or doing things that are actually really harmful to you.” One reason he chose to share his experience is because he thinks there is a need for greater discussion about this in the community. 

Stepping out into the world anew, reborn from the shocking truths of his childhood, part of his process of growth has been implosion and collapse: “I have had for too long a hard exterior that I desperately didn’t want to have. I was protecting myself. There have been too many moments where I’ve stood on that cliff edge and wanted to take my life. I’ve lay in bed for days, feeling so depressed that I just did not see a future for me in the world because I felt so unloved. I couldn’t see the love that I could have for myself.” 

Knowing his truth and learning his own story has allowed a chink of light through a once impenetrable wall, transforming his relationships and friendships today – not least the one with himself. 

For the last twenty years, John has flinched whenever he was touched. When we met most recently, he delivered a firm hug. He smiles: “It’s different now. I was in college two weeks ago and one of my good college buddies hugged me and I hugged her back. Afterwards, she told me, ‘you always let me hug you, but today was the first day that you hugged me.’” For the first time in his life, he can hear the positive things that others are saying about him, helping his self-esteem. 

In the nightmarish hardship of its various chapters, John’s story is unimaginably difficult to comprehend. But it is also a lesson in resilience and bravery: to dig deep and find the strength to face down difficulty and look inward, in search of the key to one’s authentic self. The final word rests with him: “Finding out about the abuse has given me that power to step out with my vulnerability, my beautiful vulnerability. That’s the message I want to get through. I feel like there’s a lot of people out there like that. I know that I’m not alone. That’s why I’m sharing my story. Not so it touches people in some kind of grandiose way, but so somebody might actually pick it up and think, ‘fuck, I need to talk to somebody,’ or ‘I need to do something because I’ve been ignoring this.’”

Gay Switchboard Ireland can be contacted here. Dublin Rape Crisis Centre can be contacted here. Imagery courtesy of Kate Bean.