Today I remembered my friend Simon.

I want to talk about a kid who was brave, strong and bright. A kid who I loved.

My friend Simon killed himself because of the abuse he experienced as a kid.

We were both kids around the same age, and we were both being hurt at home and at school. We hung out a lot although we never really talked about what was happening to us. We didn't have the words then, and we didn't know it wasn't normal. Here I am in the 'uniform' of one of the institutions that was abusing us. It was called King's House School in Richmond, London:

In British society, being raped as a kid is pretty normal. Talking about it is not normal. If you talk about it, they come for you. The doctors; the teachers; the priests; the politicians. All the abusive men who are running the show. And everyone else who chose money and power instead of remembering what they do to kids in England.

They are scared too, you see, those who forgot: They're scared of remembering what happened to them. They prefer to just repeat the abuse. In so many ways.

And when say you remember, it feels to them like part of themselves is remembering. And that terrifies them. So they try and stamp on you. They try and push you away. Just as they push themselves away inside.

My session began today with meditation (40ug LSD) and an intention. My intention today was:

To face whatever needs to be processed today.

Then I started drawing my friend Simon.

Simon was being hurt too. He was hurt at our school and at home. Like me.

Then it got too much for him and he damaged his eye so badly that he died. He couldn't believe where he was; and what was happening to him. He didn't want to see it anymore. He didn't want to be alone. I knew that feeling too because it is how I felt as a kid. I felt like I had to kill part of myself just to carry on.

I think it really scared me when Simon killed himself. I was scared I would do it too if I couldn't forget. I had nightmares about it. Nightmares that I would remember what happened to me before society was ready to hear me. And that I would kill myself like Simon.

I think Simon couldn't split himself like the other kids at our school could. He tried to hang on to the parts of himself we let go. He tried to keep his kid-self attached to his adult-self. But British society doesn't let you do that. The powerful men can't allow that to happen or everyone would realise they are being ruled by trauma victims.

I knew, when Simon killed himself, that I had to let go of everything, to push it all down, to 'depress' it, until I was strong enough to face it. Simon showed me the unbearable pain of remembering. He showed me the importance of agreeing to be depressed in our society. It is one way to survive.

So I got 'depressed'. Like all the other grown-up kids.

But now I've stopped depressing myself. Now I remember myself. And I remember Simon.

The world didn't work for Simon in the end. It was too confusing. Because he didn't split himself like us. He didn't pretend that the monsters were our friends. He didn't pretend that the 'adults' knew what they were doing. He didn't pretend that the schools weren't horrors: designed to destroy children's natural instincts for collaboration and to breed competition and fear.

He saw that society was organised so that the traumatised men could soothe their fears by controlling us: But he had no one left to talk to about it.

Because by then we were all asleep.

When people don't fully split after trauma, the 'powerful' male authority figures in our culture call them schizophrenic.

But people like Simon are the ones who hold on when we let go. They don't split. They try desperately not to split like we did. They try to keep a coherent reality no matter how much that reality is denied.

I think Simon was a brave, beautiful kid. And now I see him. He was so strong.

And I'm glad I met him.