I was dragged across a carpark at age two and no one helped.

This is a convoluted story, so please bare with me as I try and work it all out. I’m going to sound a little dramatic, and maybe I even am being a little, but this has been on my mind for as long as I can remember. <br><br>Time for some context; this happened in the late ‘80s in the UK, I don’t know the exact date, but I believe I was two. My family and I were on a day out at some kind of historical site. We had been for the majority of the day, and had decided to head back to our car and leave. As we walked, I saw some kind of ice-cream van near the exit of the carpark. The way my memory works, it could’ve been an actual ice cream van, or it could’ve been some other kind of snack stand, I’m not one hundred percent sure. I was already a stubborn and spoilt kid at that age, so I refused to continue walking with my parents, having seen the ice cream van and wanted to go and get something. <br><br>My parents told me they didn’t have any money, I assume this was a tactic to make me walk, but I wouldn’t budge and eventually my dad went over and tried to guilt the ice-cream man (let’s just call it an ice-cream van for simplicity) into giving me a free ice cream. I’m not sure what was said, but my dad came over and told me the man would give me a free ice cream if I went into the van with him. Again, this was the late ‘80s, so I don’t know if this is just how times were, but ice-cream man kindly said he would give me a choice of any flavour I wanted for free, if I just went in the back with him. <br><br>I probably wouldn’t have gone, I was already starting to feel nervous, but the ice-cream man said I could go in with my mum if I wanted. She declined and my dad told her to just go with me. I think she was a bit confused and didn’t know what to say or do, so when my dad insisted she smiled weakly and agreed. He walked off to go and look in some nearby shops and told us to go and get the ice cream. I started walking towards the van, but when I looked back my dad and older brother were walking away from us in the direction of the shops. At this point my mum told me she was scared and that we should go catch up to my dad and brother. We turned and started walking in that direction, but my dad was too far away to see us and he didn’t turn back as we approached, he just kept walking further and further away from us. My mum suggested we go back to the van as the ice-cream man had offered us free ice creams. <br><br>We turned around and started to walk back towards the van and that was it, that’s my last memory of being with my mum. The next thing I remember is being alone in the back of the ice-cream van. I don’t know how long I was there for, I don’t know what happened to my mum, I have no idea how I ended up alone, I have nothing. It’s all just dark. My next memory is of being in this tiny room that looked like some kind of storage closet. I was sat on a small, wooden crate that had a dirty, old looking blanket on top of it. It was dark, except for a small window high up in the wall. There was nothing else in the room except for a bucket in the corner with what I assume was my vomit in it. I’m not sure how long I’d been there, days, weeks, months, maybe even a year, but I don’t have a clear memory of anything that happened to me while I was there. Except for the fact I was naked the entire time. I don’t know what happened to me, or even if anything did, I just have the feeling that something was wrong. <br><br>My next memory is of being sat in an armchair in a normal house. I don’t know how I got there. I was still alone, but I was sat in a really nice living room. There were toys all over the floor and a big TV in the corner. I was dressed in a pair of trousers and a nice t-shirt, but I didn’t recognise the clothes or where I was. The house was nice, it looked lived in and quite well kept, but there was no one around. I’m not even sure how I ended up leaving the house. I don’t know if someone came for me, if I just wandered off or what. But my next memory is of walking along a street. I had no shoes or top on and everything felt a bit of a blur. I don’t know how long I’d been walking for, but as I turned a corner I saw a police car parked up on the side of the road. I don’t know why, maybe it was just my preservative, but as soon as I saw it I ran as fast as I could towards it. <br><br>An officer was sat inside, eating something to eat. He looked up in shock as I approached the car, I was still a young kid, no more than three and I was running down the street with no shoes or shirt on. The police officer lent across and opened his car door, I don’t know why, I wasn’t trying to get in the car, I just continued trying to get to him. He grabbed me, holding me by my arms and asked me a series of questions; what was I doing, where was I going, where were my parents? I couldn’t answer him, all I could do was cry. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what was going on. Eventually he got out the car, picked me up and got back in. He called for back up on his radio and waited. After what felt like forever, a van turned up, which I later found out was the ‘paddy wagon’ used for arresting and carrying prisoners in. I was so confused, I didn’t know what was happening to me or why I was being put in the back of the van. I was still upset, everything was a blur and I was just so confused.<br><br>The next thing I knew I was sat in a bed back at my parent’s house. I don’t know what happened to me in between being in the police van and ending up back in my bed, but other than being a bit confused and upset, everything else seemed completely normal. I’m not sure how long it was before I asked where my mum was, but when I eventually did my parents just told me she had gone away for a while and wouldn’t be back. Nothing else. I wasn’t really old enough to comprehend the answers my parents were giving me and it wasn’t long after asking that they moved in their new partners. My dad got a new girlfriend and my mum a new ‘partner’ (I use the term loosely, she was homeless and my mum took her in, for ‘companionship’). I don’t know what happened to my mum, but I know my dad’s new girlfriend used toHit me. I have memories of thesemicro interactions she would have with me that just didn’t make sense. Later, when I was talking about them to my cousin, he repeated something that sounded like what she used to say to me, except this time he was calling it a ‘daddy joke’. I looked it up when I got home and was horrified, I had no idea what her intention was, but it didn’t feel right.<br><br>I begged my dad to leave her, but he wouldn’t. So when I was ten, I ran away from home. I didn’t know where I was going or what I would do when I got there, but I wasn’t staying. I spent almost a month living on the streets before anything happened. By this time I had already started identifying as a guy and exploring my gender, I was still very new to it all, but I knew I wanted to be male. One day I was sitting by some shops, there were a few buildings all together in a small complex and I had found a nice little out of the way corner where I could sit without being disturbed. I don’t know what time of day it was, but I remember being hungry. I don’t think I’d eaten properly in days. As I sat scrounging around for any scraps of food I could find a guy approached me. He offered me some food, told me to go and eat in the park over the road as he had a full bag and he didn’t want to eat in the car. I don’t know why, but I trusted him. I took the food and sat in the park. He sat down on the bench behind me. Eventually he asked me if I was ok, if there was anything he could do to help, if I needed anything. Was I hungry? Did I need a shower? All these kind of questions. I started talking to him, everything just came out in a rush, I hadn’t properly spoken to a person in weeks, so I told him pretty much everything that had happened from being a kid all the way up to me leaving home. He told me I could come and stay with him if I wanted. I told him I was hungry, so he took me to a diner to get something to eat. Over the next few weeks, I stayed with him, sometimes just me and him in his flat and sometimes with his friends. <br><br>They treated me well and looked after me, but I always felt a bit uneasy. It was as if something was off, but I couldn’t work out what it was. I didn’t feel threatened or unsafe, but something just made me feel like I needed to get out of