Stuart Howarth - I Just Wanted to Be Loved - A boy eager to please. The man who destroyed his childhood. The love that overcame it.

At the age of eighteen I met a girl called Angela, a gentle girl with lovely long, dark hair. I pushed all memories of my childhood to the back of my mind and did my best to form a good relationship with her. When she announced she was pregnant, I said straight away that I would marry her and I vowed that I would look after her and our little boy, Matthew, who was born in 1989.

I loved him to pieces, but inside I was full of self-hatred and drinking heavily every night to drown out all the childhood memories and flashbacks that ran through my head like an illegal porn film, frame by frame. I looked at my son's little body as he lay in the bath and I was terrified that someone would abuse him one day. Questions would haunt me until I wasn't even sure if it was all right for me to be in the bathroom with him. Was even that wrong? Dad used to abuse me in the bathroom sometimes. I hadn't had a role model for fatherhood that I wanted to copy but I didn't know how else to be.

The following year, my world fell apart when Shirley died. She was left unsupervised in a bath, had an epileptic fit and drowned. All the feelings I'd been trying to repress exploded out of me in a torrent. I felt angry with the staff at the home, with God, the universe and everyone who had ever crossed me.

All my coping mechanisms broke down and the childhood memories came flooding out like torrents of water raging through a ruptured dam. I got into fights, drank even more than before and started arguing fiercely with Angela as well. In the midst of all this she announced she was pregnant again, but I felt no joy at the news – only increased stress.

I was a workaholic, choosing jobs that took me away from home a lot, and I started to doubt our whole relationship. How could Angela possibly love me? I was a disgusting, bad person. The pressure built inside me until one day I came home and told her I didn't want to be married to her any more. She was desperately upset, in an advanced state of pregnancy, and she just couldn't understand what was going on and why I was cracking up. I'd told her bits and pieces about my childhood but nothing like the whole story.

Our daughter Rebecca was born while we were living apart, and six months later I reached rock bottom and tried to throw myself under a train. I spent three days in hospital, where a psychiatrist suggested that I should get counselling, but nothing was ever done about it.

With my next girlfriend Lorraine I was even more messed up. I tried to kill myself twice while I was with her, the first time by attaching a pipe to my car exhaust and trailing it back through a window as I sat in the garage, the second by slashing my wrists when we were up in Edinburgh for Hogmanay. She tried her best to get through to me, to reassure me that she loved me and wanted to help, but by this stage I had discovered cocaine, and it fuelled the rage I was feeling.

I left Lorraine just as I had left all the women I'd gone out with up to that point, because I was scared that if I didn't then she would leave me and I knew I couldn't bear that. I'd never told anyone about my dad and everything he had done to me. I was too ashamed, as if it was my fault in some way, and I just couldn't face all the trauma it would bring to the surface if I talked about it. Then in February 2000 I found a woman who seemed as though she would make all the difference: someone who I thought could fix me and make me able to live with myself again.

I met Tracey when I called in at the sunbed shop in Ashton-under-Lyne where she worked. I've always been insecure about my appearance, with my big, squashed nose and sticky-out ears, but I feel a bit better when I've got a tan, as if it will stop people noticing all the rest. Straight away I was attracted to this petite brunette with a perfect slim figure and lovely big eyes. She had a presence about her, very ladylike and with a quiet confidence. You can tell, looking at Tracey, that she's a good person.

I didn't think there was any chance that a woman like her would ever be interested in a scrote like me. I'd never had much confidence when it came to women, but I'd always had the ability to make people laugh so I started joking around with the girls in the salon. I'd developed a joker persona at school because I reasoned that if I could make the other kids laugh then there was less chance that they would want to hurt me. I had a red patch on my nose where it had been broken in a fight some years earlier and I asked Tracey how I could tan the rest of my face to match.

‘Why don't you put one of these over it?’ she suggested, and handed me a ‘winky’ – a little stick-on patch that's used to cover your eyes in the tanning booth.

Once I was inside, I called back, ‘My winky's not big enough. Have you got anything bigger?’ and all the girls cracked up laughing.

After that day, I couldn't get Tracey out of my mind. I started driving past the salon in the hope of catching a glimpse of her, or making extra appointments just to see her. My tan was coming along well because of it. The relationship I'd been in for the last few months had broken down irretrievably and I felt very lonely. Was there any chance that Tracey was free? Surely a gorgeous girl like her would have a boyfriend already?

One day at the salon, Tracey's friend Nicky mentioned that they were all going to a nightclub called Smokie's at the weekend and she hinted that it might be a good idea if I came along because, according to her, Tracey was quite keen on me. At first I thought they might be messing me around, but I decided to make sure I was there just in case.

It wasn't all plain sailing when I walked in. I spotted the girls as I made my way over to the crowded bar area, said ‘Hello, how are you?’ then we all sat down on some sofas. I sat by Tracey's friend first, scared of humiliating myself by making an obvious move too soon, so she got the impression it was her friend I liked. She then had a dance with a friend of mine, during which I was squirming with jealousy. Finally, Tracey came back and I said, ‘Are you talking to me now?’ and she grinned.

We went off to one side of the club to sit on our own and just talked for the rest of the evening. She told me she was in a relationship that wasn't working out. I lit a cigarette at one point and she grabbed it and stubbed it out, saying it was a filthy habit. I thought ‘Stroppy cow!’, but I liked it. She obviously had a bit of spirit to her. By the end of the evening we'd agreed to meet again somewhere not as noisy and I said I would phone her at the shop.

Thursday, 2 March 2000 was our first proper date. I was nervous as hell and it took me ages to get ready because I wanted to make the right impression. I kept trying on different shirts and walking backwards and forwards in front of the mirror, talking to myself. If Tracey could have seen me I'm sure she would have called me an ‘old tart’.

We drove over to Bradford and spent the day just walking round, holding hands and talking. She was obviously a very caring person so when she noticed the slash marks on my arms, I told her the truth – that I'd cut my arms with a razor while I was up in Edinburgh for Hogmanay when everything got too much for me. That led to me telling her about being abused as a child, and my sister Shirley dying, and all the bad stuff that had happened in my life. It just poured out. Tracey listened in a sympathetic, non-judgemental way, asking a few questions and saying all the right things, which is not easy because I can be very touchy if someone is insensitive or clumsy.

By the end of the day, I had made up my mind that Tracey was the woman I wanted to be with and, amazingly, it seemed as though she wanted to be with me as well. We just ‘clicked’ in a way that felt very natural and real.