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Coping With Relationships

April 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The truth of my life, up to this point, was that I didn’t cope with relationships at all. I was always isolated, unreachable, somewhat unapproachable and very, very lonely. I could trust no-one and that led to mistrust from me, and of me. I think people sensed I was holding something back and that left them at arms length from me. It sounds paranoid, and maybe it is, but I am sure that we can get a sense of someone if we interact with them closely enough. Maybe it was my subconscious sparing me endless mistakes – or not.

I wasn’t sure where I fit in, in the world around me. I wasn’t sure that I fit in at all, even in my own insular world. Even though I had a strong will to live it seemed that there was nothing to live for, yet I still wanted to live. The world around me would never understand me and that ruled out any relationships. I created the box around which I protected myself. In my inane attempt to keep myself safe I isolated myself from real life, and from the chance of being someone. My thought was that, without someone to love me, I was no-one and would never be anyone – that had been drilled in to me at childhood. Part of that isn’t a conscious decision to be excluded or isolated. Sometimes if felt like I would purposely sabotage relationships so that I didn’t have to stay in them, and that wasn’t just love interests either. Part of that also was the lack of emotional maturity in knowing how to cope with relationships of any kind. Part of that was probably fear of rejection – I’m speculating because I don’t really know.

Within areas of my life I had what I thought were close friends, but they mostly centered round a particular area; martial arts people in the martial arts world and work people in the work world and so on. There was no conformity that I could see. No-one traversed my different worlds with me and I couldn’t mix those worlds since they required different persona’s, and I didn’t know how to transition between those. Even with some quality friends I was painfully lonely, let alone emotionally confused; all the time knowing I had this big secret. I couldn’t cope with women on an emotional level. It felt like I was dealing with a being from another planet. I had no idea what I was supposed to feel, do or say, and sex with women just didn’t have the edge for me that I knew it had for other men. I know that sounds ‘out there’ but the reality of it keeps coming back to me, even now. Why didn’t I see it for what it was? It was like having a partitioned life. I had to be a different person in each part of it but I wasn’t aware of that partitioning until two or more parts of my life tried to coexist. There were clues all over the place that something was amiss, I just couldn’t (didn’t want to?) see them.

What little experience I had with relationships with men in recent years I had felt more fulfilled and more alive than I ever did with a woman. I still chose to ignore the reality of who I was, erring on the side of being a straight male with a penchant for sex with men – modern thinking – not. Instead of facing the idea, I dived headlong into the world of elicit sex with men, acting out anytime I could and pushing the boundaries of sexual contact to increasingly dangerous levels. Acting out was an escape from any relationships, be they physical, mental or whatever. Nothing existed when I acted out, but for the need to satiate that desire however lurid that was, and that desire wasn’t always about achieving an orgasm. All the time these episodes of acting out would add to my self hatred and isolation. I felt dirty and used, even though I was the initiator. It was getting to be a death spiral.

I had not entertained the thought that all of these relationship issues, that acting out, and other dysfunctional parts of my life were connected. I thought I was a bad person. I thought I was weak. I thought I was deranged at times, and I thought I was worthless for it all. I see the pattern now – but during those times I didn’t.

Working with my therapist we took the emphasis off sexual preference. I remember her saying ‘does it have to have a label’? Somehow that made it okay for me to explore my sexuality more because I wasn’t judging by others’ standards, I was thinking about what I wanted and what I felt and what was right for me. I have always known that I am attracted to men but had never given myself permission to just be ‘me’. I have always known that I felt more alive with men but didn’t want to make that connection with being ‘gay’. I literally didn’t want to be gay to start with, and that was a traumatic thought. My therapist helped me identify areas of my life that linked to my past, and worked with me to sort through them. It was no easy task for me, but she had unlinked the stigma of being gay. Her simple statement ‘does it have to have a label’ (talking about gay or straight relationships) was profound. I was attaching the stigma, not society. I was denying myself the right to explore my own happiness, and my own sexuality because of my perceptions. Wow – a door opened.

To go back a little further in my history to my dating habits will give a better idea of how things were. My first dating experience was at age thirteen and lasted the sum total of three days. After that I didn’t data again until I was eighteen, and that was a similar disaster. I didn’t know how to cope with relationships, how to cope with women, or even what I was supposed to do. The first time I had sex I remember thinking that I had more fun with my hand. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. It just didn’t do it for me. I put it down to lack of maturity and lack of knowledge – and being painfully shy didn’t help.

I met a woman at age twenty that was willing to deal with me and I married her soon after. She hadn’t shown me love but I had seen that she liked me, and that was all I had ever wanted. I think in my heart I knew that we were too young to be married so young, but she liked me; in fact, she loved me! We had two children together and I tried so hard to be the husband but I couldn’t do it. I was the only guy I knew that didn’t want to have sex. I didn’t have sex with men during that time, but I had fantasized about it. I had messed around with friends in school, but all school boys do that – don’t they? I also had vague notions of my father but I couldn’t put the thought together enough to understand what it was I was seeing. How sad it was that I hurt her so much by divorcing her. I put her through so much pain, and my children – the sadness attached to that is still raw. Another subject to beat myself up about

Back to coping with relationships, there was a lot of confusion in my mind about relationships in general. If it felt so unnatural why did I even bother? All I did was hurt them or hurt myself, or both. The confusion was so profound that I couldn’t see a way out. There were no other options right? Wrong! I was running down the wrong path. I didn’t want to see the truth.

Here’s the crux of it – I am gay. I said I didn’t want to be, maybe I didn’t, but I am. I knew that what little time I had in relationships with men gave me more satisfaction than with women, and not just the sexual part. Being gay was natural. I didn’t have to think how to react, it was instinct. Sex with men was natural, exhilerating and fulfilling – ah, that’s how sexual desire was meant to be – I get it now. I had put the stigma of my father sexually abusing me so far in the front of my mind that I refused to be gay, for all the wrong reasons. Now I know what it’s like to be loved unconditionally. Maybe society doesn’t understand but I am more at home in my sexuality, with men, than I ever was with women. This is instinct, I was born this way – I don’t have to fight it. That process closed a chapter of self hatred and opened a chapter of fulfillment, passion, love and a long term relationship. Yes, this one has lasted four years and counting, and I am deeply in love. No-one can take that away from me.

For those that are not gay but are suffering the journey from childhood sexual abuse – don’t lose hope. You have the right to love and be loved but it has to start with you, with your acceptance of yourself. You deserve the same happiness as everyone else but you have to know that you are deserving of that – I know you are! I’ve been there, and i can see the other side – it is so very much worth the fight! It’s a worthy goal to work towards, and you will succeed. No – it’s not easy – but the rewards are immeasurable, huge! Aren’t you worth that?

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Sexual Addiction

April 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

This is one of the hardest things for me to write about, let alone admit. The shame attached to this was so painful that I couldn’t even mention it to my therapist. Even now I struggle with the truth of it. ‘It’ being the situation as much as acting out.

It’s hard to grasp or understand why anyone would willingly put themselves in situations that were dangerous, physically or mentally. When you are in those situations it is even harder to grasp the lack of control; or for my part, the lack of caring. When I was in the frame of mind of ‘acting out’ all I cared about was acting out. Nothing else mattered and nothing else would satiate the need, even though I didn’t really understand what the need was. In a strange sort of way the process of acting out was like a friend, familiar and somewhat comforting and always there. Hours would pass and I would be unaware of the world around me. My focus was what I was doing and nothing else. The hunt for sex was all consuming; the act of having sex at night in a public place was exhilarating and a powerful aphrodisiac. Just the thought of it would get me extremely aroused. It would give me strength and satisfaction, but it was short lived and I know it was dangerous in many ways.

Revealing these things to my therapist would wrench at my heart. I knew what I was doing was wrong but the need was so deep that I would become another person. I became a part of a subculture of similar minded men. It wasn’t me, or that is what I felt because rational thought didn’t seem to occur when I was in that frame of mind. The more I ‘acted out’, the more disturbed I became. The more disturbed I became, the more I ‘acted out’, an endless loop it would appear. I wasn’t full of remorse afteward though. I would feel empty, tired and even used. Even though I had put myself in those situations, I still felt used.

I knew the only way I could keep myself safe was to preoccupy myself with something else. Something that would consume me, that would require a huge commitment from me, and that would tax me physically and mentally. Having trained for martial arts prior to moving to my current location I decided to commit myself back into that training. I knew the commitment level required – I knew the regimen I was getting into and I hoped above hope that training again would keep me safe. For five years I taught and trained every night, not getting home until 8:30 at the earliest. I would even teach and train on Saturday mornings to try to work off some energy. I became committed again to martial arts and gained another black belt in a different style.

For the most part that worked. I was too tired after teaching and training to even contemplate acting out – plus I hadn’t had dinner yet so I was hungry. The combination kept me at bay for the most part. The inclination was still there, but was under some basic control. The issues came about at weekends since there was no martial arts commitment. Saturday evenings were ‘play time’, and any hope of resisting the urge would disappear with the first thought of acting out. Those evenings would be the pinnacle of my week and I would plan where I was going to go and what I was going to get up to. Again, for the most part, it was at night. There was something about the night that made it ok, made it easier.

During the first few months of therapy it seemed to get worse, and I was becoming distraught as to why it wasn’t getting easier. The more I acted out the more chance there was of either getting caught, or catching an STD. I started to open up a little to my therapist about it. The only way I could communicate it to her was to write a letter, and give that to her after a therapy session. I couldn’t tell her to her face, and I coulnd’t be in the room when she read it. In some small way, this helped. At least I could tell her, one way or another.

So, the question is was it sexual addiction, or acting out? Or is one a component of the other? I don’t really know the answer. I’m still highly sexually active but now I have a partner, that need gets satiated. I still sometimes feel the urge to act out, but I don’t act on it. I sometimes visit the adult bookstores I used to go to, but now if the urge to share myself is there I take care of the need in a closed booth. Will the urge ever go away? I don’t really know, but I do know that I have more control over it now. The need to be someone else isn’t there anymore. I don’t have to hide from myself anymore, and that’s comfortable. I don’t teach martial arts anymore either. I’ve been in a commited relationship for four years and that is all I need. We are as in love (and as child like) with each other now, as we were at the beginning. We still hold hands and we make time to be ourselves. I’m still addicted to sex, but with one man only.

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Maintaining a Career

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I am still not sure how I managed to build a career up to the point of facing the past, and still go through what I have been going through, let alone living with the past.. My thought is that the ability to ‘act out’ (not just sexually) and to segregate areas of my personality (and my life) allowed me some leeway to maintaining some sort of sanity in my career. I was always paranoid about being fired; paranoid about my boss being able to control me and painfully aware of the tentative line one walks in the corporate world, but I also knew that I could shut off the parts of me that didn’t need to be there. Now I know that it is easier to integrate my real self into all areas of my life, but that wasn’t something I could have done when I started working in the US. I love my career and because of the intensity of working in IT in Silicon Valley, it became an escape.

When I left home at 16 years old I served twelve years in the military, and did reasonably well. I think that I subconsciously knew that letting someone else control my destiny was the only way I was going to get through those years. I could either get a structured life through the military, or (I perceived) I would end up on the wrong side of the law. I had always wanted to be in the military and was accepted at age sixteen, what the British called a boy entrant.

It must have been hard work for those around me to work with me – I was painfully shy and quite insecure. I marvel at the fact that they accepted me in the first place. It must have difficult for them to understand anything about me. I know, for my part, that it was hard becoming a part of a group of people, an entity such as the military is, and I know that I was not accepted for the most part of my career. The main point for me was someone else was calling the shots and, for some reason, I bound myself to it. It would have been so easy to have been the bad boy, even before the military, but I think I was too introspective for that. I was bullied all  through school and was known by the teachers to be an under achiever. If anyone tried to get close to me to find out why I didn’t apply myself I would shut down – shut them out. Did they try hard enough? I hold guilt thinking that if I had told just one of them the truth early on in my childhood, I could have been spared the hardships that I suffered at my parents hands. At least I aimed for the military and managed to get in.

After those twelve years, and a failed marriage, I came back into the civilian world, and what a culture shock that was. I didn’t have the discipline of the military life around me anymore, but I did maintain the self discipline, for the most part. I floundered badly for a couple of years. I couldn’t make it work and the more frustrated I got at my lack of progress, the more the door opened up to allow the memories through. I’m not saying there was a direct connection but it always seems to get worse when you are already struggling. My only method of survival was to split off into a different ‘personality’. I don’t mean being schizophrenic, I mean since I couldn’t fully integrate myself into real life I had personalities that dealt with the different areas – I called them personas in previous chapters.

How does this play into maintaining a career? Those personas allowed me to act out as someone else, and be a ‘professional’ and, in doing that I managed to build a healthy business. The more I realized I could work in that ‘box’ the more I worked at it, the more successful I seemed to be, but there was always something missing – the real me. I realized that in working so many hours I was denying myself my own life. Not in the fact of wasting time, but in pretending that everything was okay. The more that came to realization the more detached I felt, the less I wanted to be detached. It was leading to a decision – make or break per say – but I wasn’t sure which way that decision was going.

I took a leap of faith when I went into therapy. I was already successful in my career but I wanted that success, and I wanted integration of all the splintered personas – I wanted to be whole. Using the knowledge and ability to be successul I grew my career whilst going through therapy, applying all of the lessons and the truths to let go of the past, but also to reinforce and strengthen the present. During that process, and working with my therapist I began integrating myself back into one persona, with the ability to flow easily between situations. Liken it to this – someone at home can be on the phone with their boss – he/she would have no problem redirecting themselves to talk to their spouse and/or their child, they flow between employee, spouse and parent – that’s what I mean by integration. My personas were separate entities, and there was no flow. Does that make sense? That’s how I maintained a career while dealing with my tangled life.

I’m not saying it’s easy, and I’m not saying that this is true for everyone – it’s just a part of the journey for me, and it’s an understanding of just how far I have come.

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Managing Change

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have thought about how I have managed change as I have transitioned through the therapy. I am profoundly aware of the thought that I didn’t consciously change anything, and I am in awe of the fact that the changes have happened at all. I’m not sure that I have managed change to be honest; more that is was a part of the process for me, and that it happened naturally, organically. Without stating the obvious, I knew that something had to change for life to become bearable but I did not know what, how, when or why, or even if I could let change happen. Although it probably sounds a little naive to state that I have not managed change, it is my perception, which is not necessarily the reality. Change has occurred; I’m just not sure how to ‘see’ it. Maybe I am looking too hard for something that just ‘is’.

I have a vague idea of change, something that I have mulled over in my mind and I often get a little caught up in trying to define what caused the changes in me, and how they came about. There is the obvious answer, therapy, and that is the truth of it. I wrote a few notes when trying to rationalize my thoughts and the first question I came across in my mind was ‘Are the changes willing’? Well, I suppose they have to be or we wouldn’t let them happen, assuming we are caught in the cycle of pain. If we don’t have a notion of them do we even know that they are occurring? It sounds a little off thinking that we don’t know, but sometimes is just feels like that. Maybe that is why we get into the cycle of pain after all. We don’t see the changes in us that the subconscious memories are causing, yet we get bitter knowing that we hurt. Sometimes is might not be apparent in real terms that we understand the hurt, just that we live with it. When it has gone there is a profound sense of knowing it is different, knowing it is better and hoping that ‘better’ will last. There can be confusion though when the you feel a sense of loss from a change occurring. If it’s a positive change it can get a tad difficult to get past that negative sense.

Not knowing that the change was occurring but knowing that I felt better about something, for me, was quite confusing. This is change, but is the change voluntary; instinctual? It’s an unwritten notion that is the absolute truth for that moment; you don’t know it, you feel it, understand it and, more to the point, trust it. I’m not even sure if instinctual is the right word, the change just ‘is’. It’s a realization in a sense that it’s almost an out of body experience. The time has passed and you have changed. You have mastered that level of consciousness and it’s time to move on. Your attitude has changed, your foundation becomes stronger and you strive for the next goal on your path to recovery, on the path to becoming a whole person. It sounds repetitive but it’s quite profound.

The point at which we define the level of changes hinges around whether it’s a conscious change, or not. At the point where your subconscious has reached the level it needs to progress you to the next level, change is inevitable. You might fight it thinking it is wrong. Most people resist change, even though it can be positive. In fact, there is cycle of managing change that shows how easy it is to become embroiled in the wrong side of the emotional attachment to a situation, a state of being so to speak. The point there is that whilst we don’t understand why we have to move forward, we know we have to, if that makes sense. That, in itself, can be extremely scary and disconcerting. I’m sure this whole chapter is hugely confusing but I’m telling it like it is. The reality of it for me was that it happened – I tried not to dwell on it for fear of being confused.

The problem I hit is, do we know that this is an instinctual response, an emotional response, or even a learned behavior? It could feasibly be any of those and if you have any doubt about the change, perhaps it isn’t positive after all? Or maybe resistance to change is the block. It’s such an inexact science that it is so easily misunderstood, in my opinion. If we are in a state of mind that fears change we could unintentionally block our own progress. If your life cycle has involved change that has been negative you may push against it. If you are fighting for your life through crisis sometimes, sometimes sense does not prevail and you may push against something that is trying to help. It’s as clear as mud, as they say. Confused yet? Am I over analyzing this?

Managing change, for me, was knowing that the process I was going through would change me for the better. I knew I had to let go of the past, I knew I had to find a way to understand the unspoken things that lingered in my subconscious and I knew that the time was right. The rest was supposition.
I can see how easy it is to remain on the wrong side of change. A leap of faith is needed to make any forward motion. Strength of character is needed to maintain an even keel and sometimes victims don’t have that. I know I didn’t in the ‘real’ me, and I am not sure where the drive to move forward came from. My spirit was strong enough at that point to allow me to be open to change.

Now I view the changes with an open mind and an open heart. It’s a constant medley of working with the thoughts and feelings and making sure that I am not on the wrong side of the curve. I trust in my therapist, and my friends, to help guide me when I get a little lost, but I know deep inside me that the stage is set and the path is predominantly forward. Managing change is now a way of life and accepting change becomes easier each time.

Looking at that a little further down the road is it naïve of me to say that I hadn’t noticed the change. I have thought about that a fair amount and still come to the conclusion that I wasn’t really aware. I know that it happened mainly in that my responses to situations changed; my needs to fulfill my life changed; my instinct about how to go about managing change changed. See how confusing it gets? It’s another of those thoughts that don’t seem to make sense, yet they occur.

If I were to make a statement of fact based on logical thought, I knew I was changing. If I were to make an emotional statement I would say I didn’t change, the situation around me did. Maybe I still don’t accept change, it’s a scary thing after all. I think that I have moved to a point where I trust myself enough to not push back against it all the time, and knowing that you can effect that change and control it to some degree gives me an element of personal power that I have never had.

The changes have not brought about miracles that you can see. It has increased the quality of my life but I am still the same ‘me’ that I always was, just a happier, more content ‘me’. My fear that change would take ‘me’ away was irrational but very real, and I know now that can’t be done, that I am still in here even if it feels sometimes like I am still a child. Stripping away the fear and the auto responses is hard work. Trusting someone is hard work. Knowing that sometimes change is good is hard work. Knowing that sometimes change won’t work is easier to understand, harder to recover from and still hard work.

One last point is that I have learned not to expect miracles. It’s a odd way of thinking, believing that some extraordinary thing is going to happen to make my life perfect. It’s human to know that is not the case but a victim finds that hard to understand. I see it, I see the changes in me and I am grateful. I also see the anger that is still in me and I still see the kid that needs to grow up. That will never change but, you know what, I don’t have to manage change anymore. It just is.

I wonder how many times I’ve used the word change in this chapter? I noticed when reading back through it that I went back and forward on the thought process, but I decided to leave it as it is, since it shows the confusion that can come with therapy. Suffice it to say that you will notice the difference in your life, your reactions, your perceptions – things that you didn’t feel possible will occur naturally – responses to triggers can disappear, or can feel less of a threat. The point is it can be as simple as waking up one day and noticing that you view the world differently. Putting your finger on the exact point doesn’t seem to be necessary – it just is.

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My Mother

April 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

My mother knew of my fathers antics, yet she didn’t stop him. I didn’t definitively know until one day about twelve years ago, during an innocuous conversation – the last conversation we ever had, she stated ‘you’ll never forgive me for what your father did will you?’ In that moment I fully realized that she knew and I let go of her. You can’t imagine the intense pain I felt inside – the betrayal – she was my mother! She was supposed to protect me, and love me, nurture me and teach me. I was never close to her though. She had a temper from hell and would lash out at us, verbally and physically. The point at which she admitted that final betrayal I ceased to love her. There are rules to being a mother and she broke all of them, not just the one about protecting your kids.

It hurt me because it meant another betrayal. Even though my life during my childhood was hell she was still my mother and I had thought that she would protect me if she had known. Reality tells me that it was an illusion I had created to protect myself, I just didn’t want to accept that I really didn’t have loving parents. I wanted to believe that it wasn’t true, even though the reality was there in front of me. I was clinging to the idea that it was the way it should have been. All I ever wanted was to feel loved, to please them, to feel a part of a family, and I never got that.

Through the past few years she has tried to contact me again through email and I have ignored her. She has tried emotional blackmail, telling me she will get to my children and tell them how much of a bad person I am; or telling me that she doesn’t have long to live, a month maybe, and that her dying wish is that I speak to her; telling me that I am unworthy, just like my father and always have been; telling me that people like me don’t deserve to be alive, that I am the trash of the earth; telling me that the way I disregard people is so hurtful, that no-one deserves to be treated that way. So, you get the picture, she is a manipulative person that doesn’t do well when she doesn’t get her own way. The sad thing is that all the things she said still hurt me. I haven’t quite understood that one yet, but I am addressing that now with my therapist. The sad thing is that it is just as hard to deal with her with my therapist, as it was dealing with my father.

My mother had always used her ‘techniques’ to gain compliance all through my childhood, and not just with me and my sister. She could feign illness well enough to fool doctors; she could reproduce certificates of qualification enough to buy a hair dressing business; she convinced the social workers of the town we lived in that she was qualified to work as a psychologist in a childrens home for disturbed kids – with her background as a mother how the hell did she get that one? These were just a few of her guises.

She was always ill, even recently telling me she has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheel chair; she has heart disease and numerous heart attacks; all of which I am now convinced are a lie.  I don’t know why she does this to herself, and then expects us to believe her. Surely by now she can see that everyone else moved on; everyone else that might have tried that tack somewhere in their lives found it didn’t work and moved on. It almost seems like she wants to be unhappy and she wants everyone to pity her – she has been a victim all her life and can’t see past that.

Her levels of manipulation never cease to amaze me, but the sad point is she still got to me, even though I didn’t answer the emails. I still read them and they still hurt me. Like my father, all I wanted was to be loved. I put him to rest but I haven’t yet put her to rest. I am unsure as to why I can’t let go. I don’t feel sorry for her; I don’t feel for her except maybe the anger of not allowing me to be a child, a son, to be nurtured the way a mother should.

I remember near mother’s day one year she was having a conversation with my sister about the qualities of a mother. My sister was reading a list of qualities that made a mother so special to a child and they both laughed as she read. I wasn’t laughing, I was crying. I was about twelve or thirteen but still the words stung. The things my mother was supposed to be, she was not and the more my sister read, the more it hurt, the more I cried, the more they laughed at me. In that moment I had a vague understanding of what I had missed from my mother, let alone my father. Even at that tender age I was fully aware of the sense of loss of finding out that I didn’t really have a mother that loved me. It was surreal and it was incredibly painful. How that came to me I’m not sure. We all know what the qualities of a mother are supposed to be so it should have been apparent to me. The look in her eyes, mocking me, almost taunting me told me she didn’t know how to be a mother, but more to the point, that she didn’t want to be.

I have scattered memories of her antics. She liked to drink and was worse for it if she did. Her temper was incredibly fiery and we lived in fear of upsetting her or making her angry. We were stuck between her rage, her blackmail and lies, and his abuse. She could go from violent rage to tearful – we could not seem to find the middle ground. No matter what we said or did, we were wrong. I’ll say that again – no matter what we said or did, we were wrong! Oh how that has chased me throughout my life. I still see the deranged look in her eyes when she would let loose her temper on me. I was the youngest and it always seemed to be my fault.

When I was in the military she invited me and two friends home for the weekend. She NEVER invited my friends home. One was male, one was female. On that first evening, after she had been drinking, she accused me outright of being gay in front of my friends. She pounded me with her words, humiliating me in front of them, relentlessly stabbing at me until I burst into tears. A twenty something military man that had seen war and not broken, and she had me in tears, crying like a child, in front of my friends. Another instance when I was younger, she had reheated some food that shouldn’t have been reheated. Our bathroom in that house was downstairs – we only had one! I only made it to the door of her bedroom before I threw up. She came out of the room and stepped in the mess. She turned and hit me so hard that I went over the railing and landed at the bottom of the stairs. She left me there and went back to bed. A few months later she had a nervous breakdown and blamed me for it. She sent me to the shop to buy dinner – fish and chips – and buy the time I got home it was cold. It was winter – what did she expect? She threw the food at me and went into a tirade of insults and swearing. This is sample of some of the things I can remember. There is so much sadness to having to remember it because there was no ‘get out’ clause. We couldn’t go to either parent about the other because both were abusive, and still no-one outside of the home could see any of this – or could they. You see how life was?

We kids learned at an early age that we had to fend for ourselves. We cooked and cleaned for them; we made them breakfast and coffee at the weekends; we kept them in coffee in the evenings; we were seen and not heard, and we daren’t do or say anything out of line for fear of punishment. That was the way life was, period.

A few months ago I started to write an email to her that I knew I wouldn’t send, but I had to get the words out of my head. After her last attempt at emotional blackmail I’d had enough. Here is what I wrote:

“I read through your email the first time and I was incensed. Then I remembered that this was your way of controlling people so I read it again. I noticed that, having not known me for over twelve years, you were making assumptions based on your reactions and your life, not mine. I noticed in the email trail that you have sent over the last few years that you had tried emotional blackmail, amongst other methods, and now you are trying to use a subconscious threat. It was an odd revelation knowing that I could finally see some of the methods you used to manipulate people, methods that you used so well on me as a child. It was almost comforting to think that the reason I had to fight myself so much was that you had trained me so well in how to not be normal.

The bitterness and nastiness in your words should bite deep, but they don’t, not anymore. I will not allow you to have any power or control over me or my life anymore. The threat you made of finding out where I work doesn’t worry me in the least. I have nothing to hide. If your aim is to bring me down then maybe you are the one that should look at your words and remember who you are. What happens if you succeed in finding me? For me nothing, because you cannot bring me down, even with your lies. Who is then delusional?”

I stopped at that point, it was hurting too much. I had seen her for what she was, again, and I wanted to tell her. If I sent the email she would have won because she said all she wanted was to know that I was alive. I refused to give her that satisfaction. In a way she is still winning because she still effects me. My reactions are learned, and she was the teacher. I’m now learning how much negative effect she had on me and it’s alarming, and very sad. I am working diligently with my therapist to unravel the lies and deceit, and the control I give her still. It’s a hard process and it feels harder than dealing with my father, and that hurts too. How can this be worse? It’s an open chapter that is in progress – it will take time but I am winning. But it’s so sad to realize fully the extent of both of their actions. I can’t cry yet – I hope to one day.

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My Daughters

April 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have two daughters. One is in her mid twenties, the other late-teens. When they were kids, before the divorce, I doted on them; they were definitely daddy’s girls, the apple of my eye, the one sane thing in my life and I love them dearly. The eldest was six when I divorced their mother, the youngest three. Bear with me here; this has a bearing on who I was, who I am and how my past affected me on different levels and at many different times.

There was a lot of heart ache with me being in the military and seeing the kids after the divorce. I would drive up to five hours each way to pick them up when I had visitation rights at weekends. It was very hard to let them go at the end of the weekend. They would both be crying because they wanted to stay with me. I’m not in any way saying that my ex-wife was anything other a great mom, by the way. It broke my heart to see them so sad; to hear them beg to stay with me. Looking back, I was an emotional wreck. I know that now.

After months of agonizing over them, I made a decision that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I decided that they were better off without me. I decided that they were being hurt too much during this process and that the best thing was for them to forget me – I didn’t deserve them anyway – so I cut myself out of their lives, literally. At the time I really thought that was the right thing to do for them, and maybe even for me. I had no idea the impact would carry for so long, but then I don’t think that I was emotionally equipped to deal with that situation, my past having been what it was.

I have been chastised for that decision many times since then. I have even chastised myself about that decision since then. I had made the decision that once my eldest was eighteen I would contact them. I had lodged a letter with my lawyer in England explaining my decision. The letter was to be given the eldest after her eighteenth birthday. The law firm ‘lost track’ of the letter after my lawyer died. I was sad to hear that my lawyer had passed away, but was mortified to learn that they had no record of the letter. I had poured my heart out in that letter; it was all the things it needed to be and it was very real. I had it counter signed by people I trusted, and the law firm lost it – and they didn’t really give a damn. I was so angry, and lost – very lost. It seemed I failed at every turn of my life, and everything around me went wrong – my perception!

After thirteen years I was contacted by their grandmother and, after some emails to and fro, she told the kids about me and gave them my email address. They were both extremely excited to hear from me and I was completely in awe of being in contact with them. I know it must have been very hard for them to talk to someone they didn’t really know. I arranged a trip to see them, all the time being in constant contact by email. I learned a lot about them through email, and even chatted with the youngest on Instant Messenger off and on. I knew it would take time for them to get to know me, even after they met me but my memories were so strong, and the emotions were still there, and I really wanted to say I was sorry.

When the time came for the trip my spirits were high and I was a nervous wreck, of course. I was extremely excited – I had bought them presents – thought about what I was going to say – scared stupid. The initial meeting was terrible. I was emotionless. I couldn’t work out why I didn’t feel anything other than nervous. You can’t feign the bond between father and daughter, and I wasn’t feeling it, far from it. The youngest was more receptive that the oldest. I had thought that the bond I had with the oldest whilst married to her mother would be similar but it was like she didn’t know me, in fact she would not come near me. The youngest tried hard to get to know me, and we bonded a little. I felt strained and unsure, but I knew it would take time. I couldn’t work out why the eldest was so scared of me, which worried me. The fear in her eyes when I left her was piercing, and the pain I felt, the guilt I felt was over powering, but I didn’t know how to deal with it.

When I returned to my hotel room at the end of the weekend I tried to reflect on those days with them, and all I could think of was the pain in my eldests eyes, and how she was so scared of me. I cried for three hours. I hadn’t cried in a long time but I cried – I couldn’t stop it – I couldn’t understand it. I say I don’t know why I was crying because I don’t know what started the tears, but after all that had happened, specifically that weekend, I felt utterly alone and very aware that my decisions had shaped the events that had played out. I didn’t put any blame on my upbringing mainly because I couldn’t see past where I was at that point. I have never felt such sadness in my life, and I hope never to feel it again. It was a culmination of realization if you will. I have yet to see them again. To this day I have yet to cry again – and that is sad too. I guess I fear if I see them again that it will play out the same way, and that scares me. I can’t deal with that again.

Since that trip over three years ago I had not heard from my oldest at all. I have never pressured her, even though it hurt me very deeply that she was ignoring my emails. Even now I don’t know what I did wrong, other than the obvious of not being there when she grew up. The youngest kept in touch. Around the time I started this process of healing I wasn’t as communicative as I should have been. She got angry with me. I tried to rationalize it with her without telling her what I was going through but she didn’t understand. When I told her I was gay, she got angry with me again, assuming that I wanted her to tell her mother and the rest of her family that I was gay. I haven’t heard from her since. So now I have two beautiful daughters whom it feels like I have driven away again.

Four years down the road and they are both talking to me now. The youngest forgave me and the eldest started talking to me again. She said she had her own demons and confusion to deal with, and that it had just been a case of timing. It’s baby steps now – I feel like I’m walking on egg shells, but at least I have them both in contact again. Later this year (2009) we are going to England. My partner wants to see where I grew up, and meet my half sister, but also wants to meet my daughters. I haven’t seen them since and I am scared, but it’s time. I have been out of the woods for quite a while now – I have been with my partner for four years (that tells you how long I have been writing this!) I’m not sure how I feel, yet.

What is the point of this chapter? The point is that my ability to cope with emotional attachment was so severely broken that I couldn’t even maintain a bond with my own children, then or now. The point is that no matter how hard you fight, or how hard you try, sometimes the goal will still seem too far away, and sometimes things will still go wrong. The point is that facing the past and its horrors doesn’t mean that the future becomes magically, immediately better. There are going to be remnants of the past that affect you. The point is that you, us, we have recognized that is wasn’t our fault, and that it can be fixed, just not immediately. We are a work in progress and it will take work, hard work.

Where I go from here with my children is still in the wind. I haven’t worked out how to get through this yet. I haven’t worked out how to deal with it properly yet. I am still realizing a lot about myself, let alone my children. I am still working through past issues and dealing with current ones. It is very sad that the effect on my children is so dramatic, not to mention how my ex-wife must have felt when I divorced her out of the blue; or how she felt if my youngest daughter told her I am gay. These are huge things to put on a child, on children and, yes, it was my fault. There are mental blocks that I still have but, you know, even adults that have had perfect childhoods can make monumental mistakes. We are all fallible. All I can do is look at it from a different angle and try. Sometimes I don’t want to try; sometimes I am all ‘tried’ out; sometimes the enormity of the past hits me square in the face and the adversity of it all drags me down. Through facing this whole thing head on I have opened a part of me that was closed. I have allowed myself to be loved, and learned to love back and in doing that I have opened a new door for dealing with my daughters. I know it’s going to be hard but they are worth it; I am worth it. To find out that you have real emotions is raw, since it proves that you were pretending for a long time, or were you? All I know is that I am worth loving, and I’m going to try – for all I am worth, I am going to try.

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Messages Boards

April 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

There was a time when I wanted to know if I was the only one feeling the way I did. I needed some sort of consolation that what I was going through wasn’t just me, but I had the strange feeling that no-one else would understand. I find it strange now to think that I would believe I was the only one, but then maybe that is a part of understanding where I was at that point. I needed to know that I wasn’t the only one out there. I needed to find some congruity in things that were happening to me, and to the thoughts that I was having. I needed to belong somewhere in a world that I thought had rejected me. I had to have hope and I thought survivor specific message boards were part of that hope.

I joined a message board for survivors. It wasn’t gender specific but it was a message board that you had to go through quite a thorough process of registration. This was the first one of two. I would read through the post of others, trying to find similarities, even with female survivors, and I did. For a short period of time I felt accepted, but was acutely aware that the ratio of men to woman was around fifty to one. That being said, I would encounter the male point of view now and then. I soldiered on in the hope of finding an outlet.

But, as I was used to, I was totally misunderstood, or so I thought. I tried to get across the reality of my situation without offending others but I seemed to always upset someone or other. I was told that I couldn’t mention how bad I felt because it might upset others and, if I did, I was chastised for being selfish and told I would be banned if I continued. I was confused – weren’t these message boards designed to help? Weren’t we supposed to be able to say what we feel and get some perspective? Apparently not!

I was lost. I thought it was about being free to write about me and my journey; to help me, and to read others stories and sympathize; and maybe even understand myself more through them. I tried hard to listen more than post but I had a need and I wanted to let go of what was inside me. I wrote some truths, at the time, about the will to live. I never mentioned suicide but I intimated that life wasn’t worth living in the hell that I was in then. Apparently I wasn’t as safe as I thought I was.

Someone from the message board pulled some details about me and contacted my therapist. That was the ultimate betrayal for me, the ultimate deed of mistrust. How could they not know how that would affect me? I was overwhelmed, distraught and felt like I had lost the last hope to healing and moving on. I can’t tell you how hard that hit me. It seemed that time and time again I was being betrayed and abused, that no-one was listening to me. I didn’t want to die but they were not hearing me. Maybe too many people cry wolf and that puts others on edge. I’m not sure of the rationale. Even though I knew what I had written and I knew that it wasn’t a suicide trip, I still felt guilty and ashamed. Why did everything come with conditions? You can talk, but not about how you feel! What? So this is a message board for those that cry wolf and want to be victims? Where’s the ‘help’ in that! (Remember this is my perception. I am not saying I am right.)

I withdrew from the list and I withdrew from myself for a while. I was alone again and I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was relying heavily on my weekly sessions with my therapist, but I still knew I wanted to find others like me. My therapist wanted more sessions but I resisted. I wasn’t sure if I could take more than once a week, let alone afford the sessions. Why is life so damn complicated?

Believe it or not, I tried another message board. For want of not creating issues for the users, moderators and owners of that board, I will not mention its name. This one seemed to be specifically geared towards male victims. I would read other posts and listen to what they had to say. I would see similarities with my situation and started to think that this might actually work. I paid a membership fee and moved to the inner boards. This time I posted messages, small, unassuming messages just to test the water. That seemed to work. I answered some posts with my thoughts and I was being accepted. I relaxed a little more.

That part of that board was good for me. Then I had a really bad day and had to post my thoughts. I wrote graphically and honestly thinking I was in a safe place, and was immediately chastised for not considering others feelings AGAIN. What? I was back on that roller coaster, not understanding why I wasn’t allowed to express myself. Others had and weren’t chastised. Why was I being singled out?

I was told that I was too graphic and that I wasn’t considering that I could trigger others with my words, even though I wrote *possible triggers* in the subject line just like I was told to. I started to not make sense again. They moved my posts off the board and moved me to a ‘secure’ area. On reading posts in that area I saw it was a ‘safe place’ for ‘predators’ to write about their fight to not molest young children, or some of them writing that they had succumbed to the compulsion and were confessing anonymously. I was dumbstruck again. These people had put me in the same ‘room’ as child molesters without considering that it might trigger me? – what? All that was after telling me that I might trigger them? I was struck with duality and the ultimate irony. Why was it that I couldn’t post what I felt, but child molesters could. Because I was too graphic? You’re kidding me! I was singled out again and I withdrew again. I was used to this now. The lesson was that I was not to receive help from other victims – it wasn’t allowed. The rules were against me – no one cared. Eyes down, head down, here we go again. I was losing my fight even though I was fighting hard.

I sent an email to the webmaster of that message board. Here is that email in all its entirety, unedited.

This is going to be an emotionally charged email and may trigger you. You gave me this address a few nights ago … you virtually demanded I email you or IM you, I did not. No-one has the right to demand I do anything. That is by the by … I am asking for your help now.

I was in a strange place the night I wrote the thread “the eyes of a child” that got you so fired up. I live in a perpetual world of memories, triggers and lies and I made the decision to give up fighting. That is my right and I still stand by it. I cannot endure living in a world where there is nothing real for me anymore. I am done, worn out, burnt out, tired and lonely.

What I don’t understand is that, for the second time, a post of mine was removed from the forum. In an inane attempt to try to convince myself that rationalizing how I feel with my words would change that decision I told that I had entered into in that post, I started writing. Writing is something I am good at … it sometimes let’s the real me out and I can take control of my life again. I thought this forum was about “us”, the survivors, our need to speak and our need to be heard by those that know what we went through but I don’t see that now. I am censured and you know what, that just reminds me that no matter what I do or say, my situation will never change. I was beaten down physically as a child, now it is in other methods as an adult. If I can’t express myself in the one place that was created to help people like me then I might as well give up. Do you think it was easy to trust my situation to “men” in the first place?

I can’t help the way that I feel; even if I know it isn’t right. I can’t change what happened to me … it has to come out and I am sorry if the fact that I don’t care anymore has irked you. Maybe you endured the same or, god forbid, worse than me, but you are not me and that hasn’t been taken into consideration.

I tried to private message the guy “XXX” twice to ask why he didn’t even let me know he was removing my post, but he has ignored my messages. I am never rude, I don’t post derogatory comments in the forums and I don’t air my angst anywhere in the public forums, but still I am censured and then summarily ignored. What little faith I had in sharing with men the rape and torture that I had to endure as a child has slowly died in the realization that there is no place for me;there is no place that can deal with me; there is no place that wants to deal with me. The feelings of sadness and failure are so intense that it feels like it is burning me, and I want to know what did I do that was so bad that your people denied me the basic right, freedom of speech? I have read other posts on the forum that contain the same tone as me yet I am chastised for mine?

My father told me that if I let him rape me he would love me. He dangled bait to a child, a kid that had no idea what it was like to be loved. A child too young to understand or perceive the lie and deceit he weaved … time and time again he would promise and I would say yes and I hated all men for it. After 41 years of life, 41 years of trying to rationalize my past I began looking for a way to lay it all to rest. Part of that was trusting in men again. I tried trusting a male counselor a few months ago and he ended up having sex with me. Do you see a pattern? I tried to let it out in a survivor forum about people like me, the ideal place for me to let go … and I am denied.

There is no place for me because I don’t know how to “be”. You have been there … why don’t you and the others realize that I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just want to be able to speak. It was the one thing that would have helped me when I wanted to live.

I guess my question is “what point is there having a forum like this if we have no way to let out the real feelings?”. There are even threats in the suicide thread for gods sake. It doesn’t make sense.

I don’t want to hurt anyone by this, I just want to understand why everyone is against me. It was the same when I was a child, I didn’t do anything wrong but everyone hated me anyway.

I’m sorry this email is so intense. I daren’t post in the forums anymore for fear of being rejected again but I want to be heard, just once, please?

One of the major horrors that sticks in my mind, even now, is that I was placed in a forum for child molesters. I cannot express just how incredibly horrified that made me feel. I was being classified as ‘one of them’. I was being ‘grouped’ with the very thing that was still trying to destroy me. To this day I do not see the rationale, nor do I care to understand the thought process. It was blatantly wrong and should never have happened. One of the issues I believe is that on a paid message board, the moderation should be carried out by trained staff, and not other victims. It’s gratifying that at least there is an attempt to help others, but surely the situation(s) dealt with on those boards are too volatile for no professional help? That’s just my thought.

It was getting to be a habit that I was either misjudged or was doing something wrong. I came to the conclusion that it was a sick mix of both, and that the only way I was going to face this was by myself. I had the vague notion that others wanted to dwell in their sadness and the pain of not healing, and that either they weren’t ready to move forward, didn’t know how, or didn’t want to – they just wanted to be victims. It wasn’t for me to judge but I felt that they were holding themselves back.

With that thought I knew that I couldn’t rely on sources such as those, period. Perhaps they work for some people, but not for me. At least I was trying different sources but they all led me to the same place. I had to face this head on with someone that wasn’t going to tell me how to be. I left the message boards at that and moved forward therapy. Had I not had the spirit to survive, these experiences alone could have put me over the edge.

I’m not blaming them for my woes, nor am I saying I was right. I’m just conveying my experiences and my perception to you. I think in both cases it could have been handled a lot better but, as I have been made painfully aware – you can’t change the past. Once you learn that (odd as it sounds), moving forward becomes easier!

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Writing in the Moment

April 23, 2009 By

“No-one said it should make sense” – These were all written during the time I was dealing with my past. They are in time order but they are spread out over a period of three years. I’m not going to edit them since the were written true to a point so there may well be repetition and conflicts. They are however, very real.

In the process of committing this journey to paper I have hit moments of realization; moments of a rationale of thought that have taken me through one more door towards a greater understanding of what ‘is’, for me. It strikes me more and more that I don’t know what the reality of emotion and expression really are, other than the predefined methods and finely balanced thoughts that I staged along the way to create my world. Sometimes I don’t understand the scope of an emotion; a reaction to an event that I considered inconsequential; a feeling that is almost instinctual yet I don’t know what it is or where it came from. It’s a learning curve and I am still heavily on that curve. As I move ahead I have found that I am beginning to understanding what I feel, where it came from and what it means. I have also noticed that the gravity of the emotion is greater, and my reaction to it can sometimes be more than I expected. I suppose that these feelings are raw in that I don’t try to suppress them anymore. It reinforces the notion that it’s hard to be human.

I had stated in the first chapter that I would perhaps win a battle or two whilst in the process of writing and I think I am learning more about myself by forcing myself to analyze what I write and why I write. In reasoning on paper I have the ability to change what I write. It’s almost like I can change what I feel in the same way or at the same times as I write. It’s also a means to understanding how I feel since I can better visualize my situation through words.

Determining the average

As I gain understand of my situation I wonder just how the ‘average’ is created. Who decides what is normal or average, and how do they have the power to impose that on us? Sometimes in the thought of it I get angry that others impose their principles and beliefs on us all. It’s a form of control and it is control that I don’t like. When you expand the thought, law, and normality even, are rules imposed from a group of people that think they know what is right, or what is normal. In defining that, what do they use to base their reasoning on? How do they define the average; what is right for one may not be right for another. What makes them think they are right? Within certain cultures they use religion to dictate what a person can or can’t do and they determine the ‘average’ from their imposed rules. It all seems to be varying different ways to make you do something that they want you to. Sometimes it is downright brainwashing. How can you expect to develop who you are if people are always imposing their rules on you? Granted there has to be an element of control, the innocence of youth can cause some issues for instance, and there are those that take advantage of peoples weaknesses. Developing who you are in association with boundaries around you is made infinitely more difficult if the rules are already ‘out there’. If you don’t have a concept of why the rules were imposed, following them breeds resentment, for me at least. I know we can’t operate without rules, I see that, but why do we give so much power to someone else to create our rules for us, and who is to say they are right? Yeah – it pisses me off!

Back to the ‘average’, there are so many corners of thought that it could become a topic itself. It plays a part in the way I think because I believe that, without the nurturing upbringing by loving parents ,which teaches us the basics of morale principles for instance, we are left to create and design our own standards. It made me look at those that think they can control our lives using the average or the norm and wonder what caused them to think the way they do. Do they seriously believe they are working for the greater good? Maybe some of it is necessary, but definitely some of it is not. It is always open for interpretation and is most definitely often abuse of authority. As I stated above, life without rules just would not work. It’s one of those catch 22 topics I think. You could think yourself into a corner with it, as I think I just did!

An Interesting Conclusion

I’ve been trying to work out some of the changes that are going on in me. My attitude evolves so fast that sometimes I feel like my intellect is ahead of my reason. I always used logic to work out the majority of issues, even emotional ones, and now I’m not sure what I use, but it works. I came to a conclusion recently that astounded me in the thought of it, but the more I think of it the more I believe it is true. Ridiculous as it may sound, I think I am finally growing up. It took a long time to realize aspects of what I was going through and what I was thinking. When the thought occurred to me it was an incredible feeling, much like winning a huge battle, and the relief was almost overwhelming. Remember those ‘aha’ moments I spoke about?

Growing up has so many meanings but the initial thought was literally just that. Maybe the child that I am is being allowed to grow, finally – or is that mature? All the things that I should have learned whilst growing up are being learned now. I’m not talking about physical lessons, more responses from the inside, instinct if you like, that is normally nurtured and grown as you pass to adulthood. It feels like sitting back into an arm chair and looking around you. Others are doing what they do and that is the way I used to learn, by watching others, emulating others. I don’t have to do that now, I have ‘me’. I feel safe in the thought of ‘me’ and feel safe enough to allow natural responses to things around me. I trust myself, finally.

There is some tempering of emotions and reactions because they are almost new to me but I have loving support around me, and that accounts for so much. I feel alive, more alive than I have ever felt, almost exhilarated. I know there is so much more to learn and the more I learn, the more I want to know. If I am not sure about a reaction, I ask, even if I have gone off at someone. I ask myself why it happened and, if I have made a mistake, I make sure to right it in my mind, as well as with the other person.

There is a thread that my therapist seeded in my mind that holds so true that knowing it is enough to empower me. She asked me once, about my boss, ‘why do you give him that power over you’? He had a habit of making me feel very small. The first part of ‘knowing’ that question was understanding that she was right, even if I could do nothing about it. That was an epiphany! That stood for a while until I had the strength to hold myself in check in meetings with him. I refused to give him that power over me. If that point came in a meeting I would sidestep and find a way to leave, only to come back stronger the next day. After a few months I learned to hold my self esteem and confidence in his presence. Even if I was wrong I could be wrong gracefully. If I didn’t like what he was saying I would ask him to explain why it had to be that way or, if he was in a bad mood I would let him be. Soon after, he was fired.

The child is learning and is enjoying the process, as well as thriving from it. The life lessons mean so much more now. I am growing up.

A Thought on a Sunday

Sometimes I sit in the moment, in the thought of whatever it is that has my attention and wonder in awe of where I came from. It seems a lifetime ago that this started, even though I know I am still going through it as I type this. I am finding out so much about myself that I really didn’t know, and I am growing at such a rate that sometimes it seems too much. Sometimes I want to sit down and let it ride. Sometimes I want that moment to last forever because the freedom that I feel in that moment is so new, so real and so wonderful that I don’t want to lose it, I don’t want it to end.

The child that I am is growing up. The child is being allowed to be, to exist, to play, to learn and to understand that to make mistakes is not the end of the world. I have tolerance and love all around me and I feel safe in who I am, where I am and where I am headed.

I wonder why it took forty years to move to this point. I wonder why I had to suffer so much confusion through my life. Was it to get to where am I now or, the reality of it, I wasn’t ready to move on, and I wasn’t ready to face the truth of it all. Maybe I couldn’t have coped with the truth before now. It’s conjecture and not worth the thought right now.
When I think about my past I have realized that I don’t view it as a total loss anymore. It wasn’t good. It was a nightmare but when I left home at age sixteen I took on a new growth, a new learning curve, all leading me to where I am now. I am grateful to have done what I have done, been where I have been and learnt what I have learnt because it all led me to here and now. It’s so simple to see things in a negative light and to use that thought to turn ourselves against ourselves, and that is not fair on us. We don’t know any different. We are victims. Therein lies the truth, never so strong, never so profound.

Tonight my partner is out at a men’s group (church group). I am at home alone. I could have called some friends and gone out for dinner but I wanted to take some time to be alone. I wrote some music and it was productive, but I needed the quiet space to look on where I am and notice who I am. I haven’t spent much time alone recently so this is cherishing the moment, and to think. I am tired but not sad. I am, as I said at the beginning of this, in awe.

I thought of some milestones. Some might think they are insignificant, but those in my shoes will understand that no matter how small the step, it was a step forward, and they are my steps.

➢ I no longer lock the bedroom door at night.
➢ I no longer close the bedroom door at night.
➢ I don’t fear the emptiness of the dark anymore.
➢ I don’t feel alone when I am on my own and I know that not only am I loved, but I can also love unconditionally.
➢ I understand that I am not alone and I understand that I am allowed to feel ‘out of it’ now and then.
➢ It’s okay to feel emotions and it is okay to share them with the right person.
➢ I don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations, even my own. As long as I try, as long as I maintain true to myself, I will be okay.

It’s hard to understand sometimes that the simple things, for me, make the world such a wonderful place. I came home from work one night and my partner had made dinner for me. This was not long after he moved in with me. You can’t imagine the elation I felt because he wanted to make dinner for me – just because he could. Someone actually wanted to do something nice for me. It must have been spread across my face because he noticed immediately. He said “one of the things I love about you is that it’s the small things make you so happy”. He was right, he is right, and that really matters to me.

In the past two weeks I have been having some intense nightmares. The realism of them has been hurting me. It felt like reliving the nightmares of the results of the past. People were treating me badly and wanting to hurt me and such like. On the first night of the bad dreams my partner said that I called out in my sleep ‘please don’t take everything again’. My partner cuddled up to me and wrapped his arms around me and I instantly, unconsciously settled. I woke remembering the dream but feeling safe. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you but to me it meant the world.

One of the dreams was of me in a room, with a woman slightly behind me to the left. The ghost of a woman appeared in front of me and starting beating me. In the dream I could feel the blows and was astounded that a ghost could actually make contact. Then she started to bounce me off the walls. It was scared stupid and was paralyzed in the dream. Again my partner noticed my unease and comforted me. I woke feeling scared of the dream, but safe in my own skin. Another of the dreams I was imprisoned in an attic with a woman. Every time I tried to escape a very large man would stuff me back in the room again. I was beginning to get a little edgy about what it all meant. I was feeling a little distracted because I thought I was on the upward side of the curve of rebuilding my life, and these were about the bad things from the past. I thought I had dealt with that.

I spoke to my therapist about it, not really expecting an answer, just to get it off my chest. She asked me if I really didn’t understand what the meaning could be. She said that I had spent most of my life imprisoned in my own mind. Now that I had escaped I was remembering being trapped and didn’t want to go back ‘there’. Maybe there was some symbolism with a female always present in the dreams knowing that my mother knew about the abuse and did nothing. After thinking about my therapists thoughts I know now that it’s not an issue. It is indeed a ghost of the past. I feel calm in the thought that the dreams are just memories of the past that are airing themselves. I gave them some thought, accepted them for what they were, then moved on. Now they have stopped. Maybe they will return, maybe not but I know that they are echoes of what was and can no longer harm me.

I am a work in progress, I know that, and I will not stop learning and evolving. With a profound sense of the child growing up I am letting instinct drive me more. I am letting thoughts naturally weave my understanding instead of forcing a logical train of thought to mold my decisions. Maybe I am using both but I notice the way that I think has changed. I am more in touch and open with myself and my partner. I am more at ease with life around me. There is still much to work on, much to learn and still some hurdles to understand but, you know, I have made it this far, now it’s becoming almost fun. Sounds odd doesn’t it? Who knows what’s next!

In Spite of my Past

I am gay in spite of my past, not because of it. It’s a profound statement and it’s very real, so why did it take me over thirty years to realize that it doesn’t really matter? Maybe maturity has something to do with it, maybe not. Maybe coming to terms with the past has allowed the freedom to think, or more, to understand myself. It’s a hard lesson to learn that it’s not up to others to tell you how to feel, let alone to understand that in that area it doesn’t matter what others think – really. If it’s right, then it just ‘is’.
My partner has a phrase that he uses that I really like. It’s short, simple and to the point. It goes like this: ‘today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present’. It took me a lot of thinking, learning and growing to understand just how simple and true that phrase is.

Maybe part of this process is identifying with myself, strange as it sounds. As I grow and become more aware of who I am I have to realign ‘me’. That journey will never end, nor do I expect it to. It can only get better and the process is so invigorating, enlightening and even profoundly enjoyable.

I became who I am in spite of my past – yeah, I’m repeating that phrase. There is no ‘because of it’. In spite of the fact that my mother is still trying the guilt trip with me, I know who I am. Yes, it still gets to me but just in a void moment. Maybe I am not 100% sure of what I feel of why I feel it sometimes, but at least I know that I am learning to not overly criticize myself for not understanding the emotions that I feel. Maybe that sentence doesn’t make much sense. Maybe it’s not meant to. Who knows.

I’m sitting here at home with my partner, watching television after a long, full day at work; after a nice, long bike ride through a picturesque trail and after a wonderful, healthy meal. We are silently together on the sofa while I write this. I can reflect on the past and not feel bad; I can remember it and not suffer for it and I can honestly say that I am loved unconditionally and can love him back the same way. It’s a sweet taste after so long, and it can only get better.

There will be hiccups and hills to climb but the foundation is sured up now and we both know the way forward is together. I have never relaxed to this level, nor felt this in tune with myself and someone else. It’s a little scary, but I have an instinctive feeling that it ‘is’.

The Limit of my Reasoning

Sometimes I have to heavily remind myself that reason doesn’t always prevail, and that what is right is sometimes not what is done, especially in the corporate world. It seems that I have to align myself differently again with the corporate world to better understand why so little is achieved by so many. A profound statement, I agree, but haven’t you noticed that bureaucracy, no matter where it’s found, hinders the way forward more than helps it at times? Office politics ring a bell?

I have problems thinking about the waste that occurs in corporations, the pressure it bears and how corporate life is administered. Having to understand that it’s not fair is not easy for me. Having to understand that it’s not sometimes on merit; it can be about who you know and how you manipulate them, and so on. I am a little confused by the level of anger I feel at the misgivings of corporate life, even though I am in the executive level, even though my career is doing well. It’s not about the employee, even if they say it is. It is about the company. We are just pawns in the process – and sometimes we get used.

Interactions with VP level here, and their perceived goals for my career, served to remind me that I don’t have that much control over my own career path. A VP wants me to work towards a higher executive level, higher than a VP, and his method is to pull me from my current career to a position I don’t know, don’t want and have no interest in, for six months. The position I don’t know is critical in its operation and cannot be compromised – so are they throwing me to the wolves? To me it serves no purpose, nor do I understand why this particular VP isn’t listening to what I want. At first I thought I wasn’t voicing what I want properly but now, after exhausting all methods of getting the reasoning across, I understand that he is not listening to what I want. He is listening to what he wants for me, to what he feels is my best way forward. The technicalities of it are not being viewed in the right light. Maybe that’s the kiss of death for my career, but I’m starting to find my stride and I’m not in the mood to compromise.

I should be grateful that he has such grand plans for me but I am not. The pressure to bear is, take this opportunity or never reach any further level. It almost feels like a ‘do or die’ situation. I am confused, and annoyed that I am letting it get to me. There’s that catch 22 again. Life goes on.

More of those moods

I guess I am still trying to understand some of the moods I find myself in. Even when I am in those moods I am aware at how childish they are, and that the reasoning behind them makes no sense. I wondered if there were limiting factors to them – did it get triggered by memory? Was it because I was tired and hungry; or that I had just blown a circuit breaker replacing plug sockets? Is it reasonable? Even at the time it is not. I’m confused.

I was annoyed at my partner for being thirty minutes late home when he went out with his friends. He got grief from them because he left when they didn’t want him to so I should have been happy that he came home when he did. I was angry that he was late, or at least I think that is why I was angry. Now I am not so sure. I had worked a full day them came home and worked on the electrics in the house. I had blown a circuit breaker and got a couple of shocks, and had just removed all eleven double plug sockets again to see where the short was. I was angry at the sockets failing and the thought of him being late was boiling up inside me. Did I resent him being away from me? It’s a thought and though it’s not totally rational, it still stays with me. I think the answer is no. I think maybe that the child in me is still learning about these new emotions, and learning how and what love is. It feels like a child. The strength of the emotion is quite hard to get by.

I hurt him with my mood and that was intolerable, but I couldn’t get myself out of it, and I couldn’t fully understand why it seemed so dramatic to me. He was upset but was more upset that I didn’t understand my own mood. We both know it is a challenge just being in a relationship, without the background being there also and I only hope and pray that he remembers just how much I love and adore him. Losing him would kill me.

I sometimes don’t know where the mood comes from. It can be so sudden and it can hurt me so much that I can’t keep it inside. I don’t know sometimes if I am justified in how I feel or if it’s just a remnant from the past. It seems that I keep getting annoyed with my partner but I should exercise some restraint. We are still growing together, and still learning about each other. I am so scared that my moods will drive him away, even though he insists they won’t.

In thinking about this I find some common indicators. I don’t share well. I don’t want to share my partner with anyone else. I don’t want to share our house with anyone else and I think that the emotion attached to those thoughts is so new and so raw that it is like a child dealing with these feelings for the first time. I can see that but I can’t get a handle on it. It’s like seeing and hearing what is going on outside of ‘me’, but still being inside watching. Part of me is saying ‘oh grow up’; another part is saying ‘I don’t know how to grow up’ and I’m stuck in the middle. Why does it have to be so confusing?

Perhaps it makes no sense at all but it’s very real to me. I’m sitting here right now and it’s very real. I feel the wake of the weekend, when sharing the house with a room mate caused me to feel threatened and insecure, and even used. Knowing that the irrational part of me got some time out in the open makes me feel sad. I know that my partner is trying so hard to understand me but I can’t seem to explain it to him. My thought process keeps going around and around. Even with narcolepsy I couldn’t sleep last night because my brain wouldn’t shut down, and my partner sensed that. He is trying so hard to help me and to understand me, but it’s not easy for him.

In ‘this’ moment I am sad. I’m trying so hard to find middle ground for the sake of my relationship but the immature emotions I feel are so hard to keep in check. If I was to let them out I would be acting like a spoilt child, so I need to work out how to tell the story without it getting out of hand. When others don’t think about the impact of their actions it irks me, and that is what gets me right now. The room mate issue is one part of that; my reaction to my partner is another.

There is another part to think about. In dealing with what sometimes seems like conflicting emotions I sense that I still don’t feel I have the right to air them. I’m not sure if what I am feeling is fear of ridicule, or fear that I am so totally wrong that I will make a mess of it. I want to be heard but I want to be able to come at this without the emotion driving it. There are valid points. What I feel is real and my partner accepts that. So, why don’t I?

Here’s one for the thinking. I can’t tell people how I feel for fear of hurting or upsetting them. Knowing that I have upset someone hurts me even more and that fear stops me from being assertive where and when I need to be. I couldn’t take knowing that I hurt someone. You’d have thought that I would have conquered that one by now wouldn’t you? I sometimes wonder why it is easier to allow myself to be hurt, than it is to allow myself to be right. Does this tie in with my fear of singing in public? Or is that a judgment thing? Needless to say it’s a Monday morning and I am not feeling quite so good about myself right now. I do know that I love my partner very much, and that I have to try harder to not be so abrasive to him. He needs leeway to understand. This is one of those points that won’t get rationalized today.

Understanding

I try to understand the nature of ‘people’, thinking that people are inherently good and that the bad decisions are made by the bad people. The more I try to get a hook on that thought the more I am finding that it’s an illusion, that most people have their own agenda and can’t operate for the sake of anyone but themselves. This is demonstrated in so many different ways, from personal responses to corporate responses; from saying something to doing another. There is so much ‘do as I say and not as I do’ that it’s hard to understand how anyone operates in this world. You could call this the duality of life but in my very limited knowledge of the realism of how life is, I find that it means that the majority of people are liars to some respect, even if it is lying to themselves.

Having not had the same nurturing upbringing as a normal child I tried to apply the rules that I saw that should have been real to the real world. In my mind promises were made to be kept; good prevailed over evil always; life was about sharing, and so many more. But then I wasn’t exactly applying details to the right template. As I grew more towards self awareness, and bear in mind that was recent, I became more aware just how much of what we perceive as real is just for show. That’s a step back – am I the only one that tries to be real, or am I kidding myself? Am I just as bad?

The Confusion of Life

Everywhere I look I seem to see duality. I have expressed it in a few places in my writing and am intrigued on how it occurs. Sometimes is can be ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. That’s the one that really bites. Other times it’s called ‘catch 22’. Isn’t that the same thing? Maybe it is that there are two paths ahead and each one is right, or more to the point, each one is wrong. Trying to understand the magnitude of those predicaments can send my mind out on a limb and into a spin. The confusion of what ‘is’ against what is perceived, especially in the scientific world, unsettles me.

I work on what is and what isn’t, definitive things in my mind, even what is right and what is wrong, simple things. What can or can’t be and what detail there is to back that up. Laws of physics; statements and assertions of fact are only real if you can understand them and perceive them aren’t they? How do I know that it is all true? How do I know that it is real? There is an element of surrealism in being in the situation I am in and sometimes reality doesn’t make sense, but when you apply thought to some of the myriad paths and tunnels of life, that doesn’t make sense either. Looking over this paragraph I’m not making much sense, but that is how my mind works sometimes. If you can understand what I have written you are somewhat closer to understanding the dilemma I am trying to explain.

Scientists’ statements set the path or foundation for what we believe in, for what rules us outside of the law. It is a scientific fact therefore it is. I breathe therefore I am. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, they can’t explain the totality of some of the basics, they can only speculate. Some of the boundaries of thought are so far out there that we can’t conceive them, so they are not mentioned. Is our perception advanced enough to conceive the reality of the fact that scientists can’t explain it all? Ouch – deep thought.

Life doesn’t make sense to me in a lot of different areas. The law will know 100% that someone committed a crime yet because of a blunder somewhere in the system that crime goes unpunished, a murderer walks free to kill again. How can that happen? How can the obvious become so untouchable? A murderer can get off because his/her lawyer is better than the other lawyer; or because someone tarnished evidence – someone saw that evidence before it was touched, what about that? A child molester can get off because someone lost the evidence. The fact that they lost it means they had seen it. Why is that not enough? We routinely put people at risk by stringently sticking to outdated ideas that the rule exonerates the crime. It’s so sad that we have come to that; that the most intelligent among us know that yet they let it occur time and time again. How are we supposed to set boundaries and rules if the very structure we work under can bend and form them the way they like? How can lawyers brow beat credible witnesses into defending a case. I really want to swear right now.

I find that I feel insular in my knowledge of right and wrong. I don’t apply to others what I can’t apply to myself. I have a sense of realism in myself that to say one thing and do another is so hypercritical that it hurts. Even now, after all that I have seen and done, I still hold true to the rules, only now I can share them with someone.

In corporate America the emphasis on work ethic is so much about using employees, and less about what is reasonable and what is real. Even though we seem to be moving towards a more employee oriented country, we still use people. Your contract may say forty hours a week but your boss will say “if you are not working fifty to sixty hours a week, you are not working for me.” That is a literal quote from my boss. Yet if you took that to an employment board it wouldn’t fly.

I guess I wasn’t meant to be so sensitive but I am. I have a creative mind and an adult demeanor, but I still think about the reality of life like a child. I feel the innocence of life still in me and I suffer for that. I guess there are some of us that don’t want to be a part of the big picture. The good thing is that we don’t have to be, just don’t expect to change the world.

Violence

I’ve notice that I am getting more and more sensitive to violence. Maybe this is just on television but it seems to affect me more recently. We were watching a television show where someone was being held down and beaten about the head. The nature of the gratuitous violence incensed me. The person being violent could only do so because the victim was subdued and couldn’t fight back. I wanted to take the aggressor aside and show them what it felt like to be the victim. I want to be the one that champions the cause but I am just as vulnerable and as prone as everyone else. I am not a super hero, I am just human and that sometimes makes me feel frustrated.

The cowardice involved in that scenario gets to me, let alone the violence itself. There are so many angles to that thought that I get confused, upset and angry all at the same time. It’s taking advantage of someone; it’s senseless violence; it’s not thinking about how you would feel if the roles were reversed, or even being conceited enough to think that the roles could never be reversed. It’s the ‘me, me, me’ mentality, selfish and greedy. There is so much of this in the real world that I wonder if there are any others out there that do actually think about the results of their actions; that actually care about how they affect others and that really do want to make it right.

I sat with my partner watching the violent outburst on television and I felt like a child. I told him I didn’t like it and asked if we could please turn it off. He said he could see it was upsetting me and he turned it off. He keeps telling me it’s not real; that it’s make believe; that’s it’s just very good acting but I know it happens like that in the real world. I told him I felt like a child, unable to stop it, unable to change it. I was angry inside and wanted to cry and hit out at the aggressor. How strange that felt. My partner supported me.

I have always been somewhat sensitive to violence, even though I am a martial arts instructor. I feel helpless for others if they are the victims, and you have to bear in mind that I only really see this on the television or in the movie theater. The thing that struck me this time was not only the helplessness that I felt and the frustration that it has to happen, but also my child like response to it.

Maybe this is all part of the process. After all it is like learning anew with emotions. I wonder how I would react in real life if I saw something like that happening. I know the anger that I felt was intense, perhaps that would push me to take action; and if I take action will I have enough control to not critically injure the person involved. That scares me a little because I have always had total control, but then I had to. Now I don’t have to pander to someone else’s violence and don’t have to hold everything in, and that worries me. Perhaps the lessons that I am learning along the way are helping me work through that. I really hope so.

The last part of this thought is that sometimes it feels like being a child again and having to learn how to cope with all these intense emotions all over again. The first time round was paying lip service to people around me. I played by their rules by modeling their behavior but only because that was the only learning model I had. My parents didn’t give me that one. In inventing how I was supposed to act and react I was telling myself what I was meant to be doing, and living by that. The problem was that it wasn’t real. Or maybe it was real and I suppressed all emotions, period. There’s a thought I didn’t expect. Anyway, either way, now that I am learning all over again ‘it’ all seems new and raw and very intense, and I feel somewhat like a child. It’s not a fair world and I can’t change that, and that is so very frustrating.

There are pluses to all this. I have a therapist that understands and is there whenever I need her; I have a partner who allows me to be me, no matter how child like I get, and I give myself permission to explore the emotions and reactions both during and afterwards. I can add my positive thought to the universe and know that I am not like them. That will have to be enough, for now.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: , , ,

The Box

April 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

WARNING – POTENTIAL TRIGGERS

During the times when my father would abuse me I would escape. I don’t know how I got to the point of escaping. I knew that if I made a noise I would be punished – I knew if I fought back I would be punished – I knew I had to ‘not be there’, somehow, yet I don’t remember when or how it started. I called my place ‘the box’. The box was the place that I took my mind to escape the physical and mental effects of what was happening to me. I would picture myself surrounded a box. My head and chest were surrounded, my lower body outside of the box and unattached from my reality; outside of my control. My face would rest in a hole that only I could see through; the rest of the area inside the box was black, quiet, calm and empty. Looking through the hole I was looking at the universe, almost as if I were lying under the stars at night. The universe (the box) was my playground; my solace; my focus; my intention and my savior. I would think about the vastness of the universe and get lost in the thought of the perception of infinity and reality. I would think about shapes that I now know are called parabolic curves, and wonder if that was how the universe was shaped – but no – that would imply an outside to shape itself, yet it could fold in on itself. I would take my mind as far away from earth as I could. I would attempt to reason the lack of the end of infinity, and the perception of time. Even as a pre-school child I was intently aware of how little was known about ‘space’.

To quote from the chapter ‘Path of Discovery’: “To cope I had to master leaving my body behind. I had to take my mind to a place where I didn’t connect to the real world, that way I felt no physical pain; that way my mind was safe from him. He could defile my body but he would never get my mind. I created my reality as I went along and survived because of it. I would wonder at the size of the universe and immerse myself in the dream world of science. I saw myself from a distance. My body was on the bed but my mind was in a box, floating in space, free from him and free from pain.”

I don’t remember ever crying during or after, I don’t remember any pain, I don’t remember much at all to be honest and, for the longest time I had no real concept of what had happened. It’s hard to explain – I knew it, but I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t consciously accept it – I’m not sure – it would sit on the edge of my consciousness – I knew it was there but I couldn’t quite grasp it. That, in itself, was frustrating.

During the process of remembering I have lost the ability to cry, and that’s very hard to deal with. I can’t let out the intense pain I feel in my heart. I suppress it, just like I suppress anger. I feel it rising from the pit of my stomach and I fight it. The higher it rises the harder I fight until the only thing left to do is to dissociate from it – that’s the point I lose “me”. I try so hard to not do that anymore, but I’m not there yet. It seems that I’m still not separating the emotions properly yet – perhaps I need practice at that, but where do you practice? My therapist can pull some reactions from me even though I trust her and know that it’s just part of the process. Even that part is confusing.

Back to the box – the saviour from the what was happening to me. I guess that even at that tender age, when the abuse started, I had coping mechanisms to help me get through it. I’m not sure at what point I made that happen, but I’m glad I did. I feel sadness for that little boy – he suffered so much an no-one cared – he coped with the reality of physical, sexual and mental abuse and survived in spite of it. I want to cry for that little boy, but I can’t – yet. I’m close, so very close.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Somewhere in the thought of it

May 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

WARNING – POSSIBLE TRIGGERS

In the time between the ups and the downs, when the memory rides on the wave between awake and asleep, there are those thoughts. You don’t quite know where they came from, and you don’t quite know why they are there. You try to see them but they are blurred in the distance, yet they are real and remembered in your mind. Awareness is a word that echoes somewhere in the real world, acceptance is a word that holds no meaning and love is a pain that was learned from way back when, confusion the norm, echoes of a life that never was.

Your mind travels the distance and urges you forward, remembering the detail that eluded you for so long. It aches to release you back to the real world but you fight it, knowing in your heart that it was real, knowing in your mind that it was real, knowing in the now, that it is real. You don’t panic or flinch, you don’t move, you don’t react or respond. You feel deep inside the weight of the memory and your heart aches to release it. You see the tears in your mind and you feel them rise from your heart but, somewhere along the way, they get lost and you hold on to that memory, unable to mourn it or let it go.

Your eyes drift down as if to bow to the memory. You see the picture clearly now, but this time it’s the ‘you’ that you are today. Now the panic starts to rise as you follow the trail of memory through the haze. You see it, you feel it and you yearn to accept it but something stands in your way. You fight to release it. It grips you like a vise and it tears the life from you. It fights you all the way. It makes you do things you don’t want to do and it laughs in your face. ‘It’, is you.

It’s clear now, the scene is set and the thought is forefront in your mind. The panic has gone and the haze has cleared. The stark light of the reality sinks into you and drags you towards the floor, heavy from its darkness, taking advantage of your weakness and clouding your judgment.

“Please, just let me cry”! You utter the words but the memory refuses.

“You have to know me, you have to accept me, you have to remember me”, it says.

“I can’t”, you reply.

It’s been too long. The memory owns you and won’t let you go. You have to get away from it but you can’t, and numbness sets in. It’s the only way you know, it’s the only path left to take and, somewhere in the darkness you lose track of who you are. There is no fight anymore. You don’t live, you don’t even exist, you just ‘are’. Until you release it, it will own you, hate you and eat away at you until you succumb to it. The weaker you get the stronger it is. It’s a vicious circle, a catch 22. “Release me” … you know it has to be done; you fight with it, against it and even for it. You relive it, accept the reality, walk through it, around it and inside of it and the memory rises from your heart, but the tears will never come. The memory has won again.

I yearn to be me, I long to be free, I deserve to understand, but I can’t. The words echo again in your mind.

“Please, just let me cry”! You utter the words but the memory refuses.

“You have to know me, you have to accept me, you have to remember me”, it says.

“I can’t”, you reply ..

Just a few thoughts … these are just the ones that I took the time to save … there are a lot more and they are not pleasant. Those that know me don’t know that I go through this in this depth, nor will they ever … but I have to get it out … I have to let it live so that I can live, or die.

Filed Under: Letters Tagged With: , , , , ,
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