Who am I really? Will I ever know?

Who am I really? Will I ever know?
Saleboat66

Saleboat66

Registrant
"Does anyone ever feel like this, have these feelings?"


I read this in a post here and started to respond and realized it was more than that for me , it is the single most destructive outcome of surviving (and I hate that word) multiple male childhood sexual abusers over several years beginning when i was around 8 or 9, ending when I began to seek my molester out, which just added yet another layer of complexity to this bullshit, suck ass, fucking awful shot fuck events that I had and personally experienced ....

I wish with all my life I could answer that with "no, I have never dealt with that question"
It is with me when I wake up, it is there when I try to close my eyes, it has been my constant since the abuse, and if it was before or started later, that recollection of course is not clear, what is however is the knowledge it been with me all this time. It can lessen, occasionally, and I think as I age, it too ages with me. It's been the horrendous struggle I have fought with, against, up hill, lay alone as it rolled over me each time I had a thought that might be different than what it told me I am, was, will be. Its been faster always always always out running me. I have done humiliating things to myself and within my marriage, which is no longer despite the legal papers. I have tried for the better part of 37 years to bury it, kill it, silence it, begging it to leave me alone and selfishly wishing it would haunt someone else, anyone else,so I might know one minute of clarity, one second of calm, one taste of what being comfortable in my skin feels like. For me this has been the most damning piece of all and I even set myself apart further from anyone because it feels to me that there is not a lot of talk about it. It has kept me questioning everything and everyone in my life, I am never free from its torment, and I look and search for others that might tell me that they also felt this and it was their optic through which they experienced everything in life, until it wasn't and they somehow had it removed and honestly disconnected it from who they are. This splitting of who I was developing into and who I then became by virtue of not only the sexual abuse, I was given the perfect storm by the man who gave me life and who who was to have shown me how to be a good man. Instead, for reasons I will never know, and used to desperately try to understand what it was that he saw, that caused my father to tell me, in ways that I can still hear and want to disappear from the hate that was behind hurtled at me in declarations, my own father would tell me I was a "faggot" a "queer" a "pansy." As I was also being sexually eviscerated by my brothers friend, my father, not aware or knowing this, reinforced the acts with humiliation and shame and buried whatever had been left of the little boy, emerging adolescent and eventual teenager I would have been, and instead became the person I did, the young boy I hated and was humiliated being, who never learned how to be comfortable in anything his body showed the world he was. My father was reinforcing the physical and emotional abuse with a sort of deranged serendipitous trauma that like bacteria that needs a host to become the black plague, it infected me and not content to destroy most of me , left me confused, filled with disconnectedness, distrusting, unable to have healthy relationships and never believing and more importantly never feeling the connection with who I looked like with who I would have felt I was, never had that amazing integration of solidness and maleness, opportunity to figure out me without sexual and verbal co mingling devastation that leaves me still, at 52, seperated from my wife, in a far away state, unhappy and the loneliest i have ever been, believing that this is my life, I used to have hope when I could still tell myself there was so much life left, but i reached an age and that hope left, and didn't let me know until i was alone again, sobbing when I should be enjoying all the good things in ,y life, as I would like to think, enjoying " the Fuck out of life", instead I'm still creating profiles on gay dating sites than deleting them after I've shamed myself or gone and took control of the encounter or feigned heightened interest when all I Could think of was being home alone in bed asleep. Then I stay away from these sites and convince myself nothing as I create another and another or shyly look at the million tumblr posts with men and incredibly beautiful male bodies, no longer immediately and always titillated by these visuals, and not seeing this as anything but natural age wiring from my brain to my dick that is the reason, not that I too daydream about women and how I would love to be in love, because the male intent is all about safety and security, and identification, I do this in the dysfunctional hope that what I see in them will become the thing I don't see in me, the masculinity, the strength, the everything a man is as opposed to the female, and the fucked up truth is, I am not unlike the men I seek out, I just have absolutely no connection between the man I see and the person I believe is me, and it seems the closer I get to potentially realizing that what or who i thought I was, may not be the case, the less happy or joyful i am, which is the complete opposite of what i should be feeling, and so it goes, I feel right now, this second, that I hate this fucking life I've been given but then my rationale side tells me the truth that "keep going" , you will know authenticity one day and it will be simple and without fanfare and you will know it and not have to keep yourself in torment every day like every day of your life...I don't know how to be me, and the me I know, leaves me alone, afraid and fearful of everyone and everything, and tomorrow I get up, put my smile on and become the working version of the person I hate, me, as alone and broken as I have ever felt, and the fear of this being my forever has me thinking I want out.
 
Hopein14,
what you wrote describes many of the same feelings I have, thank you for writing it, saying it out loud. I do many of the same things. It all just leaves me feeling alone, like i will never figure myself out. Stuck in some strange world that doesn't really match how I feel.
 
Hopein14, what I hear in your message is that as much as you have tried, you keep finding yourself unsuccessful in getting away from your memories, to the point you reach out in hope of finding someone that may (or may not, perhaps?) have been there, but knows how to change that. You push hard, trying to be yourself, but receding back, dissatisfied, because you don't feel whole, you don't feel complete. In the end it cycles around to your past, and you express how much you hate yourself for what happened. *I presume*, from what I read, this is what you're saying. Am I correct?

If so, I think a lot of us have been there in varying degrees. Myself included.

Here's my input.
Many many years ago after I (edited), I ended up in a mental hospital. I wasn't 18 yet. This is what ‘came of me I had been (edited) a couple weeks before. Quite frankly, I just wanted to die. I felt I was hated by the world. I felt as if I was to blame for this horrible event. While I was there I met a young man that as doing intern work from a local university, and he was an international transfer student. His home country was Australia.

Take note, do not do this unless your counselor feels it could be good for you. I will tell you shortly why I’m telling you this.
He sat and listened to me, no idea how long it took though it felt like hours, and he said to me, quietly, to close my eyes. Breathe to relieve the stress (one of the “tricks” we were taught) and relax.
After a couple minutes he told me to open my eyes, and I did.
He then instructed me to imagine there is a young boy in front of me, and he said to let that young boy sit on my lap.

And he told me, that boy is you. I want you to look that young man in the eyes, and tell that young man that he is not to blame. None of this he has been through is his fault. And then he told me to apologize to the young man for hating him. I did. It was hard, really hard. But when I was done, I had a long healthy cry. The intern hugged me and comforted me. He told me the biggest friend I have is myself. I cannot ever justify hating myself for things that happen that are entirely out of my control. -That is like me hating you, Hopein14, because it rained and made it muddy. You and I can't control the weather, and while it affects me, there’s nothing you can do about it.(that is an example only)-

You see, as a youth, you really don’t have anywhere near as much control over what others do to you as you seem to think you had. This is something I have had to fight so hard for so long, myself. You cannot blame yourself for what happened. As a kid, you learn learn learn. You follow instructions. You are told over and over to obey your mom, obey your dad, obey your teachers, listen to your big brother, essentially obey obey obey. Nothing but obey and learn. And in your younger adult years you adapted as best as you could for the changing environments, without releasing how you felt about yourself first.

I am so truly sorry that you feel this way against yourself. And if I am wrong about all of this, I’m sorry for that, too. And in such a case, I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you.

I will say though, to me it sounds like what I went through, emotionally.
 
I wish you the best. This has been a big issue for me. I feel like I know who I am, I just don't accept it sometimes. I'm usually attracted to women, but I go through times when I'm mostly attracted to men. It is very confusing. I have tried to label myself for many years, going back and forth to bisexual for the past 25. My wife knows who I am, always has. She doesn't understand why I have such a hard time accepting myself.

I am dealing with the effects of my mom not being a mom, but being a flirt when I was growing up. I don't think she ever wanted me to be with any woman but her, and I think she would prefer it if I was gay. I have struggled with shame around my sexuality for as long as I can remember.

I hope you find happiness.
 
Just wanted to reach out. A counsellor asked me "Who is ?"
I could not answer. I was offended. I was scared.
 
Thank you for writing your feelings out , I to am trying to figure this out also it is so strange . I hid my abuse for 53 years , I am 60 now . Its like 2 years ago when I exposed the abuse I woke up ,and my whole life has been a lie to hide what my brothers did to me . I am so thankful to find others with such feelings . I guess what I am trying to say is that I'm right with you . I just wanted you to know you have helped someone , me ,,,,, I am so new to this new life I never asked for ( the real me ) . That I'm so comfortable with the old man . But he is gone just a shadow of what I once was exists . Truth to everyone is what I'm doing not living the lie , and that's what it was , a lie . Struggling with what someone choices over us helpless children while they get off. , not knowing any better thinking everyone did this until we find the truth that its not this way with everyone . Please excuse my composition skills and grammar I'm just a truck driver ..... I am stuck with guilt , shame, a gaping hole in my inner self which has gotten better with time . I have tried destroying myself without even realizing what I was doing or understanding it. I don't trust , can't handle being close anymore , deal with skin , I see way to much of it ,don't like my own ..... odd .The thought of going insane is real . "Your not alone" , I know everyone say's it here but really think it's lonely walk .
 
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