5000 posts
roadrunner
Registrant
This is for all the new or newer guys here who don't think it will ever be easy to talk, or who imagine that they will never recover from what was done to them as boys. I hope you will read on.
Well, here it is. I have never said anything about the other "milestone" posts I have passed in the last year and a quarter. Some I just didn't notice, other times I didn't have anything to say - if you can believe that one!
But 5000 posts. Who would have thunk it? Then that's when I realized that for this one I do have something to say.
When I came tiptoeing onto the site on the 2nd of May 2005 I was a walking disaster. About five years earlier I had begun to have terrible nightmares of a horrific sexual character. At first just bits, then more articulate sequences, and always of the same kid, whom for a long time I could not identify - I just felt it was someone I knew. I was scared shitless. Had I been an abuser? Was I turning into some sadistic pedophile? Or what?
As the nightmares got worse other things were added into the mix: panic attacks, anxiety, what I called "waking nightmares" but now know to be flashbacks, and intensification of all sorts of things that had been with me so long I no longer wondered at them - anxiety if I was in a room alone with another man, distress if someone was between me and the door, feelings of being unclean and worthless, feeling nauseous when I brushed my teeth, fear of mallets (one of the abuser's playthings), wanting to crawl out of my skin if I was touched, and so on.
I tried to resist all this and just shove it away, as I had shoved it away so many times in the past, but this time it was no good. Somehow I just had to know who the boy in the nightmares was, and finally I did see him - little kid about 11, short brown hair, looking up at me from the bed, the floor, the ground, wherever - terrified and in tears. He seemed to be begging to be recognized, and when I realized it was me I threw up on the spot and thought I was going insane.
What was really terrible about all this was that I had this feeling that if I allowed myself to delve into all this I would find a whole lot more. I sensed that everything was right there for me to see, if I allowed myself to look. If the bits I had recovered so far were any idea of what was to come, well, no thank you!
But it didn't work. I quickly became sexually dysfunctional, began to drink a lot more than I should have, and more or less turned into a zombie. Finally one Sunday when I was talking to my sister Cathie on MSN, and on a topic that had nothing to do with abuse, I suddenly typed these words on my screen: "Cath I was molested when I was a kid." My finger hovered over the return key - do I send this or not? Fuck it, I thought, and hit the key.
From that moment Cathie was my rock in trying to get my life back, but that's another story. I was still flailing around trying to decide what to do, and on another Sunday morning I googled something like "child sexual abuse". The Male Survivor site appeared.
I clicked on it and thought hmmm they have a lot of stuff here. Even right there on the home page I read about how I wasn't alone; when I saw that I bet I cried for an hour. Then all about myths, it wasn't my fault, and so on. And then I discovered that there was a membership of 2500 in this place - almost all survivors (a term I didn't really know yet).
I signed up, but you should have seen it! I was shy, ashamed, very guilty and lacking in self-esteem and confidence. I didn't really want to talk all that much, and when I did it was in general and not really about me. One of the mods spotted me and took me under his wing, as it were. We arranged to speak on the phone and I was very awkward. I could hardly get five words out without choking up and wanting to apologize. I tried to change the subject but he wasn't buying it! He kept me focused on what I needed to do and told me what I needed to hear.
At first it was exhilerating to be here and to discover so many new things; I couldn't believe that anyone, even other survivors, would accept me and support me when they knew the "real truth" about me. When I got that support it felt great, and I thought okay, I ought to be able to sort all this out in a few weeks. When that didn't happen I was in despair again, and THAT took longer to overcome.
I want you to know where I am now. I am by no means a recovered survivor, but I have made good progress. I have disclosed to all my family: wife, kids, parents, and a few other close relatives. I started therapy here in Hamburg (so in German) and then shifted to the UK so I could do it in English. Therapy scared me to death - now I look forward to it. I haven't had a flashback since November. I have gained in confidence and self-esteem by leaps and bounds, and I genuinely don't mind if someone asks what the wristbands are all about. Most of the old phobias are gone, though yes, some are tenacious muthafukkas and won't let go of me yet. I can stay focused on my present, where I can actually do something to help myself. And I don't have any reservation about speaking about anything that happened to me. Why? Because I know now - and BELIEVE - that none of the abuse was my fault.
And somehow, in a way I never would have predicted, I seem to have morphed into someone with this thing about talking to other survivors. This is NOT the normal Larry, or at least the Larry as he was in May 2005. It's new. I think I found it easy to talk to younger survivors first, because as a teacher that kind of thing came naturally to me. But soon I was pretty comfortable in the male survivor forum generally, and then one day I thought hey, I wonder what the gay guys are doing. I was afraid I would get cold-shouldered, but wrong again! Within a few months I was a full member and participating on the members' side as well. One of the last forums I really began to participate in vigorously was Friends and Family. Even there I wondered would I be welcomed. And as usual I instantly made new friends.
Now I simply read everything every day - if I can - and offer whatever I feel I can say. I don't know why I do that, though I CAN say it's very important to me. I hate to see someone in pain or confusion, and I think there is always something encouraging or supportive one can offer. You just have to feel with your heart, speak from there and remember that the other person is probably pretty fragile at the moment. To give a kind word is to give of our love, and everyone needs that.
All this is part of my own recovery. As I moved forward I could gradually see that all the terrible things I thought about myself were rubbish. I wasn't a worthless sex toy and a drunken loser wasted on whatever drugs he could score. I was a good person, I had achieved a lot against bad odds, I did have things to say, and I did have a future worth working for.
Where am I going with this? Here I return to where I started - saying this is really for the new and newer guys here on the site.
When we come here we are all a mess somehow or another, but quite naturally, when we are new we tend to think that our own case makes us monstrous somehow. As if abuse is a troll machine - insert one innocent kid, press "start" and out the other side comes a loathsome troll. We think our memories are too horrific, our pain too excruciating, our shame too deep, our guilt too damning, ourselves too worthless: we will never recover and heal.
Yes you will!! But there is no way AROUND our issues. The only way forward is straight THROUGH our issues, and that means you have to talk. Not all at once, no. Not when you feel it will cause you new trauma and hurt, no. But work towards it. Argue with yourself about it. Try small points where you feel less threatened. But TALK.
Talking is a way of fighting back. It's a way of rejecting the blame. It breaks the silence that abusers needed to keep control of us. It enables us to get those bad feelings up on the table and recognize that they aren't true.
It's also a way of asking important questions. Every post here cries out: "Who believes me?", "Who values me?", "How can I ever be loved again?", "Why am I still so afraid." But others on the site are talking too. They talk back to us and give us the answers, or at least show they care. Listen to them. As I have said many times here, when God sees us in trouble He sends us people.
And it really is a matter of our own recovery. I have probably learned more about myself in these 5000 posts, begin in May 2005, than I have in every other way in the preceding 35 years. Every time I speak out to a brother or sister here I feel what I say, I learn something new. Yes I have my mantras and a lot of you know them by heart, but when I launch into them again it's for me as well. It assures me that these things I believe are things I can build my new life on. I can trust them. I can be the person I was always meant to be.
Each and every one of you can achieve the same, except, well, hopefully with fewer words. But I am a universiry professor and academic author - so never one word where ten will do!
Much love,
Larry
Well, here it is. I have never said anything about the other "milestone" posts I have passed in the last year and a quarter. Some I just didn't notice, other times I didn't have anything to say - if you can believe that one!
But 5000 posts. Who would have thunk it? Then that's when I realized that for this one I do have something to say.
When I came tiptoeing onto the site on the 2nd of May 2005 I was a walking disaster. About five years earlier I had begun to have terrible nightmares of a horrific sexual character. At first just bits, then more articulate sequences, and always of the same kid, whom for a long time I could not identify - I just felt it was someone I knew. I was scared shitless. Had I been an abuser? Was I turning into some sadistic pedophile? Or what?
As the nightmares got worse other things were added into the mix: panic attacks, anxiety, what I called "waking nightmares" but now know to be flashbacks, and intensification of all sorts of things that had been with me so long I no longer wondered at them - anxiety if I was in a room alone with another man, distress if someone was between me and the door, feelings of being unclean and worthless, feeling nauseous when I brushed my teeth, fear of mallets (one of the abuser's playthings), wanting to crawl out of my skin if I was touched, and so on.
I tried to resist all this and just shove it away, as I had shoved it away so many times in the past, but this time it was no good. Somehow I just had to know who the boy in the nightmares was, and finally I did see him - little kid about 11, short brown hair, looking up at me from the bed, the floor, the ground, wherever - terrified and in tears. He seemed to be begging to be recognized, and when I realized it was me I threw up on the spot and thought I was going insane.
What was really terrible about all this was that I had this feeling that if I allowed myself to delve into all this I would find a whole lot more. I sensed that everything was right there for me to see, if I allowed myself to look. If the bits I had recovered so far were any idea of what was to come, well, no thank you!
But it didn't work. I quickly became sexually dysfunctional, began to drink a lot more than I should have, and more or less turned into a zombie. Finally one Sunday when I was talking to my sister Cathie on MSN, and on a topic that had nothing to do with abuse, I suddenly typed these words on my screen: "Cath I was molested when I was a kid." My finger hovered over the return key - do I send this or not? Fuck it, I thought, and hit the key.
From that moment Cathie was my rock in trying to get my life back, but that's another story. I was still flailing around trying to decide what to do, and on another Sunday morning I googled something like "child sexual abuse". The Male Survivor site appeared.
I clicked on it and thought hmmm they have a lot of stuff here. Even right there on the home page I read about how I wasn't alone; when I saw that I bet I cried for an hour. Then all about myths, it wasn't my fault, and so on. And then I discovered that there was a membership of 2500 in this place - almost all survivors (a term I didn't really know yet).
I signed up, but you should have seen it! I was shy, ashamed, very guilty and lacking in self-esteem and confidence. I didn't really want to talk all that much, and when I did it was in general and not really about me. One of the mods spotted me and took me under his wing, as it were. We arranged to speak on the phone and I was very awkward. I could hardly get five words out without choking up and wanting to apologize. I tried to change the subject but he wasn't buying it! He kept me focused on what I needed to do and told me what I needed to hear.
At first it was exhilerating to be here and to discover so many new things; I couldn't believe that anyone, even other survivors, would accept me and support me when they knew the "real truth" about me. When I got that support it felt great, and I thought okay, I ought to be able to sort all this out in a few weeks. When that didn't happen I was in despair again, and THAT took longer to overcome.
I want you to know where I am now. I am by no means a recovered survivor, but I have made good progress. I have disclosed to all my family: wife, kids, parents, and a few other close relatives. I started therapy here in Hamburg (so in German) and then shifted to the UK so I could do it in English. Therapy scared me to death - now I look forward to it. I haven't had a flashback since November. I have gained in confidence and self-esteem by leaps and bounds, and I genuinely don't mind if someone asks what the wristbands are all about. Most of the old phobias are gone, though yes, some are tenacious muthafukkas and won't let go of me yet. I can stay focused on my present, where I can actually do something to help myself. And I don't have any reservation about speaking about anything that happened to me. Why? Because I know now - and BELIEVE - that none of the abuse was my fault.
And somehow, in a way I never would have predicted, I seem to have morphed into someone with this thing about talking to other survivors. This is NOT the normal Larry, or at least the Larry as he was in May 2005. It's new. I think I found it easy to talk to younger survivors first, because as a teacher that kind of thing came naturally to me. But soon I was pretty comfortable in the male survivor forum generally, and then one day I thought hey, I wonder what the gay guys are doing. I was afraid I would get cold-shouldered, but wrong again! Within a few months I was a full member and participating on the members' side as well. One of the last forums I really began to participate in vigorously was Friends and Family. Even there I wondered would I be welcomed. And as usual I instantly made new friends.
Now I simply read everything every day - if I can - and offer whatever I feel I can say. I don't know why I do that, though I CAN say it's very important to me. I hate to see someone in pain or confusion, and I think there is always something encouraging or supportive one can offer. You just have to feel with your heart, speak from there and remember that the other person is probably pretty fragile at the moment. To give a kind word is to give of our love, and everyone needs that.
All this is part of my own recovery. As I moved forward I could gradually see that all the terrible things I thought about myself were rubbish. I wasn't a worthless sex toy and a drunken loser wasted on whatever drugs he could score. I was a good person, I had achieved a lot against bad odds, I did have things to say, and I did have a future worth working for.
Where am I going with this? Here I return to where I started - saying this is really for the new and newer guys here on the site.
When we come here we are all a mess somehow or another, but quite naturally, when we are new we tend to think that our own case makes us monstrous somehow. As if abuse is a troll machine - insert one innocent kid, press "start" and out the other side comes a loathsome troll. We think our memories are too horrific, our pain too excruciating, our shame too deep, our guilt too damning, ourselves too worthless: we will never recover and heal.
Yes you will!! But there is no way AROUND our issues. The only way forward is straight THROUGH our issues, and that means you have to talk. Not all at once, no. Not when you feel it will cause you new trauma and hurt, no. But work towards it. Argue with yourself about it. Try small points where you feel less threatened. But TALK.
Talking is a way of fighting back. It's a way of rejecting the blame. It breaks the silence that abusers needed to keep control of us. It enables us to get those bad feelings up on the table and recognize that they aren't true.
It's also a way of asking important questions. Every post here cries out: "Who believes me?", "Who values me?", "How can I ever be loved again?", "Why am I still so afraid." But others on the site are talking too. They talk back to us and give us the answers, or at least show they care. Listen to them. As I have said many times here, when God sees us in trouble He sends us people.
And it really is a matter of our own recovery. I have probably learned more about myself in these 5000 posts, begin in May 2005, than I have in every other way in the preceding 35 years. Every time I speak out to a brother or sister here I feel what I say, I learn something new. Yes I have my mantras and a lot of you know them by heart, but when I launch into them again it's for me as well. It assures me that these things I believe are things I can build my new life on. I can trust them. I can be the person I was always meant to be.
Each and every one of you can achieve the same, except, well, hopefully with fewer words. But I am a universiry professor and academic author - so never one word where ten will do!
Much love,
Larry
But this time in Oxford!