An ongoing attempt to journal some of the abuses of my childhood.
Coyotejack
Registrant
This is to be an attempt to write down the traumatic events of my childhood and all the ways it seems to have influenced so much of my life so far. I am hoping perhaps that I can process my feelings as I work through this and maybe find some closure or solace.
I view my childhood till the start of 5 grade as typical. Time has taught me I had it pretty good. My parents were devoted to each other with a strong marriage. My mother was very active in the local Presbyterian church before switching to an Episcopal one. Throughout the following until their passing, I always felt my parents loved me and supported me. They not doing anything about what was happening to me was because I hid it all from them as best I could.
I was fairly well adjusted, I think. I had several friends in the neighborhood and surrounding areas and enjoyed playing outside with them.
Then 5th grade started and suddenly it seemed everyone wanted to be a bully except me it seemed.
I am a coward. I have been all my life I believe. I’m only usually capable of bravery when it comes to defending those I care about. When it comes to defending myself – running, hiding, and avoidance was almost always my response.
I recall one of my friends, who I had spent many days with at either of our homes, telling me after school in the early days of the new school year that if I didn’t become more like the bullies, they’d make sure I became one of the victims. Truer words have not been spoken. He went on to become one of the worst bullies in the school, but he avoided picking on me, though he didn’t help me either at least not that I know of.
Suddenly my days turned into a nightmare of what still feels like unending torture at times. I know there was much more to life at the time, but it seems nearly all recollection eventually triggers the overwhelming bad memories.
My bullies trained me to put nearly all my energy into the 100-yard dash. Each day I was to sprint as fast as I could from the bus stop to my home. Failure to run would result in being thrown into the nearby golf course pond and being told to stay in the water till they were out of sight. That pond is also where I learned about leeches.
Most of the friends I had the year before wanted nothing to do with me. The few remaining and the new ones I got in 5th grade were those like me, bottom of the rung victims.
The next summer between 5th and 6th grade was the year that one of the neighborhood bullies caught me fishing at a nearby pond. He tackled me, knelt between my shoulders and took one of my own gym socks that I taken off to stand in the water and proceeded to wrap it around my neck and rapidly yank it back and forth leaving a seeping rug burn on my throat that took weeks to heal. All these years later just typing that gives me a very unpleasant sensation of recall. After that I feel I spent far more time indoors.
6th grade saw more of the same. At this time my Mom was not only aware of what I was going through she was actively trying to help. Unfortunately most of her efforts had the opposite effect. It simply added Momma’s boy to my name list. Bullying in the school district at the time was rampant. It also wasn’t restricted to gender. Most of the girls were abusive if only verbally.
What happened in the summer between 6th and 7th grade until just a few days ago never left my lips until I told my wife. It shouldn’t have been so hard. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, it was that I still didn’t want to face the shame I felt. I had told her I was abused but no real detail. The recent news about my Catholic high school once again determining credible accusations of abuse and the knowledge of abuse without action sent me into a depressing mood, and all the pain felt in those years came flooding back like it was happening again.
A boy in the neighborhood invited me over to hang out. At some point he showed me some porn magazines he said his brother had. We were in a bedroom with 2 beds sitting apart and once he exposed himself and started masturbating I must have thought it was ok or something and I did the same thing. He tried several times to get me to touch him or let him touch me but I didn’t want to. That is when an older boy and girl flashed a camera into the room.
The girl proceeded to shame both of us telling us we were dirty and gay. The older boy stood with the camera in the doorway while the girl continued her pitch. She eventually to stuck one of those white plastic vibrators, sold as women’s personal massagers, in my butt. This became one of the worst betrayals in memory, because I felt it was my own body that betrayed me when I got aroused. But the fact that I did didn’t go unnoticed and she pointed out that was more proof I was gay. I don’t know the other younger boy’s involvement. Was he a victim as well or was he somewhat involved in luring me there? The abuse ended with them letting me go but telling me to return the following weekend because she wanted to see the older boy fuck me. They warned me they had pictures now and if I didn’t return they would show them around the neighborhood.
I didn’t go back to them ever, but I lived in terror through most of the remainder of my school years and to some extent beyond. Terror because so much of the bullying involved calling me gay and a fag. Those pictures would have forever labeled me that way in my mind.
On top of that now I was struggling with the notion of anal penetration. Why was I aroused by it. I’ve never felt any sexual attraction to men. I fell for girls at very early age. Not sexually obviously at first but I knew there was something different about them and it fascinated me. It wasn’t until later I learned they could just as cruel as boys if not worse.
Once 7th grade started I was in a really bad state of mind. I was regularly trying to avoid school altogether. I tried poisoning myself several times by putting a little rubbing alcohol in milk and drinking it in order to throw up. Other times I would shove my fingers down my throat to try and vomit so I could convince my parents I was too sick for school. At school I was completely withdrawn, but I was still sprinting home from the bus stop. At some point here I also started praying not to wake up. I’d end my prayers that if I should die before I wake, Amen. Far too cowardly to end it myself I simply pray not to wake anymore.
Flash forward to the summer of before 8th grade.
There were a few memorable events of that summer. That was the summer I fell out of the big maple in the backyard. Probably surviving the drop by hitting every big branch on the way down, but I lay on the ground for quite some time. Later in the summer I was hit in the face by a golfball that knocked me out cold. I still have a bump on my jawbone where it hit me. Then there was the day that a boy across the fairway from my house got mad at me for laughing when his dog accidentally wrapped the tether line it was on around the boy. I never thought he was in danger I don’t think but laughing wasn’t nice. Nevertheless once untangled he kicked my in the groin as hard as he could. From then on I’ve had a permanent curvature of my penis. The last big event of that summer was seeing the older boy who had the camera get in a car accident just up the road from home. I left the house after hearing the car hit the trees. I didn’t know who it was till I got closer and saw his bloodied face. He asked me to go call for help. I don’t know if he recognized me or ever figured out who I was at that time. I walked back home, went inside and sat down to watch tv. I never told anyone at the time I even saw him and I never learned the results of the crash.
I don’t think I found it wrong at the time. By this point I was going to bed each night lying in the dark fantasizing about killing everyone who’d hurt me in the most extreme and violent ways. Everyone was murdered in my head over and over until I’d fall asleep, a fantasy I used nearly nightly till well in my twenties. The faces changed or were just added to as I went to college and beyond.
8th grade was my last year in the public schools. I spent an inordinate amount of it in detention. By the end of the school year, I had my own room in a storage area attached to the guidance counselor office. My only interaction was when he would bring my lessons from my teachers for the day. This was my classroom for the last couple of weeks of 8th grade. I had been in numerous fights throughout the year. I basically snapped. I beat the hell out several of the bullies who’d been torturing me for years and I was proud of it. The events of the summer had reset my pain index and done a lot to overcome my fear of violence. No one could ever hit me as hard as that tree or golf ball did. I picked fights for just looking at me wrong, and when I was dragged into the principals office I refused to acknowledge I did anything wrong. I blamed the administration and teachers to their faces. They ignored what was done to me for years they could now ignore what I was doing in retaliation and revenge.
As I said before that was my last year in the public system. My mother decided to send me to a private Catholic high school, in an effort to give me a chance to avoid the bullying and fighting. I’ll never forget the first day of 9th grade. A public school bus drove us the roughly 8 miles to the private one. On that bus was myself, a couple other boys and my childhood friend from before. He came up and sat right down next to me. He asked me if I intended to start fresh at this new school or if I was going to be a victim again. I responding by telling the other boys on the bus that they’d be best to say they didn’t know me. I got in 2 fights the first week. The second time I chased an upperclassman who’d was acting bullyish to the stairwell and proceeded to try to throw him down it from the upper floor until some other students stopped me. I got left alone a lot after that which was the goal.
That private Catholic high-school was not a good place. I recall other students warning me not to let myself be alone with certain priests. Advice I didn’t need. I trusted few outside my parents. I think most of the student body was aware that there were a few priests that just gave you the creeps. Certainly the regular joking by one of them about us being the testes and him the tester was as gross as the gleam in his eye when he said it.
I was never abused by the clergy though others were apparently not so lucky as decades after graduation the PA diocese scandal would occur and several priests and laypersons present during my years there were credible accused and let go for sexual and physical abuse or for permitting it to occur while knowing about it.
I didn’t escape the physical abuse though. The gym teacher and his brother both hit me. The gym teacher liked to smack you open-handed, often when you were wet from the pool for the simplest of transgressions such as your toes not perfectly lined up on the line, he’d told you to stand at. His brother taught Health Ed. His favorite abuse was to palm his class ring stone and smack you on the top of the head with it. He even bragged how it hurt like hell but didn’t leave a mark as evidence. I can’t tell you how many times those two died in my mind. By high school I was no longer telling anyone about the abuse. I didn’t want my mother to be concerned or frankly making things worse again. She thought highly of the school and the Church. There were also many good people amongst the school staff, they weren’t all evil.
After high school I went to college in a neighboring State and I think only then was I truly able to let go of the fear of those pictures. Perhaps it was the fear itself that kept me from realizing that they would have had to admit to the crime they committed if they ever showed them and were caught. Of course they were Polaroids I think so who knows.
I put a lot of my troubles behind me for college. Bullying wasn’t so much an issue by then.
After a couple years of college I went back home to take more college classes. Got married for the first time while still in school. That only lasted a couple years until she confessed to falling in love with a bar patron where she worked and refused to leave him so I asked her for a divorce. During that marriage though I had expressed interest in anal sex with her and she accused me of being gay. She had a close male friend that was gay as well. I recall on more than one occasion when we’d go out altogether, I’d get hit on by other men and take offense while they laughed about it. I’ve had the thought years later that perhaps they were influential in making that happen.
A few years later I remarried and this one lasted a couple of years again before she cheated on me as well. Divorced twice now I was honestly ready to give up but thankfully I met my current wife.
This marked the greatest improvement in my wellbeing since 5th grade. She is my soulmate, perfect partner, best friend, and absolute love of my life. Together we have brought two beautiful, smart, funny children into the world that has only expanded the feelings of love and happiness in me. They are my family and my world. Not even the daily pain of fibromyalgia was enough to make me want to die in my sleep regularly like I did in my youth. I now have a new chronic pain to go with the fibro, ruptured or herniated disks on top of the fibro.
I still feel broken though. I told myself decades ago I couldn’t accept God anymore because I can’t forgive those that harmed me. I can’t accept that there is any way they can ever be judge by God to have repent enough to go to Heaven. The thought of going to Heaven and them being there is unacceptable to me. I’ve said for years I’d rather not go myself.
Add to that the religious notion that my lack of forgiveness means that I can’t go to Heaven. Before my wife and our children, I didn’t care. I’ve existed for years now feeling lost spiritually. I still do when I’m reminded of the extent of abuse and cover ups in organized religion. But my family has changed that. It hasn’t changed my views on abuse in general or the Church and how it still puts the sin of scandal above the welfare of children but a part of me now does worry a bit about not getting into Heaven where I hope my family will be with me someday far in their future.
Can God still love me despite my refusal to forgive or all the revenge I have fostered in my mind over the years? Will I ever stop hurting while I’m still alive? I can’t even bring myself to feel regret for all the violence in my mind against these people though I have at least stopped doing it, mostly.
I’m not sure what is triggering all the memories at this time. I am physically suffering for having them though and I am having strong mood swings. I’m snapping at my wife and I’m hating myself for it. I feel like a simmering pot far too often anymore and simple things as causing me to boil over. Any time spent recalling one particular abuse is currently triggering crying panic attacks in me. I am scared to let it continue as well as afraid to seek help. I don’t want medication for it or the pursuit of justice. All I really want to do is stop crying, panicking, and experiencing terror, just thinking of it. When I think of how I’m breaking down dwelling on it and how difficult it was to tell my wife, the thought of doing it front of strangers would test my claim of being shameless anymore.
I want to get better.
I know forgiveness is for my benefit not theirs. I can’t get justice as I don’t even know the names of many of them. I treat so much of the world with indifference, but I still struggle turning it on for my past.
Thank you if you read it all.
I view my childhood till the start of 5 grade as typical. Time has taught me I had it pretty good. My parents were devoted to each other with a strong marriage. My mother was very active in the local Presbyterian church before switching to an Episcopal one. Throughout the following until their passing, I always felt my parents loved me and supported me. They not doing anything about what was happening to me was because I hid it all from them as best I could.
I was fairly well adjusted, I think. I had several friends in the neighborhood and surrounding areas and enjoyed playing outside with them.
Then 5th grade started and suddenly it seemed everyone wanted to be a bully except me it seemed.
I am a coward. I have been all my life I believe. I’m only usually capable of bravery when it comes to defending those I care about. When it comes to defending myself – running, hiding, and avoidance was almost always my response.
I recall one of my friends, who I had spent many days with at either of our homes, telling me after school in the early days of the new school year that if I didn’t become more like the bullies, they’d make sure I became one of the victims. Truer words have not been spoken. He went on to become one of the worst bullies in the school, but he avoided picking on me, though he didn’t help me either at least not that I know of.
Suddenly my days turned into a nightmare of what still feels like unending torture at times. I know there was much more to life at the time, but it seems nearly all recollection eventually triggers the overwhelming bad memories.
My bullies trained me to put nearly all my energy into the 100-yard dash. Each day I was to sprint as fast as I could from the bus stop to my home. Failure to run would result in being thrown into the nearby golf course pond and being told to stay in the water till they were out of sight. That pond is also where I learned about leeches.
Most of the friends I had the year before wanted nothing to do with me. The few remaining and the new ones I got in 5th grade were those like me, bottom of the rung victims.
The next summer between 5th and 6th grade was the year that one of the neighborhood bullies caught me fishing at a nearby pond. He tackled me, knelt between my shoulders and took one of my own gym socks that I taken off to stand in the water and proceeded to wrap it around my neck and rapidly yank it back and forth leaving a seeping rug burn on my throat that took weeks to heal. All these years later just typing that gives me a very unpleasant sensation of recall. After that I feel I spent far more time indoors.
6th grade saw more of the same. At this time my Mom was not only aware of what I was going through she was actively trying to help. Unfortunately most of her efforts had the opposite effect. It simply added Momma’s boy to my name list. Bullying in the school district at the time was rampant. It also wasn’t restricted to gender. Most of the girls were abusive if only verbally.
What happened in the summer between 6th and 7th grade until just a few days ago never left my lips until I told my wife. It shouldn’t have been so hard. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, it was that I still didn’t want to face the shame I felt. I had told her I was abused but no real detail. The recent news about my Catholic high school once again determining credible accusations of abuse and the knowledge of abuse without action sent me into a depressing mood, and all the pain felt in those years came flooding back like it was happening again.
A boy in the neighborhood invited me over to hang out. At some point he showed me some porn magazines he said his brother had. We were in a bedroom with 2 beds sitting apart and once he exposed himself and started masturbating I must have thought it was ok or something and I did the same thing. He tried several times to get me to touch him or let him touch me but I didn’t want to. That is when an older boy and girl flashed a camera into the room.
The girl proceeded to shame both of us telling us we were dirty and gay. The older boy stood with the camera in the doorway while the girl continued her pitch. She eventually to stuck one of those white plastic vibrators, sold as women’s personal massagers, in my butt. This became one of the worst betrayals in memory, because I felt it was my own body that betrayed me when I got aroused. But the fact that I did didn’t go unnoticed and she pointed out that was more proof I was gay. I don’t know the other younger boy’s involvement. Was he a victim as well or was he somewhat involved in luring me there? The abuse ended with them letting me go but telling me to return the following weekend because she wanted to see the older boy fuck me. They warned me they had pictures now and if I didn’t return they would show them around the neighborhood.
I didn’t go back to them ever, but I lived in terror through most of the remainder of my school years and to some extent beyond. Terror because so much of the bullying involved calling me gay and a fag. Those pictures would have forever labeled me that way in my mind.
On top of that now I was struggling with the notion of anal penetration. Why was I aroused by it. I’ve never felt any sexual attraction to men. I fell for girls at very early age. Not sexually obviously at first but I knew there was something different about them and it fascinated me. It wasn’t until later I learned they could just as cruel as boys if not worse.
Once 7th grade started I was in a really bad state of mind. I was regularly trying to avoid school altogether. I tried poisoning myself several times by putting a little rubbing alcohol in milk and drinking it in order to throw up. Other times I would shove my fingers down my throat to try and vomit so I could convince my parents I was too sick for school. At school I was completely withdrawn, but I was still sprinting home from the bus stop. At some point here I also started praying not to wake up. I’d end my prayers that if I should die before I wake, Amen. Far too cowardly to end it myself I simply pray not to wake anymore.
Flash forward to the summer of before 8th grade.
There were a few memorable events of that summer. That was the summer I fell out of the big maple in the backyard. Probably surviving the drop by hitting every big branch on the way down, but I lay on the ground for quite some time. Later in the summer I was hit in the face by a golfball that knocked me out cold. I still have a bump on my jawbone where it hit me. Then there was the day that a boy across the fairway from my house got mad at me for laughing when his dog accidentally wrapped the tether line it was on around the boy. I never thought he was in danger I don’t think but laughing wasn’t nice. Nevertheless once untangled he kicked my in the groin as hard as he could. From then on I’ve had a permanent curvature of my penis. The last big event of that summer was seeing the older boy who had the camera get in a car accident just up the road from home. I left the house after hearing the car hit the trees. I didn’t know who it was till I got closer and saw his bloodied face. He asked me to go call for help. I don’t know if he recognized me or ever figured out who I was at that time. I walked back home, went inside and sat down to watch tv. I never told anyone at the time I even saw him and I never learned the results of the crash.
I don’t think I found it wrong at the time. By this point I was going to bed each night lying in the dark fantasizing about killing everyone who’d hurt me in the most extreme and violent ways. Everyone was murdered in my head over and over until I’d fall asleep, a fantasy I used nearly nightly till well in my twenties. The faces changed or were just added to as I went to college and beyond.
8th grade was my last year in the public schools. I spent an inordinate amount of it in detention. By the end of the school year, I had my own room in a storage area attached to the guidance counselor office. My only interaction was when he would bring my lessons from my teachers for the day. This was my classroom for the last couple of weeks of 8th grade. I had been in numerous fights throughout the year. I basically snapped. I beat the hell out several of the bullies who’d been torturing me for years and I was proud of it. The events of the summer had reset my pain index and done a lot to overcome my fear of violence. No one could ever hit me as hard as that tree or golf ball did. I picked fights for just looking at me wrong, and when I was dragged into the principals office I refused to acknowledge I did anything wrong. I blamed the administration and teachers to their faces. They ignored what was done to me for years they could now ignore what I was doing in retaliation and revenge.
As I said before that was my last year in the public system. My mother decided to send me to a private Catholic high school, in an effort to give me a chance to avoid the bullying and fighting. I’ll never forget the first day of 9th grade. A public school bus drove us the roughly 8 miles to the private one. On that bus was myself, a couple other boys and my childhood friend from before. He came up and sat right down next to me. He asked me if I intended to start fresh at this new school or if I was going to be a victim again. I responding by telling the other boys on the bus that they’d be best to say they didn’t know me. I got in 2 fights the first week. The second time I chased an upperclassman who’d was acting bullyish to the stairwell and proceeded to try to throw him down it from the upper floor until some other students stopped me. I got left alone a lot after that which was the goal.
That private Catholic high-school was not a good place. I recall other students warning me not to let myself be alone with certain priests. Advice I didn’t need. I trusted few outside my parents. I think most of the student body was aware that there were a few priests that just gave you the creeps. Certainly the regular joking by one of them about us being the testes and him the tester was as gross as the gleam in his eye when he said it.
I was never abused by the clergy though others were apparently not so lucky as decades after graduation the PA diocese scandal would occur and several priests and laypersons present during my years there were credible accused and let go for sexual and physical abuse or for permitting it to occur while knowing about it.
I didn’t escape the physical abuse though. The gym teacher and his brother both hit me. The gym teacher liked to smack you open-handed, often when you were wet from the pool for the simplest of transgressions such as your toes not perfectly lined up on the line, he’d told you to stand at. His brother taught Health Ed. His favorite abuse was to palm his class ring stone and smack you on the top of the head with it. He even bragged how it hurt like hell but didn’t leave a mark as evidence. I can’t tell you how many times those two died in my mind. By high school I was no longer telling anyone about the abuse. I didn’t want my mother to be concerned or frankly making things worse again. She thought highly of the school and the Church. There were also many good people amongst the school staff, they weren’t all evil.
After high school I went to college in a neighboring State and I think only then was I truly able to let go of the fear of those pictures. Perhaps it was the fear itself that kept me from realizing that they would have had to admit to the crime they committed if they ever showed them and were caught. Of course they were Polaroids I think so who knows.
I put a lot of my troubles behind me for college. Bullying wasn’t so much an issue by then.
After a couple years of college I went back home to take more college classes. Got married for the first time while still in school. That only lasted a couple years until she confessed to falling in love with a bar patron where she worked and refused to leave him so I asked her for a divorce. During that marriage though I had expressed interest in anal sex with her and she accused me of being gay. She had a close male friend that was gay as well. I recall on more than one occasion when we’d go out altogether, I’d get hit on by other men and take offense while they laughed about it. I’ve had the thought years later that perhaps they were influential in making that happen.
A few years later I remarried and this one lasted a couple of years again before she cheated on me as well. Divorced twice now I was honestly ready to give up but thankfully I met my current wife.
This marked the greatest improvement in my wellbeing since 5th grade. She is my soulmate, perfect partner, best friend, and absolute love of my life. Together we have brought two beautiful, smart, funny children into the world that has only expanded the feelings of love and happiness in me. They are my family and my world. Not even the daily pain of fibromyalgia was enough to make me want to die in my sleep regularly like I did in my youth. I now have a new chronic pain to go with the fibro, ruptured or herniated disks on top of the fibro.
I still feel broken though. I told myself decades ago I couldn’t accept God anymore because I can’t forgive those that harmed me. I can’t accept that there is any way they can ever be judge by God to have repent enough to go to Heaven. The thought of going to Heaven and them being there is unacceptable to me. I’ve said for years I’d rather not go myself.
Add to that the religious notion that my lack of forgiveness means that I can’t go to Heaven. Before my wife and our children, I didn’t care. I’ve existed for years now feeling lost spiritually. I still do when I’m reminded of the extent of abuse and cover ups in organized religion. But my family has changed that. It hasn’t changed my views on abuse in general or the Church and how it still puts the sin of scandal above the welfare of children but a part of me now does worry a bit about not getting into Heaven where I hope my family will be with me someday far in their future.
Can God still love me despite my refusal to forgive or all the revenge I have fostered in my mind over the years? Will I ever stop hurting while I’m still alive? I can’t even bring myself to feel regret for all the violence in my mind against these people though I have at least stopped doing it, mostly.
I’m not sure what is triggering all the memories at this time. I am physically suffering for having them though and I am having strong mood swings. I’m snapping at my wife and I’m hating myself for it. I feel like a simmering pot far too often anymore and simple things as causing me to boil over. Any time spent recalling one particular abuse is currently triggering crying panic attacks in me. I am scared to let it continue as well as afraid to seek help. I don’t want medication for it or the pursuit of justice. All I really want to do is stop crying, panicking, and experiencing terror, just thinking of it. When I think of how I’m breaking down dwelling on it and how difficult it was to tell my wife, the thought of doing it front of strangers would test my claim of being shameless anymore.
I want to get better.
I know forgiveness is for my benefit not theirs. I can’t get justice as I don’t even know the names of many of them. I treat so much of the world with indifference, but I still struggle turning it on for my past.
Thank you if you read it all.