He was my friend

[NoSimpleMachine]

I've spent a lifetime keeping people at arm's length. Few connections, chosen carefully based on my emotional feelings with someone, and always leave myself a way out. Even a friendship that's lasted half my life, there's a way out. And it's really hard to feel much impact from taking that decision. I can turn my back on someone who's been there for years without much concern. I don't like that part of myself, but I guess I'm finally starting to realize it came from somewhere.

Before my abuser abused me, he was my friend. I was 3 and he was 40 but I didn't have concepts of age differences or "appropriate relationship structures" or anything like that. I liked this person and wanted to spend time with him and have him like me back. And then he raped me, and his wife hit me when I tried to tell her, and the whole thing was covered up, I buried it, and that was that. Ten more years of them being my neighbors followed, and I always wanted to be there and be close to them, but always felt like I was on the fringe, and I never knew why. It certainly made me sad a lot when I was a kid. And I certainly consider it a primary reason that one of my biggest fears for so long was not being accepted socially, and how much stress and drama and bad feelings came to me over and over again over the years when I tried to make social connections with new people or groups. Deserved or not, I would feel cut out and unwanted each step of the way. Slowly these things build into a self-definition; an identity.

I guess the good news is that now that I'm understanding this, I feel like I deserve to make choices in my life that are good for me, that respect my value as a human being. The bad news is...I don't know where to point this new "weapon" (for lack of a better analogy). I have the self-respect now to stand up for myself and structure my life the way I want, but I also have a lifetime history of finding problems where maybe there aren't any and pushing people away just as my standard way of operating...when things get tough, blame it on a person or a group, push that out of your life, rebuild, and proceed. Sure it tends to feel good, but is it? I don't know. It leaves me feeling pretty stuck about how to proceed in life. When am I making good decisions based on my full understanding and when am I making poor decisions based on my skewed emotional upbringing?

I started reading Evicting The Perpetrator. In my mind, what felt like a locked room full of pain 6 months ago now feels wide open, empty and echo-ey. Little pockets of hurt and trauma linger in the corners but overall it's this walled off space that's reserved for the memory of my abuse. How does that become part of my own mind again? How do I reclaim that space that was taken by someone else, someone I trusted who hurt me?

A couple weeks ago, I spent a weekend with a friend in Seattle; we both went back to attend a mutual friends' wedding. We've talked for years and have both left Seattle for similar reasons, me returning home to California and him returning home to Alaska. And this person, he loves me. He loves me a lot. And while I'm more OK with that than I have been for anyone, ever...I still don't really feel it much. It's shocking how hard it is to let someone come close. And the thing that makes me nervous is how close I can APPEAR to come to someone without really being that close in my own mind. It's not fair to someone who's trying to share their heart.

The thing about this person is...OK most of the time I'm pretty good, pretty up, pretty social, or at least capable of being social (I consider myself introverted overall but not excessively so). But when I get into a low spot, I want to withdraw from this person (and others). I don't want to share my thoughts or concerns or anything. And at some point I grow to realize that I'm not making things better, that I'm in an old pattern of anxious behavior that wrecks relationships. So I dig up the courage to get over that and approach this person. And damned if everytime, he doesn't surprise me. He comes to me with words and emotion that are so genuinely caring that I'm really disarmed. I am accustomed to having my emotions disregarded or minimized, and I presume that this is how I will be treated by others all the time. And I still feel like I need to be an island as a result.

 

[JW1230]

NSM,
Wow, I related to so much of what you said; I do the same thing with people. I too keep them at arms length and always have a "way out". When I begin to get too close, I have a pattern of cutting ties. I have hurt a lot of people over the years and never knew why I did it. It never was my intention. I know that I get fearful and feel the need to protect myself from hurt, but the last thing you said gave me some insight into why I do this:
"I am accustomed to having my emotions disregarded or minimized, and I presume that this is how I will be treated by others all the time. And I still feel like I need to be an island as a result."
As I hear so much here at MS, "ME TOO".

You sound like you are on the right track to break this cycle...I wish you the very best!

Be well,
John

 

[don64]

Hi NSM,

I am familiar with what you are talking about. My damage was precognitive also, and I frequently say it registered at a level close to instinct. Very difficult for me to approach directly. You're discussing something I have been curious about for many, many years.

I wrote a paper in graduate school, maybe 35 years ago, about a woman who had relationship issues such as you describe, genuine love came her way, the power of the love melted so many of her defenses she wound up in a locked ward of a psychiatric hospital, unable, at that time, to handle the ingrained threat that level of intimacy posed. My professor had me read it to the class and commented about how wisely she had chosen. Of course, I knew and know that the paper was about myself. I am just getting to the level of awareness, at age 65 that you are at now.

My own take is that I will continue to consciously move through levels of old threat in the present, experience life differently as I have now brought old material into consciousness, and my dream/fantasy is a together enough man who loves me and vice versa shows up who is able to walk through my levels of terror with me without it exhausting him. I can only hope that who I am and who I am becoming is meaningful to him, and that we are interested in each other's conversations. I feel like my ability to be verbal is my only way through this.

Sending you love and support,

Don

 

[finallyhere]

Wow, how far you have come. cognitively know the sentence you italicized may have recently been the most important one to realize but I believe you should have italicized a couple sentences before and the last one also.

"And damned if everytime, he doesn't surprise me. He comes to me with words and emotion that are so genuinely caring that I'm really disarmed. I am accustomed to having my emotions disregarded or minimized, and I presume that this is how I will be treated by others all the time. And I still feel like I need to be an island as a result."

I don't believe there is a boat to take you off that island but don't miss out on a bridge that is being built by someone that believes there is a very good reason to extend it out there so that travel back and forth is possible. Perhaps try to build a footing in the waters edge so it can be attached. A bridge to nowhere doesn't do any good for anyone.

Best wishes as you heal.

 

[NoSimpleMachine]

Thanks for the words everyone. I'm realizing as I get further into Evicting The Perpetrator, that this is the "habilitation" process. That description really really struck me when I got to it (cliff notes: rehabilitation is restoring something to a state it was in before. Habilitation is getting used to something you never had before. Habilitation is what a young CSA victim must do to define positive relationships because they never had positive relationship dynamics figured out before.)

My abuse happened one or a few times, but I was out there looking for an adult role model and friend because my parents were kinda not there. My father, I love him dear and I've had a very secure relationship with him over the years in the sense that I trust him completely to do me no harm, and he is a gentle soul, but damned if I'm not finally seeing how he lacks the emotional intelligence, sensitivity, and empathy to really connect with me or anyone. He's a gentle, kind, well-loved person, but he's in his own sorta bubble and you're not about to go forge a deep, intimate connection with him. He's having fun in his own life and will share it with people around him and that's kinda it. My mother, maybe she should've never had children. Her mother was manic-depressive and her father was two-faced and materialistic, valuing money and his own advances in life over his wife and children, so she has this morose nervousness about her, how she assumes things will go bad all the time, how she doesn't trust people. I realized a little while back, my mom gave me a lot of advice over the years, and always encouraged me to be a certain sort of person. A person that appears together to the outside world, that dresses right and talks right and has the right paperwork in their pocket, so they can go out into the world and go where they want to go. She taught me how to be a shell that fools the outside world. She's effectively never taught me anything about how to be happy within myself or how to be a better, happier person. She can't teach what she doesn't know.

I dunno how long she's been drinking herself into a stupor on a nightly basis but it's been as long as I can remember (at least since I was 6, likely earlier; even well before I was born). It came up at Thanksgiving, the parents were discussing with their contemporaries what happened to these people and those people, and my dad said something along the lines of "we couldn't keep track of who was getting divorced when or anything like that, we were just struggling to make it at the time" (the early to mid 90s, aka, my core developmental years). And ya know, that makes a lot of sense. I remember my father consistently struggling to pick me up from daycare before they closed at 6 PM those days and my mom struggled to get home in time for dinner at 7 PM (at which point she promptly began drinking), and then they were both out of the house in the morning before my brother and I went to school. Very typical of my pre-pubescent years.

We don't do the emotional connection thing in this family very much, and we don't hug or hold either. I got very little positive reinforcement that wasn't money or things (here's money for good grades, here's a nice christmas or birthday present), and even that didn't feel very positive because my parents were adamant my brother and I were treated equally. So I could be the more well-behaved child and get a really cool christmas present because of it, but my brother who was less well-behaved would then get the same value of present because that was "fair". I mean, this is genuinely all I had to judge my own self-worth growing up. Because verbally you got nothing but chit-chat, joking awkwardly about things, or negative reinforcement. It's hard to moan about family life being tough when I'm talking about receiving expensive presents while other kids got the belt or the back of the hand or repeatedly sexually molested, I didn't get that at home, but I did get this vacuum of positive emotional reinforcement and intimate connection that happened for a lifetime after being raped by an adult I trusted. And I guess I connect the dots and it makes a lot of sense to me how messed up I can feel at times.

 

[Garf]

Dear NoSimpleMachine and fellow members of MS,

Always do I thank each of you for your honesty and support that you give to each other. I am amazed at how similar we are, yet how much we feel like we are the only ones, the freaks.

NoSimpleMachine, I always say I wish I could take away what happened to you, and I sincerely wish I could. It hurts to think that even after the abusive acts, you still wanted the approval of the perpetrator and his wife. Do I ever understand how it feels to never seem affirmed by anyone.

I am reading Mike Lew and so much of what he says is very true for me. He talks about how isolated we feel, yet how we purposefully isolate ourselves in order to survive. I too cannot accept the care or concern of others or really even that they would want to be in my presence. I am thrilled that there is someone in your life who really does love you, and I pray that it is allowed to happen. That, sir, is the truth, that you are worthy and that you matter greatly to others.

Take care of yourself, good man.