???Home is Where???

???Home is Where???
TJ jeff

TJ jeff

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Was not really sure where I should post this thread? - I know that this problem is connected to my past (have talked about this many, many times in the past w/ my old T but it just seemed to confuse him) so will post it here...

What I am really starting to wonder is... - How many others out there feel as if there is absolutely nowhere that they trully belong in life?

I know that for me while I was growing up in an abusive home - I always felt as if I was unwanted there (and so I left for the military at 18) - but then I left the military after 6 years because I also felt that I was no longer wanted there (Clinton's Right-Sizing the military, high year tenures / change of retirement from 20 to 30, phaseing out of my rateing...) - And now I am living with my Grandmother (sort of keeping an eye on her), but i am really startig to feel very unwanted here as well...(I could write a book on the many things she has done in the last few years that clearly say to me that she wants me out of here - and yet when asked she'll say that if I leave this house it will force her to move as well as she cannot live alone out here...)

Is ther any way to get rid of this deep internal feeling of being unwanted??? - or is the feeling right???

Any input is appreciated... - I'm just kinda confused right now...

TJ jeff
 
TJ,

I can't exactly identify. But I can say that there has never been a place in my life that was "home".

Shuttled enough, from one place to another, I had no home. I call Arizona my home because that is the only place I remember clearly.

I can only remember one address. 1615 E Linden. And I went back to that house about ten years ago. It was empty and so small. It's amazing that the place that was the subject of my worst abuse is the only place I can identify.

On the grandmother issue, I can also identify. My great-grandmother was being kicked out of every relative's house. Even her daughter's.

I spent three years taking care of her. Working two jobs to afford the nursing care she needed. When she died at 104, my relatives made a secret of where she was being buried and I wasn't told.

What is home? I have no idea. I don't even feel "home" in my own place.

Yeeeshhh!

Marc
 
Hi, TJ. I can relate very well to what you're saying. To me, it's kind of like the Gone With The Wind thing, where Scarlett's father talks to her about the importance of Tara. When really, Tara is just a house of board and nails built on a piece of dirt - but it's where you feel rooted that matters.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling out of my mind about 11 o'clock one night so got in my truck and went out driving. Know where I went? Drove 12 miles to a little farming community of about 100 population. Why? It's where my grandparents lived when I was a child (they're both long since dead now though), and a place I felt safe when I was growing up. I just drove around the town that night, remembering, feeling safe again. Everyone in town was asleep, and there wasn't so much as a stray cat out and around, but it satisfied what I needed at that moment - to feel grounded. At that moment, that was "home" for me, it was my Tara.

Luckily, our house that I grew up in and endured so much pain in burned to the ground when I was 17. I'm glad it did, because a lot of bad living went up in the flames with it.

Any of this make any sense? Hope it helped.
 
Ya, I went to four grammar schools in three years in three states. Some kids seemn to thrive on that shit, I just played more roles and got more deeply separated from myself.
I was able to make certain that my daughters stayed in the same school district for all grades. They even went to college in town and we were able to see all of their perfomances. I think that it has given them a more balanced life. They have both traveled to Europe and around the US extensively and are now both home again, putting down roots of their own.
I grew up, after all of those moves, and with the confusion suffered because of the CSA, feeling like you, A Stranger In A Strange Land.
Take hope in what you are discovering now, the person that you want to be, in the place where you want to live.
I enjoyed the description of your late night drive, Eddie, I don't know if I have a place like that...I envy that.
Marc, my heart goes out to you. I'm sending you my best to find a place that's just special for you.
I spent a very short time in Hawaii...I think that I could feel at home there...the people are friendly, the weather and water are to die for...at least I wouldn't freeze to death.
As I sign off for the night, the phrase, "Home Is Where The Heart Is," comes to mind.
If that's the case, then this is home, and you guys, is where my heart is.
Peace, comfort and pleasant dreams,

David
 
Interesting note. I've never thought I had a home either or feel like I ever came from a place I call home. I've moved some 30 times in my 40 years, lived in four different states, two countries, and 11 different cities. Along the way, I managed to pick up 4 university degrees, a sucessful career, a beautiful wife and now have two wonderful children. But I'm still searching for something and don't quite know what it is. I sing the Billy Joel song "I've never had a place I could call my very own, that's alright with me 'cause you're my home" to my wife and children, who are the very center of my existence. In the meantime, I know I have many miles to go and places to see and live in before I sleep.
 
Feeling like I don't belong, is a big problem in my life right now. I think it probably always has been, but in the past I used many different (and mostly unhealthy)coping strategies to cover up my feelings of being unwanted or out of place.

I feel sure that most people would have never guessed that about me, because I did a terrific job of pretending that I was at ease in any place I ended up.

I guess the answer for me would be two fold.

First, I have the feeling of not having a home or not belonging, because that was the truth, literally, for many years.

I ended up living with the adult male who sexually abused me at the age of 15 because I did not have a safe place to live. His shelter was the best I could find. And that's pretty damned sad, if you ask me.

So part of my feeling is based on past experience. At one time, it was the truth for me.

Getting rid of those old attitudes which no longer reflect the reality of my external life is part of the work I do to recover.

The second part of my answer would have to do with my attitudes, particularly towards myself.

During all the years that I hid the facts of the sexual abuse and lied about what had happened, I felt deep down inside that if people knew the truth that they would not want or love me.

So in a sense I created this sense of being "false" or "not right" because I did not have the courage to speak the truth about being sexually abused. I was living a lie, and I knew it. I spent lots of time and energy maintaining that lie; but somewhere deep inside I knew it was all terribly wrong.

It's no wonder that I never felt comfortable with anyone or in any place. I never let anyone know the real me; and I never really went anywhere different. Sure the geography changed, but the guy who went there was still the lying, deceptive, scared, abused guy that I had been since as long as I can remember.

Now I am daring to be me, and I am finding it more daunting that I imagined. But as I have often observed, "If this recovery stuff was so goddamned easy, we'd all have done it a long time ago!".

Finding out who I am, and what I want and where I do feel comfortable---finding MY HOME---is really what my recovery from the sexual abuse is about.

So in the meantime, the old lies are being shed; the new life is being created and it's easy to see why I would feel a bit out of place...sort of caught between two worlds in a way.

Easy to see, but not so easy to live with. I am having a terrifically difficult time right now. Letting go of the past and moving towards an uncertain future is hard.

Honestly, though, I do feel like I am finding my home--both physically and spiritually. It's just that home is not a destination but a journey, in both realms.

Thanks for a topic that has really stirred me.
 
Danny,

You hit a lot of familiar themes. For a while, my home was my car. A couple years later I didn't even have that. Still remember a cold, rainy October night in a doghouse in someone's back yard. Not a particularly fond memory, that.

David says, "Home is where the heart is." That's true, I think, but because home is where I make it, and I want it where my heart is.

I used to think, "there's no place like home, there's no place like home..." :) but in the sense that "there is no place that feels like it's my home." Now I am beginning to realize that places don't mean as much as I thought. It's the people in my life that matter, and I only get real influence on one person's life. Mine.

Good thread.

Thanks,

Joe
 
Thank You to all who replied,

It has helped me to know that many here feel somewhat the same as me

Tonight the phrase 'Where's Home' has more of a literal meaning for me - I came home from work tonight - had only a short time to get showered, changed, and back up to town for my part in running the Wednesday night youth group at my church - Had a suprise awaiting me though... - My grandmother is replaceing the windows in this old house - includeing the one in my room - so I had to clean out everything from in front of it (not a small task if you've ever seen my room!) - I would have loved it if she'd of given me at least a little bit of a heads up on this whole project (who in their right mind goes ahead and starts a complete exterior renovation project without even mentioning it to all of the people living in the house?) - anyways... - I was real pressed for time, so I hop in the shower quick, then I go upstairs to get dressed and there she is digging through my pile of stuff on the shelfs in front of the window (talk about a major breach of privacy!!! - there are a lot of survivor 'stuff' on those shelves) - without even totaly blowing up I just simply told her that I'd take care of moveing my own 'stuff' - I am however very irked that she'd just go digging through my personal stuff - I now very fully understand that I have no privacy here... - This house is not my home... - I am only a guest here...

Sorry all... - I'm just very upset tonight...

TJ jeff
 
Good post.

"How many others out there feel as if there is absolutely nowhere that they trully belong in life?".

I do - this all started off with a family that refused to believe that my abuse actually happened, It disgusts me so much I am seriously considering changing my surname to that of my maternal grandfathers and ditch the surname I was born with even though today I'm aged 48.

Archnut
 
It has been tough for me. When I was a kid, we moved every year or two years. I think most of it was because my father couldn't hold down a job (might have been more to the reason but don't know for sure). I've finally just started pieceing together where all we lived because my early years are a blurr. I never got to develop friends and people that I knew long term so my social development wasn't normal. I never felt like any one place was my home but often I claim I was born in CA, grew up in Iowa but tell people I'm from NC as I lived there for 8 years! A record for me!

Now I have lived in FL for almost 5 years and don't plan on moving from here any time in the future. I remember a therapist telling me that it took a few years to really get established in an area where you got to know others and I would have to agree with that for me.

One of these days, I'm going to go back and piece my school records together and see if I can actually make sense out of all of my early years.

But we moved so much and sometimes it was just 20 or 30 miles from one place to the next. I remember the cold houses in Iowa and freezing most of the time. I remember not having enough money to buy food and living on Govt cheese, dried eggs and powdered milk. So glad those days are long gone.

Don
 
I never had a home that was safe. I moaned about that. I ranted and screamed and did general mayhem. And all the time home was all around me. I refer to my family and my wife's family. I do have a family and I live in a house with my family and it is home.

But I have another home. It is right here at MaleSurvivor. We do not always agree but we care. It is a safe place for me and always will be.
 
Being on the outside looking in is the only thing I know.
 
I live about middway between the house I grew up and left at 21 to get married, and the school where I was abused.
Both are about 7 or 8 miles away.

Since we got married we've lived in this old cottage, but it's only now that I'm getting itchy feet and have been thinking of moving.
I don't think I want to escape, I just think that my life's changed dramatically recently and I feel able to excercise MY freedom, I no longer feel tied down.
But the truth is, I am. I have a job that I have 4 more years to go before retirement and my parents living close by. But once those aspects of my life have gone we plan to move on.
It's either going to be the south west of Eire, county Kerry, Nova Scotia or Utah.

Dave
 
I too have similar feelings of not belonging, but not necessarily within my "home" where i live, but more within myself... i have been struggling to find a place where i feel comfotable, and feel like i belong in the world, in the workplace, in my personal life, with friends, and in away within myself... i feel like every step i take to change things, and start building something of my own is a step in the wrong direction, i feel uneasy, and scared. i don't feel at home within my soul... and i dont really know why. i guess its cause i feel lost in the world, with no direction,a nd feel myself slipping further away from myself... and i guess what i'm trying to say is that i dont feel at home in my own skin, in my overall place right now... its a bit of a stretch from this topic, and i'm not sure how i related this all, but i wanted to post this anyway... sorry if it is hard to follow, but thanks for reading...

take care,
cpt.
 
I loved my home as a kid after the abuse, trouble was, I always associated it with my abuse, I really wanted my folks to move somewhere so that the perp cannot find me, because he "knew" where I lived.

How could my home be my home? I could never be the kid I should have been, full of self doubt, doubt because I couldn't understand the overpowering feelings, I wasn't a normal kid, I was different to my siblings.

Dirty, filthy, powerless and then the feelings of emptiness and despair, not being adequate in my dealings with the abuse, you are a boy, boys don't cry, some folk call me crazy boy, so I don't have any dealings with you, if you don't have the power to see the hurt, you don't have the power of care.

The power to think, hey, that kid is hurt, you think he is crazy, how about yourself, maybe you are crazy thinking that way? Is this not how we instinctively know who is really crazy, hey it's not me, but your inability to think anyone can ever go through anything but a normal childhood!!!

By the way this is not aimed at you who read this, it is aimed at my old neighbours, most who understood me for who I was, but for some, it was like they blamed my parents for the kid I became, so abuse is aimed at you from so many ways, hey he is like some sort of target to aim at, and the target, when hit, really hurts.

Don't we all hurt through this, because we can never understand how much hurt we really had to go through?

Should I really say, other people never took the trouble to care about us, even when we cry out from the child perspective.

I always remember keeping all the doors closed and locked when I got into the house, if I got home from school, and there was nobody at home, I would freak out, just in case he was in the house, waiting for me, so the first thing I did was inspect warily every room in the house, put on the TV and just hope the knock on the door was one of my family coming home.

I moved home age 17, but still felt vulnerable, even remember getting my first decent nights sleep on a make shift bed, but I was away from the memories.

I still go back to my old home, and I wonder whether the family who live there feel the hurt that I went through in the past, like maybe a haunted house???

I hope not, I hope the family live in peace, I can still remember my mother making home made bread in the kitchen, cakes, good home cooking, and me locking the kitchen door, even though it was so hot, an obsession, I got over, WOW.

ste
 
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