How Far Does This Reach!? (Triggers?)

How Far Does This Reach!? (Triggers?)
T

TX_Space

Registrant
******TRIGGER WARNING**********

So, in February, I admitted that I was abused to my counselor. It was just three occasions at ages 4, 5 and 7. I knew those things happened. I kept them inside of me as things that weren't right. I've struggled to understand how they affected me and my life.

NOW, I'm starting to re-visit some other times in my life. From ages six to seven, a couple of neighbor boys and I used to "experiment." One was about 4 years older than me and was the younger brother of my last abuser. During that same time, the brothers would get my other friend and I and a neighbor girl to do things to each other...until recently, I always chalked it up to experimentation...but it was really under the coercion of the older boys. Finally, I thought about (and it really had been lost in my memory) about the older brother of another friend (again about 6 years older than me) who used to make inappropriate sexual gestures in our presence. He'd always walked around the house in his underwear...and would pull them down and dance in our faces...making remarks. This was in late elementary or early junior high. I can also remember him forcing us to stick our hands in his pants and tell him how big he was.

Why did I continue to allow this to happen? Why did only the other three times stick with me as abuse and the ones that I'm now confronting seem like experimentation and kid play? In all cases, I knew it was wrong...but in all of them, I felt like I HAD to do it...either via threats from the older kids or being told I was a p*ssy. That was at 6 years old...a six year old should NOT know that word...or be afraid of being that!

How deep does this go? I'm now starting to be afraid of thinking about my childhood. It always seemed pretty idyllic...except for those first three episodes that always lived with me but locked away. But, the more I think about and look into...the csa was much more prevalent and rampant!? Was I just a kid that was overly sexualized? Was I a magnet for this kind of stuff? Those are questions that keep trying to surface and I won't let them for fear of the answer.

tx_space
 
Tx, I don't think abuse happens in a vaccuum. Sometimes we get hung up on the idea that it only happened this many times or that was abuse and this wasn't abuse and how often or infrequently the line was crossed. As far as I'm concerned, SA isn't just an incident. In some of our families, it's a way of life. Maybe the guy only SA you three times or whatever, but what were all the times he forced you to see him? It's their toying with us that makes me even more angry.

My wife was CSA (the "C" standing for chronic, I think) for most of her life by her dad. But the fact was, when the abuse wasn't happening, it was still happening. She wanted to learn about mechanics, but she couldn't, because he'd lean over the motor and wink at her or lick his lips or something gross. Was that SA? Just talking about it makes me want to plant his face in some concrete.

I don't think it takes a certain number of times to make abuse hurtful. We may only get hit a couple of times before our arms raise defensively. A couple more times and we learn not to raise our arms. We're born with the instinct to survive and protect ourselves. Maybe my uncle only scared me once or maybe he only SA me a few times, but I know the look. I know the fear. Once the fear is there, how's a little boy to "allow" or "not allow" anything? And how were we to know what to file away as normal or abnormal when we lived in the middle of it every day?

You ask, "Was I a magnet for this kind of stuff?" No. Never. What little boy on the planet is a magnet for sex? No. The problem was with the perps who did this to you. Not you. Even if they sexualized everything and trained us that way, the fact is you were not born that way. You were a good boy surrounded by sick people. It wasn't your fault.

PM me anytime. And hang in there, OK? We're here for you.
 
Tx
no, you weren't a magnet for the abuse, none of us were. It happened to us because 'they' made it happen.

Abuse is different to the normal sexual experimentation that most kids do, I went through that with other kids and don't even think about it, certainly not in the same terms as my abuse.

Sexual abuse is as much the abuse of power as the abuse of sex, they just used sex to show their power and influence over us.
And when you were 6yo they were 10 and 12yo, just look at the kids around you and see the difference 4 or 6 years makes.

Could you have said no? and even if you did, would they have taken any notice?

Dave
 
tx,

wow, that really hits home for me. I find it especially hard to think about the "experiments" the neighbor boys played with me, because I dont know who to be mad at. I want to be mad at them but then think that they were only a little older acting out something that was being done to them. where does the chain end? who can I get angry at?

when I want to get angry, I just think of my kids and know that its all in the past and that i have joys left in life. I try not to let it own me. Its helped me be more willing to look into my past just to know that it doesnt have to own me now.

As for being a magnet, I think we just have a way of lumping all the bad things together. I think of my childhood experiments and being raped, being a teen parent almost losing my partner and kids with my acting out, it seems to all add up. But I try now to think of my kids and how great they are. I think of how I'm working with my fiance to be better together, I think of all those good things and try and change the magnet to attrack the good. change the poles around so to say.

Take stock of the good things you have now. and get that magnet moving the other way.

-Aardvark
 
This thread got me thinking about the "magnet" issue.

I think it is natural to ask that kind of question: did all this happen because of something about me that "attracted" abuse? It is a child's question, though; I think it arises from a child's world of ideas where everything is black and white and where, when bad things happen, we wonder was it our fault. Some of the teenagers here may feel this question as something immediate and urgent to them here and now. As we get older I guess it is something that remains with us. Why? Because it is a terribly vital question for which we never got an answer.

I think the answer must be that none of us is/was a "magnet". Thinking like that comes from the feelings of shame, inadequacy, and worthlessness that abuse gives us. That is, it's a feeling that hits us after abuse; it's never something that can explain how things were before we were hurt. My abuser wasn't sitting in his home reading his newspaper and then suddenly got dragged outside to pounce on me because of some "here I am" vibes I was giving off. He was a paedophile who had hurt other kids before me and would go on to hurt others after me. He hunted children. He had no way of knowing this is a "weak" one, or this is an "easy" one. He groomed me and gradually got me in deeper and deeper and tangled up and confused with all his incredible lies. All kids are vulnerable because all kids are more or less innocent and trusting and susceptible to adult authority.

I was abused because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and because once a kid gets into this nightmare it's very difficult to get out. That's not a very reassuring answer to the question of "why me", but in fact I don't think there is any other answer. It seems to me that the "magnet" explanation takes us nowhere. It is also very harmful, since it's just another way of clinging to the possibility that somehow it was all our own fault.

Larry
 
This is a huge struggle with me too, the magnet issue, especially because the way that I was groomed is becoming very real to me, I was made to seek being abused, did that make me into a magnet, am I still a magnet although an adult, I know the answer is a resounding NO, but the feeling is just so real it is difficult to curb with logic at this point but it sure helps.
 
The 'magnet' feeling is a big issue for us, I'm not sure of any figures as far us guys here are concerned, but I think the majority of us have had more than one abuser.
I've actually had sexual contact with more men than women.

Why? because of the first episode of abuse is why.

That was done so skillfuly by the abuser that I accepted that "this is what I want" and became easy prey for all the others, and I include the people I acted out with as an adult in that statement as well.

Dave
 
An incredible thread. Why us?
FF said this, "Once the fear is there, how's a little boy to "allow" or "not allow," anything?
That to me is key to how it happened to me. Shock, surprise and fear, what could I have done, where could I have gone, who would have believed me?
And if they had believed me, would I have been sent to reform school. More fear. To allow or not allow, I did NOT have a choice.
I do now, however, and my 8th grade teacher will get his letter by tomorrow.
Have a good weekend, guys.

David
 
Dave,

I take your point entirely, and I think anyone would agree that once you have been abused the first time, the chance of a repeat is a lot higher. Might be the same person, or, as you say, numerous others.

I don't mean to rationalize away what really is a terrible experience, I am just uncomfortable with referring to this in terms of becoming a "magnet" for abuse. Why? Just to repeat: because it encourages us to see fault in ourselves as opposed to placing the blame where it belongs - the abuse we suffered and those who inflicted it on us. A kid gets hurt again because his defenses have been wiped out: confusion, shame, guilt, no confidence, self-esteem or respect, etc. And all that came from being abused in the first place, not from a failing in the child.

For me it is rather like saying "I'm so fucked up". Okay, maybe that's true. But isn't it better to think of it this way: "Actually, I am okay. It's what happened to me that's so fucked up, and I am simply doing my best to cope with it."

I don't know. Seeing you last post Dave made me think again, and maybe I'm just wrong about this. Or perhaps I just don't "feel" what you are saying because I was only abused by one person. I'm just wondering if we aren't leaving ourselves open to a lot of unnecessary and misplaced hurt just by the way we choose to talk about things.

Larry
 
Originally posted by roadrunner:
"I was abused because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time..."
Click to expand...
Or, to look at it another way, I was in the wrong family at the wrong time. My previous T and I talked about this quite a bit. In a way, the abuse I went through was inevitable, given the family members and situation that preceeded me. My father and mother both suffered in abusive families growing up, and they in turn practiced what they learned. My older brother, being of my father's temperament and suffering the abuse of our parents, turned that out upon me in the form of sexual abuse. Basically, I was doomed from the womb. All these factors integrated together to create the atmosphere for it to happen. So, No - I was not a magnet that attracted it. I was the low man on the food chain, so to speak, so all that abuse funneled down towards me. I didn't have to do anything to attract it - it just fell there.
 
Eddie,

I think that's exactly how I would look at it:

No - I was not a magnet that attracted it. I was the low man on the food chain, so to speak, so all that abuse funneled down towards me. I didn't have to do anything to attract it - it just fell there.
Click to expand...
There was nothing you did or nothing about you as you that explains what happened.

Maybe I am too anxious to save myself here. I was raised in a happy functional family in a prosperous middle-class neighborhood of other young families: my Dad was one of those soldiers who returned from the Second World War, got married, went to college on the GI Bill, and so on. I was asthmatic as a kid, okay, and a bit lacking in confidence because I could not participate in a lot of the sports that other boys enjoyed so much. But the first time I was abused I was groped and fondled at a friend's house by his father. My friend and his mother had gone to do some shopping, and while they were gone his Dad trapped me in a bedroom and that was it. I don't see how I could have "attracted" him in any way, and as I remember it I had never been weakened by past experiences that made me an easy target. I was just a kid, that's all. I didn't even know what was happening at first, and by the time I figured out something strange was going on I was too confused and frightened to react. It wasn't exactly a rational moment, and it didn't occur to me that I had any choice. And of course he was feeding me lies already, about how this made us special, etc. I just froze. There was no magnet. Just a sick bastard who took an opportunity to make his move on another innocent trusting kid.

Larry
 
I know I didn't ask for what happened to me in the beginning. My Uncle was so slow and done over a long period of time. (4 Yrs) I looked up to this man, thought he was everything to me. He abused me for four years even shared me with the boy next door. But I loved him and know he would not hurt me.
I didn't ask for anything, When My mother would use me in place of my father because he was always Drunk at night and hate & treat me like shit during the day. Dad as drunk as he was know some thing was going on so just for the hell of it he would beat the shit out of me and call me averything under the sun. I didn't ask for it.
My older brothers knew what was going on and never said a word for the most part ignored me like I wasn't there.
It wasn't till I finely ran away and lived on the streets for two years that I had to do things to say alive that I'm not very proud of and it hurts more I think then the abuse because I had control but it's very cold in Winnipeg in the winter. However I only did what I was showen to do.
I did Survive, But I never asked for any of it. So why should I have to relive it every night?

I never asked for any of it, Craig I will survive
 
My take on this is still:

There are opportunists and opportunities.

We all know who the opportunists were within our own lives.

Please do not describe yourselves as magnets!?

Some of these perverts attack children with no prior thought as to who they will attack - they 'get lucky' that some child is in a 'suitable location' so that the attack can occur. It's a bit like the lotto/lottery - sometimes the perv goes for years without so much as winning 10/$15, sometimes they hit the jackpot!

They are pure bastards that do not understand the sanctity of childhood.

Some of these perverts groom children - I am a classic case. Every adult that I had known in my life prior to being abused was fully trustworthy - why would I doubt what this pervert told me?

Please do not let their lies keep you down - everyone one of us can at least stand up to ourselves and state that we did nothing wrong. We also have the right to believe that we did nothing wrong.

As you drift off to sleep, repeat...I am not a magnet...I am electric (I have the power).

Best wishes ..Rik
 
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