How it feels

How it feels
A

Aden

Registrant
My perp ( isnt it interesting how we claim ownership of our perps?) Was my step-brother. He moved in with us when I was 8 and he was 11. He was a delinquent whose mother couldnt handle him, so she sent him to live in my house. I was an only child until then. By the time the rape started a year later, I had already been brow beaten and tormented beyond reason. He was an evil spirit. And I was a choir boy.

It wasnt violent. I wasnt allowed by my parents to defend myself. It was painful, sickening, and shameful. I stopped going to confession and taking communion. It is hard to be 9 years old and know for certain that you are going to hell.

When hell is a certainty, the fear of hell is no longer a controlling factor. The ultimate consequence, having already been earned, there is little to lose. Hope, pride, safety, love, trust...All the good stuff is gone. So I replace the good with what is near at hand. Hope/greed, Pride/vanity, Safety/anger, Love/lust, Trust/control. You settle for the next best thing and it is never good enough. God doesnt waste His gifts on the damned.

I have wasted so much time trapped in that ugly place. Some days I am able to see the light. But it is not the light of heaven. Its just the sun shining over the rim of this deep, deep hole. I will never be free of this.

The good news is, I no longer believe in hell. There is some freedom in being able to recant my own damnation. Now, if I could only relive my life...Oh well, some things are possible, others are not.

Aden
 
Hi Aden,

The bit about hell so resonates with me. I have been thinking about this since I said in another post about not telling the truth in confession from the first one on. I would imagine the priest would give me enough penance to keep me busy praying for months if I told the truth. I took communion otherwise people would know about my sins and I was in denial about them most of the time. I could barely acknowledge how sinful that made me, sort of forcing gods face into a cesspit. The adults were always throwing holy water on us to keep us safe and I would sometimes try to avoid it landing on me I would imagine it burning me like it did the devil. I had a vision of my soul as once an oval luminous white thing, now covered in the sooty mortal sins. I tested the priests reaction once by telling him about fictional disobedience towards my parents. He was clear the bible says; they must be obeyed. This reinforced what I already believed that I was the sinner and I couldnt stop sinning. The icons in our house with the eyes that for the little me so mysteriously followed me around told me there was no escape. In our family prayers I would see the parents and grandparents praying sincerely and know I was the one that was wrong.

I was barely conscious of it but felt like adam and eve being chased out of the garden, I would stare at a bible picture of them and know I was even worse.

The certainty of hell was a numb semi-conscious inevitability. I was a compulsive thief all through my childhood and I guess I didnt think it mattered due to the belief that gods mercy wasnt coming my way anyway. When I was suicidal I knew hell was waiting but I thought thats what I deserved and would get anyway. As you say there was little to loose.

Somehow the guardian angel remained a comfort to me and I could say that prayer without shame.

It is really awful to feel doomed at such innocent ages. The doomed feeling persisted long after the belief in hell. Knowing the innocence and pain of my little self has shifted that. The religion certainly added extra misery. I guess thats what angers me about the bible or any religious belief system.

I dont much like the my when it comes to perps I often say the for adults in my childhood when Im angry with them it sort of divorces them from me.

Sorry that I only have my own stuff to throw in here, its been circling around my head today, I think I get how that must have felt for you.

Thanks

Take good care,

Rustam.
 
Aden,

What you write, wow. I thank you for writing it, for sharing it. Because it just seems to me to be the rawest emotion you have shared here so far. Perhaps it is not, from your view of it, it is just how it hit me.

It is interesting, what you say, of once we know we are condemmed to hell, the threat of it of course loses it's power. But for the conscience of something, we all could have become quite evil monsters without that fear of our final destination.

I do believe there is a hell. Hell is what we have been through. I can not imagine something more terrifying or scarring beyond it. So maybe that is what take away my fear of it, that I feel I have already been through as bad or worse.

I am very sorry you have grown so many yearswith that thought, that you are going to hell. To feel that you have done something wrong or bad to send you there. No one should be weighed by that burden if they have not earned it. The people who have put us at this site have maybe earned it. The people here at this site, haven't.

It sounds like you feel very hopeless of your feelings right now, and unable to get out of the 'abyss' you are in emotionally. It is maybe trite to say 'it gets better'. Maybe 'it can get better'. For some people, maybe it won't. It does take work, time, effort, strength, courage, etc. All things I think you have.

Aden, for you, I hope it DOES get better.

leosha
 
Now, if I could only relive my life...Oh well, some things are possible, others are not.
Click to expand...
As long as we are alive, we all have the power to transform ourselves and transform our lives. It is not easy and does require a lot of hard work, as we all know too well. But it IS possible!

May the light of your faith shine ever brighter!

Peace,
Raphael
 
Aden, I reserved response to this thread because I felt so much emotion in what you wrote.

Hell is where youve been, if you are going there then you are not going to be much worse off.

Heaven is only a memory to me.

I was a kid who was a regular churchgoer in a small community. After the abuse happened, I did not go to confession or receive communion.

I felt that the guilt of what "I" did was too much to tell the priest in confession.

I thought that, in order to take communion, I would have to confess to what I did, even though it was not my fault.

I honestly was so scared as a kid, to believe that if this perp was caught, he would blame me! No wonder we shoulder the guilt.

Confess! For a beast attacking me, but that was what I thought at the time, no wonder my mind was so f**ked up.

I still have my childhood traits, to which I would be caste into hell for telling lies, or breaking Gods' commandments.

I have probably broken some of them, but not many, and I always pay back what I owe him.

I can never be where others in here have been, I can only tread my path in life, a life of so many unwanted and undeserved emotions, sometimes negative but trying to be positive in the maze of life put before me, and so many others.

There is so much tragedy unfolding on this Earth in 2004, I look back in reflection of it all, and how easily it forgotten, not by me, and probably many others here.

I suppose we will the World to be so much a safer place for all, but we see the World and our lives in chaos, but then again we seem to live in our World as so much as the Alpha male was meant to be.

Maybe I was the runt of the litter, but a friend always said to me, the runt of the litter always made the best dog. Maybe he was right, never known him not to be, so I trust his judgement.

sorry about rambling on,

ste
 
Aden
At the age of 51 I am an atheist, and will in all probability remain so. It's been a concious decision, and one that I have thought about often, since I was 11yo.

Up until that age I was a believer, I was raised as a devout Methodist until I went to boarding school where the culture was Church of England. Prayers at every meal, a service every morning, and church in the local village every Sunday.

I can remember very vividly going to this village church and wondering "why?".
I had already began to wonder why I was the one they were having sex with, I already knew that I didn't really want to continue.
So I would stand, sit and kneel at the appropriate times, which I still do when I attend weddings and funerals as courtesy, and go through the service without any participation.
Any belief I had was gone, and I don't believe it's going to come back. Now I feel that I've made my final choice, although 'spirituality' in a personal sense is important to me.

But I'm 100% certain that the events and the abuse that took place at school influenced - no, forced - that decision.
Do I regret it? not now, atheism is something I believe I would have come to anyway. But the fact it was forced upon me is not something I would have wished for.

Dave
 
Aden,
Thought I would reply to this one because it's an issue I feel very strongly about as well. I don't believe in hell either. In fact in all the years I've spent studying the Bible I have come to the realization that the concept was used as an effective tool through the ages as a way to keep people in fear and control, and as survivors it's something that we don't need. In fact one of the root words often translated Hell in many Bibles is "sheol" which basicly means the common grave of mankind, a state of sleep like inactivity described in Ecc 9:5&1O. All of the places in the Bible that are twisted and missinterperated to support the belief in Hell, when you read the context and analize the passage it becomes obvious that the writer is writing in highly symbolic terms.
We are capable of love because we were made in God's image, a God that "is love". How many of us in our right mind would even think of holding our childs hand over a flaming fire for any extended period of time, because our child made some misguided mistakes?

Anyway, I decided to post this in support of your non belief in Hell, it's a big cotroversial issue and sometimes it just feels better to have some facts under your belt in your behalf. If you would like any additional refferences feel free to PM me.
(For everyone else that read this, I understand that this can possibly jolt your belief system if you do indeed beleive in "Hell", however I do ask that you not PM me if your intention is to argue.

Thanks,
Calg
 
Aden,

"Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality is for people who have already been there."

That's a saying I have heard many times, and so today I am more likely to call myself a believer in spirituality. The definition of spirit is 'breath of life' or 'animating force', for one, and it is that breath or force that I seek to follow.

Hell for me is when I feel so low that I believe myself inadequate or unworthy of contact with that spirit of life that animates my world. I spent so many years that way. Jung once observed about alcoholics like me, that we seek our spiritual connection in spirits (alcohol). (That's a bad paraphrase, the original is in Latin and I am too lazy to look it up.)

As you observed, the great thing about having been to hell, is the fear of it is substantially lessened.

The bottom of the bottomless pit of hell, at least according to Dante (one of my favs) is solid ice, frozen forever. That to me is how I was when I felt so ashamed, so apart from, so beyond the pale of humanity.

The effects of the sexual abuse left me cold, frigid, alienated, afraid and so terribly alone with the knowledge of what had happened to me.

The Spanish poet Unamuno wrote, "We die of cold and not of darkness."

I'm glad you guys are here with me now. Even when it's dark, I can still sense your warmth.

Regards,
 
Originally posted by Aden:
When hell is a certainty, the fear of hell is no longer a controlling factor. The ultimate consequence, having already been earned, there is little to lose. Hope, pride, safety, love, trust...All the good stuff is gone. So I replace the good with what is near at hand. Hope/greed, Pride/vanity, Safety/anger, Love/lust, Trust/control. You settle for the next best thing and it is never good enough. God doesnt waste His gifts on the damned.

Aden
Click to expand...
Wow...thank you for this post. It made me think a lot about things that have been going on lately with me. Especially the part above.
 
Aden you said.

Now, if I could only relive my life...Oh well, some things are possible, others are not.

No need to relive it Aden. Just change your feelings around the past. Put the shit where it belongs. The past is a part of us all. It is our feelings and emotions that can be changed around the facts. And the facts dictate that it was never the fault of any of us. The future is ours to mould.

I have seen tremendous growth in you in the past and that will continue for 2005. Remember that we are going to spend the rest of our lives in the future.

Religious I am not to much I am afraid. But I do recognize that it can be a tremendous help to some people to. We had hell on earth. And it was freakin hot. Nuff said.
 
Great posts everyone..
When my SA started I knew I was going to hell. Afterward I was in hell. And now I am finally pulling myself out of hell. There was a time when I couldnt dream or hope for anything. I thought why would God want anything to do with a dirty and sick perv like me. Thanks to this website I no longer feel that way. I think where I have been the past 29 years was hell. A dark and unforgiving place that I never want to return too.
 
Aden - Hell is the place that I lived in until I spoke of my dirty secret. It's a place that I don't want to ever receive any new inhabitants. The work that spreads out from this site could eventually realise my dream - I really hope so!

Best wishes ...RIk
 
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