*Triggers Possible* Letting it all out
NeverWholeNeverHealed
New Registrant
New here. 50 years old. Never married. No kids.
Molested by my female cousin when I was 5. We were caught, and I was blamed for it. And shamed for it. And punished for it.
Gang raped by three older Hispanic boys in the school restroom when I was 6. I told a woman I saw outside the restroom, sobbing. A teacher, a school administrator, a random parent, I don’t know. She told me that I was “ok” and to go back to class.
A random man knocked on our front door in December of 1982. He said he was gathering neighborhood kids to go Christmas caroling. My mother let me go with him, despite my objections, thinking nothing of it. We went to one house. Just the two of us. We sang for some lady. He then led me down an alley. I honestly don’t remember what happened after that. I don’t remember how I got home.
I was hyper-sexual with other children during this time, from about ages 6-8. Girls and boys. Never by force or cohesion, but always the instigator. The behavior stopped. I don’t recall why. I just didn’t do it anymore.
10-11 was rough. The age when kids start having awakenings. Start having awareness. I didn’t get to experience that preteen bridge between innocence and sexual awakenings. I wasn’t allowed to cross that bridge. I had previously been hurled into the chasm below, and had to figure out how to climb back up. While the other kids founds their way across, and found their way with each other, I was still climbing out. Thrown in too soon, climbed out too late. Childhood? What childhood.
I felt attractions to girls, like a child is supposed to at that time in their lives. I felt too guilty and ashamed to begin that phase of development. I had already experienced by then more than most, I suspect.
Jr High was even rougher. Got raped yet again while in the Boy Scouts. It wasn’t an adult. It was an older Scout. Told me that he felt like butt-fucking someone. So, he did. I was 12. Quit the Scouts after that.
I wish that was it, but there are more layers: Ultra-religious step-father. Mentally ill mother. Constant verbal abuse, religious abuse, neglect, physical abuse. Never knew when I would be physically dragged out of bed in the dead of night to be forced to “confess” for bringing “demons” into the house. Never knew when he would kick in the door and tell me that God told him what I had done, and he had to punish me. Always on egg shells. Never knew when he’d get set off. Everything was “Satanic.” Didn’t have a tv. Wasn’t allowed to watch movies or listen to music. They burned all of my toys and all of my books in a ritualistic fire while they waved their hands in the air and closed their eyes really hard. They even burned my Chronicles of Narnia books and my copy of the Hobbit, which just shows the level of their stupidity, and their limitless belief that demons were everywhere.
I told my youth pastor I was being abused and I was afraid to go home. He yelled at me and told me I was influenced by Satan, because I wasn’t honoring my mother and father.
I told a school counselor that I didn’t want to go home. He told me that I was overreacting, and I needed to learn to accept my parent’s discipline, and realize that they were acting in my best interest.
So, yeah, that whole “tell an adult if you are being abused” thing? That’s a crock of shit. At least it was in the ‘80s. Too many cowards. Too many people looking the other way, pretending that they didn’t see.
People knew. They had to know. My sister’s kindergarten school photograph showed her sporting a back eye. Mom made up an elaborate story about how she got it. She fell while playing and hit it on the corner of the coffee table. Only, that’s not what happened. My mom hit her in the face with the back of a hairbrush because she couldn’t sit still while her hair was being aggressively brushed. People had to have known that it was a dangerous home. How could they not?
Parents had cooled off on the whole religious crap in high school, and let me listen to music, watch movies, and grow my hair long. It still wasn’t great. Step-Dad was still a prick, just without the crazy evangelical edge. Not sure why that all stopped. I’m glad it did. The thick layer of religious perversion had been removed, but there was still so much bad that remained.
Got bit by a spider one morning. It hurt. A red welt appeared on my forearm. A red streak started traveling up my arm. I showed my mom and told her I needed to go to the doctor. She told me I was fine. The red line grew farther and farther up my arm throughout the day. My shoulder started to hurt. I begged her to take me to the hospital. She finally did. She yelled at me the entire time, telling me that I was going to cost her more money. Got to the hospital. I collapsed. Came too with a doctor and bunch of nurses over my head. An IV stuck in me. Said I was moments from death. Had the poison reached my heart. Mom never spoke about it. Not once. Never apologized for it. She never once apologized for anything. Not to me, not to anyone else.
Could never talk to her about anything. She’d either tell me I was mistaken, tell me I was lying, said she didn’t remember, or even fly into a crying rage about how I was telling her what a terrible mother she was. Bla bla bla. She was a narcissist, a liar, and a gaslighter. Her husband was an abuser of quiet rage. Rarely spoke. Everything would be as fine as could be. Until it wasn’t. Would go from peace to chaos in an instant, never understanding why. Never understand what I did to be suddenly on the receiving end of some sort of violent fit. Mom would watch. Tell me I deserved it. Would punish me again for failing to understand what I did wrong. I still don’t know.
Never dated in high school. Too embarrassed. Still felt shame for feeling attraction of any kind to a girl. It wasn’t shyness that stopped me. It was self-disgust. Planted by parents and religion. Created by punishing me for being victimized by someone who was obviously victimized by someone else. I was the male, though, so it was automatically my fault. Broken at five, then malfunctioning when I was supposed to be learning how to engage with the opposite sex.
There’s a lot of other stuff that I don’t remember. I have physical evidence of genital mutilation. I have no memory of how it happened.
Got herpes on my tongue. Right on the tip. It manifests occasionally, usually times of stress. It hurts and burns like crazy. It first appeared in the ‘90s. I had no prior sexual activity at the time, except those incidents when I was a child. Doctor said that the virus can incubate for years, even a decade or more, before manifesting. I’m not sure which person gave it to me, but I am sure that it wasn’t my fault. I am sure that at the moment of it’s first appearance that I had not had a single bit of sexual encounters whatsoever in at least ten years, before I had reached my teenaged years.
Couldn’t use public toilets all through childhood, and well into adulthood. Even though I know there’s nothing wrong, and nothing will happen, my brain still goes on alert. It’s hell. If there is any one else in there, or anyone walks in, I’m suddenly six again.
Never been in a relationship with a woman that’s lasted longer than a few months. I think five months was my record. That was almost 20 years ago. I can’t connect. Woman call that a “red flag.” They call that a “fear of commitment.” They are foolish know-it-alls without a single clue.
I decided long ago to never let any of that define me. I forgave my parents. Even maintained a good relationship with them. Had a successful career. Had lots of friends. I thought everything was fine. Just had headaches all the time. I hit my head really hard on a car door frame when I was around 28. I’ve had a headache ever since. I was always quiet and easy going. Almost timid, After the head injury, I was loud. Brash. Confrontational.
Mom died in 2019. Cancer. I was there, but I didn’t say a word to her. After that, I spiraled into fits of rage. Always angry. Suddenly finding myself screaming at my dead mother. More and more childhood memories returning.
I also suffer from chronic migraines. The diagnostic term is “Refractory Migraine Without Aura.” It’s a migraine that is almost always there. I also get the migraines with auras about 3-4 times a month. I have fibromyalgia. Burning, fatiguing pain that feels like my muscles are concrete and my nerve endings are fire. In constant neurological pain. Have to get nerve blocks in my head about once a month. Been disabled since 2018.
Shoulders and upper back are always stiff. From always being hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant. From never knowing when I was going to be struck, or manhandled, or ambushed, or any other horrible things that happened to me from out of nowhere. I never had any reason to be on guard since I left the house at 18, but it’s constant pain.
Got chronic nausea. Stomach was always nervous and queasy, since 1980. Got worse, yet also familiar. Hardly ever notice it. Take a Zofran when I do.
Spared from addiction. I never went down that road. I don’t like intoxication. Psychiatrist told me that it’s because I can’t handle not being in control. I also have a genetic mutation that affects dopamine production. My brain doesn’t produce enough of it, and it takes longer to replenish. As a result, I don’t get the dopamine surge from alcohol or drugs. Lucky, I guess. Or maybe not. At least they found a way to escape, even if it destroys them. I’m stuck with the memories. They’re always there. The demons are always there, too. I’m not referring to the imaginary demons my parents were fighting. I’m referring to the metaphorical ones. The ones created by people who had the one job to keep their children safe, and colossally failed at it.
Also had a stroke. Left a lesion on my brain. Didn’t even know I had a stroke. No memory of it, but the MRI proves it. I probably thought I was just having a migraine. They can be brutal sometimes. Hemiplegic migraines. Makes one side go tingly and weak. Mumble and get confused. Happens occasionally. I think nothing of it. Left side of my face still tingles to this day. Happened sometime before 2016, when it was discovered by the MRI. Sometime after adulthood, though. That’s all my neurologist can ascertain given the type of damage on my brain and when it was discovered.
I don’t know how all that shit could happen to one person, but it did. I don’t know why it absolutely destroyed me, but it did. I always told myself that it wasn’t that bad. Some kids have it way worse. I wasn’t getting beaten and yelled at every minute of every day. It was erratic. It was unpredictable. Long periods of calm. Followed by periods of sheer hell. Lots of people have had it way worse. Your story may be a thousand times worse than mine. I’m not trying to compete. I don’t know what level my trauma sits at. I don’t know how it compares to others. I just know that it took its toll on me. I just exist the best that I can.
Glad I never became a victimizer. I know it’s common for abused to become abusers. Didn’t happen to me. I know how it feels to be ruined by another who wants to take for personal gratification without care or concern about what that does to their victim. How could I ever make someone experience that? How could I live with myself knowing that I was the source of someone’s trauma? Doesn’t matter. I’m hard to talk to, hard to approach, hard to get to know. Makes me hard to date. Probably a good thing. Probably a good thing that I have made no way to continue a cycle of abuse. It’s easy for me to say that I couldn’t ever abuse another, but how does one truly know that? Safer to just never be in a position where I can abuse. So, I live alone. I honestly like it. I learned how to escape into my own mind at a very young age. It was the only safe place I could go. My domicile must remain a place of peace, quiet, security, and safety, and it does. Others disru
Long post, I know. I have not told any of these things before. I want to tell people sometimes. Not for attention. Not for pity. Just so they can understand. So they’ll think to themselves “oh, I get it now. That’s why he is the way that he is.”
I’ll end this with a story that may seem unrelated, but it is not. There was a plush Snoopy toy that was released in the early ‘80s. Clothing accessories were also released, so you could dress him up in different costumes like Sherlock Holmes and his WWI fighter pilot gear. My grandparents bought it for me. I loved it. It was a brilliant white. Pristine. I was sitting on the edge of the patio holding it, having only possessed it for a short time. A few weeks, perhaps. The yard was full of water from irrigation, which is how yards were watered in Arizona at the time. I fumbled and dropped Snoopy into the water below. Even after washing him over and over, he never looked the same. He came out of the washer looking even worse. He was grimy and gray. There was no way to restore him. He still looked like Snoopy, but he was forever changed. Then he was discarded.
Molested by my female cousin when I was 5. We were caught, and I was blamed for it. And shamed for it. And punished for it.
Gang raped by three older Hispanic boys in the school restroom when I was 6. I told a woman I saw outside the restroom, sobbing. A teacher, a school administrator, a random parent, I don’t know. She told me that I was “ok” and to go back to class.
A random man knocked on our front door in December of 1982. He said he was gathering neighborhood kids to go Christmas caroling. My mother let me go with him, despite my objections, thinking nothing of it. We went to one house. Just the two of us. We sang for some lady. He then led me down an alley. I honestly don’t remember what happened after that. I don’t remember how I got home.
I was hyper-sexual with other children during this time, from about ages 6-8. Girls and boys. Never by force or cohesion, but always the instigator. The behavior stopped. I don’t recall why. I just didn’t do it anymore.
10-11 was rough. The age when kids start having awakenings. Start having awareness. I didn’t get to experience that preteen bridge between innocence and sexual awakenings. I wasn’t allowed to cross that bridge. I had previously been hurled into the chasm below, and had to figure out how to climb back up. While the other kids founds their way across, and found their way with each other, I was still climbing out. Thrown in too soon, climbed out too late. Childhood? What childhood.
I felt attractions to girls, like a child is supposed to at that time in their lives. I felt too guilty and ashamed to begin that phase of development. I had already experienced by then more than most, I suspect.
Jr High was even rougher. Got raped yet again while in the Boy Scouts. It wasn’t an adult. It was an older Scout. Told me that he felt like butt-fucking someone. So, he did. I was 12. Quit the Scouts after that.
I wish that was it, but there are more layers: Ultra-religious step-father. Mentally ill mother. Constant verbal abuse, religious abuse, neglect, physical abuse. Never knew when I would be physically dragged out of bed in the dead of night to be forced to “confess” for bringing “demons” into the house. Never knew when he would kick in the door and tell me that God told him what I had done, and he had to punish me. Always on egg shells. Never knew when he’d get set off. Everything was “Satanic.” Didn’t have a tv. Wasn’t allowed to watch movies or listen to music. They burned all of my toys and all of my books in a ritualistic fire while they waved their hands in the air and closed their eyes really hard. They even burned my Chronicles of Narnia books and my copy of the Hobbit, which just shows the level of their stupidity, and their limitless belief that demons were everywhere.
I told my youth pastor I was being abused and I was afraid to go home. He yelled at me and told me I was influenced by Satan, because I wasn’t honoring my mother and father.
I told a school counselor that I didn’t want to go home. He told me that I was overreacting, and I needed to learn to accept my parent’s discipline, and realize that they were acting in my best interest.
So, yeah, that whole “tell an adult if you are being abused” thing? That’s a crock of shit. At least it was in the ‘80s. Too many cowards. Too many people looking the other way, pretending that they didn’t see.
People knew. They had to know. My sister’s kindergarten school photograph showed her sporting a back eye. Mom made up an elaborate story about how she got it. She fell while playing and hit it on the corner of the coffee table. Only, that’s not what happened. My mom hit her in the face with the back of a hairbrush because she couldn’t sit still while her hair was being aggressively brushed. People had to have known that it was a dangerous home. How could they not?
Parents had cooled off on the whole religious crap in high school, and let me listen to music, watch movies, and grow my hair long. It still wasn’t great. Step-Dad was still a prick, just without the crazy evangelical edge. Not sure why that all stopped. I’m glad it did. The thick layer of religious perversion had been removed, but there was still so much bad that remained.
Got bit by a spider one morning. It hurt. A red welt appeared on my forearm. A red streak started traveling up my arm. I showed my mom and told her I needed to go to the doctor. She told me I was fine. The red line grew farther and farther up my arm throughout the day. My shoulder started to hurt. I begged her to take me to the hospital. She finally did. She yelled at me the entire time, telling me that I was going to cost her more money. Got to the hospital. I collapsed. Came too with a doctor and bunch of nurses over my head. An IV stuck in me. Said I was moments from death. Had the poison reached my heart. Mom never spoke about it. Not once. Never apologized for it. She never once apologized for anything. Not to me, not to anyone else.
Could never talk to her about anything. She’d either tell me I was mistaken, tell me I was lying, said she didn’t remember, or even fly into a crying rage about how I was telling her what a terrible mother she was. Bla bla bla. She was a narcissist, a liar, and a gaslighter. Her husband was an abuser of quiet rage. Rarely spoke. Everything would be as fine as could be. Until it wasn’t. Would go from peace to chaos in an instant, never understanding why. Never understand what I did to be suddenly on the receiving end of some sort of violent fit. Mom would watch. Tell me I deserved it. Would punish me again for failing to understand what I did wrong. I still don’t know.
Never dated in high school. Too embarrassed. Still felt shame for feeling attraction of any kind to a girl. It wasn’t shyness that stopped me. It was self-disgust. Planted by parents and religion. Created by punishing me for being victimized by someone who was obviously victimized by someone else. I was the male, though, so it was automatically my fault. Broken at five, then malfunctioning when I was supposed to be learning how to engage with the opposite sex.
There’s a lot of other stuff that I don’t remember. I have physical evidence of genital mutilation. I have no memory of how it happened.
Got herpes on my tongue. Right on the tip. It manifests occasionally, usually times of stress. It hurts and burns like crazy. It first appeared in the ‘90s. I had no prior sexual activity at the time, except those incidents when I was a child. Doctor said that the virus can incubate for years, even a decade or more, before manifesting. I’m not sure which person gave it to me, but I am sure that it wasn’t my fault. I am sure that at the moment of it’s first appearance that I had not had a single bit of sexual encounters whatsoever in at least ten years, before I had reached my teenaged years.
Couldn’t use public toilets all through childhood, and well into adulthood. Even though I know there’s nothing wrong, and nothing will happen, my brain still goes on alert. It’s hell. If there is any one else in there, or anyone walks in, I’m suddenly six again.
Never been in a relationship with a woman that’s lasted longer than a few months. I think five months was my record. That was almost 20 years ago. I can’t connect. Woman call that a “red flag.” They call that a “fear of commitment.” They are foolish know-it-alls without a single clue.
I decided long ago to never let any of that define me. I forgave my parents. Even maintained a good relationship with them. Had a successful career. Had lots of friends. I thought everything was fine. Just had headaches all the time. I hit my head really hard on a car door frame when I was around 28. I’ve had a headache ever since. I was always quiet and easy going. Almost timid, After the head injury, I was loud. Brash. Confrontational.
Mom died in 2019. Cancer. I was there, but I didn’t say a word to her. After that, I spiraled into fits of rage. Always angry. Suddenly finding myself screaming at my dead mother. More and more childhood memories returning.
I also suffer from chronic migraines. The diagnostic term is “Refractory Migraine Without Aura.” It’s a migraine that is almost always there. I also get the migraines with auras about 3-4 times a month. I have fibromyalgia. Burning, fatiguing pain that feels like my muscles are concrete and my nerve endings are fire. In constant neurological pain. Have to get nerve blocks in my head about once a month. Been disabled since 2018.
Shoulders and upper back are always stiff. From always being hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant. From never knowing when I was going to be struck, or manhandled, or ambushed, or any other horrible things that happened to me from out of nowhere. I never had any reason to be on guard since I left the house at 18, but it’s constant pain.
Got chronic nausea. Stomach was always nervous and queasy, since 1980. Got worse, yet also familiar. Hardly ever notice it. Take a Zofran when I do.
Spared from addiction. I never went down that road. I don’t like intoxication. Psychiatrist told me that it’s because I can’t handle not being in control. I also have a genetic mutation that affects dopamine production. My brain doesn’t produce enough of it, and it takes longer to replenish. As a result, I don’t get the dopamine surge from alcohol or drugs. Lucky, I guess. Or maybe not. At least they found a way to escape, even if it destroys them. I’m stuck with the memories. They’re always there. The demons are always there, too. I’m not referring to the imaginary demons my parents were fighting. I’m referring to the metaphorical ones. The ones created by people who had the one job to keep their children safe, and colossally failed at it.
Also had a stroke. Left a lesion on my brain. Didn’t even know I had a stroke. No memory of it, but the MRI proves it. I probably thought I was just having a migraine. They can be brutal sometimes. Hemiplegic migraines. Makes one side go tingly and weak. Mumble and get confused. Happens occasionally. I think nothing of it. Left side of my face still tingles to this day. Happened sometime before 2016, when it was discovered by the MRI. Sometime after adulthood, though. That’s all my neurologist can ascertain given the type of damage on my brain and when it was discovered.
I don’t know how all that shit could happen to one person, but it did. I don’t know why it absolutely destroyed me, but it did. I always told myself that it wasn’t that bad. Some kids have it way worse. I wasn’t getting beaten and yelled at every minute of every day. It was erratic. It was unpredictable. Long periods of calm. Followed by periods of sheer hell. Lots of people have had it way worse. Your story may be a thousand times worse than mine. I’m not trying to compete. I don’t know what level my trauma sits at. I don’t know how it compares to others. I just know that it took its toll on me. I just exist the best that I can.
Glad I never became a victimizer. I know it’s common for abused to become abusers. Didn’t happen to me. I know how it feels to be ruined by another who wants to take for personal gratification without care or concern about what that does to their victim. How could I ever make someone experience that? How could I live with myself knowing that I was the source of someone’s trauma? Doesn’t matter. I’m hard to talk to, hard to approach, hard to get to know. Makes me hard to date. Probably a good thing. Probably a good thing that I have made no way to continue a cycle of abuse. It’s easy for me to say that I couldn’t ever abuse another, but how does one truly know that? Safer to just never be in a position where I can abuse. So, I live alone. I honestly like it. I learned how to escape into my own mind at a very young age. It was the only safe place I could go. My domicile must remain a place of peace, quiet, security, and safety, and it does. Others disru
Long post, I know. I have not told any of these things before. I want to tell people sometimes. Not for attention. Not for pity. Just so they can understand. So they’ll think to themselves “oh, I get it now. That’s why he is the way that he is.”
I’ll end this with a story that may seem unrelated, but it is not. There was a plush Snoopy toy that was released in the early ‘80s. Clothing accessories were also released, so you could dress him up in different costumes like Sherlock Holmes and his WWI fighter pilot gear. My grandparents bought it for me. I loved it. It was a brilliant white. Pristine. I was sitting on the edge of the patio holding it, having only possessed it for a short time. A few weeks, perhaps. The yard was full of water from irrigation, which is how yards were watered in Arizona at the time. I fumbled and dropped Snoopy into the water below. Even after washing him over and over, he never looked the same. He came out of the washer looking even worse. He was grimy and gray. There was no way to restore him. He still looked like Snoopy, but he was forever changed. Then he was discarded.
