Moving on
The regulars here will probably have noticed that I don't come here as often as I used to, well.......
I come here and read, but don't post as much as I did.
Am I cured? hell, no! I've always said there isn't a 'cure' - so don't bother looking for one!
So 'where' am I, and does the place I'm in right now give other survivors hope for their futures?
I'll say right now that there is hope for a better life, and that it is available to everyone.
It's not easy, and I'm certainly not saying that what I've done is exceptional - or that I'm in any 'smarter' than the next guy. I'm a very ordinary guy who somehow found the will to make the effort.
Can I say that I've reached a milestone in my healing and things suddenly changed? No I can't.
I still have flashbacks, nightmares, urges to act out and all the other shit I've had for years.
The difference is that I've developed ways to deal with the shit that are different, and apparently much more successful, than the ones I tried years ago. ( for those that don't know me, I started therapy in 1999 )
All the big and significant changes, for me, took place early on - mainly in therapy. Since then I've been tinkering around the edges by going to group therapy and coming here to MS. Which has been a wonderful experience for me, I learned so much about myself from the interaction with you guys. We learn from each other success and failures, we practice social skills and so many other things that our abuse prevented us from fully developing when we were young.
We make mistakes, hell, we've seen arguments here that make bar brawls look like nursery school tiffs! But we learn all the time.
Is there nothing left for me to learn then? Of course not, that's why I'll be here sometimes for a long time to come. And trust me, I'm no genius!
I think I've come to a realisation that I'm probably not going to make any major changes to the way I am from now on, for me "this is probably as good as it gets".
Which is OK by me, I'm not the slightest bit dissapointed that there isn't a magic cure that will erase all my bad memories, stop my nightmares and kill the urges to act out.
What I've got is an acceptance of my memories, based upon the FACTS that THEIR abuse of me WASN'T MY FAULT. So the memories now have the right amount of importance attached to them, or should that be - they slot into my other childhood memories instead of dominating them, in the distorted way they once did.
If I think about my childhood now, I remember David as a boy, playing and doing things normal kids do.
The fact that some people abused me sexually is something that I can't deny happened, and I don't deny the important effects it has on me still.
But it's NOT the only thing that influenced my life, lots of perfectly normal things did as well - good or bad.
So what about the influences I still have then?
Like the urge to act out.
I last acted out with a strange man in 1998, I guess it was early 1999 that I last seriously went cruising. So that's a great success as far as I'm concerned, and my wife's happy about that as well!
Today my acting out is masturbation to porn or fantasy of sex with strange men. I could do without it, and the fact is both things are losing their appeal. But do I worry about it?
Do I hell! I refuse to beat myself up over a behaviour that's become ingrained for over 30 years and has its roots in the abuse someone else subjected me to. It's not my fault so why the fuck should I feel guilty?
Like I said, this is a behaviour that's fading away. Perhaps 3 or 4 years ago I wanted it to stop completely? I think I did if I'm honest, and with the benefit of hindsight I can now see that it was never going to happen overnight. So I've settled for the slow fade.
Over the last few years I've had a bit to do with other survivors, and the guys who've been at 'healing' for a while all seem to have settled into accepting a levelling off and a slow down in the rate of change we experience.
That might well be the last thing someone new to healing wants to hear, but I believe it is the reality we face.
Time is a great healer, and to expect results in some kind of time scale isn't realistic, we have to do the work and then perfect the results to get the full benefits - over time.
Which is what I'm doing now, just chillin' and spending time on me.
And that's something that is also true of my other interests or hobbies as well. I've been hugely involved with a 4x4 Club for about 10 years now, editing the magazine and being on the committee. But I'm resigning. And I'm also letting a lot of other 'stuff' go.
I'm still going to compete in my 4x4, but it's someone elses turn to do all the work.
That might sound surprising? After all, I've managed to do all these things while I was also seriously struggling with my healing. And if I'm OK with that now, then the other stuff should become easier?
It's a great theory, but somehow I just want a taste of the easy life for a while. And it actually feels very good - liberating in fact - to do this.
In a way I feel that I have "made it" through my abuse and the subsequent healing, so now I want to damn well enjoy it!
Dave
I come here and read, but don't post as much as I did.
Am I cured? hell, no! I've always said there isn't a 'cure' - so don't bother looking for one!
So 'where' am I, and does the place I'm in right now give other survivors hope for their futures?
I'll say right now that there is hope for a better life, and that it is available to everyone.
It's not easy, and I'm certainly not saying that what I've done is exceptional - or that I'm in any 'smarter' than the next guy. I'm a very ordinary guy who somehow found the will to make the effort.
Can I say that I've reached a milestone in my healing and things suddenly changed? No I can't.
I still have flashbacks, nightmares, urges to act out and all the other shit I've had for years.
The difference is that I've developed ways to deal with the shit that are different, and apparently much more successful, than the ones I tried years ago. ( for those that don't know me, I started therapy in 1999 )
All the big and significant changes, for me, took place early on - mainly in therapy. Since then I've been tinkering around the edges by going to group therapy and coming here to MS. Which has been a wonderful experience for me, I learned so much about myself from the interaction with you guys. We learn from each other success and failures, we practice social skills and so many other things that our abuse prevented us from fully developing when we were young.
We make mistakes, hell, we've seen arguments here that make bar brawls look like nursery school tiffs! But we learn all the time.
Is there nothing left for me to learn then? Of course not, that's why I'll be here sometimes for a long time to come. And trust me, I'm no genius!
I think I've come to a realisation that I'm probably not going to make any major changes to the way I am from now on, for me "this is probably as good as it gets".
Which is OK by me, I'm not the slightest bit dissapointed that there isn't a magic cure that will erase all my bad memories, stop my nightmares and kill the urges to act out.
What I've got is an acceptance of my memories, based upon the FACTS that THEIR abuse of me WASN'T MY FAULT. So the memories now have the right amount of importance attached to them, or should that be - they slot into my other childhood memories instead of dominating them, in the distorted way they once did.
If I think about my childhood now, I remember David as a boy, playing and doing things normal kids do.
The fact that some people abused me sexually is something that I can't deny happened, and I don't deny the important effects it has on me still.
But it's NOT the only thing that influenced my life, lots of perfectly normal things did as well - good or bad.
So what about the influences I still have then?
Like the urge to act out.
I last acted out with a strange man in 1998, I guess it was early 1999 that I last seriously went cruising. So that's a great success as far as I'm concerned, and my wife's happy about that as well!
Today my acting out is masturbation to porn or fantasy of sex with strange men. I could do without it, and the fact is both things are losing their appeal. But do I worry about it?
Do I hell! I refuse to beat myself up over a behaviour that's become ingrained for over 30 years and has its roots in the abuse someone else subjected me to. It's not my fault so why the fuck should I feel guilty?
Like I said, this is a behaviour that's fading away. Perhaps 3 or 4 years ago I wanted it to stop completely? I think I did if I'm honest, and with the benefit of hindsight I can now see that it was never going to happen overnight. So I've settled for the slow fade.
Over the last few years I've had a bit to do with other survivors, and the guys who've been at 'healing' for a while all seem to have settled into accepting a levelling off and a slow down in the rate of change we experience.
That might well be the last thing someone new to healing wants to hear, but I believe it is the reality we face.
Time is a great healer, and to expect results in some kind of time scale isn't realistic, we have to do the work and then perfect the results to get the full benefits - over time.
Which is what I'm doing now, just chillin' and spending time on me.
And that's something that is also true of my other interests or hobbies as well. I've been hugely involved with a 4x4 Club for about 10 years now, editing the magazine and being on the committee. But I'm resigning. And I'm also letting a lot of other 'stuff' go.
I'm still going to compete in my 4x4, but it's someone elses turn to do all the work.
That might sound surprising? After all, I've managed to do all these things while I was also seriously struggling with my healing. And if I'm OK with that now, then the other stuff should become easier?
It's a great theory, but somehow I just want a taste of the easy life for a while. And it actually feels very good - liberating in fact - to do this.
In a way I feel that I have "made it" through my abuse and the subsequent healing, so now I want to damn well enjoy it!
Dave
