My Sister and her Friends

[BigFred]

When I was about 3 years old my 9-year-old sister started sexualizing and fondling me on a regular basis. When I was 8 and she was 14 she and her girlfriend each raped me. She taught me to be her sex toy and to perform oral sex on her and her friends. By the time I was 12 I had been raped by her and her friend too many times to count. It all ended after she got married and had her first kid.

I dissociated myself from it. I have three different realities (personalities or tools for coping). The main me forgot about it for many years. I got married raised a family. I lived an almost normal life with the occasional outburst of anger, from something inside of me, directed to aggressive females.

When I was 64 years old I experienced some anger towards a female member of my family. I was so out of control I sought help from a therapist.

I told the therapist, “I think I may have been molested by my Sister.” The therapist started asking me questions about my relationship with my Sister. Memories started flooding back I felt like I was freezing, I was extremely anxious, I started breathing rapidly. My wife thought I was going into shock.


I have been going to the therapist for four months now and I am still re-remembering details to my trauma. When I remember a detail, I feel like I am freezing cold, I am extremely anxious, and My breathing becomes rapid. Does anyone else experience these kind of PTSD symptoms?

 

[Ceremony]

Hello BigFred,

I have been going to the therapist for four months now and I am still re-remembering details to my trauma. When I remember a detail, I feel like I am freezing cold, I am extremely anxious, and My breathing becomes rapid. Does anyone else experience these kinds of symptoms?

Yes, I have, and sometimes do have those symptoms. Last year, I would say they were daily, this last half of 2017, maybe a couple or few times a month.

Though our circumstances for being here may not have the same perpetrators, they do give the same reactions, symptoms and need for relief.

I'm sorry about your sister and those others. Betrayal of what we could have had, or should have had is not something any of the men here had a choice. Your story resonates as that of a boy to man, who had chances to find whom he is, altered by traumatic betrayal. Again, I'm sorry. I don't have to be, right, none of us has to be sorry, my intent, any, is to share, to show the compassion that's missing for millions of men. We're outside the focus of attention, semi-hidden even among the organizations whose intended purpose had been to serve sexual assault victims.

That focus, the idea fomented in the minds of society, was and is that men aren't seen as victims, rather, we are perpetrators. Sexualized beings, thinking about sex every 3 seconds, like the analogy of being distracted by a squirrel. That like any animal, we can't help ourselves. Yet, here we are, we survived a betrayal that so many can't imagine exists. Here, I found that I'm validated.

Man, I still get teary eyed.

Who can believe me, 39 years and older from what happened to me at 16, 12 and 13? Why would they, it's just me, I'm coming forward to cry bitter tears and share pain I had no idea anyone could understand. Here, I am understood, and no-one denies my validation, it's given and given and given. I was raped, and I say so, and I'm believed. Man, that always gets to me, that I am believed. I needed that so badly, and I got it.

You too, you are getting that. We know, we care and it's real.