My Story, my Pain, my Shame, my Life.

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My Story, my Pain, my Shame, my Life.

Jeremy Doe

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Hello,
Recently I’ve had a triggering moment that brought up a lot feelings and memories that have been out of mind for years. The last time I had this sort of feeling, which sent me in a spiral was in 2014. I honestly had not consciously thought of what happened to me as a child and as an adult in a long time. And then, it came all bubbling up recently and again sent me in a spiral. Reading other stories has let me know that I am not a lone and has given me a semblance of courage to tell my own story. It hurts me to know that my story is but a rain drop in an ocean.

Where does one begin with a story like this? I read the guidelines and the recommendations and then I read other stories as a reference point which highlighted that each story is different because everyone’s story is different.

This is the first time I sat down and actually really wrote down what happened to me through a post-adolescent frame of mind. And when I've laid it out that way, it really helped me make connections between some of the things i do and the dispositions I have.

Just adding that this might be a trigger for people too. I know it’s a trigger for me. I've tried to sanitize it so that it's not just a cryfest for me. This may come across as overly formal. I’ve written this and re-written and revised it so many times and it still doesn’t seem to do it justice. It doesn’t feel like it adequately describes just how nasty it makes me feel and yet it’s the most disturbing memories I’ve ever had and attributing it to myself really leaves me feeling… just gross.

I’m writing this as a starting point for my journey of healing. I’m 38 now and the sexual and emotional abuse are all in the distant past but they continue to return I'm not sure it's healthy for me to tell myself that it wasn't me or that if I don't talk or think about it that it would go away. Is hasn't yet and the recurring visuals and nightmares have taken aa bigger toll on me than I thought it did. For almost a decade, I thought that it was behind me, but it seems like I carry this baggage with me everywhere I go and its with me all the time because, from time to time, I look in the mirror and see the baggage behind me and it leaves me torn and confused and lost and ashamed and dirty and hurt and that lingers for days or weeks or months until I’m able to bury all the vitriol and shame I feel behind the veneer of my person. I’ve never said a word to anyone, ever. And it seems like quasi-anonymous forum postings are as close as I’ll come to courageous in my sharing.

Verbiage and terminology I updated to be more inline with adult language and was not the language referenced at the times of my abuse. I didn’t use words like penis and what not when I was 6 and 10. We had different words for those bits of ourselves.

About me. Where to begin. I was born in 1983 in SC to parents who were both marines. I have 5 brothers (1 full, 1 half, and 3 step (2 older & 3 younger). My parents divorced when I was 2 and I lived with my mother who suffered from bulimia, alcoholism, and probably depression. She was physically abusive to my older brother, my full brother. She may have been physically abusive to me. I think she cared about me but apparently not enough to stay in my life.

When I was four, I loved in TN. At some point she drove drunk and crashed the car into a ditch. The police put me in foster care in the state of Arkansas. I was there for a year and a half because my maternal grandparents and my mother hid where I was from my dad. Supervised vision during this time with my mother was the last time I've ever seen or talked to her. But while in foster care, that's where this story starts. It wasn’t all bad. My fondest memory was when they would mix peanut butter and honey and you could eat it with a spoon. That and I learned I didn’t like canned spinach.

In the foster home was a mother, father, their older son, their daughter, and a son that was my age, and then there was me. I’m not sure if I invited it or what, but the older one took a liking to me. He was friendly and what not. He was tall and had brown hair. I don’t remember his name, but his face was smooth and he looked kind. His hair was parted to the site. He had freckles. He was about as tall as the adults, but thinner. He was pale though. Not like an albino, but I remember him being much more white than me or his brother. We’ll call him Jacob.

I was in a new place and I had a backpack with my things. I had a stuffed animal, Grey Dog, and that was pretty much it. The father figure worked in a fiberglass facility and they would wash my laundry with his and I would get horribly itchy and would scratch until I bled. They eventually changed how they did my laundry and that problem resolved. But right off the bat it seemed like they were disappointed in my complaints. There’s more there but suffice to say I found some comfort in the attention Jacob gave me.

At first it was just hanging out. Normal stuff. Games, we played checkers and monopoly. WE played outside a little, but most of that was with his brother. Stuff like that. I shared a room with his brother and he had his own. He would play toys with me in his room. It didn’t seem odd to me that he would shut his door. Though after a while, he would shut his door and he would want to play more with me instead of the toys. We'd do pillow fights, and he would tickle me and sit on me and stuff like that. He showed me that I could get hard by him touching me and that by me touching him, it would happen to him. He would pull on my penis and he would flick it with his hand or his finger. I remember it hurting. He would tell me that I was a baby and that’s why I had to live there. He said I was lucky because the last kid had to move away. He would instruct me on how to play with him, how to hold his penis and his scrotum. He would instruct me on how to masturbate him. He would tell me i had to kiss it. And then put it in my mouth like a straw. I remember it not fitting and that would make him mad. He told me to kiss on his scrotum too and I remember the hair being in my mouth. He did this for a little bit and he played with my butt. It just started with him squeezing my butt together like my parents did after I went to the bathroom (I was falsely diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and had to take a lot of medicine). Later he would put toys in there and then he would put his his fingers in there. And it's the fingers that I remember the most. The digging the pushing the stretching. It hurt and I told him so and he would get mad. And then it would stop and he would tell me to pull my pants up and he would do the same and then he would leave me to pick up the toys. And that went on for what must have been a while. I don’t remember if there was any ejaculation or fluids like that. I do remember that there were times that he pull down my shorts and his, and rub up against me for a while. Rubbing up against my butt and rubbing me as I laid on my back. He would point to my erection and said that meant I liked it. Sometimes it would happen while I still wore my jeans. He liked to push my face into a pillow. I still to this day can’t recall why I didn’t say something.

Around that time, I guess I started acting out. You know how foster kids are. I had difficulties in class ( I guess preschool?) and this was when corporeal punishment was a thing and I remember on more than one occasion being hit with the paddle in the office. Well In one particular event I was running around the house with the other kid, we’ll call him Jason, and he slipped and hit his head on something. They left to tend to him he was bleeding. But I think they blamed me for it. While they were gone, the sister hit me. She hit me in the back and my head and my arms that I held up to cover my face. Jacob came and made her stop and he took me to his room where he held me while I cried. He took me into his room and held me. And then he rested my head on his lap. and he rubbed my back and neck. He got up and shut the door he came back in his underwear. He played with himself and then he told me to kiss it. He held my face down and he ejaculated in my mouth. That was the first time I saw that. I tried to get up but he just held me and told me to swallow it. When he did finally let me up, he got up and put on his shorts. He said I needed to go brush my teeth.

Shortly, or so it seemed, after that my Dad came to get me and I moved to Colorado where I re-met my older brother and my dad. That was a fun summer, we lost GI Joes in the sand volleyball court. But I guess I was underweight too because they made me this weight gainer stuff and added it to strawberry milk. To this day I can’t drink strawberry milk. But it was fun to play with my brother again. We hadn't played since we lived in Tennessee with my mother, before my dad came to get him and I opted to stay because I didn't really know him. Hindsight being what it is, all that could have been prevented if I just moved with my Dad back to Hawaii. But it was short lived and soon I was went to go live with my Aunt in Iowa. I don’t know why. But I did kindergarten and first grade in Des Moines.

I really enjoyed my time in Des Moines. I got to have a second bedroom in the basement. It was kind of cold but gave me lots of room to play with my toys. And my Aunt got me A LOT of toys. I had so many GI Joes and so many teenage mutant ninja turtles. In my room upstairs I had a water bed. My teacher Ms. White was really nice. It was really nice. I had a friend down the street who had an older brother that listened to loud rock music. In thinking of it, I didn’t realize until now how I avoided him at all cost. I don't think what happened at foster care really registered. But my friend was cool and we had lots of fun with our teenage mutant ninja turtles. But then my Aunt wanted to move to California with my other “Aunt” and I had to go back to living with my Dad. But at this time he had remarried and was living in South Carolina. So I got to re-meet them again and meet my new step mom and a new school and new life. I remember getting in trouble a lot. But I got to learn how to swim so it's not all bad i suppose

My Dad and I are cut from different cloths or so it seems because he would yell at me. My therapist says I was emotionally neglected which seems like an apt description. But he was a marine through and through and he expected everyone to fall in line. Individuality wasn’t really appreciated and that was a big shift from living with my aunt. I got a lot of attention from my aunt. But with my dad, we were just expected to do as we were told. I was a talkative student in the second grade and I made friends easy enough. I had a black friend Ryan, and we showed each other our penises in the bathroom. There was mutual touching because they looked different. I would learn later about circumcision. Not sure why I would do that though.

I spent all of second grade and half of third in SC. During that time my younger brother was born. That was 1990. In third grade, I got a bad grade, a “B”, on my report card and was grounded to my room for a month. I called my Aunt and asked if I could come live with her. I must have been unhappy. So then I moved to California over Christmas and went to a new school again. It was in California, Vallejo, where I met Steve.
Steve, Shay, and Eric and I were neighborhood friends. Steve was the oldest, I would put him in the range of 13-16. He was in 8th grade when I was in 3rd. He didn’t have a car, but he was a lot taller than me and bigger. He had a really tight chest and muscles. His jaw was also prominent. I think he was either biracial or his mom was but he was black with very light skin. His hair was dark and his eyes were brown. His skin was clear and smooth. He didn’t have a lot of body hair though he did have arm pit hair. And I'd learn later he had pubic hair. Shay was slightly younger, and Eric and I were about the same age, 9 or 10, but we went to different schools. It was Steve who introduced me to the game of “Doctor.”

It started off with simple examinations, Neck, chest, arms, head, stuff like that. He would rub inside my leg and on my groin area. Does this hurt he would ask me. I'd say no. It was all on top of my jeans and shorts and ask me to roll over and spread my legs where he touch and grab my groin area from behind my while pushing on my butt and checking my back. He would ask that I did similar examinations on him but he would keep redirecting him to his crotch. His was a lot bigger than mind I can still remember the outline outside of his jeans.

Eventually these types of examinations moved from my back patio to his garage. His mom worked a lot and he and his sister were home alone a lot, though his sister wasn’t there as much. Well he’d invite me over. We’d play double dragon on his Nintendo in his garage. The garage was a converted bonus room area with a couch and TV. Eventually he started closing the door when we would be in there playing toys or video games. I just thought it was because it was hot outside.

When the door was closed, he would want to play doctor some more. But this time, I would be in my underwear and he would remove his shorts and underwear. It was my first time seeing boxers. And once we were in that place he would do his examination, and play with me until I became hard. He would ask me questions about how it felt and if I liked it. It was my first experience with the turn your head and cough sort of things.

Side note, while writing this, I remembered the first time I did a physical for school sports, high school wrestling. I was so shaken and it was all I could do not to cry on the way home. My dad would definitely pry and probe and then think I was gay or a “fa***t” as he would say. And he didn't like it when I cried. That's just not what we did. To this day, aside from losing my dogs, I can't seem to cry. I'd say I was without a lot of emotion but I have enough anger to power a small city. Sometimes I just sit and want to have a moment and it leaves me feeling dead. So I think at some point I just stopped trying to feel.

Anyways, Steve would spread my legs and after playing with me and rubbing my chest he would cup my private areas with his hand and run his fingers underneath and touch by anus. He would roll me over and play with my butt crack. At first it was spanking, heavy rubbing and parting. He would put his finger and thumb in there or just push against it and he would pull down my penis, which wasn’t that big and have a look. His was bigger and I didn’t know why he kept doing it. But he could hold my entire situation in one hand and cover it. He would ask me to get on my knees and spread my legs and lift my legs like I was a dog.

He would then want me to play with him. Up and down and pulling and rubbing and he would get hard and make moaning sounds. He then would put his penis in my mouth and move my head up and down. I wasn’t able to put much of him in my mouth. I do remember he made me cough though and he got mad because I bit him. Oh he was so man. He’d show me how to rub the area behind his balls, and touch his anus. He would also instruct me to lay face down on the couch in his garage where he would rub his penis along my butt. Sometimes bare, sometimes in his jeans.

I never said anything to anyone. I wanted Steve to like me and to be my friend. I guess I also thought that it was normal and that this is how peopled played. I feel a great deal of shame knowing that I went back and back and back. I still don’t know why I did this or why I let this happen. Why not just leave? Maybe that’s why he closed the garage. I struggle still with understanding my motivation for letting that happen to me.

At some point, it got a bit more painful. He would be rubbing on my butt with his stuff and I could feel his hair along my skin. His face was kind of rough. I'd learn about stubble later. He started to hold me down on the shoulders while rubbing but one time he stopped and pushed his fingers in me. He rubbed his wet fingers along my butthole and then made it slimy. I would learn later that it was oil from the kitchen. He then told me, “hold on for a sec this might hurt a little” He told me to put my face into the pillow and when I did he held my face there. This might hurt a little. That’s what he kept saying to me. What happened next still makes me shake. I feel like a pit in my stomach just opens up just writing it. He put his penis tip to my butt and pushed it all the way in. He held it there. It hurt so bad. It’s hard to describe the pain. It hurt and it burned and It felt like I had to poop but it felt…I don’t know it just hurt so bad. He let up on my face in the pillow when I stopped screaming. Then he started going in and out while I just laid on the couch and cried. He commented that I was hard so I must have liked it. I’m guessing he finished because eventually he stopped. I put my pants back on and he opened the door and I went home. He told me not to tell and I didn’t. I never did.

Outwardly something must have been visible because my Aunt asked if I was okay when I came home crying. I said I was and that just fell down. I went to the bathroom to go to the bathroom and there was blood and stuff in my underwear. I panicked then. I wiped and there was blood and I wiped and more blood. I remember crying and being afraid. Eventually there wasn’t anymore blood. I hid my underwear in my bedroom closet behind my GI Joe base. The next time I had to clean my room I put it in the bag with all the trash and no one ever knew. They were one of teenage mutant ninja turtle underwear with Leonardo. I remember them being my favorite, which how you can have favorite now seems weird to me.

I only remember that happening the one time with my butt. Sometimes I would go over to play and we would play. Sometimes we would have neighborhood wars with our toys. He’d rub against my butt several more times, but mostly it was just playing with him. Always like we were doctors. At the end of fourth grade I had to move back with my Dad who was now living in Kansas going to school.

This is pretty much where I would live until I moved out and then away as an adult. Whereas I wasn’t the most popular kid, I wasn’t unpopular, and I found myself somewhere in the top middle of the pecking order. I had several friends. Adolescence, puberty, sexual awakenings, sexual activity made for a really turbulent and awkward time. And there was no one that I felt comfortable talking about it with. I remembered sex-ed, especially in 6th grade to be awkward and i remember panicking when I learned about STDs in 8th grade. I worried for quite a bit of having AIDS. Otherwise, I was what they call a “late bloomer” and constantly felt inadequate in terms of development and my body. I spent a lot high school dodging any accusations that I was a f** or a qu*** and it seems that much of my homophobia stemmed from fear that I might be gay or that I might be accused of being gay. Hindsight being what it was probably a massive overcorrection. I didn’t realize that until my 30s.

I know I didn’t like the idea of homophobia, which is why I quit going to church with my dad and his 3rd wife. It would just be non-stop “love the sinner, hate the sin” hypocrisy. I wish i had quit earlier because I spent quite a bit of time knowing I was going to hell, which was odd because I've often thought being a priest would be a cool job. They got to talk to god after all. So dumb. I had a pretty loud fight and argument with my dad about me not wanting to go. I was 16 or 17 at the time and I never went back. He only went because of his wife and he would quit going after they divorced. Later my girlfriend and I would agree that we’re pretty sure Christ would have had a different lesson to preach.

High school wrestling was an interesting experience because I felt extremely uncomfortable in the singlet and had fears of getting an erection during matches or practice. I remember in wrestling when I as in the bottom position I almost quit then and there. But the shame of saying why kept me in there. I refused to shower with the other guys and was just overall confused. I would tell them I would shower when I got home. My brother who also wrestled pretty much put an end to the teasing. He was well liked and played football with a lot of the guys. I didn’t realize it until writing this but that really meant a lot to me. I’m sure I would have been teased much more in school had it not been for him. He was in the grade ahead of me and was a bit bigger. I wrestled 112 and 119 and he wrestled 140 something or something higher. I never won a match and he went on to wrestle in state. He left to join the Navy, and I flew solo my senior year.

Sleepovers were strange and awkward and so I avoided those too. Its surprising how many bathroom doors at people's houses have a faulty lock. I remember sharing a bed with a guy who I was spent the night with, nothing sexual, but after he fell asleep I sat on the floor until I must have fallen asleep. I maybe had 4 sleep overs in my life between 5 and 12th grade.

It was a weird time. I think looking around the locker room and seeing people with armpit hair talking about girls and stuff left me feeling damaged. I thought for several years that it was because I was masturbating. I discovered masturbation in the 7th grade when I learned that if I played with it hard enough I’d get a good feeling and go right to sleep. I seriously thought my masturbation used up all my hormones so I wouldn’t grow. I was pretty stupid then.

Pair that with a baby boomer military father who had specific views on male and female acceptable relationships. For instance, “no f** will be living in my house.” Was actually something that was said. He would often refer to my aunt living in the land of fruits and nuts. At first i thought it was an agriculture reference, but I wised up later that it wasn't. He’s come along way but that’s still not a topic I will talk about with him. Maybe I’ll tell him on his deathbed how it made me feel really unsafe. The homophobia at home and at school left me feeling isolated, scared, alone, and confused. And shame. So much shame. I felt tainted and dirty all the time and no amount of showering, and I took really long showers, and they never made me feel clean for more than a day. I'm not sure if it was just growing up or if it was my abuse. But I remember that time in my life being really hard. I started having nightmares about it and images would just come in my head and I remember telling myself it wasn't me and I wasn't gay. But I put on a brave face and buried it down deep with all my other feelings.

While I was sexually active with women since 16, I’m not entirely certain I was ready for that. The first time was a girl from work, she was older 18 or 19 and had her own place. So I’d go over there after work and we’d smoke weed and cigarettes and she’d get me drinking and then we’d have sex. Not exactly how I imagined my first time going but at least I wasn’t a virgin anymore. But now that I write that I guess I wasn’t a virgin before then either. We didn’t use a condom because I didn’t make a good decision and was fearful for weeks that I’d get her pregnant.

Fortunately I had a friend who would eventually become my wife and helping her through her troubled home life gave me some sense of relief from my past. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about my trauma if I was focused on someone else’s. We had a great time and I almost told her on numerous occasions that I think I might be gay. Though now that I say that out loud, I think I tried to bury my sexuality because deep down I think it reminded me of Jacob and Steve and like I deserved it for being a sinner. I think if I told myself I wasn’t gay that I could say the abuse didn’t happen either. I hate that my sexuality is so tied up with my past.

But even that friendship wasn’t enough to cover up the black hole that was my psyche and in the summer after graduating in 2001, I tried to kill myself by taking handfuls of pills. I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. That the thought still occurs to me is frustrating. Clearly, I wasn’t successful. It just made me throw up all over my room and left me feeling drunk and disoriented for a day or two. The only one that seemed to notice, because she approached me the next day when I was at work , was my Dad’s third wife. Not sure how she knew, but she pulled me aside at work. I remember being legitimately surprised I woke up. Looking at the vomit on the floor by my bed, panicking. I went and hot the note i left on the kitchen counter and hid it in my desk. I cleaned up the vomit and then covered up the spot with laundry until I could clean it better. And then i went to work. Never told anyone that until now either. But it was probably the first time I felt like someone saw me or cared about me or what would happen to me in a while. Sure my dad said he loved me and I knew I'd have a place to live, but I don't really remember feeling loved. It's like my older brother got all the benefits and my youngest brother got all the attention. I just drifted along. A piece of driftwood in a river is what comes to mind.

And that was growing up. The rest is what my adulthood, which while not part of my abuse definitely came with its own fair of triggering moments.

In 2006, while on a work trip in Maine I had dinner with a superior and I had some drinks and ended up in his hotel room where we were chatting. Just shooting the breeze about a range of topics like politics, and George Bush and the war and my brother in Afghanistan. Just normal conversation. He poured me some drinks from the minibar thing or maybe I brought a drink back to the room, but we were drinking. I sat on his chair and and he sat in his bed. I’m not sure when but at some point in the conversation, it took a more intimate turn. We gave each other blowjobs and we tried for him to f*** me, but there was no lube and when I rolled over, and we made out, his stubble on rubbing on my face gave was visceral and I had never felt so scared. I got up, got dressed and left. I went back to my hotel room where I masturbated, which now seems very odd, and took a really long shower. Maybe I had too much to drink but I was filled with shame and called in sick for the rest of the work trip until I could fly back home. We never talked about it again and I felt scared and nervous that he would say something to me. Thankfully that never happened and I got to keep my secret.

Also in 2006, I had three different people talk to me and hit on me in the men’s room and that made me really uncomfortable. It got to the point that I couldn’t use a restroom that didn’t have a lock. I started leaving work to use the restroom at the gas station across the street. I told my wife and she jokingly called me gaybait. I felt more than just bait. That seemed to be a phase, but to this day I still can’t pee if someone is in the room. My wife seems to be an exception.

In 2008, while on a work trip in the Philippines I was approached and cornered by some dude and his friend in a mall restroom where they prevented me from existing a stall. Fortunately, another American chose that time to go to the restroom and got me out of there. I didn’t leave my hotel, with the exception of going to work, for the rest of my month-long trip. It was a real shame because I wanted to see the Philippines ever since hearing my dad tell stories of the time he was stationed there, Korea, and Japan.

It was around that time that I was really starting to question what it was about me that got me into these situations. Was I asking for it? Is there something wrong with me? Why? Looking at the timing in hindsight, that’s also when I began heavily lifting weights and bulking up and stacking. Fortunately I noticed pretty early on that stacking was turning me into a psycho and opted for a more natural route. T3 is no joke.

I was happily married, and am, since 2005 and while my wife jokes sometimes and says I’m a prude, overall we have a mostly healthy sexual relationship. She gives me a hard time that it seems like I don’t like her, but I’m not sure that she really feels that way. I know she knows I love her, but it would be nice if she wouldn’t make those kinds of comments. At times, my past comes back to haunt me and filles me performance anxiety and I have to really really focus on being present, which makes me more anxious. In those times I've never been able to finish and so I just fake it and roll over and pretend like I'm asleep. And then after laying awake for a bit, I get home and go finish.

I guess what I’m experiencing is trauma. Situations take me back to earlier times and the shame comes with it. In 2013 or 2014, I went to the doctor for a prescription refill, something I’ve done several times. Because I thought I had low libido and it turned out my testosterone was low which could be causing some of my mood swings. Hearing about my low testosterone left me feeling more inadequate and lame. But I didn’t really have any options other than this topical gel, Testim. I thought maybe it would give me a bigger penis but all it did was shrink my testes. Well I needed a refill but I had moved to Washington, so I needed a new doctor. I thought they would fax over my records and it would just be a rubber stamp. Well, it wasn’t. And the female doctor who I saw wanted to do a prostate exam. Well I needed the refill so I didn’t have much of a choice. She instructed me to lower my pants and underwear, face the exam chair and lean over. She then proceeded to put on gloves, lubricant, and inserted a finger or two in my butt. It was an instant erection with pre-ejaculate to boot. When she was done, I pulled up my pants and turned around and the shame must have been visible because she apologized for something like it being a surprise. I wanted to tell her "yeah it was a f****** surprise" I’m not sure what I said, but I took my prescription and all but ran out of the office. I’ve never gone back. I moved all my records somewhere else and started over completely. I remember being so mad. I actually screamed like a psycho in my car. Oh I was so so mad. Hell my fists clench just reading it and I shake.

The trauma and shame and resentment continued. Unfortunately for my wife, she was the victim of my anger which manifested in yelling, slamming things, irrational anger at inanimate objects that didn’t perform their function, road rage, and aggressive posturing, and so much more. I've said some really unkind things to her too. Truth be told, I’m surprised she stayed. I’m not sure I would have.

I’m thankful that I never subjected her to physical abuse and I’m forever thankful that she had patience with me. She’s indicated that she knows something happened in my childhood, But she’s never pried and I’ve never told. You can’t unring a bell and I felt, and still feel, that it would be unfair to subject her to that type of information. Turns out her mom was abused by her dad and brothers and it really messed her up. She eventually drank herself to death. I felt bad for her. I don't think I can relate because I only knew my mother for five years, but I'm sure not being able to call your mom and seeing her decline is hard. And I felt worse about myself. Was I just some sort of charity case? I don’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want to be the molested husband. I remember telling myself that I needed to be more circumspect. Which, I guess, upon writing that, makes me a pretty deceitful person. Nothing to see here seems to be my life story.

We separated for about a year and half to work on us. It was really our only time as adults of living on our own. We both moved out together when we were 18 even though she was still in high school. It was eye opening. I learned a lot about myself during that time. We're better now than we've ever been and it really gave us space to prioritize us and our attention to one another. It was really healing. And I really thought that I had turned a corner and that the past was well and good in the past.

I also started seeing a couple of therapists and worked through different techniques to manage my anger and my temper. I also spent hours in that couch or chair talking about my life and my experience. I took up meditation and that has been a godsend for ways to distance yourself from your thoughts and to be focused on the present. With their help and guidance, I was able to reframe and reexamine aspects of myself. It's amazing how validating it can be to hear someone help you reframe things. It also strikes me as odd that professionals can give you insights and you can go home and twist those insights back into blame. The work continues, but the work really started there on those couches.

I still have never discussed the sexual abuse in foster care or with Steve. But they've both referred me to a few sexual abuse resources. The first time it happened, I quit going and went to another therapist. Huh, I never understood why I did that. I always thought it was because it was a guy. Denial... wow. Anyways they’ve asked and I still have not been able to say the words. It’s like Pandora's box when it comes to mind and I have other things that I can work on. So we discuss mainly my issues with how I was raised and treated and supported, emotionally, as a child. It’s then I learned that all the confusion from puberty on is because I’m attracted to both men and women. I don’t much care for labels but I guess I’m the silent B in LGBT. Bury it deep. There's nothing to see here.

But having that realization was a paradigm shift for me and has since changed the way I view myself and the world. I can now look at men and women and find them attractive without the shame and the guilt about the orientation. I've long since given up on the judeo-christian god and no longer worry about my eternal soul. Not it's society that I worry about the most but my wedding ring is an invisibility ring and bi-erasure is something I live in. To this day there is only 1 person, my second therapist, that I’ve ever told about that realization. And I've never talked about it again. Apparently, according to her, time away by yourself is a time for a lot of learning. But there seems to be something about being too straight to be gay and too gay to be straight that effectively made me keep my mouth shut. I can't be a part of that community because I won't allow myself to be. I also wonder if me being bisexual is what made me a target for abuse on some level. The whole "asking for it" thing is a thought that refuses to give up. It doesn’t seem logical, but when I think about that it’s not really logic that’s running the show.

I just don’t know why me. I’ve been assaulted by two dudes in two states and at different points in my life. 4/5 and 9/10. Like what the actual f*** is wrong with me! I dress in a heteronormative way. I’m cis-gendered. I played with action figures and did other boy things growing up. I’ve only dated women. I’m married. I don’t intentionally flirt with men. I’ve never initiated a sexual action with another guy, with the exception of the Maine situation. Not even on any of the guys who I liked and fantasized about. I don’t leer or make sexually explicit gestures, to anyone of any gender. I didn’t say a f****** thing and yet people did things to me that replay over and over in my head.

I’m a good person. I volunteer at animal shelters, I rescue animals, I feed the neighborhood birds, I give to charity, I work hard, I pay my taxes, I’m courteous, I help the elderly, I like to read and write. I like to play video games. I like to help people. I’m a good neighbor. I'm politically active. I'm an ally to different of resource groups for vets and for pride-folks. I've wanted to do a big brother thing and help the youth, but to me that's a bridge to far. I really don't know what I would say if they talked about abuse. There's also a lot of fear there that I was destined to be a predator too. You can't imagine my relief in reading here and putting a name to vampire syndrome and more importantly that its a myth. But I still feel like a deviant when I tell my nieces or nephew, or my friends' Littles that they can't sit on my lap. I couch it as setting boundaries, but it's fear. What I were to get an erection.

And so and yet all this f****** stuff happened to me and I don’t have any outlets. I can’t tell my family. I can’t tell my therapist, I can’t tell my friends, I have to be evasive to my boss when it’s impacting my mental state preventing me from going to work. I can’t tell my doctor.

And I want for nothing more than to be rid of this feeling. I did everything I was supposed to ever do and yet I get to carry this f****** powder keg on my back throughout my whole life. I read a book and it put me in a depressing spin just from reading a statistic that most sexual violence among boys and men go unreported. A f****** stat sent me down a hole that I thought was well and good behind me.

My whole like is just weird. I have to get buzzed in the parking lot of the doctors office just to go to the doctor because I think they might want to do a routine, well intentioned check to make sure I don’t have cancer. When I think about it, that means I would rather have cancer then to tell anyone or have anyone look at me. They ask me to take off my shirt and I blush like some school age kid. I'm a grown adult. Like what the actual f***.

Okay tangent aside, I know that's not helpful. And now I get to start doing the work to examine my past sexual trauma and make sense of that. I recently read a great book. Man Enough, and there’s a chapter in there pertaining to sexual abuse and it was very triggering for me. So here I am. But there were also lots of really insightful chapters that dealt with just the messed up way that men in our society are socialized. So I'm trying to see past the triggering content to the better, broader truths beyond. I wish I could retract what I wrote to him.

I want so much to leave all this baggage in the past. To not feel shame and guilt. To be able to get a hug from someone other than my wife or my dog or my dad and close relatives without panicking. To be able to be open and honest about who I am as a person and what experiences helped shape me. I want to be able to go to a social outings with male friends. To be able to have deeper and more meaningful friendships with other males. To feel safe in a public restroom, to overcome this shybladder thing, and live a happy and fulfilled life. It's the most embarrassing thing to be standing at a urinal, needing to to go, and just nothing. Like I have anxiety about going to sporting events, or any events, and needing to use the restroom. But it kept me out of the air force and out of the war, so I guess I have that going for me. Heck, it’d be nice to be able to be open and honest about who I am with the people who I’m closest to. I’m so tired of the secrecy and the lies and the deception. And I’m so tired of the fear I have about my secrets from being found out. I think it would ruin my career and all my personal relationships and people would look at me with pity or worse fear. “Oh there goes the molested guy, poor him.” or “Oh, there goes the molested guy, hide your kids.” I’d be a social pariah.

Maybe I can find some camaraderie in this group. I just can't put into words how accepting and empowering the guys here have been. And supportive. Wow. I wish I had it in the 5th and 6th grade and pretty much beyond. It's healing to tell my story and it's also stirs up feelings that I've tried so hard to forget. To not talk about. To not think about. To ignore and convince myself that it was someone else. But it wasn't. It was me. That happened to me and it's a weight that I get to carry because I'm the only one who can now. Because I didn't say thing.

So that’s my story. Not exciting. I doubt a movie would be made of it, but it’s been freeing to put all this out there even if I lack the courage to use my actual last name. If you read this far, thank you. And if you stopped somewhere along the way, thanks for trying. Just putting it out there has been something else.

Best,
Jeremy

On a positive note, I had written this while I was gathering my thoughts and feelings. Since I wrote this, I actually worked up the courage to tell my wife. She’s been understanding and caring and compassionate, but she now looks at me differently. I told her that I don’t want it to change anything between us, but I’m not even sure that’s possible. She looks at me and seems to want to comfort me. It’s a mixture of pity and sadness, like the way you’d look at a rescued puppy that was mistreated. I don’t want sympathy or compassion or care. I don't want pity, and I don't want to talk about it. I just want to forget. I want to be normal. So I’ve just been spending most of my time except for meals, workouts, hygiene activities, and sleep, locked away in my office “working.” And hoping desperately that this is all just a bad nightmare and that I’ll wake up and everything will be better. I doubt that will happen so I just need to suck it up and go about my life.
 
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