Personal Revelations

Personal Revelations
Hauser

Hauser

Registrant
As some of you may recall. I had recently disclosed to my Uncle Dave. He invited me over for lunch and we talked.

I had expressed to him that I regret so much having not told my Dad what my perp did to me. Dave said, "You weren't ready yet". ..............................................................................
Consternated, I told a short story about a 6 year old boy that was molested by one of my friends neighbors. The perp was a 17 or 18 yr old kid. The boy lived in a broken family, with a single Mom, who smoked pot and drank, no father around. This is the ideal target for a perp.

But what happened? He told!!! And the perp went to jail for some years.

Now.........why did that boy that grew up in a worse family situation than I, tell on his perp?

Choices...............I made the wrong one. I probably could have had my life back a long time ago if I had told.

But..........back to our conversation, and the wisdom of my Uncle Dave, who reponded, "Like I said, YOU weren't ready, now you are, move forward and do it now"

He continued, (I'm going by memory now, but this is close enough), "Each of us has a role to play". The things that lead up to it are tailored for what that role will be, but we don't see it until we step out on the stage and begin to play the role". "You're starting to step out".

Wow!

My uncle Dave is 76 years old, retired corporate lawyer, never married, never had a girlfriend, is not gay, never had pets, travels to Europe all the time.

I guess I'm ready now............
 
Hauser,

Though it may seem that you made the wrong choice, you decided not to disclose for a reason. Don't look back on that too much. I'm glad to see you're ready now and willing to share with us at MS.
 
hauser ,you gotta stop blamming yourself for not telling ,you can what if yourself to death ,what if something ,just one minor little thing had happened different the first time you were abused ,what if you had been somewhere else that day? none of it would have happened ,your no more to blame for being in the wrong place than you are for not telling . for every kid that tells there are god knows how many who don't . you know my case and i'm not saying i did the wrong thing by telling ,but i gotta say telling ruined what was left of my life,the abuse was bad enough but on top of that i lost my family ,got put into foster care ,and still don't have a family ,all because i did tell . and for what? he was in prison for 7 years ,he is out now and i know he is stalking kids as we speak .i feel helpless to stop him .my telling didn't solve the problem it just made it go away for a while .telling is not like you see on tv ,nobody lives happily ever after ,believe me no child should ever have to go through a felony jury trial .you did what you had to do no guilt in that shadow
 
Hauser,

Your Uncle Dave is a wise man, and he is absolutely right. You are talking now because you are ready now. In the past, well, that wasn't the case. The reasons for that are something else, and as Adam suggests, they quickly get us into the quicksand of "what if", "why me", etc.

Adam points out how his disclosure went wrong, and in fact we have no way of knowing how things "would have gone" in the past, had we spoken up about what had happened. All that belongs to the unknowable world of "what could have been".

When I think about this I wonder the following: When we fault ourselves for not speaking up, aren't we just finding a round-the-corner way of taking blame for what happened to us? Once an abuser lays hands on a boy everything that happens is his/her fault - everything. It is not the boy's responsibility to say no, find a way to escape, disclose to parents, or whatever. Sometimes he can do that, and it's great when that happens. But it still isn't the boy's task to do any of this. It's the adult's responsibility to keep hands off in the first place.

Recovery from abuse is a huge burden. Don't increase it by accepting guilt that belongs to someone else bro.

Much love,
Larry
 
Hauser,

You didn't tell because you could not. It is unfair to you if you apply adult reasoning to your circumstances as a child. Nothing positive can come out of doing it so don't even try.

You were a victim.

Uncle Dave sounds like a good man.

Zipser
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top