Physicalities (**Triggers**)
I am taking this to the GBT forum because it is a rather delicate issue that I think is as much about sexuality as it is about abuse (the latter training the former). I had two assailants as a twelve/thirteen year old boy. The first was my abuser. The second was a stranger I met when my abuser took me by the hand and led me into his dark and confusing world. That stranger was me - a me I never knew, never asked to know, and wished I had never met.
My therapist - who specialized in CSA and worked with referrals from others - thought the nature of the sexual acts I endured were particularly damaging. And this is where it gets a bit triggering - so feel free to skip from here to the next paragraph. I have written and rewritten this so many times and it seems there is simply no way to do it with any politesse or dignity other than to say he climbed on top and consummated himself in my butt. I remember trying often to say "no" (I am thankful my memory has recorded that - a truly soul-salvaging remembrance) - yet in the course of things, my body would say yes. And that was the most disturbing part of it for me, really. Denying the sexual waves he set in motion proved an absolute no-win for me, and the more I tried to deny them the higher they would pique, leaving deep grooves of damage. To say those were the most intense sexual experiences of my life is probably not an exaggeration. But intensity does not mean pleasure. It was not the soul-affirming connection of reciprocating adults, but instead an experience that probably is very much like a demonic possession - being inhabited physically and mentally, consumed, and in every sense overwhelmed beyond any developed maturity to process what was happening to me.
And that was the me - the stranger - that I discovered. I didn't like him - the darkness that came out of me during those hushed sessions. It was a sudden me that I never knew, could not deny, and instantly hated - and no-one could save me from me.
As I write this, I realize what a crime - what an intrinsic theft - that was! I often wonder had he had forced oral sex instead (which he never did to any of us) would the physiology would have trampled and trammeled such a damaging course through my nascent sexuality? Could I have separated myself sexually from the experience in a way that I was unable to with anal intercourse? These acts have undeniable dynamics that just get swept up and ignored under the umbrella term of "sexual abuse" or "rape" - and in the process everything the child knows and remembers gets ignored. Adults can develop a remarkable capacity to not see things.
Good therapy has helped me sort out the twisted sexual geography of my past, the topology of who I was and who I am now. I've since learned that a truly fulfilling sexual experience empowers and enhances the individuals who share in it. Imagine years of sexual dialogue enhancing one person at the expense of the other - learning that sexual release feels more like surrender than empowerment, more like defeat than love and sharing.
The distorted dynamics didn't stop there. My molester was not only abusing me but many girls in our neighborhood the same exact way. I would often break up his abuse of the girls. Those episodes opened my eyes as witness to the single, ugliest part of my childhood - to see his abuse of the girls did far more to make me hate him and hate what he was doing than what he made me do. I think I equated masculinity - being "topped" - with sinister and nasty intent, while submission maintained at least some intentioned purity of soul. In my black and white world, conquerors were bad and the conquered were good - defining the lines of personal and professional dysfunction that would mark so many patterns in my life since.
My little sister - a co-survivor of this guy - told me (when we finally were able to talk about it years later) that she felt like "damaged goods." I think that was very true with me - that I was so damaged that I think what was happening to me hit such a low point that it really couldn't hurt me anymore, that all the emotional conviction in fighting it left me and the only good I could manage to effect was to save others from the darkness I knew. I guess I managed to save a few kids here and there. I was like a dirty sponge, absorbing his filth and asking only that my dark secrets not be spilled.
So I wanted to throw this out here. It is a topic I have long contemplated sharing but for some reason only now am I introducing it. It is about the physicality of the abuse, the sexual nature which I am realizing more and more seems to have defined the intensity of the experience for me and the nature of the way I adapted. It is a difficult subject and inherently triggering. It is not as safe a topic as talking about "abuse" in a more generic fashion, its details hidden behind a curtain to save our sensibilities and yet in the process we can't even admit or see what it is we are talking about. So often it seems that what the adult will see is not what the child knows - even when that child and that adult are the same person.
My therapist - who specialized in CSA and worked with referrals from others - thought the nature of the sexual acts I endured were particularly damaging. And this is where it gets a bit triggering - so feel free to skip from here to the next paragraph. I have written and rewritten this so many times and it seems there is simply no way to do it with any politesse or dignity other than to say he climbed on top and consummated himself in my butt. I remember trying often to say "no" (I am thankful my memory has recorded that - a truly soul-salvaging remembrance) - yet in the course of things, my body would say yes. And that was the most disturbing part of it for me, really. Denying the sexual waves he set in motion proved an absolute no-win for me, and the more I tried to deny them the higher they would pique, leaving deep grooves of damage. To say those were the most intense sexual experiences of my life is probably not an exaggeration. But intensity does not mean pleasure. It was not the soul-affirming connection of reciprocating adults, but instead an experience that probably is very much like a demonic possession - being inhabited physically and mentally, consumed, and in every sense overwhelmed beyond any developed maturity to process what was happening to me.
And that was the me - the stranger - that I discovered. I didn't like him - the darkness that came out of me during those hushed sessions. It was a sudden me that I never knew, could not deny, and instantly hated - and no-one could save me from me.
As I write this, I realize what a crime - what an intrinsic theft - that was! I often wonder had he had forced oral sex instead (which he never did to any of us) would the physiology would have trampled and trammeled such a damaging course through my nascent sexuality? Could I have separated myself sexually from the experience in a way that I was unable to with anal intercourse? These acts have undeniable dynamics that just get swept up and ignored under the umbrella term of "sexual abuse" or "rape" - and in the process everything the child knows and remembers gets ignored. Adults can develop a remarkable capacity to not see things.
Good therapy has helped me sort out the twisted sexual geography of my past, the topology of who I was and who I am now. I've since learned that a truly fulfilling sexual experience empowers and enhances the individuals who share in it. Imagine years of sexual dialogue enhancing one person at the expense of the other - learning that sexual release feels more like surrender than empowerment, more like defeat than love and sharing.
The distorted dynamics didn't stop there. My molester was not only abusing me but many girls in our neighborhood the same exact way. I would often break up his abuse of the girls. Those episodes opened my eyes as witness to the single, ugliest part of my childhood - to see his abuse of the girls did far more to make me hate him and hate what he was doing than what he made me do. I think I equated masculinity - being "topped" - with sinister and nasty intent, while submission maintained at least some intentioned purity of soul. In my black and white world, conquerors were bad and the conquered were good - defining the lines of personal and professional dysfunction that would mark so many patterns in my life since.
My little sister - a co-survivor of this guy - told me (when we finally were able to talk about it years later) that she felt like "damaged goods." I think that was very true with me - that I was so damaged that I think what was happening to me hit such a low point that it really couldn't hurt me anymore, that all the emotional conviction in fighting it left me and the only good I could manage to effect was to save others from the darkness I knew. I guess I managed to save a few kids here and there. I was like a dirty sponge, absorbing his filth and asking only that my dark secrets not be spilled.
So I wanted to throw this out here. It is a topic I have long contemplated sharing but for some reason only now am I introducing it. It is about the physicality of the abuse, the sexual nature which I am realizing more and more seems to have defined the intensity of the experience for me and the nature of the way I adapted. It is a difficult subject and inherently triggering. It is not as safe a topic as talking about "abuse" in a more generic fashion, its details hidden behind a curtain to save our sensibilities and yet in the process we can't even admit or see what it is we are talking about. So often it seems that what the adult will see is not what the child knows - even when that child and that adult are the same person.
