That which was Stolen from us.

That which was Stolen from us.
M

Muldoon

Registrant
Its May 3 and the trees are just starting to bud out, ya spring comes late to MN. Well we have only 2 weeks before session is over at the capital this year. Our bills are still waiting to be heard on the floor of the House and Senate. We have made great progress in educating the members of the 201 Club on the evils of CSA. I would say over 50% understand the great harm that was done to us but the other half just doesnt get it. I would like to ask for your help one more time.
Please tell me and the members of the 201 Club about: That which was Stolen from you by your prep. I will be using your words to move the Reps to action. When I print the post out I use the printer friendly version so all the personal information doesn't print out. Thanks for your help. Muldoon

After spending 5 days with my friend and his 10-year-old son I have learned so much, it has over come me with so many feelings. I got to see childhood in action. What a care free and totally trustful time in the development of the human being. Meko showed me what I had missed in my life. That which my perps stole from me. There are so many common things in life that I was not able to experience. I could never trust any one, was always on guard, always ?????.

During my teen years I couldnt develop a healthy sexual ID. Always wondering, ??? Searching. I had many dates with girls during my high school years but it never progressed past 2 or 3 dates with each girl. After the necking got to heavy I would run away from the relationship. I was too scarred of the next step to continue on. Was I man enough to be dating girls? There is so much more that was stolen from me but I want to hear about you. Thanks again Muldoon
 
Muldoon,

Your persistent dedication to & work on behalf of our cause & all of us as male survivors continues to be very much appreciated & a great inspiration!

OK, what was stolen from me by my perps?

Damn, sometimes, like right now, it feels like the question should be what wasn't?

My life as it should have been, my self as I was meant to be, was stolen from me by my perps!

Emotionally I'm still struggling to get through adolescence, tho I'm chronologically 46 years old.
I have the characteristics of Complex PTSD, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and severe clinical depression.

My brain was rewired beginning in infancy by the abuse and I have lived with several addictions & compulsions, including live sex, porn, alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, & overeating.

Due to dissociation from the unbearable memories of my abuse, I suffer from ongoing dissociative disorder. My concentration & memory have suffered greatly, to the point that I can frequently do things like getting up to walk into the next room to get something and by the time I get there forgetting what I got up for, or sometimes even what room I was headed for.

Physically, I have had multiple problems, mostly rooted in Fibromyalgia (FM)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS): constant chronic pain, soreness & muscle tightening, numbness & fatigue that often becomes severe even debilitating; sleep apnea; irritable bowel sydrome (IBS) & acid reflux; sensory overload & severe startle response; difficulty hearing; degenerative back arthritis; and resulting severe limitations on my ability to exercise & enhance health.

Spiritually, I struggle to love, accept & forgive myself; battle false guilt & shame that should not be mine but my perpetrators'; and am compulsively driven to actions & thots contrary to my religious beliefs and my sense of worth & well-being as a human being, which leads to further guilt & self-hatred.

Socially, I have difficulty accepting love, being intimate with others in healthy ways, and just enjoying being with others & enjoying life.

As my wife said recently, "She (my mother, my primary perpetrator) robbed us of our life."
"Yes," I replied "before we even had it."

Muldoon I hope this helps.

BTW Muldoon I saw you on TV the other day on an ACME Hour cartoon with 2 zany cops, one was called Muldoon! ;)

Victor
 
I think my perps robbed me of any chance I had at being "normal" or fitting into society. They robbed me of a good childhood and they robbed me of my innocence. They robbed me of ways to relate to my peers. They robbed me of my self-worth, my self-esteem, and my trust. They made me hate myself and the rest of the world. I became angry and withdrawn and I think that no matter how long I work at it I'll never regain some of the things they took. I was too young when they took them and I can't even remember what it's like not to hate yourself immediately when you wake up in the morning.
 
Well what did my perp/pereps take from me. First I think they took everything from me. My ability and will to love. They took my ability to look at the world with the eye's of a child, instead I look at them as though looking through a calideascope (spelling?). You can see everything anyone else does but it's distorted and freakish. They took my ability to trust anyone and everyone. I think that anyone that is nice to me for what ever reason they may have is out to hurt me in one form or another. They took away my reasoning to think straight, they made me feel guilty for what they did to me. Causeing me to have a real problem seperating the "own your faults" and "owning the worlds". What else did they take from me? My freedom....they put me in a jail for life. I will spend the rest of my life "getting over this". As to where my perps are either dead or living a "Ward Cleaver" life with there white picked fences and there perfict 2.3 kids. Now I agree that as I learn to accept what has happened to me and the fact that it WAS NOT MY FAULT it will get easier for me to cope with life and all it puts in front of me. But here I sit in my house and still dont feel safe. Here I sit in my house and cant work because of the PTSD is so bad that my nightmares keep me up most nights. So it's hard to work when you can't say for sure what time you can get there. Here I sit afraid to go to Wal-Mart durning the day, scared someone will see through me and know what my step father did to me and either judge me or want to do the same things to me. Here I sit scared that if someone did want to reinact my step father's abuse on me that I would not be strong enough to stop it. After all, "You like it, you know you do"...."If you werent so damn good looking I could keep my hand off you"...."If your ass wasnt so tight"..."If I..If I..If I...If I....If I...If I...If I" it's always "If I.." Well Im slowly learning that it's not "If I" it's "YOUR WRONG FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME" Im not the one broke here you are. So you ask what my perps took from me.....I guess I could have answered the question with a shorter post.
"What did your perp take from you?"
EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well thats my thoughts on it. Hope it helps you in your fight. But I just wanted to say thank you. I want to think you for two things.
1. For fighting the fight for all us wolves.
2. For asking the question.

You asking the question made me think about it. And because of you asking it I now see how far I still have to go, but I also see how far I've come. And as long as I keep my eye on to where I need to go as well as be mindful of where I've been then this "journey" will be just that a journey and not just me living a lie that I call LIFE.

James
 
Muldoon

I got to see childhood in action. What a care free and totally trustful time in the development of the human being. Meko showed me what I had missed in my life. That which my perps stole from me.
Click to expand...
This is the greatest theft perpetrated on me, and my wife, I've never felt safe enough to have children.

I had so many fears about continuing the cycle, so many doubts about my abilities and skills. So much confusion and doubt.

Tonight we sat in our favourite Indian resteraunt and as it filled up the tables alongside ours were taken by a man with his son about 7 yo and on the next table were two women with a little girl of about 2 yo. And although, for whatever reason, both parents weren't with these kids, we watched the smiles and interaction that went on with the sole parent there. And it's a wonderful thing.

My wife is very maternal, and I watched her watching them and saw the sorrow. It's something I see all to often now, and it's something I'm also beginning to feel.

Thankfully we have many nephews and nieces who live close that we can spoil rotten.

Dave :(
 
Muldoon,

Thanks for your great work. I hope this sounds ok; I wrote it to the legislators. My wife says it sounds ok.

**********

What I Have Lost

I cannot say with any certainty what I have lost, since I can never know the life I might have had if the perpetrator (I refuse to call him "my perp") had not raped me when I was 16 years old.

I was enrolled in a private high school which my parents could not afford. I was able to attend because I had won scholarships. When I was a sophomore in high school, I took the PSAT standardized tests and scored very well, in the 99th percentile. I was still only a high school sophomore but I was awarded a full four year scholarship to one college, and my scores generated a great deal of interest from many schools around the world. Within a year I would be raped multiple times and deliberately go out to drink the night before I took the SAT tests. I never graduated high school, settling for a GED. What did I lose? I can't say what might have happened.

I have no memories of high school sweethearts, first kiss, prom nights. After I was raped, I did not ask a girl out on a date for the next 8 years. What did I lose? Your guess is as good as mine. I can't identify something I never knew.

I did have a friend, a girl with whom I spent a lot of time. We were good friends, although I never considered discussing my SA history with her. One day, after we had known each other for 2 years, in a restaurant across the street from her house, she hugged me and kissed me. I froze. After telling a quick lie about needing to go somewhere, I literally fled. The fear of a possible sexual relationship was so strong that I did not see her again until the day she moved away when I waved good bye. What did I lose? I honestly do not know.

I did not join any teams, although I had enjoyed football and softball in elementary school. In fact, I never again attended physical education class. I wore my PE uniform beneath my regular clothes to avoid changing in the locker room, then snuck back to the locker room during class and changed, sneaking out of the gym before the other boys entered the locker room. I was that ashamed of my body. I had never been a star athlete, but I had enjoyed playing. What did I lose? I'm not sure, perhaps camaraderie, a sense of how to work on a team. Someone who actually had those experiences might have some idea what I lost.

I suffered from headaches that lasted sometimes for a week or longer, with no relief possible via aspirin, alcohol, street drugs, exercise, sleep, or any other remedy I tried. I had seizures, like epilepsy, but exhaustive testing never detected an identifiable physical cause. I stopped dreaming, literally and figuratively. Prior to beginning to work on recovery from the abuse (last year, 26 years after it happened) I did not recall more than a few dreams in the previous 2 decades.

Eventually I returned to school while recuperating from a car accident. I managed to put together a life that appeared on the outside to be a good one. I met and married a wonderful woman. She has given me three beautiful children. I have been unable to express emotion to them, literally afraid at times to be seen hugging them for fear that I might be taken for a molester. Worse, I have been unable to be the emotionally supportive partner that my wife deserves. Our marriage nearly failed last year, and that threat was finally sufficient for me to break my silence about the most shameful events in my life.

I have stayed in the wrong jobs, been passed over for promotions, etc., because I have been unable to speak up for myself. I have felt distant from every one I know, my parents and siblings who still do not know about the rapes, my wife from whom I hid this for so long, my children whom I can't even imagine telling. I have no close male friends, and haven't since high school. I don't go to the bar to watch a game, or have friends over for the Super Bowl. I don't have friends over at all, to my wife's consternation. What did we lose? She knows what she feels is missing in our life together. We will work on our marriage together, but at the core of many of our problems are my hard learned dysfunctional behaviors.

On a more personal level, having started to recover from the effects of those nights so long ago, I have found that I sometimes have flashbacks. These seem to occur more frequently during times of physical intimacy with my wife. Spending those precious moments with me in a frozen state of horror and shame, begging an abuser to leave me alone is not the way my wife and I imagined our life together. I have a good idea what we have lost in this case, but I'm afraid that it may be part of the process of recovery. If so, it will eventually pass, but we will never be able to recover what we lost so far.

Let me thank you for taking the time to read this, and the other sharings brought to you.
 
First of all, thank you for the effort, time and patience you are putting into trying to convey to the lawmakers just what SA actually means.

Second of all, I've been here before under the moniker of spider-man but forgot my password and the old account was keyed to an email address that no longer exists.

Third of all, what was stolen from me? Many things that I try to get back on a day to day basis. My life, if I were to generalise.

These are the things that I know are missing - there may be many more that I have not discovered yet. That I may never discover. But I try, as we all must. To do otherwise is to petrify.

----------------
What was stolen?

An absence of pain - in all respects. My mind is scarred and the blood of my heart runs through the channels that should not be there, that do not feel natural. The things that should feel natural don't. I cry when I have sex with my wife, when I am able to.

I should be able to take a shower like any human being, feeling clean and refreshed afterwards. Today, I nearly threw up, because, the cloying sensation of smelling semen overpowered my senses, even though physically there was no such smell.

If I ever had it, I can't remember, but I miss the idea of being at ease and comfortable with myself. To not doubt and fear and worry over everything I think and do and feel. To wonder if some part of me, twisted in the wreckage, will try to change a good thing into something destructive. I miss trusting myself, having some sense of who I am. Sixteen years of pulling the ultimate cover up on myself by hiding the memories of abuse for my own sanity and survival left me wondering: is there more that I have hidden from myself? What other dark things might crawl from this mind I sometimes laughingly call my own?
I wish I could see children playing and laughing and not fervently wish that what happened to me will not happen to them. To live every day with the pain of yesterday, the hammer blow to the clay still being molded.

My memories return, slowly. A childhood lies in there somewhere, before and between and beneath the wounds. I watch a movie where someone fondly recalls their childhood with joy and I find it hard not to hate them. I fear mine. I don't know what else I might find.

------------------
Dave
 
Thanks guys I tryed to read your post on the computer but I started crying. I printed them out and will read them later down at my chair in the woods. I will get back to you all in a day or two. Muldoon
 
Thanks Guys for all your input on this subject. As we can all see so much was stolen from us. This the point I want to make at the Capital that child sexual abuse is evil that laST a life time, Muldoon
 
would like to here from the new guys here on this for my work at the capital this year. Thanks Tom
 
Ah, Muldoon, I wish I had seen this thread earlier. But what could I add that hasn't been already said?

But, yes, in my words, what I've lost:

A large chunk of my life, which was repressed until recently.

The ability to trust freely.

The ability to love truly.

My self-esteem.

My sexuality.

My ability to cope.

Sex in general.

Trust in myself.

Trust to anyone with children who knows about my situation.

Inner peace.

Everything.

But I'm trying to get it back.

Thanks for letting me say this.

Scot
 
Some of you guys know that I have been really depressed lately. I am pretty much used to that having been in and out of really serious depression for 30 years but lately I have been trying to get to the bottom of it, challenge it, hear what the negative voices in my head are really saying. Journaling helps me see it.

While writing this morning it occurred to me that one of the background beliefs I have is that I survived by accident, that I wasn't really "meant" to survive, that I just slipped by, and that my reason for being alive was lost or taken away a long long time ago.

Perhaps the central thing I have to do in rebuilding my life is to take back that thing, that reason for being alive which is like saying taking back my life which includes just about everything Scot listed.
 
what have they stole from me? my childhood. any resemblence of having a life. self-respect. any feeling of selfworth. the ability to have a relationship. the ability to make love without working at it.

THEY STOLE ME.

who am i, what am i, when will i be me, where has the innerchild in me gone, what is to become of me, how am i going to trust???????

THEY STOLE ME.

Now I am taking it all back.

it's not theirs to take. it never was. those are mine, all mine. it is not greedy to want them all back, to demand them all back. they are mine, and mine alone, to share with whom i chose, when i choose. and i don't choose them.
 
I think I was stolen from myself. Everything I am capable of becoming, or could have, should have been by now. The person I was meant to be, the person my soul was put on this earth to become, if this shit had not happen. My life was stolen from me. The life of some decent and clean, innocent child, with the loving parents, the happy younger brother, the family that goes out together to the park or something, and the father will push the boys on the swings, or help them build in the sand, because he actualy love them. My mind was stolen, as it has split off into others that I do not know, and have no control over. My image of myself, my feelings of adequacy of myself, my feelings of sexuality, my feelings of confidence, my feelings of belonging in the universe, those have been taken from me. And also, with what was stolen from me, it was stolen from others also. I feel very much like the abuse continues, because it has so much influence on how I am with others, even people I love so desperately. It effects my trust of others, how much I can trust, and even how often, because it can come and go away again. It effects my trust of myself with people, and make me push them away sometime, when what I want most is them closer. It has stolen myself, my life, my relationships, my confidence, my trust, my intelligence even. I think an easier question to answer would be what was not stolen from us. Answer is nothing. It all was taken or tainted.

Leosha
 
THere is so much that has been stolen from me, the list could go on forever. But a few things, my perps stole my childhood, I see my 3 and 5 year old nephews now, and wonder how could a person hurt a child like that, and I see what exactly was stolen form me in regards to my childhood.

Also, in a way, I was stolen from myself, I will never know the person I could have been if not for the abuse, and that eats at me every day. My perps stole my very identity, they stole my life, my life has not been mine, it has always belonged to them, and in a way it still does beloing to my perps because of everything I am still going through.

My ability to have a healthy realationship up to this point has been stolen, I mean I am 20 years old and have never had a girlfriend, because of fear, because of the abuse I was forced to endure.

THere are just so many things that have been stiolen from me, I mean i have lost my very identity, I don't even know who I am because of the abuise, it is very hard to filter ouit the abuse from who and what I really am.

Trust was stolen from me, the ability to really trust a person, fear has overtaken that possibility. Trust is essential to live and right now trust is a very very hard thing for me, perhaps in time it will cbe easier, but right now I cannot see the end of this fear of trust. Not only am I unable to trust other people, I am also unable to trust myself, I don't know if what I am feeling is real or just a result from the abuse.

These are just a few of the many things that were stolen from me, the list could go on forever, but these are some of the 'highlights.'

scott
 
Scott I like to think that instead of being stolen our childhood and the ablility to have meaningful relationships were caged behind a solid steel door. The SA put it there and the shame and guilt that was laid on us aided and abetted the perps. They locked the little We and our emotions up and then they gave us the key and we continued as jailers to our childhood and emotions. And we kept silent.

Now in order to move past this state of suspended animation I think it is our duty to work hard on our recovery so that ilttle guy inside can feel comfortable enough to come out into the world again. We can be his best friend. And toghether we can do the things that children do not matter how silly they may seem to other adults. I mean, Hey we have a lot to do before the two of us reunite as one.

Just one guy's thoughts
 
You name it and then add the words "Decades of ", in front of it.

Decades of life.
Decades of fun.
Decades of achievement.
Decades of sexuality.
Decades of joy.
Decades of ...
 
Been super busey this last two weeks and finaly got time to look over your Replys. Printed it out and will have time in the next few days to read things over. Thanks everyone Tom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top