At the age of 14, my math teacher called attention to the school about behaviors I had exhibited. A woman, whom I would guess was from children's services came to talk with me privately. During the interview, I remember thinking, if she knows then how many of my friends know?
I denied everything the woman was asking and while walking back to my class I went into the bathroom and freaked out. I immediately decided that I had to change everything about me so no one will have a clue! It was a choice I felt would save me the humiliation, but it would also shut in and leave behind a kid that was sexually abused forever.
I took on childhood heroes as part of my life and character - Marty Stouffer, Jaques Cousteau, and John Denver. Nature never failed to be my place of escape and recovery after my abuse, these guys who I looked up to might very well bring me guaranteed peace and safety if I could follow their life path. As life went on though, that would fail me, and by 10th grade I was smoking pot before, during, and after school, dropping acid, and drinking heavier than I did when I was 13 years old.
I constantly tried to surround myself with people whom I felt were safe, made me happy, and serve as a distraction from my own reality. Never allowed any of them to know me. It was my way of controlling what I couldn’t control inside.
That boy I once was, was still locked away in a box a million miles away. The men who abused me visited my memories visually and physically for decades. The more they did, the deeper the pain would grow until one day I broke for the last time.
It’s been an arduous journey to save my life for me, and the loved ones that surround me. And here I am, as my therapist just said the other day "You’re a thousand miles from where you were almost 3 years ago."
The healing work I do with such tenacity has brought me to a new phase, and that’s making room for the kid I left behind. I went back to him, I apologized, we talked... And while we’re still working through things, we are now doing it together. No longer is my therapy wholly about the trauma that surfaces in me as an adult, but it is for that kid (Young Scott) and allowing him to walk with me through this life.
It sounds crazy if it wasn’t all true, feeling that younger part of me that was locked away, and this shell of a man that grew up without the other half of his soul - both coming together. This has been the hardest, strangest, and yet most fulfilling part of my healing so far.
Not only am I a father of two great kids, but as of late on occasion I find myself feeling like a kid along with my own kids. Maybe it’s that young Scott coming out, the free and innocent part of my soul coming back to life.
So, this is me thus far, a man with plenty of room inside for that kid to heal and grow and I can’t wait to see where things go from here.
I denied everything the woman was asking and while walking back to my class I went into the bathroom and freaked out. I immediately decided that I had to change everything about me so no one will have a clue! It was a choice I felt would save me the humiliation, but it would also shut in and leave behind a kid that was sexually abused forever.
I took on childhood heroes as part of my life and character - Marty Stouffer, Jaques Cousteau, and John Denver. Nature never failed to be my place of escape and recovery after my abuse, these guys who I looked up to might very well bring me guaranteed peace and safety if I could follow their life path. As life went on though, that would fail me, and by 10th grade I was smoking pot before, during, and after school, dropping acid, and drinking heavier than I did when I was 13 years old.
I constantly tried to surround myself with people whom I felt were safe, made me happy, and serve as a distraction from my own reality. Never allowed any of them to know me. It was my way of controlling what I couldn’t control inside.
That boy I once was, was still locked away in a box a million miles away. The men who abused me visited my memories visually and physically for decades. The more they did, the deeper the pain would grow until one day I broke for the last time.
It’s been an arduous journey to save my life for me, and the loved ones that surround me. And here I am, as my therapist just said the other day "You’re a thousand miles from where you were almost 3 years ago."
The healing work I do with such tenacity has brought me to a new phase, and that’s making room for the kid I left behind. I went back to him, I apologized, we talked... And while we’re still working through things, we are now doing it together. No longer is my therapy wholly about the trauma that surfaces in me as an adult, but it is for that kid (Young Scott) and allowing him to walk with me through this life.
It sounds crazy if it wasn’t all true, feeling that younger part of me that was locked away, and this shell of a man that grew up without the other half of his soul - both coming together. This has been the hardest, strangest, and yet most fulfilling part of my healing so far.
Not only am I a father of two great kids, but as of late on occasion I find myself feeling like a kid along with my own kids. Maybe it’s that young Scott coming out, the free and innocent part of my soul coming back to life.
So, this is me thus far, a man with plenty of room inside for that kid to heal and grow and I can’t wait to see where things go from here.
