Wanna know what REALLY pisses me off?

Hi Guys:

I have a decent therapist. I like her a lot. And I like the PTSD group that I go to. I'm the only survivor in the group, so it's a little strange. But considering where I am (in a very rural part of New England), it's amazing that you can even find other people with PTSD.

All the same, I am really pissed. Wanna know why? When I really needed help, I was in my teens. I didn't know what was wrong with me. And I was doing things like trying to kill myself. Just kind of hating myself, hating seeing myself in the mirror. And eventually I got myself therapy. At 17, I went and found a counselor. But my family didn't want to participate. The counselor didn't know what was truly wrong with me. Neither did I.

Anyhow, while all that was going on, my family was totally distracted with my older brother, the one who had been abusing me since I was a baby. I mean, by the teen years, he was just an out-of-control psychotic. Doing stuff like climbing out on the roof at night and howling at the moon. I'm not kidding.

And after a brief stint in a public mental hospital that looked like a scene from "Snake Pit," my father decided that my brother would have only the very best care available. Back in the early 70's, my Dad had excellent insurance through his company, with a really huge dollar limit for mental health to cover the whole family. I mean, I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. (My Dad belonged to a really good union back then.)

Well, for the next few years, my brother was in and out of some of the very finest mental health facilities in this country, including one place that was kind of the "funny farm" for the stars. Lots of celebrities had their breakdowns there--I kid you not!

Meanwhile, I had attempted suicide and no one wanted to deal with that or even think about me having problems. And in a few short years, my brother blew all that insurance money on those fancy hospitals and was back to public hospitals.

That's what pisses me off now. Instead of focusing all their attention on my brother, couldn't my parents have paid some attention to me? Okay, they didn't know that I had been abused. But a lot of signs were there that something was terribly wrong.

Anyhow, here I am an adult. And yesterday, I was calling around seeing if I can get some government funding for therapy. So that maybe I can actually talk to someone who knows something about CSA. And they just make you jump through one crazy hoop after another. Don't get me wrong. I'll probably do what I have to do. And if I get really lucky, I'll get that help.

But it just pisses me off. As much as my father tried to do really well by all his kids, when it came to my older brother he just became obsessed with getting him care. Not just any care. The very best care.

So how abou me, Daddy? You're gone now. Both you and Mom are gone. And I sure could use some of that help.

Sorry if this sounds whiney and angry and very unpleasant. That's how I feel. Why did my perp get all the help?

Thanks for letting me vent.

Jasper

 

[reality2k4]

Jasper, my older brother was my mental abuser, after the abuse, he abused me because my father doted on his injured son.

My parents could not see the mental damage he was constantly doing to me, but I had nowhere to hide.

I always remember running away and being grounded, then running again, like a never ending cycle, to just get away and be me.

He is still abusive now, if I let him, but he cannot have control any more, and nobody talks to him in the family.

He hates it, when my lil brother and me swap jokes and talk so much, but you can guess who got the blame.

Yeah, me.

ste

 

Hello Zach, Hello ste:

Zach you are right. Life is not fair. And there's nothing that can be done. When I was young I didn't really resent my brother getting all that attention. He was, after all, very sick. But then, I wasn't even conscious of the sexual abuse back then (only the physical abuse by him). It's just one of those ironies of life tht my Dad went totally overboard caring for my brother, seeing that he got cigarettes and spending money, and everything else he wanted, whenever he wanted it. No matter how inconvenient it sometimes was for the rest of the family. And if my Dad had known? Had really known what my older brother had done to me? Well, that's a question that won't get answered. I just think my Dad would have been a very wounded man if he knew the truth. Very torn between wanting to get me help and wanting to get my brother help. So I can't change it but it's just something that came up and I'm venting.

How am I getting funding for therapy? Well, by seeing if I qualify for Medicaid and SSI/SSDI. I don't have health insurance. Right now, I'm getting treatment on a sliding scale based on low income. But I'm just seeing if there is anything else out there I might qualify for--based on my doctor's and therapist's diagnosis of prolonged post traumatic stress disorder. It's not all related to the CSA, by the way, although if there hadn't been any CSA, I might not have PTSD now. And have it as bad as I do, making daily life impossible sometmes. But there have been several very traumatic events in recent years and they've all taken their toll. And by many people's definition, I would be considered mentally/emotionally disabled, even though that's something that I have avoided facing until now. I guess I just didn't want to face the truth about that. Now I have no choice, not if I have any hope of getting the kind of treatment I need. Does that make sense?

Right now, by the way, it doesn't look good for Medicaid. But there might be hope for SSI/SSDI. I'll just have to see.

ste, I am so sorry that you have a brother like that. But I'm glad that your family is now behind you--not him.

Take care, guys!

Jasper

 

[Lloydy]

Jasper
it's an odd thing, the way we wonder "what if?"

I wasn't abused by any family members, in fact my parents did the best they could and loved me. They have their 'faults' but nothing that should have screwed me up into my 50's.

They still don't know I was abused at boarding school, and they're in their late 80's now so I'm planning to keep it that way.

But I often wonder what they would have done if the spineless headmaster had told them when he discovered my abuse was going on?
My guess is that I would have been taken out of that school quicker than the headmaster could close the door and cover it up.

It's something I'll never know for certain, and the alternative - that I remained at the school - is too awful to contemplate.
But it's a choice I've made, I don't need or want to upset my parents in their last few years. My mother has dementia anyway and would barely understand.

Am I happy with my 'not knowing' ?
On balance yes, my ignorance of their possible reactions is my my choice. It's something I dealt with at length in therapy, even going to the place of them knowing and doing nothing. That was painful, but I dealt with it rationally and safely and got it out of the way.

We do need to think about these alternatives, but when we do we also need to process the emotions of they create safely.

Dave

 

[andrew51]

Sometimes the randomness of life sucks. Like a great big wheel of fortune, there is no rhyme or reason as to why some people get the short end of the stick. We are not all created equal or given equal opportunities. But we are all worthwhile and worthy of respect, human dignity and the right to live our lives freely. Peace, Andrew

 

Dave:

I can understand your reasons for not telling your parents. My Mom lived on for 20 years after Dad died. And in the last year or so of her life, she was in tremendous pain. So for that reason alone, I might not have said anything. But you know what? Since getting in touch with all that happened to me, starting as a baby, there is a need in me so strong to pick up the phone, dial her number, and blurt out the truth. Of course, I can't do that and it is an ache within me, as much as I ache to hold her and kiss her forehead, just as I did so often when she was alive. It is such an odd time in my life to be an "orphan." In my flashbacks no time has passed. Yet I am 50. I am without a mother, without a father. At least I was able to disclose to other siblings. My sister, who is so much like my mother sometimes it's scarey, has finally come around. She believes me without question! So perhaps Mom herself might have eventually been able to accept the news. Who knows?

Andrew:

You are so right!

Like a great big wheel of fortune, there is no rhyme or reason as to why some people get the short end of the stick.

In the end, all we can ask is "What if?"

But when one goes down that road, there really is no end in sight, is there? Because the greatest "What if?" of them all is "What if I had never been abused?"

Yes, what if indeed!

Thanks, guys!

Jasper

 

[Lloydy]

Jasper
I'm fully expecting the 'big ache' when my parents have gone, hopefully the work I've done now will ease it a bit.

I have told my brother about my CSA, so that's helped.
It eased my doubts a lot because he's 8 years older than me, and would have probably picked up that something was going on if my parents had been told.

Dave

 

[roadrunner]

Jasper and Dave,

Can I jump in here on the "what if" question? It's a killer isn't it? I keep coming back to it and wondering "what if" I had told my Mom and Dad. I am from a close and loving family and as a 56 year old adult my first thought is that if only I had told, somehow everything would have been better. I also started doing some very harmful math: Abuser lived for 31 years after he was forced out of Scouts, so how many others did he hurt?

Then I had a talk with "The Rock" - my sister Cathie. She asked me to sit down and think about this. It was all more than 40 years ago. There was no awareness of CSA in general and certainly absolutely nothing concerning boys. It is not at all clear that my parents' love for me would have made them capable of dealing with this. And even if it did, then what? A fourteen year old accuses an eminent businessman and respected church leader of CSA in court in 1963? He could very easily have gotten off, in which case how much further harm would have been done to me?

Jasper, I of course never knew your Dad, but I suspect he was just doing his best in a terrible situation. He did not mean to neglect your problems, he just did not see them. I can tell you as a father myself that this happens all the time.

It is natural to get into "what ifs" I suppose, but really, they lead us nowhere. It is already difficult enough, I think, to figure out where we are now.

Take care,
Larry

 

[chuck]

Japsper,

The what ifs are tough on us. However I was only able to start to work on CSA about 10 years after they were deceased. I did tell my mother when my dad first started the abuse with my older brother but she didn't want to talk about it. From then on I began to become more and more independent from them. They had abandon me to keep their public image intact, so in a sense I became less attached to them.

I suffer from disassociation that is I went away durnign the attacks to protect myself. I had invented the perfect family and so I could continue on with my life. There were times during my life that I thought about suicide to end this misery, but I managed to pull myself toghether to move on.

The what "ifs" or "why" hurt but looking back they had made their decisions and I made mine to endure inspite of it. So I try to look at the positive sides that in the past I chose to continue to move on and that is what I doing. I still am angry at them but I realize that the anger towards them doesn't help me if I don't use it to move ahead but hurts like hell many times.

Chuck

 

[blueelectron9]

Anyhow, here I am an adult. And yesterday, I was calling around seeing if I can get some government funding for therapy.

Jasper and others looking for free or reduced therapy: Don't give up. It can pay off. My therapist sees me at a reduced rate since I'm on a fixed income.

Take care,
Scotty

 

Thanks, Scotty, for the encouragement!