Was This Too Abuse?

Was This Too Abuse?

zookeeper

Registrant
I remember my mother kissing me once. It was the only time I can remember her kissing me. I was in the kitchen doing dishes in my underpants. When you don't have any clothes you spend a lot if time in your underpants. And when your mother's a drug addict, there isn't anybody else to do the dishes.

She came up to me and kissed me on the lips. It was so strange. Not only because she literally had never kissed me before, I was 13, but it was the way that she kissed me. She took too long, she stood too close. I was big for my age, and gone into puberty 2 years before. I must have looked like a man outside but I assure you inside I was a little wounded boy. She put her hand on my chest and let it rest there, then she leaned in and kissed me. When I pulled away she said "What's wrong, can't a mother kiss her son."

Some weeks later, I was in my bedroom with the door shut. (Or as shut as it could go). My room was at the very back of our ranch style home. It was late that night the house had gone quiet. It was as much privacy as I could manage to find in our dysfunctional house. I was in my bed and was masturbating, with the sheet pulled down. I was about to reached climax when I heard a sound at my door. It was my mother who pushed the door open and the hinge creaked. She had been looking through the opening of the door. Her hands were at her side and I can only surmise that she leaned forward to see better and her head pushed the door further open with a pop.

Startled, I stopped and covered myself. She, through the partially open door, made a half hearted apology and nothing more was said. She went back into the bathroom. Thirteen year old boys don't bring up the subject of their mothers catching them jerking off, so the likely hood of me bringing the topic up with her was zero. The next day she said nothing and was probably drunk, high or both, per usual. Nothing was ever said about either incident.

These two events had remained separate and unconnected in my memory, until now.
Recently I was lost in thought when both of these incidents came to surface together. I felt nausea. I had never questioned the abuse I suffered at the hands of my brother and uncle. I clearly remember the neglect, hunger, shame and -frankly-dirt. But I had never considered what she did as abuse. Perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps I am being over sensitive and misreading. But the memories are sure, no fantasy or delusion. It's the connection between the incidents that has troubled me.

Was my discomfort with the way she kissed me just normal teenage angst, or was there a reason for my wariness? Did she just stumble upon my nighttime adventure or was there more to it? And if she ran across me by accident, why did she wait and watch until I found her looking? And I am sick and frightened at the thought that this was abuse.
 
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The lines of abuse and what constitutes abuse can be dificault to pin down and confusing at the same time. I some times chose to focus on my reaction to the situation in order to determine how big of a deal it was. Each of us encodes our experances difrently.

I would say the overt kiss from you mom was abuse for two reasons it was not normal and it was relationally confusing. The unspoken boundrys and norms were violated drastically. But you already know that. Was it sexual abuse? Well in that not extreamly invasive way, yes probably. Combined with the extream neglect I would flag it as contributing to sexual confution and throw it on top of the emotional abuse pile. The other one is gray as it gets. I hate these because you can never really know her true intent. But again, abuse or not it was extreamly impacting! Looking at the evidence it was odd that she was there. I think that's as far as you can go with it with out blurring the lines between what you know to be true and what could be. I have a big one of these on file with my father. Everything points to abuse but to save my mental understanding of what I know happened and may have happen I have to discriminate. I have to put it in the there's no way to ever really know stack. And yet...

Sometimes I have to remind myself that coming in to a new understanding of something that happened a long time ago has only changed my understanding. What was, was,regardless of how I chose to think about it.

Be well,
Mike
 
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My only visual flashback was of my mother standing in front of me in her underwear. I have never recovered any memories of anything sexual happening between us just a sense that there was something very wrong about the time we spent together playing in my parent's bed after my Father went to work.

Our couples psychologist explained this was a passive violation of a boundary a child was not yet ready to face. That violations of these boundaries were traumatic in a different but very real way for a child.
 
Guys thanks so much. Mike your insights are very helpful and i can very much see what you are saying. This is why I need you all so very much. I am sobbing and shaking as I type. I understand that I must see it for what it was. I cant add to, but I cant take away from. I feel as if a great weight has lifted.

Dissociated, I appreciate your sharing and passing on the info. The partial memories are difficult for me. My mind wants to fill the most horrible options. For me, not knowing is a major hurdle for me to cross.
Thanks so much guys.
 
hey zoo, and others on this thread
my mom too pushed the boundaries of what was supposed to be normal behavior, we used to pretend to make out, like with one of our hands covering our mouths, we would push our lips together and go side to side, and make noises. basically mom taught me how to make out and inevitably made me feel that the only good thing i was made for was strange sexuality, a very confused and somewhat violent sexuality. one day i remember i asked , i said, mom is it time to remove our hands from our lips, i brought it up and she immediately said no, i felt so betrayed, i was only about four or five years old max. I thought she loved me, there's even a photo of us doing it. I don't what else to say, I hope you don't feel so alone anymore, i know that reading this thread reminded me of it, and how sick i became and am as an adult, so maddened is not my fault. do i forgive and forget , do i let these memories control me or define me, maybe so, maybe not so. I don't know what else to say, right now i don't know which version of me is the one to stay. Anyways, thanks for reminding me, I needed to rememeber that. It makes me feel understood. bye for now! W-R
 
There are some things, such as we've all experienced, which we can clearly label "sexual abuse", some, clearly emotional or physical abuse etc. We probably all here have other things which we wonder, did they cross the line? Was that abuse?

To be honest, if you are still remembering it (or even just now remembering it for the first time) and wondering, and not feeling comfortable about it - then it almost certainly crossed a line, whatever label you want to put on it.

In many of these cases, such as the original post here, even if you can argue they aren't in and of themselves abuse, they are definitely part of a larger pattern of abuse (whether sexual abuse or perhaps in this original case, more physical neglect). Either way it is something you are uncomfortable with and therefore need to work through.

I have my own almost opposite example of this, which is the touching I did with my sister when I was a kid. We both initiated it without any coercion or pressure. Is that kind of thing right and accepted? no. Did either of us understand that or mean any harm? no, absolutely not. Was it abuse? Arguably no (and if it was, I would have been more than happy to help heal things by apologising, which I have done countless times). It then got overshadowed by the actual sexual abuse we both suffered at the hands of my "friend", and then when it came out, I got all the blame and my parents have added emotional abuse to the party, not let either of us forget it and ensured my sister remains a professional "victim" and I the official bully (since my mother cannot acknowledge the real abuser).

In W-R's example, was it abuse? Arguably yes - the difference being that his mother did know better and it's still present for him. If it had been another 4-5 year old, would it have been abuse? No, although he might still have been hurt by it and still remember it now and still need to deal with it.

So sometimes there are two questions - whether something needs a particular label (and whether that helps), and how best to deal with it.

Sorry, I think I probably haven't helped, except to add that, we all do have these examples (I have others, with my abuser, but I've gone on long enough for one post), and whatever the name you give them, we do all still need to overcome them.

Peace to all.
 
Zoo, I have to admit this was tough to read. Abuse in a family seems to be more than an event, but rather a way of life. There are many things that were done at my family’s home that didn’t feel right. I’m not sure the label matters. It’s how you feel about them that matters. I know I’ve had to back away and look at my entire family in an entirely different way to understand the scope of what was happening. My therapist almost pulls me away from the sexual abuse memories to look at the big picture. What family dynamics existed to allow abuse in this family? What in this family prevented anyone from talking about it?

Ogo, I thought I was reading my own story there for a minute. Wow. I agree completely. It’s that blurry line that’s frequently crossed in families of abuse.

Zoo, the process of what you’re doing now is so tough. It’s the feelings attached to the memories that matter. How did that boy feel about what happened? How did it change him or his feelings or his ability to live a "normal" life? And as much as I feel blame and anger and resentment toward my family, I think the reason for all of this work is to figure out how to undo what our emotionally incompetent family did to us who didn’t even know where the blurry line of abuse started and stopped. It’s so we can live a better life. What a journey, huh?

Take care of yourself.

Michael
 
@Ogo
You made a very important distinction that came up when I had my first man-to-man with an older distant family member about the sexual abuse I experienced as a child. He is a native of Europe, in his 60’s, heterosexual/married, was not sexually abused but had a quite adventurous sex life as a young man before he got married. We finished the best part of a 12-pack til the sun started coming up. It was a hard conversation, forced me to put together pieces I am not sure I was ready to connect but may have never taken the leap any other way.

His initial reaction was no wrong had been done to me. That it was common for young heterosexual boys to masturbate with each other in a variety of different ways; it was a normal part of adolescent sexual exploration. When I went on to explain I was 6 and my cousin was 13 he told me he needed to put that in the context of his own sexual adventures. He closed his eyes and thought for a minute. Shaking his head he said I was only a child; it wasn’t the same. I did not consent or even know what was happening to me. The older boy was wrong to do that to me. VERY WRONG.

I was a bit taken back when he asked me to tell him about what happened with my Mother. I explained I had just recovered my first memory a year ago; a visual flashback of seeing her in her underwear, and the darkness and tears when I tried to remember details of the time I spent with her each morning in my parent’s bed after my Father went to work. He asked if I was sure I was remembering correctly. If I may have misinterpreted something she did or was making too much out of something that happened once by accident. I was a ball of tears, explained with as much as I did not want them to be true, one by one my Mother has verified all the other memories I had recovered. That she had shared with me her brother molested her for several years when she was a young girl. There had to be a reason my Father stopped leaving me alone with her. That I went from loving her to hating her like someone flipped a switch inside of me. I told him I didn’t know the details. But I knew my mother molested me the whole time I was in grade school as sure as I knew my name.

Once again he said he needed to put this in the context of his own adolescent adventures. He closed his eyes, quivered and opened them again. He told me he couldn’t imagine this. WOULDN’T imagine this. Not his MOTHER. This didn’t happen in the real world, only movies. His disbelief slowly turned to rage. He asked if I had confronted my Mother about this. I told him I hadn’t, reminded him she was 86 and in a nursing home.

I have never felt a greater sense of compassion from anyone than I did in the words he used to end our conversation. He told me:

"We all have our shit. That's life. But you had a horrible horrible injustice done to you. You have every right but made an honorable choice not to confront an old dying woman about something she did 50 years ago. This is a very unfortunate situation with no solution. You are a good man and paid the dues of ten lifetimes. You need to, DESERVE TO, put the things that happened behind you. Screw the rest of the world and live your life to the fullest to make up for what was taken from you."
 
Thank for sharing, one section really spoke volumes that I needed to hear

"This is a very unfortunate situation with no solution. You are a good man and paid the dues of ten lifetimes. You need to, DESERVE TO, put the things that happened behind you. Screw the rest of the world and live your life to the fullest to make up for what was taken from you."


Your relative would appear to be a wise man. Another good man recently said something very similar. Im going to take some time to work on being distracted and happy. Thanks for the encouragement.
 
Hi zookeeper,

You've asked a question that seems impossible to answer unless you're right in it's midst. If the abuser is outside the family it's usually pretty easy to identify the bad guy.

But when the suspect is a family member it's a whole different dynamic at work. Too many times there's love/hate going on, so it's hard to know if the line of inappropriate behavior has been crossed. My parents, who are long gone, to my knowledge never kissed me, so had they, I'm sure I would have immediately sensed abuse. But having known that, I think they (maybe unintentionally) created the situation that made me a ready and willing target. When I think of a word to describe my own father I think of the word "indifferent"

If it still causes angst and lingering memories after all this time, certainly those would be signs there was, in fact, abuse. I'm not trying to defend your mother at all, you know the situation and have a much better guess of what were her intentions. But here's an example of a situation I was in some years ago. When my sons were teenagers I routinely checked in on them at night, they had bunk beds in the same bedroom. On one occasion my older son was clearly masturbating, but it took a while for me to realize what was going on because my eyes were first checking on the younger son in the upper bunk plus I hadn't adjusted to the semi dark bedroom. When it dawned on me what was happening I left as quickly and quietly as I could, never mentioning it. Mostly because I didn't know what to say. Although I have assumed not, he could have easily thought I was spying on him. Hopefully, all the other many experiences he had when growing up prevented that incident from lingering in his memory, as it has for me.

I'm sorry these memories and thoughts have surfaced now and caused such emotional turmoil. Best wishes. Peace

CJ
 
Thank you CJ. What youve said is both kind and wise. You must be a great dad and your kids are quite blessed to have a Dad like you.
Be blessed and thank you
Brian-zookeeper
 
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