What if this is as good as it gets?

What if this is as good as it gets?
M

MEC

Registrant
Been falling back into the complacency of isolating and being alone. Rage came on once last week, but it was bad; I intentionally bumped into a guy and was ready to fight. I'd have lots of rage before I discovered my SA, but then I usually took it out on inanimate objects, seldom on people.

Now that I want to interact with others, I find myself getting depressed with being alone. At 53, how do you begin to find relationships? For the past decade I've been pretty much a recluse and happy to be alone. The only thing I now find rewarding in my depression is being asexual and without a desire for any deviancies. Seems only in depression do I feel pure and with a solution to what often feels like hopelessness.

Now that my eyes have been opened to a life better than the one I've lived as a believer of the lies I told myself that it was my own doing, what if this is as good as it gets? Kind of like coming out of blindness only to find no light at the end of the tunnel.
 
Mec.

Rage is a normal thing for us especially when we realize that the rage was directed inwards at ourselves. Now you know the lies that you believed just like we all did.

Now that my eyes have been opened to a life better than the one I've lived as a believer of the lies I told myself that it was my own doing, what if this is as good as it gets? Kind of like coming out of blindness only to find no light at the end of the tunnel.
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Mec you have led a reclusive life. Do you belong to a church group, a bowling league or something like that. If not maybe you should consider it. Remember you are like a young man taking that first tentative step into actually living and not just passing through life. Hey brother it is natural that you would think that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. It takes practice . Do you have any friend at all who could help you in this. Someone you can trust. Really I think the best place is, if you are a regular church goer, to become active in the activities.

You might also consider doing some volunteer work where you would meet people.

And Mec just remember where the Rage belongs; the gd perp thats where. It is not your fellow man or woman just one who was a sick asshole. Take you anger out on a pillow. It cant hurt you and it sure cant hurt the pillow.

Mec it wont be easy but I think that might be the best way to do it.

Hope this helps a bit.

Mike
 
Indeed MEC,

...what if this is as good as it gets?
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Where do we go from here? As whacked out as mikechurch is... hee hee, KIDDING!!! :D he brings up some very valid suggestions.

My take is that, "HEY!!! you're still alive! You're still depressed! I don't think that your journey/self-discovery has ended yet!" You seem to be still attempting to control and decide what your own environment is. You have some control but not over everything. More importantly, your thinking is still at least 'a little' distorted so why not let the people outside of you whom you do trust, help you to determine when your journey is finished? Not determine... HELP determine. Use them or even us as a sound board for you. What the hell? I've got nothing better to do sometimes! Coming from my perspective... at 53 you're still a kid! You've got a few oil changes left under the hood! :D

What's this about being asexual? How is it rewarding? If you want to be ok then. But you certainly don't have to be. There are plenty of women and men out there that go for an older man!

...like coming out of blindness only to find no light at the end of the tunnel.
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Me thinks that you need to open your eyes further chinaman! :D

No chinese men were harmed in the commentary of this thread.

Patent pending... all rights reserved.
 
Wow I'm asking this same question myself. I been through this years ago. Thought I had dealt and figured everything out and now 25 years later I'm still trying to still understand things. I'm getting numb again, its like its recycling it all over. I'm so tired of it all. I want my head to stop thinking about it anymore. STOP. I hate everyother feeling to be sexual content and acting out in my head. It doesn't seem to be subsiding inside anymore. It's be a way to long of a raod and I'm tired. But a new day is here. I'm a survivor at least I can say that. I'm broken the cycle in the family of abuse. I will pray to GOD and thank him for another beautiful day that he has given me and to ask for help with the thought in my head. Thanks everyone here.JAG
 
I have a lot more of better times than I do bad times and the rage can sometimes come and go with me. If I get real tired or have been fighting a lot of stuff, the rage can more easily take over. But for the most part it, the rage is much less than it was.

I do remember one year at christmas (that is when rage can hit me the hardest) and I was walking out to my car in a shopping center parking lot. A couple of "fairly good sized guys" were walking by and I took what I thought was them laughing about me. I went into the "attack mode" and started to get quite mouthy with them and challenged them. Fortunately, they were in a good mood and just ignored me because I was ready to rumble. And most likely with two of them, I would have got my butt kicked.

The part that really gets me right now is the buttholes that I deal with at work. Some days it is all I can do to just not tell them where to go. With jobs the way they are right now, I have to hold on for a few more months, but they sure spark the rage within me.

I'm finding that sleep, relaxation and doing fun things in life are helping me. But, that volcano still simmers below.... AT least I'm not like my father where I attack people and beat the day lights out of them. I do remember the temper he had and what he used to do with me in regards to it.

Don
 
Michael,

At 53, how do you begin to find relationships?
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I should know better by now than to try to answer questions like this, but I haven't finished my first cup of coffee yet. :D

You begin at 53 the way you would have at 13. You find something that interests you, and someone else who's interested. You make the effort to listen to what they have to say and the effort to really understand what they mean. Repeat it back to them, maybe in your own words, to be sure you've got it. Make it clear to them that you are interested in what they have to say.

You have to decide what interests you. Where to find the other person? Where do you do the interesting things? I like Mike's suggestion that you start with your faith community, but it's possible that you're not one for organized religions. How about organized hobbies? You like to bike, check bike shops for info on clubs and local trails. You like sports, join a sports league. Check the web sites for your local area to find more contacts for different activities.

OK, lucidity approaches as I finish cup #1, so I'm going to post now.

Thanks,

Joe
 
Joe,
That was simply an elegant bit of advice. Heck, I'm 25 and I struggle with that same question. Thanks for sharing.
Mike
 
Seems only in depression do I feel pure and with a solution to what often feels like hopelessness.
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Michael, maybe that's becuz you are facing the pain you've been burying in rage & in acting out or numbing out the pain. It hurts yet it gives you clarity. Which sometimes makes you wonder if ignorance isn't bliss. It isn't. But who likes pain?
https://www.nonstick.com/sounds/daffy_duck/ltdd_182.wav

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Now that my eyes have been opened to a life better than the one I've lived as a believer of the lies I told myself that it was my own doing, what if this is as good as it gets? Kind of like coming out of blindness only to find no light at the end of the tunnel.
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Michael, perhaps you were "Blinded By the Light."
Were there a light at the end of the tunnel it might be a Mac Truck! Now you can emerge from the tunnel with its extremes of total darkness or dangerous light, into the real world.
:cool:
And it seems that is what you're doing.

And yes it does get better! :)

Victor
 
It depends on what you mean by better Michael. If you mean some absolutes such as: will you be free of depression - will you be free of anger - will you be successful and content with your success - will you be popular - will you be amusing and socially adept ????? The answer is probably not. The fact is: everyone experiences ups and downs in life, and few people are wholly satisfied with their lot in life. People who have never even heard of SA issues are prone to ups and downs. Navigating life is a learning experience for everyone and some will learn better and faster than others. It isn't necessarily about sexual abuse. I am a year younger than you and have also experienced the asexual non appetite thang for periods of months, I put it down to age and a lower hormone level, no big deal. As we are well into middle age, our interests, abilities and perspectives change. Sometimes I look at life and ask myself "is that all there is Alfie". And then I am reminded to ask myself "how much am I putting into this". If the answer is: Not much, but I'm sure feeling sorry for myself. Then don't expect much back.
Peace, Andrew
 
Michael
I'm lucky in that I have my wife and friends around me, and I don't experience loneliness unless I want to be alone, which is a an entirely different thing I know.

But as I shifted my old behaviours - deviances as you call them fits my old acting out I suppose - I found the empty feelings you feel as well.

I had to make a concious effort to fill my head and my time with something new, hopefully something better as well.
I started with small stuff like listening to talk radio instead of music as I drove around all day at work. That way my mind was active as I ranted and raved at the idiots on the radio, although sometimes I even agreed with them. But it turned my mind away from being a vacant lot just waiting for a fantasy to fill it.

From there I returned to my old hobbies of woodworking, reading and becoming active with the 4x4 Club I was in. I started to edit the newsletter, became a committee member. I'm building a new competition 4x4 at the moment.
I also find time to help here and at a local charity that helps survivors.

Five years ago I vegetated in front of the TV every night, now I hardly turn the thing on. I was a recluse in my own mind, I met people but didn't interact with them in any meaningful way at all.

We make a tremendous effort to start our healing, and as it progresses we find it takes less effort to maintain, at least that's what I felt.
So I diverted that effort, I looked around and saw what my friends and workmates did and I wondered how they managed to fit it all in ?
And when I tried I found I could too, well most of it I fit in anyway.

I spent so much time as a victim thinking that I was useless and nobody would want to bother with me that when I did get off my arse and try new things I was shocked to find that I was very little different to anyone else. Now my relationships with friends are completely different, I share myself with them I guess, and I get a lot in return.

Pick up a local paper and see what's going on, they advertise so people go to their events whatever they may be - so that's half the battle won.

Dave
 
Thanks to everyone. I have to think I was just feeling sorry for myself slipping back into my old nasty habits. Relative to the 'high' of the first three weeks of this new life of mine, I didn't like - don't like - HATE being in that dirty place. Makes me feel like hiding again, unlike the new me who has really become a good, solid, caring person to be around.

Last week I even went to my nieces daughters' recitals, dance for the 7 yo and piano for the 9 yo.

My boss likes the changes and progress I've made since she put my job on the line if I didn't get help for a rage I could not honestly see. I tell her that was the other guy and he agrees. Yet, today she invited me to go with her to DC for a conference and my mind immediately went into the thought that she might get to know the despicable person I am was... Same old shit as before, the lack of giving of yourself because maybe it - Holy COW!! As I was writing I could SEE the protection mechanism kick in.

After I told her I don't think I could go, because of some bogus excuse, I went into her office and asked if I disappointed her in that she maybe wanted my company. I think she understood, but I still feel I let her down. She told me that (my decision to not go because of disappointing her) that that shouldn't concern me.

I think I'm still getting lost in the forest for my focus on the tree, on me.

Off to meet people at a gay AA meeting. ?Two birds with one stone?
 
Have a good meeting Michael. But about the two birds thing ..... isn't there something about a "single mindedness of purpose" ... just asking.
Peace, Andrew
 
Hi Andrew,
I'm not sure what "single mindedness of purpose" means, sorry.

I know I want to go to AA, but , because my sobriety is better than I could imagine after having unlocked some of my past, I use AA to at least get out of the house. If I should meet some one at a meeting and a relationship develops, all that much better.

Stay well
 
HI Michael, It was my understanding that AA espouses that a recovering alcoholic maintain a single mindedness of purpose during meetings, that being focussing on the 12 steps leading to sobriety.

I quote: "The source of strength in A.A. is its singlemindedness of purpose. The mission of A.A. is to help alcoholics." by Dr. Vincent Dole,for several years a trustee on the General Service Board of A.A.

I'm sure you've also heard of the AA 12 traditions. The 5th one makes reference to this issue.
"Each group has but one primary purpose ,to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers."

It is also my understanding that they discourage relationships within the first year of sobriety Michael. If someone has more clarity on this topic .... please jump in. At any rate, in my very humble opinion, I don't believe that an AA meeting is a good place to find a date, look for potential relationships, or as you put it, "kill two birds with one stone".
Peace, Andrew
 
Michael,Andrew et al,

Very good discussion, guys. Michael you really hit me where I live.....and die.

For me being aware of the truth of the abuse in my life was a huge event--watershed I believe people say. I though the world would change. And it didn't. But I did....very slowly.

While this new info relieved some of the anxiety of not knowing why I felt so crappy my whole life, I had to learn the next big lesson for a smart-ass, cynical intellectualizing, over analyzing, "I'm going to control this by the power of my own mind!"

Ha!! I couldn't even control my intake of alcoholic beverages and I was going to "think" my way out the nightmare of sexual abuse...alone?

Someone much wiser than me once said, "The real
addiction of the alcoholic( sub. ragea holic, etc) is SELF RELIANCE."

I expect to solve my own intransigeant lifetime
problems such as surviving sexual abuse ALONE and UNAIDED by simply understanding it better.

When I start using my understanding like I used everything else in my life, as a tool to try to control or change the past, then I am being very unreasonable in my expectation of myself.

It pisses me off at myself. It leaves me feeling sad. Hopeless. Worthless. After 10 or 20 years of this, it all coalesces in RAGE.

Being an Aware Victim without moving forward into true Acceptance is a really hard place to be.
I know.

For me acceptance is when I cease fighting and trying to manipulate what has already happened like the abuse. Acceptance does not mean that I like or approve of abuse. Far from it.

It means that I recognize it's true nature in relationship to myself.

Go to AA for whatever reason gets you in the door. The smallest amount of willingness to break open the wall of denial is a miracle.

One of my favorite meetings is in NYC, "the Mustard Seed." I'm no Christian, but I know the quote from the Bible. "if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, nothing is impossible to you...(paraphrase)".

Mustard seeds are pretty goddamned tiny, but grow into very big plants--not by dint of willpower or skill or good looks, but by surrendering their nature of a seed, sacrificing the life of a seed to grow into a plant.

Rather than requiring efforts to grow, it more requires effort to stay out of the way of the sun and the rain.

I haven't been on a date or met anyone in that way for the last two years. I got so sick from the realization of the sexual abuse (and other things) that I had to devote my energy to getting better.

God really got my attention--I didn't have the energy to run away from my emotions. or seek to find the escape from reality in some guys levis.

I had to sit still, feel all that I had been unable to process before, ask for and accept the help, the sun and the rain that God puts in my life.

I've met someone through the personals this week.
We're scheduled to have dinner together on Saturday. I am going out of my fucking mind with anxiety. I am so afraid of failing again, of getting hurt, of fucking up one more time.

So thanks for all the good suggstions about caring for myself, being patient, focussing on what's good in me rather than what's lacking.

The sexual abuse continues to torture me to this day. I felt the joy of closeness to another man, the abuser, then realized it was all bullshit. He was using me. I still feel so ashamed.

He was using me and I feel ashamed. Go figure.

For the weekend, I've talked about ways I can not fall into old behaviors. Up front I told this guy that there would be no sexual contact at first. I hope to have the strength to stay true to that. I have been so lonely and needing the touch of another man.....but giving myself away on first day don't leave much to give and unreal expectations of what I should receive.

Instead of trying to make myself liked by him, I'm trying to think of myself as a real catch..that he is lucky to get to meet me. That I'm going to honestly look at him to see if he has the qualities I seek like honesty, compassion etc. instead of falling in lust because he sucked my dick.

It's scary to give up the old life, because our new one is like that little seed. Don't look like much. I guess that's where that tiny bit of faith in ourselves, in God if we can and certainly in you guys here in the group.

One of you called me last night when I was really down and out emotionally, crying and just feeling like shit.

There was no magic bullet, just one survivor talking to another. When I hung up the phone, nothing had really changed, yet I felt so different, less agitated and more at peace.

Thanks. I love you guys because of the way you make me feel. You are a blessing in my life, the miracle I've always wanted and needed.

Go to that AA meeting. Check out the cute guys (stay away from the new ones) and listen and learn. You're on the right track buddy.

What got me started responding is what I'll close with.

Two questions:

One:

How do you find and follow YOUR primary purpose?

Two: Why the hell would you want to throw stones

at those tiny little creatures and What the

hell good would you do with two dead birds?

Sending you all best wishes for a steady recovery,

Lycanthropic love is the best!
 
Danny,

Someone much wiser than me once said, "The real
addiction of the alcoholic( sub. ragea holic, etc) is SELF RELIANCE."
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Ain't that the truth? It's my fierce determination to be self reliant that contributed so much to my isolation that drove my need to be self reliant that....

Being an Aware Victim without moving forward into true Acceptance is a really hard place to be.
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And another truth. Geez, before I finish my first cup of coffee again. :)

I'm unsure what my memory holds now. I have always, since the horrifying moment when it began, been aware that I had been molested, abused, raped. Since I disclosed to my wife last year I've been examining my memory to find that I don't have a clear memory of any of those nights, start to finish. But I have always been aware.

Acceptance. Hmm, how to get there? How many lies will I give up on the way there? That I was somehow responsible? I'm working on that one. That I should have told someone? I don't know how to work on that. Maybe it's not a lie. Or does that stem from the need for self reliance and lead back to me being responsible?

Anyway, there's a lot of road to travel between here and acceptance.

Go to AA for whatever reason gets you in the door. The smallest amount of willingness to break open the wall of denial is a miracle.
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Michael,

By all means, if alcohol is getting in the way of living the life you want and deserve, then go to AA. Listen and learn. Even if you only get dry instead of sober, you're better off. And the chance to get sober is still there.

The sexual abuse continues to torture me to this day. I felt the joy of closeness to another man, the abuser, then realized it was all bullshit. He was using me. I still feel so ashamed.

He was using me and I feel ashamed. Go figure.
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No matter how much coffee I have, I can't figure that one. I could have written those words, they're so close to my experience.


How do you find and follow YOUR primary purpose?
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I can't really say yet. I'm still working on "find" and that work may turn out to be the essence of "follow" for all I know.

Danny, I hope you meet someone nice this weekend, and have a relaxed good time sharing with each other about your lives and likes. You most certainly deserve no less.

Thanks,

Joe
 
I have refrained from posting to this thread because I only have negative things to offer as I continue to get more frustrated, looking for non existant outlets or people who actually give a tinkers damn. And the only ones I see responding here are living on some sort of theraputic cloud, praising the miracles of modern counseling. But... thank God for at least having this site with success stories.
What about the rest of the world here who do not have the therapy option available to them, Christian or secular? And I think one has proven to be just as hideous and potentially dangerous as the other, and I won't even start on that tangent.
I believe this IS as good as it gets.
Personally, I am about ready to go out and TAKE back some of what has been stolen from me.
It has to be more fufilling than continually having to defend this..

quote: 'In this time of economic uncertainty, it's easy to see who is dedicated to providing health care, and who is chasing bucks.'

Tom S.
 
I believe this IS as good as it gets.
Personally, I am about ready to go out and TAKE back some of what has been stolen from me.
It has to be more fufilling than continually having to defend this..
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Tom,

I'm glad you did join the thread.

I don't know how "good" it is for anyone, so I can't say whether you're at the "good as it gets" point or not. But I would like to know more about what you will "take back." As I learned back last month, and discussed in this thread , "take back" is literally the IndoEuropean root of "recover." I posted about some of the things that I want to take back, but I'd like to hear more from you and others about that.

Thanks,

Joe
 
Hi
I am taking back my LIFE, SEPF RESPECT AND MY DIGNITY so that I might live as who I really am and not what some assholes forced me to become.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to enjoy my wife, daughter, in the future son-in-law and grandchilren. I want to see things with my wife and to relax with her and be close without constantly worrying.

I dont think that is too much to want. Is it as good as it gets? LETS JUST SAY IT IS AS GOOD AS I AM CAPABLE OF RIGHT NOW AND IT WILL IMPROVE AS I IMPROVE.
 
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