When does it get better?

When does it get better?
S

Sick Puppy

Registrant
I've been crying myself to sleep pretty much every night for the past few weeks. I don't stop crying because I've stopped hurting but after a while I just get exhausted and fall asleep. I don't know where the pain is coming from, really. I promise myself things will be ok. I whisper out loud to myself; I say "It'll be better tomorrow, Josh, I promise it'll be better tomorrow," and sometimes it is, but then as soon as evening comes and I am settled down for the night it gets bad again. I'm so lonely. I know I'm lucky that I have a patient and loving partner and I am very glad for that but everybody needs friends... besides him I have only one or two friends, and I just... I don't know. I'm just really, really lonely. I have no social skills to speak of and I can't meet people. I don't know what to do or say, and then I am afraid and isolate myself. People think I'm creepy.

I keep hoping and hoping that someday it'll hurt a little less. I don't expect some magical transformation but I can remember days when it didn't hurt quite so much. I keep waiting for them to come again. My self-comforting methods are wearing thin and I don't want to cry anymore. I want to be able to fall asleep thinking neutrally about my day or the day to follow instead of hugging my stuffed animal and sobbing. I just want things to even out again. There's never been a time when there was no pain but I've gotten so used to it that it's just like a solid block underneath me, something immobile, something I can ignore. I want it to go back to that level so I can get on with my life.

Circumstances aren't bad right now. They're pretty good, actually. I am on good terms with my partner; his birthday is on Thursday, and I'm going to buy him a nice dinner. I just made a ton of money from a tag sale and I'm going to buy an old Sega Genesis from the junk shop down the street and relive the better aspects of my childhood. My sister's coming home for the summer and she's on better terms with me than she was last year. I'll be moving out to Santa Fe soon and will be living with my partner. I'm employed, well-fed, with a roof over my head; things I can't say I've had at every point in my life. I don't understand why I am hurting so badly.
 
Hey, Josh,
If there ever was a guy here who has written more in the short time that you'be been here, I don't know. My point is that you've uncovered and revealed a lot in that short time. I think that is a good thing but your feelings have to catch up with your mental activity.----"Thank you, Herr Freud."

I don't mean to come off like your therapist, but it's kind of like what my therapist told me when we started to wrap things up--ending my formal therapy. I was telling him that I didn't know if I could live without him in my life and he was gently telling me that by the time that I read his obituary, I would have many other things in my life and that I might feel very little for or about him at that time.

He also went on to say that I was more in tune now, with my feelings, and that I may find myself crying when passing an automobile accident, for example.

It's true, I find myself crying much more easily than I did before--some tears could be labled as coming from, "someone too sensitive," but the majority of my crying comes from real emotions, deep inside, expressing themselves on the outside.
Maybe some of us have more to cry about than others, maybe some of us are able to express the sadness in our lives more readily.

Cry, Josh, it's OK. Hug your stuffed animal, hug your partner. He sounds like a guy who deserves your hugs.

By the way, if I haven't mentioned it to you before, I'm thinking that there must be a group of guys in Sante Fe because of "The Survivors Network, PO Box 80058, Albuquerque, NM 87198. That address came from Hank Estrada's book, "Recovery For Male Victims Of Child Sexual Abuse."

The book has several resource sections. The author lives in Sante Fe.
Take care, Josh...embrace those tears....you're rediscovering.....little Josh.

Your brother in the struggle,
David
 
Josh,

I don't know if it's any consolation to know that I feel something similiar, but I do. I also feel worse at night. Nights in late spring in MD don't look much like midwinter nights in the mountains of PA, but I keep seeing piles of frozen snow that aren't there, and feeling like I'm back in that apartment.

I asked last month about "turning the corner," you know, from the "getting worse before" to the "getting better" part. Mike Church, Victor, and Jer replied with good advice. Take a look at what they said.

https://www.malesurvivor.org/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001759#000000

It's not the same as face time, but we're all here if you need to just vent, ramble, whatever.

I honestly don't know anything else I can say that might help, so I'll shut up now.

Take care,

Joe
 
Most of the worst pain for me came from within. I believe my perp taught me to hate myself. Any abuser, physical sexual or verbal does the same thing. They trick you into doing something you dont want to do, and then they make you feel like the worst person in the world because you did it. Then they use it to extort you into doing the next thing.

Guilt and anger are thier tools, but the guilt is usually about something contrived. One attempted perp made me feel like I hurt his daughter and deserved to be punished. One convinced me that as an 11 year old I broke his 3 year old son's leg and I had to make it up to him. He told me the doctors said his son would never walk right again. What a bunch of crap. I carried that guilt for over twenty years until I realized that you cant break a kids leg by letting go of his arms and letting him drop less than two feet. He made me feel like I was garbage and the only way I would feel better or make anyone like me was to hurt myself or make fun of myself. One of my wife's relatives who was abused's dad used to come home and beat her every time he lost his job and she really felt like it was her fault. One of my attempted perps convinced a kid in my class when I was 9 that I was responsible for his parents divorce and the fact that he had to move. I thought I must have done something because that kid seemed so genuinely mad at me. I felt guilt for no reason, and when I moved in 7th grade I panicked because there was a kid in my class with the same last name as him. It turned out he spelled it differently, but I know I carried that guilt with me for at least that long if not till now.

I read a lot about verbal abuse and after reading about what verbal abusers say to thier victims, I learned not to say those things about myself. Then the pain stopped coming from within. They convince you that you deserved it and you can't ever be make it on your own or exist without someone like them in your life to "whip you into shape" and we believe it because their always has been someone like that in our lives telling us the same thing. They also try to convince you that you are the only person in the world that has ever had to be treated the way they treat you. They also try to convince you that no one else in the world could ever tolerate you but them. Needless to say, its not true. When I read story after story about people who were treated the same way I was I realized what was going on.

I believe that self hatred and making you feel like you cant ever exist with out someone abusing you the way they do combined with the terror left over from having been conspired against drives almost all of us to suicidal thoughts, and an unfortunate few of us to the real thing. But its all a load of crap, dont believe it. Life is so much better for me without the hatred from within and despair.

Peace
MO Healing
 
Hey Josh,

I'm sort of in a similar situation. Though my life is far from I want it to be right now, it could be a lot worse. Yet nearly every night I find myself crying myself to sleep and hugging my own stuffed animal.

I have spent the vast bulk of my life supressing my feelings (lately I've begun to realize how early I started doing this) and now they are all coming back. That coupled with coming to terms with the pain that I suffered when I was little, and periodic flashes of memories of the abuse that I hadn't recalled make it very difficult for me as I try to go to sleep.

Like you, througout the day I can usually be okay because I've got other things to focus my mind on, but at night, when my mind is left to wander it all hits me, usually quite hard.

I don't know if this post is especially helpful or not, but I hope it is a comfort to know that you aren't the only one going through this right now.

Eric
 
Greetings Josh,

I am not sure, but I thiink the psych docs have a special name for this reality of feeling good for a while then feeling bad, up and down within a day or for a few days at a time.

My experience for a very long time was that I just could not put together a string of days, weeks or months when I even felt less sick, much less well.

Sustained feelings of being well and happy will come. For some, I guess, sooner than others. Part of the suffering in the feeling that some power is playing with you, teasing you is that--you feel well and can't enjoy it because you know crap is on the way. The trick is to enjoy the good hour, or two or three--whatever. Then don't let the maddening swings of wellness and illness get you down. All of that appears to be a part of the healing from the multiple wounds we have received.

Josh, I may well be full of nonsense, but I think that you were so hideously battered down, that you need to be built up, almost as though you were a newborn. What you are seeking is a good guide to what you need, or so it seems to me.

You do need true peer friendship, you do need to have fun with them, you need to learn to trust some folks and experience the joy in that. You probably need to learn to play--but it sounds like you are moving in that direction. Once you have re-experienced childhood, it would be great if you could be an adolescent again. This time though with a loving family to guide you, show you acceptance and understanding, and teach you to set boundaries for yourself that the whole USMC could not bust through.

I do not have any idea how you can do that. I think you have experienced love, understanding and some good brotherhood here. But you do need true human closenss. As was mentioned by one of our brothers here, we can hope that when you get to Santa Fe, maybe then you will find meetings you can go to and make some friends that will be true friends.

Lots of things are going to happen to you, that is, you are going to experience all kinds of good things. You know you can get some stuff here--some of the nurturing may come from your sister, and who knows what else that is good will come along.

Take good care of yourself. Tell yourself time and again that you are really loved and respected at MS and that is not an exaggeration. You have been put down in so many ways that it may be hard for you to recognise people truly liking you for just being who you are. It will all come in time.

Bob
 
Hi Josh,

You said, "I have no social skills to speak of and I can't meet people. I don't know what to do or say,"

Brother, you're not alone there! Anyplace where there will be 'small talk' I get panic attacks and have to flee. Sometimes, I'm growing to believe, you don't need to say much at such events. They said Nixon was that way, awkward with small talk.

You're lucky. You know who you are and can love another man, your partner. I've not been able to love anyone, don't know what it is, and I can't face being gay even though I know I am. I have one friend and have been a recluse for more than a decade not wanting anyone to get close to me. Until recently, I would turn my phone on when I'm not home, and turn it off when I am home. You have more than you know, you're lucky. And I believe acknowledging what you [and I] want is the first step in getting it.

Stay strong,
Michael
 
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