Why Me

[Mike Church]

Nathan:
I read your story and can feel your pain.

You asked

On the road of life I have found many truths and many lies. I am sure like many of you I have asked
questions that cannot be answered by me. I have asked, "is their a god," "why did he let me be abused?"
and "is their really any point to life." I feel that being able to questions is what makes us human and to
ask questions that are unanswerable allows our minds to freely work.

Some of those you are dealing with and I would like to add a couple of things.

With all of us suffering from SA and to all others HURT WAS INEVITABLE. SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL. Think about that. We are created in a state of cleanliness that is never repeated. we are a product of our past, no matter how bad it was or how good. If we choose to suffer that is our choice and if there is a God or superior entity he/she/it gave us the ability to choose our path. The great steps forward in the human condition have been forged in the furnace of adversity. And that rule applies to we individuals as well. It is how we overcome these obstacles to inner peace and self respect that is the true essence of our being.

Walt Whitman Wrote.
The Past-the dark unfathom'd retrospect!
The teeming gulf-the sleepers and the shadows!
The Past! the infinite greatness of the past!
For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

And Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote

The terror that scares us from self-trust is our past act or word. But why should you keep your head over you shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory? Bring the past for judgement in the thousand-eyed Present, and liver ever in a new day.

I think those to quotes say it all

When we look at a star at night we are not seeing the truth. It may have died thousands of years ago but we cannot tell. We see the star because we believe it is there. Much of our past is viewed this way because it is what we choose to believe and we push away anything that might have been pleasant or great for us. We only see the pain, hurt etc.

There is anothe truism

Dont know who wrote it

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to reapeat it.

I think as it applies to us. If we do not choose to remember the past and all we did to cope we will be doomed to constantly reenact it thus comfirming our lousy sense of self worth. Now some of us used the mechanism of deleting and burying the past so deep it may take years to rear its head. When it does it must be delt with or it and/or the feelings we had will happen over and over again.

Dont know if this makes any sense but I try.

Your brother Wolf

Mike

AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Nathan LaChine]

You wrote

There is anothe truism

Dont know who wrote it

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to reapeat it.

I think as it applies to us. If we do not choose to remember the past and all we did to cope we will be doomed to constantly reenact it thus comfirming our lousy sense of self worth. Now some of us used the mechanism of deleting and burying the past so deep it may take years to rear its head. When it does it must be delt with or it and/or the feelings we had will happen over and over again.
[/QB]

Mike how very true that last statement that you made. It does make me think alot about my past. Mike do you feel that when we reenact the past that is our minds way of trying to rememory the past or are we trying to change the out come of our abuse?

 

[Mike Church]

Nathan

Mike do you feel that when we reenact the past that is our minds way of trying to rememory the past or are we trying to change the out come of our abuse?

You know Nathan I have never thought of it in that light and now I would agree with that statement. What I think is that we have not correctlc delt with that particular past, which is the abuse, and therefore we repeat because by so doing we reconfirm in our minds that this is what we are good at. This coping behaviour, while helping us to exist, does continue to work on our self worth and pounds it deeper into the mud.

The solution therefor, I think, is to work to remember if it is vague and deal with it. Look at it and realize that it was not your fault , no matter if you liked it, or were aroused by it, or sought it over and over again. It never was, and never will be. Even if it made you feel good it was a terrible evil at a time when you were vulnerable. The ne-enactment additionally may take you back to something that you thought you liked or caused you to be popurlar or whatever. It is funny how your mind views the past. It has a lot to do with what you thought you felt like and is clouded by the passage of time. Just like looking at the star. You can see it therefore it is there.

Am I confused. Hope not

Mike da Wolf
aaaaaaaaawwwwwwwhnhhhhhhh000000000000000

 

[PAS]

Just wanted to say that these posts in this thread really rock.

So good.. I would love to send them to my BF but I am not so sure he could handle that overload of emotions quite yet (he is not a member of this site yet).

These quotes do touch a chord for me as I too am an abuse survivor (not SA but others) and I too struggle with the same issues as you all do.

Rock on, wolves.

soccer

 

[Lloydy]

My acting out with other men was nothing more than re-enactment of my childhood experiences.

I know I enjoyed a lot of what happened, I participated at the time.
What I didn't understand at the same time was the abuse of power and influence that they were exerting over me, and I never did until I was well into my therapy.
So perhaps the 're-enactment' could also have been called a 'continuation' of what I had been taught.

Now I see it differently, and I have learned from my history. What happened is carved in stone, it'll always be with me - but I have learned that the sex acts were probably the least important influences on me as an adult, the abuse of power was far more powerful.
So my acting out was a way of continuing the sex acts I was 'taught to enjoy' but this time under my control, with me having all the power.

It was a misguided theory, but I knew no better, and it was only a good therapist that led me to discovering this.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

This is true, while I had a distorted memory of my past I was condemned to repeat it, when I remembered it clearly and judged it from a different viewpoint I learned a great deal from it and changed my present behaviour.

Dave

 

[Lloydy]

Nathan
I did this backwards, I replied to these posts then read your strory in thr Survivors Stories Forum.
Nathan, that's a pwerful and sad tale, but one that you write with a sense of hope.I can sense that you want to heal yourself and live your life as you were meant to. I'm sure you will in time.

Two different people at times but in the end they are both me. At night both of these people howl at the same moon that my brother wolves howl

When I was a victim and in the early days of recovery I felt this way most of the time, I was torn between who I was and who I wanted to become.
And as I said in the previous post we have to learn from our past so we have to re-visit it.
But lurking there is all kinds of memories we don't want and all our comfort behaviours.
And it's so easy to slip back into the comfort zone.

But we don't need our old comforts to become the man we aspire to, look forward Nathan as well as back. Don't stand still.

Dave