Tuesday, August 29, 2017

I'm Still Standing


There has been a voice in my head for my entire life telling me that I am worthless, weak, pathetic, and unworthy of respect or love. When I was sixteen months old my father took his own life. From the ages of three to twelve my stepfather and his buddies made me their living sex toy. When I was sixteen I left home and never went back. When I was twenty I was shipped off to a conversion therapy camp by my church where they tried to electrocute the gay out of me which resulted in me following in my father's footsteps and trying to end my own life. That voice has been a constant companion. I must be worthless to have no one save me from these things as a child. I must be weak and pathetic to continue to allow myself to be abused again and again.

When I was twenty-nine I had enough of feeling bad about myself for my sexual orientation and came out of the closet. At thirty I started college. At thirty-five I completed my Bachelor of Science degree. At thirty-six I let my walls down long enough to trust a group of men called The ManKind Project and disclosed my childhood sexual abuse for the first time in my life. Shortly after the memories of my childhood hit with a vengeance. For all the strides I felt I'd made in my life the past few years; the memories, nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks left me feeling once again weak and pathetic. Reliving my worst experiences brought me to my knees begging for it to stop. Until last night.

Last night I got rocked by yet another full sensory three hundred sixty degree flashback to an incident of my childhood sexual abuse. Once again I let it hit me like a freight train. Once again I let that voice tell me how worthless I was, how weak and pathetic I am. But then it dawned on me, I'm still here. After all of the nightmare shit that life has dished out, after my own mind forced me to relive the worst of it, after trying to end my own life, and being told again and again how weak and pathetic I am; I realized that I'm still standing. I'm. Still. Standing. How can that be? If I really am worthless, weak, pathetic, and unworthy of respect or love then how the hell am I still here? How have I made it this far? How do I have this desire to move forward? How do I have this fire in my gut to make the world a better place? Maybe, just maybe, the reason that I'm still standing is because the voice that tells me I'm weak is a fucking liar. Maybe, just maybe, I'm still standing because I'm strong!


Friday, August 18, 2017

It Turns Out There Are People Who Care


Nearly a decade of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather and his friends was a living hell, but what hurt nearly as much was that no one came to my rescue. I have spend my entire life feeling like I was worthless, that no one cared, and that no one could be trusted. That led me to a very isolated and lonely adulthood. That led me down a very dark road of depression.

It's come to my attention that it is obvious that I have been letting that darkness creep back in lately. The big difference this time versus in the past is that when I walked that dark road before no one seemed to notice or care. Since joining The ManKind Project, Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunctional Families, and sharing my journey here with other survivors; something has shifted. For the first time in my life I have people asking me if I was okay, offering an ear or a shoulder, checking in, and showing up in my life in ways that astonish me. It turns out that there are people who care in this world.

I am sitting with such immense gratitude for those people. My brothers in MKP, my fellow travelers in ACA, my fellow survivors, and the family of choice that is forming from them all are changing the way I see myself and changing the way I see the world. There is a lot of dark, twisted, fucked up stuff going on in this world; but there is so much love and support that I never dreamed existed. In isolating myself from people to protect myself from more pain, I couldn't see that there were people like me out there. There are people who have experienced the pain that this world offers and who choose to love and support others instead of following in the footsteps of the abusers and evil people in this world. I so want to be, and feel that I am becoming, one of those caring people. If you are reading these words, if you are following this blog, please know that there is love, support, and hope in this world. As terrifying as it is to risk being hurt again, there is so much healing to be found in letting caring people past your defenses and into your life.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The Voices In My Head


As the late Chester Bennington said, "The space between my ears is a bad fucking neighborhood that I shouldn't be left alone in." Nearly a decade of childhood sexual and emotional abuse left me with the clear message that I was absolutely worthless. If I had any value as a human being then I wouldn't have spent my childhood as a living sex toy for my stepfather and whoever he felt like sharing me with. I've been around long enough to know that we all have voices in our heads. Bits and pieces of messages that we picked up along the way that we internalized. A grandfather's advice, being shamed in public by a parent, being ridiculed by peers. The good, the bad, and the ugly all informs how we see ourselves and how we talk to ourselves. The messages that I received as a child resulted in some pretty fucked up voices in my head. The overwhelming clear message I have carried well into adulthood is that I am worthless and don't matter and will never make a difference. That I will never be more than a pathetic victim. Those are the voices in my head that scream and rage and sound so fuckingly, devastatingly familiar.


Something is beginning to shift however, there are new voices in my head that are telling me a different story. I have shared here in this blog that I have spent the past few months since I disclosed my childhood sexual abuse finally asking for help. I am surrounding myself with support in the form of The ManKind Project and the Adult Children of Alcoholics 12 Step Program. It's taken a while to sink in, but I am starting to notice that the support, encouragement, and love from these amazing new people in my life is slowly restoring my faith in humanity. Their words telling me that I am a good man, that I am brave and strong, that I am compassionate and loving; these words are slowly sinking in and competing with the old voices in my head. Right now it's a bit chaotic with the old voices and the new at war in my mind and spirit. The thing that gives me hope and keeps me moving forward is that I think the new voices in my head are winning. There are times that I don't feel worthless anymore. There are times that I think my life has value. There are times that I feel like I might even be able to make a difference. And you know what? That feels pretty damn good!

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Tired of Wishing I'd Never Been Born


So in case you didn't guess from the post title or the image, today is my birthday and I'm not exactly happy about it. That being said, today's post is going to be equal parts trip down sad memory lane and affirmations for my life and birthdays going forward. Thank you for being here and coming along for the ride.

Just four months after my first birthday my father took his own life. I spent the rest of my childhood being sexually abused by my stepfather and his friends and feeling more like an object for their pleasure than a human being. At sixteen I ran away from home, got emancipated, and never went back. I didn't enter into my first serious relationship until I was almost thirty. All of this resulted in me feeling just as isolated and alone as an adult as I did a child. When my birthday rolls around each year, it is very difficult for me to look at my birth as something to be celebrated. To be honest, most birthday rituals center around me cursing my mother for the day she brought me into this world. Hell of a way to spend nearly forty years on this earth, huh?

If you've been following along on this blog, and thank you if you have, then you know that my life started changing in many ways this year. I joined The ManKind Project, disclosed my abuse for the first time, started attending Adult Children of Alcoholics 12-Step meetings, and started blogging about my recovery from my childhood sexual abuse. That's a lot for only eight months of my thirty-seven years of life. When yesterday came around and I began to feel those old self-pitying emotions beginning to bubble up, I entertained them for longer than I care to admit. When I look back on my life, most of it sucked. There's no denying that my life up until this year was mostly a living hell. The question is do I want my present and future to be a living hell too?

The answer to that question is a resounding HELL NO! I have wasted too much of my adult life and the freedom I could have had allowing my stepfather's legacy to keep me stuck in the past and dead on the inside. I know that I still have a long road of recovery in front of me. I know I'm not done revisiting my past, but that doesn't mean I have to live there anymore. The gloom and doom I wallowed in yesterday marks what I hope will be the last pity party I ever throw myself on my birthday. I'm tired of wishing I'd never been born. 2017 is the year that I have begun to transform myself and my life for the better which makes this birthday one to finally be celebrated!

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Strength and Stars


During my Flashback Friday posts, at my ManKind Project I-Group meetings, and in my Adult Child of Alcoholics meetings I have been confronting my childhood sexual abuse head-on. When I have written an experience down and been able to step back and look at it from a distance, what I see at first is a weak little boy being overpowered by an adult man or men who were supposed to protect me. When I look deeper though, and through the lens of what I know now, I see a very different picture. Suddenly I see my stepfather and his friends as weak cowards. The only power they had was over a little boy who couldn't fight back. Another thing they all have in common is that nearly all of my abusers drank themselves into an early grave. For all the power they had over me, they were powerless in the face of time and in the face of karma. Their power was nothing but an illusion.

My abusers are nearly all gone, but I'm still here. How? Why? The horrific childhood sexual abuse that I endured broke my body, mind, heart, and spirit into a million tiny pieces. How am I still standing? How did I somehow make the journey from victim to survivor? The answer I am beginning to grasp is strength, inner strength. While their power over me was nothing but an illusion, somehow my inner strength was very real. No matter what my abusers did to me, there was a spark that they couldn't extinguish. They did their best to snuff it out, but they failed. They settled instead for breaking me.

I have been staring at the million broken pieces of me as an adult that are left in the wake of my childhood sexual abuse and despairing that I was weak and could never be the kind of man I always wished could have been there for me. I needed a hero and there was none to be found so I was a boy broken by the false power of men. But isn't that how all the great superhero stories start? My greatest wish for this blog is that in sharing my past and my journey to heal that I might inspire another man who was a broken little boy to start his own healing journey. So with that, I do the only heroic thing I can think of. I take the broken pieces of me that still hold that spark of light and I throw them up into the sky as stars to light your way. May it help you on your journey...


I'm Still Standing

It has been 17 years since the Mother's Day on which I attempted to take my own life. When I woke up in the hospital they even told m...