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 me I succeeded. The doctor had given up and called my time of death before the universe spit me back out and the machines started beeping again. At the time I was angry to find myself still among the living. This hadn't been a cry for help, I really wanted to die because I could never have imagined the life I have now. Life is still a challenge and there are days where I wonder if its worth it. Then I am reminded that I have found a purpose in helping other male childhood sexual abuse survivors and that through The ManKind Project and ACA I have people in my life who love and support me. So I choose each day to live, to put one foot in front of the other, and make something of this life that refused to let me go 17 years ago.

Not Worthless Anymore

From the ages of three to nearly twelve I was sexually abused by my stepfather and anyone else he felt like sharing me with. Ten years. Ten. Fucking. Years. Not one relative, not one teacher, not one adult of any kind asked if I was okay, spoke up, stood up, or did one damn thing to save an innocent boy from a childhood in Hell. Fast forward to the thirty-seven year old man writing this post and every day I carry the message that their inaction etched into my mind, heart, and soul. I was worthless. It was the only explanation. No one came to my rescue because I wasn't worth saving. That voice has been whispering, sometimes screaming, to me just how worthless I must be. It has sabotaged my friendships, my relationships, my career, my education, and my faith for my entire life.

For as much damage as that insidious voice has done, it has been a comfort as well. If I am worthless, if I was worthless as a boy, then it makes sense that no one saved me. The thought that it was some flaw in myself that made me not worth saving has been a darkly comforting explanation as to why I was abandoned by those who were supposed to protect me.

Pretty fucked up, huh? When I first started on this healing journey last year, I certainly thought so. Now though, after connecting with other male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I have come to learn that I was not the only boy who received this message or carried it with him into adulthood. Hearing that feeling of worthlessness in another man's voice, seeing that shame in another man's eyes, it struck me how fucking wrong it was that any boy should live with that message and carry it into adulthood. I was fine carrying that message inside of me but my heart breaks for other men carrying that same wound. I won't carry it anymore.

To any man reading this, know that you are not worthless and that this message was never yours to carry just as it was not mine to carry. I have accepted this voice into my life for far too long. I am not worthless anymore. I never was. And neither were you.

Healing Brings Change

It has been almost thirty-five years since my childhood sexual abuse began and almost fourteen months since I spoke that truth out loud for the first time and began taking my first steps to face my past head-on. I genuinely had no idea just how much I was sleepwalking through my life, how much I was letting other people control and dictate my fate whether it was people from my past or my present. Fourteen months ago I began to wake up and really take stock of my life. I did not like what I saw. The trauma from the past really did a number on my present, but now that I can see that I cannot help feeling that if I continued as I was that now I was choosing that life that was forced on me. I didn't wake up to go back to sleep. It is within my power to choose healing. It is within my power to choose the people I want in my life. It is within my power to choose to change my life for the better. So what do I do with the knowledge that I have choices as an adult that I didn't have as an abused child? I choose healing. I choose happiness. I choose purpose. I choose love. And I will continue to make that choice every single day for the rest of my life no matter how much my past tries to drag me back to sleep.

My Healing Journey: Down A New Road

This month marks a year since I disclosed my status as a childhood sexual abuse survivor for the very first time. Over the past year, I have been rocked with nightmares, flashbacks, disassociative episodes, and other reminders of my horrific childhood. At the same time, I have spent the past year as an active member of The ManKind Project and Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunctional Families attempting to work through the issues I am facing both as a survivor and in my life in general.

While I have found support in MKP and ACA and met many wonderful people, there have been challenges. When I speak about my childhood sexual abuse in general terms, I am met with great support. It is when I attempt to dive deeper into my childhood wounds that I have perceived a shift in the way these people see me. The reactions I get range from pity to disgust when I go past the surface of my childhood abuse. While I judge that most of them mean well, I am left feeling like a circus freak. I see the looks of horror and pity on their faces and I just shut down and my defenses go back up. I am tired of carrying this weight and not feeling like I have anywhere that I can set it down for even a moment without feeling like a burden on the very people I have been turning to for help.

Feeling like a freak who makes everyone uncomfortable has been my default setting for most of the last year. Luckily for me, there are people who love me enough to urge me to continue to seek out resources and support in whatever form it may take. A fellow MKP member and CSA survivor recently pointed me in the direction of a local domestic violence/sexual assault non-profit that is open to male survivors as well. While at first I resisted picking up the phone to call, I finally did.

This morning was my first counseling appointment with a sexual assault advocate. I didn't really know what to expect. I went in full of fear and uncertainty. The woman I met with seemed warm and genuine, but I was still nervous about telling her my story. Once I started though it all came rushing out. And you know what? She didn't look at me with pity or disgust. She didn't go running out the door. She looked me in the eye and said, "What you have been through is not normal, but what you are feeling and experiencing because of it is normal." I was blown away. Those are words that I have longed to hear delivered in a way that made me believe her.

My childhood hell lasted for nearly a decade and continues to haunt me more than thirty years later, but still I have felt impatient like I somehow should feel better by now. The healing journey I have been on for the past year was a beginning, but I am far from the end. I feel like I am standing at a crossroads and working with this sexual assault advocate is me choosing to take a new path. Here's hoping I'm on the right road...

Getting Back On Track

Wow. What a roller-coaster the past two months have been. Just before Thanksgiving my baby brother died leaving behind four children and a lot of unanswered questions. Then the holidays hit which always remind me of losing my father between Christmas and New Years when I was a toddler. To top it off I got hit with a handful of particularly nasty flashbacks involving my stepfather sodomizing me with a giant candy cane and then making me eat it. Fa la la la la la la la la...

All of that hit hard. Really fucking hard. I feel like I have been having one long drawn out disassociative episode for the past couple of months. I got lost in my pain and couldn't see past it. I couldn't see the people who loved me reaching out. I couldn't see the pain of the fellow survivors in my life. A part of me wants to beat myself up over how much I withdrew into myself, but the part of me that has been healing since I first disclosed my status as a childhood sexual abuse survivor last March is telling me that I needed the chance to retreat and to grieve. It wasn't out of selfishness that I withdrew, it was out of self preservation and care. I will never stop grieving for my baby brother, my father, or my stolen innocence; but the time has come to stand back up and get back on my journey to heal and to support my fellow survivors in their healing. The time has come to get back on track.

I know this blog has been pretty quiet, but my mind has not. There are flashbacks I need to process. There are resources I need to share. There are conversations I want to start. There are questions I need to ask. To those of you who have stuck with me during the silence I thank you. Stay tuned to this blog for a renewed sense of purpose and, I hope, writings that spark conversations that need to happen.

Three Weeks Ago Today

Three weeks ago today I attended an information session at a local university to learn more about their Master of Social Work program, specifically the mental health and substance abuse concentration. As my friend and fellow ManKind Project brother and I were leaving the meeting, I turned on my phone and was met with a number of confusing social media messages from family that implied something bad had happened. Then I saw I had a missed call and a voice mail from my mother. My blood ran cold. I hit play on my voicemail and was greeted with the news that my baby brother, my best friend, had taken his own life.

Those of you who have been following my blog since it began this summer know that my history of childhood sexual abuse began the day my baby brother was born and that it was his father who was my primary abuser. Many of the choices I made as a child and as a teenager were made in an effort to protect my baby brother from the horrors his father was capable of.

I was willing to do anything to protect and shelter him, to ensure that he had a chance at a normal life. For a while it seemed like I had succeeded. He had a wife, a home, a job he loved, and four beautiful children that were the center of his world. A few years ago that all fell apart due to the selfishness of his ex-wife. My brother was left alone to raise four children because she wanted to live a life without responsibility. There was so much stress on his life and so much love in his heart. I knew that he had it hard and I did what I could to help despite the geographical distance between us. I thought he had a handle on everything. I thought he was coping. I was wrong.

And now I'm left wondering what else I was wrong about. Did I protect him or did my stepfather get to him too? Did I do everything I could to help my brother in his time of need or could I have done more? What does it mean for my recovery from childhood sexual abuse that I will never be able to share my truth with the one member of my family whose belief would have meant the most to me?

At three years old, my nightmare began. I thought the nightmare was over. Three weeks ago today my nightmare began again and I feel so alone with my baby brother, my best friend, not here to witness the someday where I am healed enough to be the man he always said I could be...

Coming Up For Air

If you have been following along with the blog, you know that The ManKind Project New Warrior Training Adventure was a turning point in my life as it was there this past March that I disclosed my childhood sexual abuse for the first time. It is through the trust I have built with my MKP brothers and the work and tools of MKP that I have begun making progress in coming to terms with my past. Two weekends ago I returned to the site of my MKP NWTA for the first time in over six months. This time around I elected to return as a rookie staff member so that I could support a new group of men in starting new chapters in their lives the way that I had. One of the men was even a fellow survivor who I became friends with through this blog which really lit a fire in my soul to come back and support this work that is making such a huge difference in my life.

In the space of time between March of this year and this month, I have spent so much time diving deep into the darkness of my past as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and the shadows that my childhood trauma created in my life as an adult. Considering the decades I spent in repression and denial, I guess it shouldn't have come as a shock that I would dive so deeply into my recovery once I accepted the need. During this month's MKP NWTA though, something in me shifted. The only way I can think to describe the feeling is that after diving deep into the darkness I was finally coming up for air. There was a lightness in my chest and a genuine smile of joy on my face that I can't ever remember being there. I met up with four of the men that had participated in my NWTA at this one and they all told me they didn't recognize me at first because the man they knew in March didn't have the joy that I moved through this weekend with. I was riding the high of that newfound joy for over a week, and then suddenly I began to feel guilt and shame once again.

I spent decades repressing and denying my abuse and the impact it had on me and my inner child. During the first six months of my recovery, I was deep in the past and the shadows. I was reliving my abuse through nightmares and flashbacks that I couldn't control. Somehow my guilt and my shame convinced me that in my newfound suffering I was honoring the suffering of my inner child, of the little boy who endured a decade of sexual violence. In my service to others at this month's NWTA I discovered a lightness and a happiness I have never known. It felt amazing until it didn't. The guilt and the shame came roaring back attempting to convince me that by letting myself be happy that I was somehow betraying my inner child. In a twisted way, there was logic to this that I had a hard time refuting.

Thanks to my mentor and my brothers in my Monday night MKP iGroup, I was able to process this odd sense of guilt and shame over being happy. My recovery is an ongoing process and I have a lot of healing left to do. There will be times where the weight of it drags me back into the dark and that's okay. It's part of the process. But the reality is that I need to let myself come up for air every once in a while. I need to remind myself that sometimes it is okay to be okay. If I can't allow myself to feel those moments of progress, lightness, and joy then what am I working so hard for? Isn't that the goal of working to recover from childhood trauma, to be fucking happy? I may not have had a choice as a child in what was done to me, but I have choices now as an adult. I choose to continue this work to heal myself and hopefully help others on their healing journey and I choose to come up for air every once in a while and to let myself feel pride and happiness for the man I am becoming...

Flashback Friday - Full House and I Lose

A word of explanation and warning. Since I first disclosed my status as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the end of March of this year, I have spent many sleepless nights and many waking hours consumed by a tsunami of flashbacks to specific incidents of the abuse that have left me feeling like I was drowning. With each successive flashback they feel as if they have been piling up in my mind, heart, and soul in a way that is threatening to consume me. When the flashbacks hit it is not me remembering the abuse, it is me reliving the abuse. All of my senses are transported back to that time. I am not a thirty-seven year old man; I am a three year old toddler, a six year old little boy, or whatever age I was from the ages of three to twelve during which the abuse occurred. I need to get these flashbacks out in order to be able to detach and see these events through my adult eyes so that I can begin to heal. The only way I know how to do that is to tell the stories. If you are a fellow survivor, these Flashback Friday posts are likely to be triggers. If you are a supporter, please know that what you read on Fridays will likely be extremely disturbing. If for either reason you choose not to continue reading, I understand. If you choose to continue reading beyond the image below, thank you for validating my experience by listening to my truth.

I know it's been a while since my last Flashback Friday post and the reason is that this is far and away the worst flashback I've had and the one that keeps coming up the most. I've had a really hard time finding the strength and the words to get this one out of my head and onto the page. Thank you for your patience.

As near as I can tell, this incident of my childhood sexual abuse happened when I was seven or eight years old as we were still living in Metro Detroit and hadn't moved up north yet. I have no idea where my mother or my little brother were. For some reason I was home alone with my stepfather one night when five of his buddies came over to play poker and get drunk. While the other guys seemed to be pacing themselves, my stepfather had a much larger collection of empty beer cans in front of him than anyone. He started getting angry and losing hand after hand as he was so drunk he couldn't concentrate on the cards in his hand. Throughout the night my stepfather's buddies kept making comments about what a cute boy I was. It made me feel good that they all seemed really nice and that they liked me. I wasn't scared that my mother wasn't around because these men made me feel safe. What a naive child I was...

After countless hands of poker and a lot of beer, the night seemed to be coming to a close as one of my stepfather's buddies, a really tall guy with light curly hair, looked at my stepfather and said "You lose Chuck! Time to pay up." My stepfather pulled out his wallet from his pocket and opened it up to show the other men that it was empty and then he started laughing. I knew that laugh and it made me really, really scared. He looked sideways at me and then said to the five men sitting at the poker table, "No worries, right guys? You didn't come here for money. You came here for the tightest ass you've ever fucked!" And with that my stepfather stood up, picked me kicking and screaming under his arm and carried me over to the living room couch. He threw me down on my stomach over the arm of the couch, knocking the wind out of me, and pulled my pajama pants down, spit on his dick, and rammed it up my seven or eight year old anus as hard as he could while his poker buddies cheered.

For what felt like hours I blacked in and out of consciousness as my stepfather and his poker buddies took turns raping me over and over as I lay across the arm of the living room couch with tears streaming down my face. The pain never stopped and I was in agony as each man raped me each more than once. Eventually they all zipped their pants back up and left one by one until I was alone again with the monster my mother called her husband. As I shakily tried to stand to my feet, I could feel something running down the insides of my legs and I thought it was the stuff my stepfather put inside me all the times he raped me before. When I looked down though, there was blood running down my legs from the savage multiple rapings I had just endured.

I have a vague memory of a period of about a week where I kept putting a wad of toilet paper in my underwear to keep from getting blood on my underwear and pants. In light of reliving this event through multiple flashbacks I'm pretty sure that was right after my stepfather's poker night. To this day, I can't watch poker on television and I've lost count of the number of excuses I've made over the years to not have to learn or play the game. Even looking at a deck of cards can trigger a flashback to that night. I know enough about the game to know that a full house is supposed to be almost a sure win in a game of poker. In my case, it was a full house but I lost more that even I might ever know.

Real Men Feel: Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse

Not Mine To Carry

This week the universe decided to teach me a lesson through the actions of a man that I sit in a men's group with and thought was a friend. For whatever reason, something about me triggered this man and he decided the way to deal with that was to dump his issues on me, to make me the bad guy, and to accuse me of something that was proven to be untrue but yet he refused to acknowledge his error. I carried the weight of this for most of this week. I wondered what I did wrong, what I could have done differently. I felt guilty and ashamed. Sound familiar?

I realized after a few days that whatever the cause of the rift between my friend and I, it wasn't my fault. He has his own issues to work through and tried to make them mine. But his issues aren't mine to carry. The confusion, fear, guilt, and shame I carried are his and so I gave them back to him and set myself free from the burden. It seemed like such an obvious and simple response in this situation. Why then is it so hard to apply to the past?

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I have carried the secrets, guilt, and shame of the abuse for over thirty years. On one level I know that these are not my burdens to carry either. They belong to my stepfather and his friends who sexually assaulted me for years and ripped away my innocence. None of that can be laid at my feet so why am I the one left feeling guilt and shame? Why is it so easy to let go of what is not mine to carry in one instance and nearly impossible when it matters most?

All I can think of is that because I have carried the guilt and shame of my abuse for so long that they are familiar and feel like they're mine, but they aren't. From the day this past March that I finally broke my silence and revealed all of the dirty little secrets that I have been keeping for him, I have been on a journey toward letting go of the guilt and shame, of returning to his ghost what is not and was never mine to carry...

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!

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.

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!

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!

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...

Flashback Friday: Why I Didn't Tell (Trigger Warning)

A word of explanation and warning. Since I first disclosed my status as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the end of March of this year, I have spent many sleepless nights and many waking hours consumed by a tsunami of flashbacks to specific incidents of the abuse that have left me feeling like I was drowning. With each successive flashback they feel as if they have been piling up in my mind, heart, and soul in a way that is threatening to consume me. When the flashbacks hit it is not me remembering the abuse, it is me reliving the abuse. All of my senses are transported back to that time. I am not a thirty-six year old man; I am a three year old toddler, a six year old little boy, or whatever age I was from the ages of three to twelve during which the abuse occurred. I need to get these flashbacks out in order to be able to detach and see these events through my adult eyes so that I can begin to heal. The only way I know how to do that is to tell the stories. If you are a fellow survivor, these Flashback Friday posts are likely to be triggers. If you are a supporter, please know that what you read on Fridays will likely be extremely disturbing. If for either reason you choose not to continue reading, I understand. If you choose to continue reading beyond the image below, thank you for validating my experience by listening to my truth.

When I was about five years old there was an assembly at my school all about stranger danger and bad touching and what to do if someone tried to touch you in bad ways. They told us it was wrong and that we should tell someone. I came home from school with my mind racing. I knew that I hated the things my stepfather and others had been doing to me for the last couple of years, but until that assembly I didn't know it was bad. I didn't know that I could tell and it might stop.

Later that night, my stepfather came into my room. My little brother and my mom were in my parents' bedroom and my stepfather said she went to sleep because her head hurt. He told me to follow him into the bathroom because it was bath time. I knew what he really wanted and, empowered by the assembly at school, told him no. I told him what he does to me is bad and that if he doesn't stop then I am going to tell.

The next thing I knew his hand was on my chest lifting me into the air and slamming me down hard on my bed. His face was red and his eyes were bugging out of his head. He leaned down until his face was touching mine and told me that what he does to me is his business and no one else's and that if I tell anyone that I'll be dead in the ground next to my father. With that he ripped my pants off and thrust himself into me in one painful shove. As I opened my mouth to scream he grabbed one of my pillows and pressed it hard over my face. I was in agony. Everything hurt. My body was sore from being slammed on the bed. My butt hurt from the assault he was doing to me. My lungs burned from not getting any air. I was thrashing around on the bed trying desperately to breathe.

I woke up the next morning in my bed in my pajamas with my entire body hurting and my voice raspy. My mom thought I had a sore throat. For years that night served to keep me quiet. I had no doubt that my stepfather meant every word and would kill me if I told anyone what he was doing to me almost every night. His reign of terror and sodomy and hate lived on to fight another day.

Inner Child: I Am He And He Is Me

Within the context of my personal development work with The ManKind Project over the past few months, and my growing connection to Adult Children of Alcoholics or Other Dysfunctional Families, I have encountered a lot of talk and exercises around connecting with my inner child. The idea is that in healing the part of ourselves that was wounded as a child, we are able to break the patterns that keep us from having the kind of life we want in the present. This kind of inner child work makes sense to me on an intellectual level; the majority of the trauma that is negatively impacting me as an adult took place when I was a sexually abused child.

I've written before that for over thirty years I did my best to repress and deny my childhood sexual abuse. Even though it was impossible to really ignore nearly a decade of abuse at the hands of my stepfather and his friends, I did my best to not remember. Until very recently, I was unconsciously using my inner child work as a new method of repressing and denying the memories of my abuse. When I sat in MKP or ACA and talked about my inner child; the words I used were he and him. I talked about my inner child like he was a being wholly separate from myself. He was the one who spent a decade as someone's live in sex toy. He was the one who was abandoned and abused.

That started to change when I started writing this blog. I couldn't share my experiences with anyone if I didn't claim them as mine. A slow realization has dawned over the past couple of weeks in relation to my inner child. He is not separate from me. I am he and he is me. I am the one who was abandoned by my father and mother. I am the one who was raped by my stepfather and his buddies from the ages of three to nearly twelve. I am the one who was broken. I am the one with grade A abandonment and trust issues. I am the one with the black dog of depression hanging over my head tempting me with an easy way out of having to deal with the pain.

But I have to deal with it. My inner child is me, not he. If I am ever going to heal, if I am ever going to be the man that I want to be, then I am going to have to own my past and own my memories. No more repressing or denying what happened to me. No more passing the buck to a fictional "other". The little boy I once was is a part of me and the only way to heal him is to heal myself. I am frustrated and sad and angry and resigned to the reality that there is no easy fix. There are too many scars, there is too much pain, there is too much baggage that I carry as a result of my childhood sexual abuse for me to recover or heal from it as quickly as I wish I could. There is a long road ahead of me to heal that part of me that was broken. All I can do is lift my lantern to light my way in the shadows, grab my teddy bear for comfort when things get scary, and put one foot in front of the other every day until my past no longer controls my present or my future...

A Way Out, But Not THE Way Out...

Everyone's pain is different. I can't begin to know exactly what Linkin Park front man Chester Bennington's pain was when he made the choice to take his own life yesterday. I do know a little bit of his story though, and a lot of his music, and I know that one thing we had in common was both being survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Chester was pretty open about it in interviews and it came through in a lot of subtle ways in his songs. I have been sitting with a lot of pain since news of Chester's suicide reached me yesterday. I had a really hard time holding it together at work. I wanted to run home and turn his music up as loud as my speakers could handle and scream along with him.

When I was twenty years old, I let my pain wash over me so strong that I was pulled away by the riptide and carried under. I did my best to take what felt like the only way out. I failed and the thought of taking my own life has been barely a whisper ever since. Until now. Now that voice is screaming in my head. Disclosing my abuse. The nightmares. The flashbacks. The panic attacks. The pain. The rage. The shame. FUCK!!! For the first time in nearly twenty years that voice is back screaming in my head that there is an easier way out of all of this pain then doing all of this work and ripping open all of these old wounds. That voice is so fucking soothing and seductive. Chester's suicide seems to be serving as a reminder to a dark part of myself that death is a way out.

Suicide is a way out, but it is not THE way out. There has to be a way to process all of this trauma and pain and shit and come out the other side. There has to be a way to heal and be happy. I have to believe, I CHOOSE to believe that there is a better way out of this pain then to end any chance at a happy life. My heart breaks for Chester and his pain. My heart breaks for the pain of every childhood sexual abuse survivor who has to carry the weight of the memories that threaten to overwhelm us. My heart breaks, but it still beats. Where there is life there is hope. Where there is hope there can be found support. If you were affected by Chester Bennington's suicide or by your abuse or by anything in life that is leading you to think that taking your life is the only way out then please hear me. There is hope. There is support. You are not alone. It will get better. As much as the past few days have awoken the black dog of depression in my life, I have found too much love and support on my journey these past few months to follow Chester's lead. Nobody can save me but myself. I need to make the choice to seek support, to accept the outstretched hands I once slapped away, to look for the little moments of joy, to live, to THRIVE.

Trust?

Trust. What an alien sounding word. Until a few months ago, I really didn't know what it meant to trust someone. I learned at a very young age that trusting people only leads to pain. I trusted my parents to keep me safe and yet I endured a childhood of horrific sexual abuse. I was taught to trust the adults my parents said were safe. The men my stepfather called his friends were no safer than he was. Why the hell would I ever trust anyone after the endless string of betrayals in my life?

If you read yesterday's post, then you know that something changed in my life this year. You know about ManKind Project and the group of men who made me believe that maybe, just maybe, some people could be trusted. What I didn't tell you yesterday is that last week one of those men violated that trust and sent my world into a tailspin. I went to group last night and confronted him using the tools of MKP to try to clear the air. The burning anger that simmered beneath the surface for me for a week has dissipated thanks to that process. The anger is gone, but the pain remains. The doubt remains. I was asked if I could trust this man enough to sit with him every week. I was asked by this man if I could forgive him. The only response I could give was I don't know.

When it comes to trust I am still an infant. Even though the men in my MKP group have nearly all earned a trust I never thought I had to give, it is still new and raw. What this man did to violate that trust has left me wondering if perhaps I was right before and that trust isn't worth it. Before, there's a telling word. Not trusting is an old pattern for me. My work here in attempting to heal from my childhood sexual abuse and my work in MKP to become a man I can be proud of means becoming someone new and not holding on to who I was. Yes this man violated my trust and hurt me deeply, but there are a dozen other men in this group who have and continue to honor my trust in them and who seem to trust me in return. I am learning that trust can open doors as well as open wounds.

Will I be able to trust this man again? Only time and space will reveal the answer to that question. As for forgiveness, that's a hell of a question best saved for another time...

The ManKind Project: A Light In The Darkness

I never thought I would ever look forward to Mondays, but ever since I joined a ManKind Project I-Group that meets every Monday night it is now my favorite day of the week. I've shared a couple of times here on this blog that it was at a ManKind Project New Warrior Training Adventure weekend that I first disclosed my childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather and his friends. That has gotten some people asking about MKP so I thought I would share the impact that this brotherhood has continued to have on my life and my recovery since I joined in February of this year.

When I joined MKP I was a boy trying desperately to fool people into thinking I was a man. I hated my life. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror without feeling a burning hatred for my own reflection. With all of the guilt and shame and rage and despair from my childhood locked away inside of me, it was like a cancer that was killing me from the inside out. MKP had been on my radar for a few years and I had made half-hearted attempts at reaching out in the past, but by the time this year came around I decided I needed to do something. Something needed to change. They say that change only comes when it hurts too much to allow things to stay the way they are. I am a living example of the truth in that statement.

So February of this year came around and I decided to reach out and ask for help. A man from the local MKP I-Group responded and invited me to a weekly Monday meeting. I went into this meeting not being able to trust anyone. My childhood had robbed me of that ability. I never really let anyone get close even though I gave the appearance of doing so. I always kept people at arms length. To this day I can't really put into words how they did it, but over the course of the next month this group of a dozen or so men made it past my defenses. Not only did I like them, I realized upon receiving their invitation to take it to the next level by attending the NWTA that I actually trusted them. It was such an odd feeling, but it gave me hope. I trusted these men and they told me this experience would make a difference in my life. Understatement.

Putting this newfound trust to the test, I attended my MKP NWTA this past March and began to transform my life. Over the past few months a swift, yet gradual, series of changes have been sweeping through my life. For the first time I feel like I am in the driver's seat. I am awake. I am setting boundaries in my life. I am shining a light on my shadows. I am facing my past head on so that I can finally see myself as a man with a future. These men in my Monday night group are leading by example and mentoring me to be the kind of man I never thought I could be. The tools that I am learning from The ManKind Project are helping me to create a life I am starting to be proud of. The best part of it all is that with everything I have been through, I can finally look the man in the mirror in the eye and smile...