I am Ultimately Responsible for My Life, Despite Their Abuse

I thought, at the time, as a child, that my life was fairly normal. Sure, Mother was constantly having her nervous fits and was frequently picking fights with my father. Daddy was always trying to smooth things over and protect us kids from the worst of Mother’s behavior. But, we lived in a regular middle class house and Daddy had a regular white collar job and I attended a regular suburban school and our lives didn’t seem too different from those of our neighbors.

And, then, I was molested at swimming lessons and threatened with the death of my parents, my father was killed in an airplane accident, my mother started going out on weekends and drinking, we moved from our peaceful small town on the plains to a large city, Mother married a bigoted redneck who wasn’t anything like my father, the kids at school began to beat me up every day, and I realized I was gay. In a matter of just two years, my life went from the fairly peaceful and secure to one of daily Hell. I learned rather quickly and brutally never to take things for granted because they can change or disappear in an instant.

I made a lot of really stupid decisions after all this. In college, after a successful academic career in high school (I was determined to show everyone who ridiculed and attacked me) I basically gave up. I started drinking beer and smoking pot. I discovered the gay cruising spots on campus. I dropped out of school, even though I had earned several academic scholarships and had several sterling opportunities awaiting me when I graduated. And, I spent the next three decades in dead-end or entry-level jobs as a waiter or working in customer service call centers.

It was easy to blame everyone else for my failures. It was also easy to blame myself completely. On the one hand, the kids at school and my redneck stepfather were constantly ridiculing and attacking me. On the other, there were people who recognized my ability and gave me chances and opportunities that I turned around and blew. Was it the fault of everyone who bullied and abused me? Was it my fault because I was a loser who deserved what I got?

It’s hard to figure out where to draw the line. For years, in my mind, it was either all THEIR fault or all MY fault. It has taken a long time in recovery to accept that maybe there is a point somewhere in between. Yes, I was abused and beaten and ridiculed and survivors of this are often self-destructive and self-blaming. But, yes, I lied and stole and cheated and drank and drugged and cruised and argued and got fired a dozen times. I was abused, but I also made decisions. I might not have made those decisions without the abuse, but I made them all the same.

I struggle today not to blame everyone else for my actions, and I struggle not to make the same mistakes I did for thirty-five years. I recognize that I am a victim, but I am also responsible for my own life. I am determined now not to put the blame for my mistakes and failures solely on others. I control my fate, despite the actions of others.

What’s Worse, the Abuse or the Reaction to the Abuse?

Sometimes, the reaction of adults to a child’s sexual abuse is more harmful to the child than the actual abuse. This was certainly true in my case and the cases of several others whom I know.

I have described my first molestation in a previous post. It occured at swimming lessons when I was ten years old in 1968. I was also molested several times by an older male family member (NOT my father) over the next two years. I never told anyone about the first incident and it wouldn’t have had much of an effect on me if the perpetrator hadn’t threatened me at the end with killing my parents. I was terrified by that. Six months later, my father died in an airplane accident and though I told myself that there was no connection, in the back of my mind, there was.

As I say, however, were it not for that final threat, it wouldn’t have been a very traumatic event for me. I knew it was wrong, but I also knew it wasn’t my fault. I would have been okay. Later, however, I was molested by an older male relative. Once again, it wasn’t particularly traumatic and I felt no guilt or shame for it. I did eventually report it to my mother, whose reaction was to make a phone call to the family memeber. The molestation ended and that was that. Nothing more was heard or said.

A few years later, however, it was learned that he had simply moved on to molesting a younger brother of mine. This time, however, when it was revealed, the shit hit the fan. My brother was embarrassed and shamed by the incident as my mother went ballistic. The man died of a heart attack a few days later. For years after, my brother was haunted, not by the molestations, but by the public humiliation of exposire, the fury of my mother at our relative, and the declarations that he had been “messed up” by the incidents. Well, yes, he was messed up and spent years in self-destructive behavior from which he emerged only a few years ago. It has taken him decades to recover and he has done so with great success and at great credit to himself. However, it was not the molestation that “messed him up,” but the reaction to it.

I think I have always been gay. People tell me (and looking back, I see remember feelings and see indications of my orientation well before the molestations I experienced) that I was probably always gay. However, my mother made a comment to me after the death of my relative that he might have “ruined” me had he been allowed to continue. She has never explained what she meant by that, but I know she was referring to being gay and it devastated me to hear that. I knew at 14, when she made that comment, that I was gay and it killed my soul to know that my mother thought I was “ruined.” It also amazed me that she hadn’t been able to see what apparently everyone else had, that I was gay long before then.

However, what also devastated me was the reaction to my brother’s molestations. It was not that I wanted a big deal to have been made about MY molestation. Indeed, I was, and am, profoundly grateful a big deal WASN’T made. But, why was my mother so much more upset when it happened to my brother and not when it happened to me? Why did she feel she had to explode and make a scene over my brother’s experience and not mine? Was it because she really did know I was gay, or that she blamed me for the molestation, or that it just wasn’t a big deal if the molestation happened to me? Why was it so much worse in her mind when it happened to my brother? THAT was what messed me up. That and the idea that she considered me ruined.

In watching and reading stories about child abuse, over and over I wonder what trauma that victim or survivor is going through at the hands of supposedly well-meaning adults who are reacting with anger and horror and other similar emotions. Do people realize they are simply adding to the trauma? Do they care?

There are varying degrees of abuse and I in no way want to condone or excuse child abuse. What I DO want to do is to caution people not to over-react to it, because you can cause more harm by doing so than the original perpetrator. Of course, there are those who make a living through the over-reacting to it and they will do what they can to blow it out of proportion. But, don’t victimize the child twice. Don’t add to it. Punish the perpetrator if you must. But keep the reaction in proportion and don’t lead the child to believe that they are responsible or have been “ruined” or “messed up” or something similar. Don’t lead the child to believe that they are now broken.

Don’t join the perpetrator in adding to the child’s pain.

Living in the Future, Living in the Past

Anticipation was the word for my childhood and adolescence, anticipation of the holidays to come, of the vacations to come, of the careers to come, of the life to come. Memories of what was or thoughts of what could or should have been are the terms for my life now. Never, as a child or an adult, have I lived in the presence. I was always looking to the future, until I realized I didn’t have a future anymore. Now, when I am not struggling to remain in the present, I live in my childhood, or in the idealized vision of what my childhood was, or in the fantasy of what my childhood could have been.

Reality was never good enough for me. When I was young, I was constantly praised and complimented by my father and grandparents and told what a wonderful future I would have. In my adolescence, howewer, as life took a drastic change and ridicule and abuse became the norm, I escaped from the ugliness of my life by dreaming or fantasizing about the future, of careers I would have in which people would praise me, respect me, compliment me. As I grew older and I discovered other forms of escape, primarily alcohol, marijuana, and sex, escaping into the future was less important to me. It was not until a few years ago, when I realized just how badly my escapes from reality had destroyed my life, did I see just how much of that future I had lost, as well as how much of my present!

Often people with addictive personalities, particularly those who survive traumatic abuse as children and adolescents, turn to escapes from reality for relief from the pain of their lives. That was certainly true for me. However, I wasted so much life dreaming of becoming that I never became and never lived. Now, when I no longer turn to chemicals and sex for escape from reality, it is a constant struggle not to live in the past, the remember how it was, how it might have been, how it could have been. I don’t have that much more life left to waste on fantasies and escapes and I struggle to live in the present, to find peace and joy and serenity in life as it is at this time, at this moment.

Have others experienced this and what are your comments from your experiences?

Empathy Defecit Disorder?

I try not to be too skeptical whenever I hear of a new psychofad because its always possible there might actually be some validity to the claim of a new disorder or syndrome. Too often, enablers of self-destructive behavior come up with imaginary disorders and syndromes as a means of excusing the behaviors of some people rather than of addressing the issue of personal responsibility. I found this to be particularly true when I first entered recovery from alcohol and chemical abuse. I would hear that its not my fault because I have a “disease” and then I would be told I had to make a fearless moral inventory. Well, if it wasn’t my fault, then why was I making a fearless moral inventory of what I had done because of what wasn’t my fault?

So, it was with wariness that I saw a report at CNN.com reposting an article from Oprah magazine about Empathy Defecit Disorder. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading Oprah magazine, but even though the article was written in a breezy and not very professional style, when you boil away the superficial “Oprah” stuff, it had a few good concepts.

Some people have great difficulty establishing empathy with others, and not just those with Asperger’s Syndrome and other Austism Spectrum Disorders. Children learn their behaviors and develop their personalities, in part, by observing their parents’ behaviors and when parents don’t show understanding or acceptance for their children’s feelings, the children don’t learn to do that either. This isn’t a “blame the parents for everything” excuse. It’s just common sense. Children learn from watching their parents.

When I was a child, I wasn’t exposed to other children until the age of four, when I entered Kindergarten. I spent the vast majority of my time around my mother, a narcissistic, self-absorbed neurotic who blamed the world for not recognizing that she was the center of the universe. My father was the polar opposite and though I tried to emulate my father, it was my mother’s behavior that I absorbed and displayed throughout my adolescence and into adulthood, until I recognized what I was doing and struggled to overcome it. Even today, at fifty, I struggle not to be so self-absorbed that I subconsciously act as if the world is out to get me or that no one loves me or that I am the center of the universe. Sometimes, if I listen to others, if I show concern to others, and feel their pain (not in a touchy-feely Oprah way, but in a genuine and authentic manner that doesn’t reduce their emotions to just recognizing that they are victims), then I see others reacting in more positive ways.

When people feel their emotions are not being validated, they shut down on the outside and internalize everything. I know that I do that. But, when others recognize their feelings and emotions, without giving in to the enabling tendency of playing along with their victimhood, then they feel validated and can move on.

Unless a person’s lack of empathy is related to an autism spectrum disorder, I don’t think it is a disorder in and of itself. However, one can learn not to have empathy for others and that makes one’s life less full and meaningful. Of course, one can go to the opposite extreme and place ALL one’s attention on feelings and that is equally dangerous. Balance is important, but I have found that working toward being more empathetic with others does help in my day-to-day relations with people.

Tim Russert, Father’s Day, and My Own Experiences

Here are a few slightly related comments about the past few days, a sort of stream of consciousness ranting about family, politics, and my own messed up life. First, without joining the orgy of exploitation on MSNBC, I will say that Tim Russert was the best journalist on television, a man who loved politics, his coworkers, and his family. Would that we had more people like Tim Russert and far, far fewer people in the media like Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann!

I was struck by the obvious closeness of the Russert family. I am envious of his close-knit family. I am not close to any of the few remaining members of my family. I wish I could be, but there is too much in the past and too many incompatibilities. I worshiped my father, but there has been no one else in my family who engenders that kind of devotion or affection.

My father was the finest man I ever knew and he was given a dreadfully raw deal by life. Abused by his father and a survivor of polio, he was the most determined man I have ever known. He faced failures and overcame them. He never gave up, even though he was kicked in the teeth by an emotionally unstable wife, four children who didn’t learn to appreciate him before it was too late, and parents who could have been more supportive before his death than they were after. My father was a great man.

Unfortunately, I took after my mother. As a young child, I was never around other children until I entered Kindergarten. My siblings didn’t come along until later, so my mother was the primary influence for my first four years. Unfortunately, I learned from her to carry a chip on my shoulder, to blame others for my mistakes, to have a sense of entitlement, and not to accept criticism. It should not be surprising that, even with the patience and dedication of my father, I blew every opportunity, and I had many, that was handed to me. Only now, as I have crossed the threshold of fifty, am I putting together a life.

It is amazing what we learn from our parents. Would that my father had been the primary influence in my life. Would that my family was more like the Russerts of Buffalo.

School Shootings, Bullying, and Indifference

ABC News’ Nightline had a report Wednesday evening about school shootings in which two things stood out for me. The first was that 75% of school shooters were victims of bullying and that the shooter they interviewed was removed from reality when it was happening, having been desensitized to the shooting violence by the video games he had been playing.

Over and over, we hear of shooters having been tormented by the bullies at school or taunted and abused by the general student body. And, yet, despite all the attention this point receives and the supposed actions that school officials take, little is done to address the most important cause of the shootings- bullying. There is a “zero-tolerance” policy in most schools against weapons, anything that could be construed as a weapon, thinking about weapons, writing about the subject, drawing pictures, even kindergarteners holding their fingers in a gun position. ANd, yet, little if anything is done to the bullies who provoke this.

I was bullied and abused in junior high school and live with the after affects to this day. Had I had access to a gun in 1971 when this abuse was at its peak, it would have been quite easy for me to have committed one of these atrocities. The teachers and administrators at my school blamed me for the bullying. The coaches at the school encouraged the jocks to bully me, saying it would make me a man. The Assistant Principal told me that I should fight back, and then paddled me for fighting back. My redneck stepfather ridiculed and criticized me daily for not fighting back. And, no one, NO ONE, made any attempt to help me or the dozens of other kids, all nonconformists, who were bullied, beaten, and tormented on a daily basis in my school.

Until we stop, as a society, glorifying the bully and the snob, this will continue. As long as we view the shooters as monsters, instead of as victims pushed over the edge by other kids who find it amusing to taunt or bully them, it will continue.

I don’t condone school shootings and I feel great sympathy for the shooting victims. But, I wonder if any of the jerks who bullied Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who beat them and taunted them every day, ever think about the cul[pability THEY have in the Columbine massacre?

Somewhere out there, right this minute, is a boy who has been taunted, bullied, beaten, and humiliated by the other kids at school, whose plight has been ignored by the teachers, the coaches, and the administrators, whose parents are just as indifferent or just as cruel, and who sees either the deaths of others or his own death as they only way out. I grieve for that boy for I know what he is feeling.

PTSD and the Indifference of the System

I was diagnosed several years ago with post-traumatic stress disorder. I have persistent nightmares of being beaten and attacked, as I frequently was in the seventh grade. I find myself shrinking or becoming nervous and stressed in difficult situations, and I find it difficult to accept criticism. Nearly forty years after the worst of the physical abuse I experienced in school, I still relive these moments and I find the system stacked against my receiving help to recover from these experiences.

It is very common for survivors of traumatic abuse events to become alcoholics or addicts. Despite my over-achieving in high school, I turned to chemicals and sex as a means of escape from my fears and anxieties in college. The dreams and expectations of my youth dissolved into failure and humiliation as an adult. I am putting my life back together now, but getting the medical and psychological assistance that could make this recovery so much easier has been almost impossible.

I was receiving counseling and medication at a non-profit clinic in my home town until the company for which I currently work finally offered me health insurance. Then they cut me off. My personal physician, however, will not prescribe the medication I was receiving and requires my going to a psychiatrist, which my insurance won’t cover. Nor will they cover the medication I need.

PTSD is not some silly excuse for underperforming or the latest psycho-fad syndrome. It is a real disorder. Continued and repeated exposure to trauma, particularly when one is young, can lead to permanent and physical changes in the actual structure of the brain, changes that result in chemical imbalances and other actual symptoms. I can’t afford the medication I need on my own, but I no longer qualify for assistance. Welcome to the Catch-22 that is today’s American health-care system.

Sometimes, suicide seems the only option and though I can intellectually tell myself that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, the problem has been something I’ve been dealing with for nearly forty years. It doesn’t seem so temporary anymore.

Ironically, its the people who pretend to commit suicide frequently that get all the attention. If you are working and struggling and doing what you’re supposed to be doing, as I am trying to do, you are ignored by the government, the clinics, the insurance companies, etc.

Recovering from a half century of destruction.

How does one recover from years of alcohol and chemical abuse, from decades of self-destruction and self-loathing, from a life of humiliation and failure? How does one overcome the damage from a childhood of molestation and bullying, of an irrational mother and emotionally damaged grandparents? How does one look back on fifty years and not see a life of wasted opportunities and crushed dreams? I have no answers to these questions, but they are the tasks that stand before me as I begin this blog.

I have been free of alcohol for three years and of marijuana for nearly two. I am not, however, free of the hopeless feeling that I have no future and that years before me hold nothing more than the same failure and pain I have known before. I have no desire to use and no fear that I will resume using. My fear is that I will die having accomplished nothing, having never found self-respect, having never known serenity and a sense of accomplishment.

It is common, I am told, for survivors of childhood and adolescent sexual, physical, and emotional abuse to have little or no self-respect or self-confidence. Even when one has a myriad of opportunities to succeed, when abuse of various kinds is thrown into the mix, it is common for the survivor of molestations, of beatings, of humiliations to be blind to one’s abilities, responsibilities, and opportunities.

I have attended meetings of various recovery programs, been under the care of several mental health care professionals, and studied countless books and web articles concerning recovery from abuse and its various side-effects and, yet, I find I still have difficulty in finding the peace and serenity I think I ought to achieve, to find the balance between taking responsibility for my actions and seeing that others contributed to my pain and failure.

I hope that this blog will help me as a means of putting these various issues into perspective and that others may share their experience with me, as well as benefit from my own mistakes and experiences.

I Was Molested Forty Years Ago Today

It is not common for ten year old boys to be interested in politics and the news, but I was not a common ten year old. My father was very interested in politics and I often listened (and occasionally contributed) to his discussions with friends and family about the momentous events occurring in the spring of 1968- the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, McCarthy driving Johnson from the race for President, Bobby Kennedy entering the race, the assassination of Dr. King, the riots across America, the near revolution in France. So, it was not strange for me to get up just after my father left for the office and turn on the Today show. It was unusual for my mother to enter the family room to see my crying. My father was a Nixon supporter. I was for Bobby Kennedy and I had come downstairs expecting to hear news of Kennedy’s win in the California primary. Instead, I learned that he was lying near death in a Los Angeles hospital after being shot.

1968 was the first Presidential campaign which I felt a part of. Ten campaigns later, I still remember the excitement I felt at debating the war with adults and adults actually listening to me. I have felt nothing like that since. But, June 5, 1968 was a dark day for me, for not only did I see my political hero struck down, but I found my own innocence about life yanked away from me and trampled by a selfish monster who killed something within me.

I had been enrolled in Red Cross swimming lessons and was to be at the indoor swimming pool at the local college at ten that morning. I had begged my mother to let me skip the lesson that day so I could stay home and watch the news to learn if Senator Kennedy would live. But, my mother insisted I go and, reluctantly, I obeyed. When the lesson was over, rather than shower and change from my trunks to my standard shorts and t-shirt, I simply ran out of the pool building to my bike, which was chained up outside, so that I could speed home quickly and sit back down in front of the television.

An older man approached, large, with graying hair and an old, cheap suit. He demanded to know if I were enrolled in the swimming program, which I thought a silly question as I was still in my swim trunks, with my clothes dropped into the basket of my bicycle. I replied that I was and he told me that I need to come to his office to fill out some paperwork for the insurance. I didn’t know there was insurance involved and I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. But, he was quite insistent and I had been taught to obey adults. I reluctantly followed him upstairs to his office in the building neighboring the pool.

I won’t go into detail about what happened, except to say that he immediately began to compliment me on what a handsome boy I was and how proud my parents must have been. Growing up in a small town in the American Midwest in the sixties, I was pretty naive when it came to sexual matters and didn’t realize that what was happening was wrong until it was too late, by which time I didn’t want it to end. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t want it to stop.

When he was through with me, he told me to put my swim trunks back on and his entire demeanor changed. He growled menacingly that if I told anyone what had happened, he would kill my parents. He walked me back down to my bike and watched as I rode slowly home.

The shame I felt was incredible, shame that I had allowed him to do it, shame that I had allowed it. How had he known I would like it, I wondered. Was there something wrong with me, some sign that I was a wicked boy who would allow him to do those things? Why had I enjoyed it so much?

I never told my parents. They refused my request to quit swimming lessons. For the rest of the time, I parked my bike near the library and walked around the pool building from the other side to avoid possible contact with the man, though I felt such loathing and disgust with myself for even considering that I might want to see him again.

I consider that morning the moment that it all began, when the long train of events that have brought me to the point It is not common for ten year old boys to be interested in politics and the news, but I was not a common ten year old. My father was very interested in politics and I often listened (and occasionally contributed) to his discussions with friends and family about the momentous events occurring in the spring of 1968- the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, McCarthy driving Johnson from the race for President, Bobby Kennedy entering the race, the assassination of Dr. King, the riots across America, the near revolution in France. So, it was not strange for me to get up just after my father left for the office and turn on the Today show. It was unusual for my mother to enter the family room to see my crying. My father was a Nixon supporter. I was for Bobby Kennedy and I had come downstairs expecting to hear news of Kennedy’s win in the California primary. Instead, I learned that he was lying near death in a Los Angeles hospital after being shot.

1968 was the first Presidential campaign which I felt a part of. Ten campaigns later, I still remember the excitement I felt at debating the war with adults and adults actually listening to me. I have felt nothing like that since. But, June 5, 1968 was a dark day for me, for not only did I see my political hero struck down, but I found my own innocence about life yanked away from me and trampled by a selfish monster who killed something within me.

I had been enrolled in Red Cross swimming lessons and was to be at the indoor swimming pool at the local college at ten that morning. I had begged my mother to let me skip the lesson that day so I could stay home and watch the news to learn if Senator Kennedy would live. But, my mother insisted I go and, reluctantly, I obeyed. When the lesson was over, rather than shower and change from my trunks to my standard shorts and t-shirt, I simply ran out of the pool building to my bike, which was chained up outside, so that I could speed home quickly and sit back down in front of the television.

An older man approached, large, with graying hair and an old, cheap suit. He demanded to know if I were enrolled in the swimming program, which I thought a silly question as I was still in my swim trunks, with my clothes dropped into the basket of my bicycle. I replied that I was and he told me that I need to come to his office to fill out some paperwork for the insurance. I didn’t know there was insurance involved and I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. But, he was quite insistent and I had been taught to obey adults. I reluctantly followed him upstairs to his office in the building neighboring the pool.

I won’t go into detail about what happened, except to say that he immediately began to compliment me on what a handsome boy I was and how proud my parents must have been. Growing up in a small town in the American Midwest in the sixties, I was pretty naive when it came to sexual matters and didn’t realize that what was happening was wrong until it was too late, by which time I didn’t want it to end. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t want it to stop.

When he was through with me, he told me to put my swim trunks back on and his entire demeanor changed. He growled menacingly that if I told anyone what had happened, he would kill my parents. He walked me back down to my bike and watched as I rode slowly home.

The shame I felt was incredible, shame that I had allowed him to do it, shame that I had allowed it. How had he known I would like it, I wondered. Was there something wrong with me, some sign that I was a wicked boy who would allow him to do those things? Why had I enjoyed it so much?

I never told my parents. They refused my request to quit swimming lessons. For the rest of the time, I parked my bike near the library and walked around the pool building from the other side to avoid possible contact with the man, though I felt such loathing and disgust with myself for even considering that I might want to see him again.

I consider that morning the moment that it all began, when the long train of events that have brought me to the point where I now find myself began. Forty years ago today, June 5, 2008, the morning Bobby Kennedy was shot and the morning I was molested at swimming lessons.where I now find myself began. Forty years ago today, June 5, 2008, the morning Bobby Kennedy was shot and the morning I was molested at swimming lessons.