I am 50 years old. My father died shortly before I was born so I never knew him. Saw a picture and he looked just like me as a man. I don’t have anything of his….just some memories…memories of his picture and some love letters he wrote my Mom….beautiful letters….I think I have his heart.
My mother and I lived with my father’s family because she was unable to support us on her own after he died. There was my grandmother, her mother, and my grandfather. I have no bad or insecure memories from this time period…up until I was at least three.
My mother remarried when I was three, and my stepfather adopted me a little while later. I felt safe for awhile after that I think, but my stepfather was very controlling, domineering, and mean. By the time I was five or six I remember feeling a lot of fear much of the time. The reason I remember is because that’s when I began First grade. I was very afraid and insecure in school and had difficulty concentrating and learning. I was aware that I was having great difficulty in school and my stepfather made me feel stupid by comments he made, mostly subtle comments. He would make remarks about the uncertainty of my genealogy for example…I remember his telling me he could be sure about my brother’s intelligence but not mine because they really didn’t know much about my father and his lineage, because he was also adopted. One night I was having difficulty with my spelling and I was very frustrated and in tears. He made me stand in the corner of the room and cry until I could spell a word. It was a very simple word but I was so upset and humiliated I just couldn’t do it. Finally, after a long time of humiliation, frustration, and sobbing, my mother rescued me. I am still angry at my step-father for this whenever I think back on it. And I’m also angry with my mother for allowing it. I am angry because a grown man or woman should not humiliate a child, or permit it. Children should be encouraged rather than discouraged. My whole life, I’ve felt discouraged, inferior, and stupid.
Anyway, then, when I was around eight I think, my mother went home for awhile, leaving us alone with my stepfather for a few days. I believe she left because her mother was sick or had died, I don’t remember. But that’s when the sexual abuse began. The first time it was just fondling, done under the pretense of making me feel ‘special.’ This quickly progressed to oral sex and continued for about 2 years I think….he carefully coerced and manipulated me (and my mother), and although I knew something was wrong and felt it wasn’t okay, I felt unable or powerless to stop it. Now I realize I was powerless because I was just a kid and he was a grown man. Anyway, when I was about ten the sexual abuse abruptly stopped. Then, when I was about eleven, I was beginning to realize it was wrong for sure and tried to ‘bait’ him so I could tell my mother what he had done, but he wouldn’t take the ‘bait.’ He somehow knew I’d figured it all out. So I just internalized all the feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. I kept our ‘dirty little secret’ and all those horrible feelings for another 25 years until I was 35 because I felt somehow responsible, or at least partly responsible. By that time I had married my 2nd wife of 23 years now…..I had become very, very depressed….and I trusted her, so I told her what had happened. That’s when I think my recovery really began, about 15 years ago.
I had had what I believe was a ‘spiritual experience,’ so I started going back to church….I also became a school volunteer presenting a child abuse prevention program at various elementary schools about the County. But church and the volunteer work didn’t work well for long, just a couple of years, because one of my symptoms from the abuse became more and more apparent…alcoholism. So, tormented and desperate again, I joined AA and stayed for nearly eight years….no booze and lots of step work. But I became disillusioned again eventually because I could not rid myself of my feelings of depression, unhappiness, and despair. (I remember reading a story of Bill Wilson’s, co-founder of AA, where he said that after so many years, six or eight I think, he had no more feelings of depression….but this never happened to me.) Looking back, no matter what I did, I think I continued to suffer from some sort of chronic, low-grade depression that stemmed from my childhood abuse. What I wrongly decided is that I had this childhood abuse problem that had caused me to drink excessively…and I reasoned that I had confronted the problem and fixed it, so now I was ‘normal.’ So I left AA to find happiness in normalcy I believe. I think I had the feeling that if this is as good as it gets, I might as well drink.
So, leaving AA after about eight years, I drank periodically over the next five. Finally, I gradually became miserable enough again that I made my way back to AA hoping against hope that it would somehow work this time and I would find the happiness and peace I’d missed before. And, for six or eight months I seemed to do better but still felt a sadness I could not overcome, and I drank twice in the end in order just to get a little relief from my feelings of despair. I wasn’t suicidal this last time but I became very preoccupied with death….even daydreaming about my eulogy from time to time….how sick is that? Finally I began to realize for sure that I was suffering from depression of some sort, and that I needed something more than AA, or rather in addition to it, because AA had never given me the level of happiness and joy that I knew many were able to achieve there. I began to realize that my sexual abuse was probably behind the depression. I wasn’t having ‘flashbacks’ or nightmares, but what I kept having was like ‘thought intrusion’ about the abuse, and also insomnia. So I went to my doctor, a childhood friend, and told him about the abuse and what I thought…and he started me on anti-depressant medication right away. I felt some immediate relief. Also, I began EA, another 12-step group that deals with emotional problems, because I’m aware now that I have emotional ‘dis-ease,’ probably all stemming back to my childhood abuse.
I realize now that for the past 40 years I’ve been suffering from depression stemming from my childhood emotional and sexual abuse. The symptoms I’m aware of are low self-esteem, feelings of stupidity and inadequacy, anxiety, shame, anger and even rage, not to mention alcoholism. A psychiatrist has recommended I consider long-term therapy….probably sessions of two per month for eight months she says. I may do this when finances permit, probably will, but in the mean time I think that EA may be the answer for me to achieve emotional sobriety, happiness, and peace of mind. I hope so as my little group of eight or ten consists about half of incest survivors that I’m aware of.
I am still angry with 3 people:
- my step-father because he betrayed me, demeaned and abused me
- my mother because she didn’t rescue me and has never been capable of helping
me
- but mainly myself because I’ve never been able to get over this and feel incapable
at times of taking care of myself and my family the way ‘I should’…I still feel
stupid and inadequate sometimes because a psychopath convinced me of that years
ago, and I resent myself for not being able to outgrow it. I have always been
financially insecure.
The only things I’ve found to relieve my anger are detachment, prayer, and talking about it with friends. So that’s what I do.
My strengths are:
- I have a great little family that loves and appreciates me, and I have been
a good husband and father. I also have some very good friends who respect me
and trust me.
- I’m beginning to think or realize that my depression, financial difficulties
and insecurities, anxieties, etc., are the result, at least to a very large
degree, of my childhood abuse and insecurity, i.e., my shortcomings aren’t really
‘all my fault’ by any means because I’ve done about the best I could under the
circumstances….but, from here on out I want to try hard to be ‘response-able’
for myself. I want to try to forgive and love myself, and that is very difficult
for me at times.
- I like to help others because it makes me feel good. And all I’ve ever really
wanted from life is to feel good. I feel good today because writing my story
has helped me know myself a little better. And, having done this, I am more
hopeful today about my continued recovery. And more hopeful still that someone
may read this and be helped some also. I am beginning to accept myself as I
am and where I am in recovery. I like myself today…maybe it’s even love? I’ve
found my wounded soul. He’s still afraid sometimes and sad too, but he’ll be
okay now because I’m learning to take better care of him. :)