It’s no wonder that I felt alone. I was alone. I was also lucky in finding someone else who was willing to tell their secret in my 20s. Most survivors remain alone with their trauma for decades. Even when they go about their lives, marry, have families, etc., they live alone in their trauma. Others tried to tell someone and weren’t believed, which is a level of being alone that I cannot imagine.
It was worth it, though. Stephanie is correct; if you don’t define yourself, other people will. It happened as a child to many of us when an abuser defined us as someone whom they could abuse; we took that lesson to heart and allowed others to keep defining us repeatedly. Some of those people may have wanted to help, some likely didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The only person who has the right to define you is you.
This logic that emotional and psychological abuse isn’t “as bad” gives short shrift to the people who’ve been psychologically abused. We also don’t recognize the emotional and psychological abuse that went on alongside the other forms of abuse in our situations. That can limit us when it comes to healing. We can’t heal what we don’t know. If we ignore the impacts of these other forms of abuse, we run the risk of dealing with the effects for the rest of our lives instead of taking them on in our healing work.
We struggle enough to talk about grief when someone dies. We don’t even come close to acknowledging the other things we can and should be grieving. As an abuse survivor, I still grieve for the childhood I never had, the close relationships with parents I never had, and the freedom to enjoy life that I didn’t have as a child.
The amount of courage and effort it took to tell you deserves more than a dismissive comment.
Boys get molested. I was one of them. Lots of other men you know were likely molested, too. Some of them may not even know because we weren’t taught that boys could be victims of sexual abuse. After all, if our bodies reacted, we must have wanted it somehow.
This reasoning is so outdated and harmful. Men who were sexually abused as children deserve to have their stories told. All survivors deserve access to support and resources. It’s the very least we can do.
