Life After Sexual Victimization, Freedom in Recovery Part 2
Solution: Freedom Using Love Not Others
“The string of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music”
The next morning I drearily dragged myself out of bed and began working on my hang over. Because my cousin was only visiting for a few days, and I still had the sincerity of southern hospitality in my blood, I had to get to a spot where I could entertain. I had to scrape pretty hard. The drunk fog that whirled around me all day had now mixed with the thick soil of self-despair creating a viscous mud that dried in the kiln of sleep and dreams, preventing most movement- both body and mind. He was not home yet from the meeting so I hopped into the shower with a beer, a recipe for relief I was very proud of creating. I showered with haste so that I could consume another before his return from the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. This was the recipe for success I had created; I had to be a good host.
He returned from the meeting and bounced around like a child while he finished unpacking from the night before, settling into my house like it was gigantic blanket fort. Between shuffling through his tightly stuffed suitcase and fluffing out his clothes, remembering what he had packed and connecting his devices to the power outlets he mumbled, “wow that meeting was spectacular, it seems like there are a lot of kind people in this town.” I did not get that sense at all. This ski town was filled with selfish assholes with a lot of money who enjoying touting their egos and kept themselves busy by engaging in conversation in which they desperately tried proving to each other that their story was better than the other. At this point, at 29 years old, I still had not learned the lessons from The Beauty and the Beast. The more you look at the ugliness in a monster the more monstrous it becomes. The next words I said changed my life forever, “I think 'i’ll join tomorrow, if that’s cool with you?”. Maybe I asked if I could join him the next morning because I didn’t believe his take on the town, maybe I wanted to find ways to prove him wrong, or maybe I was just on my way to getting loose and I let my tongue tango before my mind could catch up. It doesn’t matter why I said that now, the cat was out and he was going to chase it like a rabid dog.
For the rest of the day he talked about how sobriety had changed his life. He ran with it in the car, on a hike, at lunch and well into the evening. The evening prior he had only mentioned he was sober. Now he was running around like a kid with a Christmas present… in a fort. He had got me to say I wanted to join and he was not going to give this present up for anything. He continued to encourage me throughout the day by sharing his story and illuminating the differences through great tales of the before and after kind. I now see that what he shared with me throughout that day was the beginning of the answer I had been looking for. He was practicing what became the key to freedom from trauma in my life. It took much time for me to find it. If trauma is your pain, I hope the following words will help you find it much sooner.
My cousin flew out shortly after the morning meeting that I attended with him. In this meeting I heard people say that they had moved through pain and lived life free of fear. This was something I needed to have. I was pretty desperate. I had sought counseling but I refused to go to support groups for sexual abuse. So, I went to a support group for alcoholics. I did not want to stop drinking; I just wanted some fucking support in my life. Shortly after joining this group I was told that in order to get through my pain, hurt and fears I needed to explore the role I played. I needed to revisit the events in which I had felt wronged. During my reunion with these experiences I would have to take responsibility for my part in the events. I would then need to call the other people involved and make amends, explaining my role in the situation. What the shit?!
To be honest I sort of stopped the Alcoholics Anonymous program there. I still regularly attend, but as of now I have not called all the people I believe wronged me. I have called and talked to many- but not everyone. I have not thought of the Japanese woman who came into my Cancun hotel room at midnight when I was 12 and told me to lay back on the bed while she “taught me how to have sex.” I have not muttered the name of the woman whom I woke up to straddling my member with her mouth after I passed out from getting too drunk and high at the company party. I have not spoken to the guy who told me to take my clothes off and rub myself this way while I do it to him because that’s how people show love, when I was no older than 5. I did not have the strength to push them away then and I haven’t had the strength to do so yet. I have not found where to take responsibility for these occurrences, but I have found the freedom that the other members speak of.
I heard a gentlemen say that one day his mentor asked him how he was doing and he replied, “doing well under the circumstances,” his mentor replied, “What are you doing under there?” I have found out that I don’t have to live under the circumstances. They can be in my life but I don’t have to live under the fear and pain they create.
Being molested and raped became a hurt worth attention, but it is slightly different than some events. Its different, but the solution is mostly the same. In the course of ones life there are many times that pain and hurt will arise. I have noticed, through much deliberate inspection, that in many cases I played a very crucial role in the subsequent hurt that arose. For instance, when I got a severe hang over I had to stop blaming the quality of the beer or the fact that the booze was cheap. It was not the quality that was to blame. I was the one who caused my hurt. I had drank the beer, regardless of it’s quality. It has become easy to pinpoint my role in cases like this. Lets dissect another one that is a degree more difficult, but not quite as illusive as rape. In every instance that I have ended up in a car wreck I have spent the next couple of months blaming the other driver. One time, I actually blamed the driver of the other car because their car was green and blended in with the large bushes. Because they blended in I did not see them when I jetted straight through a four-lane intersection. I blamed the color of the car and I blamed the goddamn bushes. I sure wasn’t to blame. Well maybe I was. After a few months of fighting with the insurance companies to receive full compensation I started to believe the truth. I was in a hurry to hop back on the highway because I was heading to Atlanta from Tennessee on a drug errand. I was on my way to pick up a few pounds of marijuana and a couple hundred pills of ecstasy and I had pulled off the highway to refuel. When I pulled onto the off ramp I realized that there was not a gas station nearby so I needed to get back on the interstate and find the next exit, ASAP. I hit my gas pedal like I was Evel Knievel about to jump a ramp over the Grand Canyon. I smacked into the other car and for the next few months I was furious. No wheels for my drug deals. No bueno, no bueno at all. I was furious until I accepted I was to blame, at that point I was actually able to laugh about the situation.
Am I able to laugh at the rape? No. Am I able to come up with a scenario that explains my role in the rape or abuse I faced? No. Am I able to recognize anger? YES! There it is. That is the similarity to the car wreck. I was angry with the other driver and I was angry with my abusers. The anger with the car wreck caused me to act on it. I called tons of insurance companies trying to find help. I talked to lawyers. In desperation I called the owner of the car and threatened him, “I have the best lawyers in Atlanta and will destroy you if you don’t assume the blame.” If there is one thing I have learned about anger is it is always okay to get angry, but rarely, if ever, okay to act on it. Some like to talk about this thing called “righteous anger” as being permissible but I still haven’t found a time it has worked. Maybe I’m just not righteous enough, but that’s ok, I have no gripes. The responsibility of God on me would be my collapse.
In triathlon I have learned that when a pain arises action must be taken. Inaction results in me giving up which is not an option. In the six months I have been training I have had 4 user injuries. The four I have had- Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, shoulder impingement and sciatica are excruciating and debilitating. Achilles tendinitis felt like the section connecting my heel to my calf was ripping like a rusty zipper with every pull required for each step I took. The second felt as if there was a golf ball in the pads of my foot and Tiger Woods was taking his iron to it trying to dislodge the ball from a sandy divot each time I stepped. The third was a shoulder pain that felt as if a tiny medieval warlord was protecting the upper reaches of my arm from the dirty hand people and every time I tried to raise my hand he would smash the muscles with a flail causing the drawbridge of my shoulder to give out. Sciatica feels like archers are nestled somewhere above my buttocks shooting arrows through the veins of my leg towards archers above my knee who just reload and send arrows right back.
Each of these injury cases I have had to make the same choice. I could resign, get some pain meds and stop working on a solution. This would most likely lead me to a lifetime of struggling with the ailment with some degree of discomfort, and remorse over giving up. Or I could find a way to work around them, thus a solution that kept on working no matter how much I put my body through. The first two I changed my form while running and the third I changed my stroke while swimming. At first I did not see the pain going away. Daily I thought I would have to give up and could never be a triathlete. I would go home from training and feel lost and beaten down. I’d submerge myself into ice and act like I wasn’t in too much pain around my wife. I didn’t want her to worry or to ask me to stop. Sciatica has been a different sort of monster, it isn’t form alone I had to change- it was my lifestyle. For this reason it is most similar to my sexual trauma, while the others seem more related to the cases of self-inflicted pain like a hang over or feelings over a car wreck.
With sciatic I had to start stretching throughout the day, before any activity, including sleep. I had to sit with proper posture and avoid long love affairs with the sweet embrace of a recliner. With all the fury of heaven and hell sciatica reminds me of any departure from these life changes. So I stretch. Its very tempting, however to rest for a few days with sciatica and take a vacation from stretching. While the most comfortable place to be with Sciatica is on the recliner, in my experience, this is also the worst place. When I rest on a recovery day and don’t share with her in some yoga then she gets very moody and starts throwing tantrums worse than chucky. To me this is the same as the pain and hurt I have over my trauma. If I don’t take action continually by sharing it then it tightens up and releases with anger.
In addition, I’ve noticed holding onto the same thoughts and feelings is much like doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. It’s an inadvertent way of repeating the cycle over and over. In this instance, it caused a lot of pain and hurt that did not need to happen. Yes it caused a lot of pain and hurt to me, but that didn’t mean I needed to spread that pain and hurt. Instead of spreading the hurt and pain by inflicting I can share the hurt and pain
I didn’t know I was doing that at the time, I figured I was just messed up mentally when it came to sexuality. But now, I think of the women I used to pronounce and display my masculine sexuality and the men I used to make myself feel desirable and worth money. I think of the embarrassment I caused by bragging how I slept with her or hooked up under the bleachers. I think of the pain and strain I must have put on my first girlfriend through in order to have sex. I encouraged it for months and when she finally conceded we ended up getting caught by her parents, naked as we came. She must have endured a life of strain in her family all because I pushed her to have sex and was so desperate I even pushed for it and went through with it in her parents’ house while they were there! I was kicked out of school for hooking up- for a long time I was mad at the school, and I never once thought about the difficulties the girl had getting over the ridicule she must have endured. And what about the men? The men who I allowed to climb around with me while I was seeking money and assurance- did they not have feelings too? Was my emotional security worth more than their marriages? Was it more important for me to feel like I wasn’t scum than anyone else? In doing things the way I did I may have felt important, sexy or masculine for a minute, but how long did it take for that emptiness to raise back up? Further, how many men and women felt like scum after being sexual with me? Did they all not feel used? But that was why I was doing this- I was used! I was used as a child and later as an adult! But, was I not doing the same thing, inflicting the same pain and hurt I had felt and expecting different results?
I have found a way to depart from this never ending cycle and I know that it is right because I want to give it away freely to anyone and everyone. I wanted to give away my body at great costs to self and others and I gave away my mind through 15 years of heavy drug use, at great cost to self and others. Now I want to give it away again- seems at times like a high cost (admitting this stuff- won’t family and friends think lowly of me?) but the difference is it is for the benefit of others. In return, somehow it has had great benefit to me. The world has changed inside of me and seems to be changing all around me. I don’t think it’s changing because of how I’m changing it; it’s changing because of how I’m seeing it. In seeing the world as an opportunity to give I don’t see it as a land where I must take. This is a change of lifestyle. This requires adjusting every action that I do and never sitting with it too long. I wandered through childhood confused as to if I was a real boy or if I should have been a girl. I ran through teen life believing I was an object and others were too. I left a courthouse feeling nothing, alone, ready to die.
The hurt requires action. I can continue to look at the world as being against me and as if I’m alone, but I don’t have to because when I share it I quickly learn that I’m not alone. This is why they say people who have been abused fare best in support groups. Its essential to share, otherwise I try to take everything from everyone to fill my void. If I keep it inside and don’t reach out then I remain a confused boy wishing desperately to give and receive the right kind of love. I repeat the same things causing the same hurt. However, there is a way to see the world as a place to get out the love I had trapped inside. I have learned it doesn’t come unless I send it out. So here is my way of sending it out. Here is me stretching my trauma muscles before I go exercise. Just as my cousin began to share with me on that fateful day I choose now to do the same, here… it’s no longer mine to hold onto- its ours to share- let us be healed.
Finkelhor, D., Hotaling, G., Lewis, I. A., & Smith, C. (1990). Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: Prevalence, characteristics and risk factors. Child Abuse & Neglect 14, 19-28. doi:10.1016/0145-2134(90)90077-7
Black, M. C., Basile, K. C., Breiding, M. J., Smith, S .G., Walters, M. L., Merrick, M. T., ... Stevens, M. R. (2011). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 summary report. Retrieved from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
Roberts, M. (2013) When a man is raped: A survival guide. NSW Health Education Centre against violence ISBN 1-876969075. Retrieved from NSW Department of Justice- victims services: https://www.victimsservices.justice.nsw.gov.au/sexualassault/Documents/guide_when-a-man-is-raped.pdf