N
Needtovent
I will begin this awful story by stating that this is not a childhood and adolescent autobiography. I honestly, truly, wish to portray the struggles I went through to feel “normal” because I never truly understood nor accepted how deeply I was troubled. I developed a pseudo-perfectionist attitude where I could prove to everyone of my worth through success; good grades, best-in-class results in band, prestigious awards and scholarships, earning a college degree—a first in my family. But, in the end, I realized rather harshly that putting your happiness and self-worth in the hands of others is not only foolish but leads to disaster.
When I reflect on my life, I honestly cannot pinpoint a time when things just fell apart while growing up. For some reason, I was able to suppress a lot of the negative memories and overcompensate by being successful academically (no pretentiousness here, I am a nerd). I always feared men figures; my step-father and I fought never-endingly. But it progressed into manipulation, where I felt I could outsmart him and make his life a nightmare. Why? Well, that will require a bit of a history lesson.
When I was somewhere in the 2-3 year old range, I was frequently at a daycare near my mom’s work. My mother was an incredibly hard worker; she would work her day job, but then deliver newspapers early morning before dropping me off for school. I frequently spent time with my grandmother at her overnight job working at the airport docks. For me, this was the beginning of a sleep cycle that would plague me for the better part of my life. But I also learned a lot about work ethic, the strength of women, and sacrifice.
Despite my family’s best intentions, something terrible happened to me at that daycare. To this day, I cannot fully recall everything. Throughout my life, more and more has revealed itself to me. Therapist call these “repressed memories”, but to me it is a hidden nightmare. What I do remember is being trapped within the tunnels of the playground equipment (much like a McDonald’s play area) by two boys that were much older. Do I ever want to remember the rest? I don’t know. But I fear one day I will know whether I want to or not.
After that, I started acting much different. I had this sudden curiosity about sexuality and knew about sexual acts I should never know at 3 years old. I rarely share this, but another boy in the neighborhood and I began acting out some sexual acts and were caught by a neighbor. I blamed myself for years for this, but how does a child know sexuality and the likes? It was forced upon me somehow and while begin caught by the neighbor was hard, the reaction by my family scarred me forever.
This portion of my life is what is blacked out the most. I have fragments of memories, but mainly I have feelings and emotions that I can feel as clear as day that overwhelm me when I think about it. When I was 29-years old, I was reading a book about childhood trauma. The quote that shattered everything for me was this: “Sometimes, children are so overtaken by the fear of what they perceived has happened that they may even beg and plead for the parental figure to not disclose or address the abuse…” I had my first flashback: sitting at my parents table explaining what I was caught doing with the neighbor boy….my mother was enraged that the daycare event had happened (though she has never disclosed what actually happened), but the real defining moment was the reaction of my step-dad. To him, I was now a faggot. I was gay, I was an embarrassment, and most of all, it was public. Ironically, I am not gay. I was a confused child. The torment that followed has scarred me beyond belief.
Through therapy, I realized my fear of needles actually stems from my step-father. After most of this occurred, he became addicted to pain medication. Eventually, he found it amusing to inject me with “allergy shots” that were actually mixes of heroin and morphine. He would put on masks and chase me; I have reoccurring nightmares of him trying to “find me” during games. I would burrow under beds, in towel closets, even outside. The outdoors became the only place I felt safe and I routinely ate outside and slept outside.
After we moved away from the neighborhood where the “incident” happened, my step-father decided a faggot child didn’t deserve to eat inside. I was forced to eat outdoors at a wooden table and could not come inside until my step-father inspected my plate. Once, when I could not finish everything, he stabbed a knife through my hand and told me I could come inside when I removed it. I still have this scar…I was 5 years old.
I have very weird, fragmented memories from this time. I do not remember seeing other kids often; I have memories of all 3 of us (my mom, myself, and step-dad) in the shower and my mother looking shamed. She once tried to leave and he chased us down the middle of town telling us to come back. We did….and this is where a rift happened between my mother and I.
She told me eventually to “stay with a friend” and the next day he was dead. I almost didn’t know what to feel…I felt so unworthy of love and was ashamed to be me. My mother did little to help…she immediately remarried (and I mean within a year) and I never understood why she never took the time to help me heal.
The man she married is a good man deep down but constantly triggers me. He is rough, abrasive at times, and as compassionate as a rabid badger. He undoubtedly loves my mother, but I have never shaken the feeling that I wasn’t worth the time to help…being married for my mom was more important than helping me cope. The byproduct of this is my mother and I never spoke much about this until my life fell apart about 25 years later.
Social interactions can really be hard for me at times, but I managed throughout college. I graduated college with a BBA and was able to secure a job with a great company. I really, really tried my best to be “normal” and make my family proud. I found a wonderful woman that I fell in love with immediately a few years after graduation and we got married, and my life felt like it was moving forward. We bought a home nearby and eventually remodeled a home in a prime area. My wife was navigating through law school and all seemed to be as planned. But, something terrible happened. My Wife was raped…at a party. She was never the same. I was never the same…I never forgave myself. Memories I had not had in an eternity began to flood my mind.
But that wasn’t the end. During her recovery, she developed some sort of psychosis associated with her PTSD from the rape. She nor I knew this was the case and the entire situation was traumatizing for us both. Her family wanted to commit her to a hospital, but I did not. She told me her greatest fear was becoming some wacko, and I did not think she was that at all. I tried everything, but her family threatened to sue me for power of attorney to make it happen. I was able to get her to voluntarily admit herself, but she never forgave me for this. It tore me apart having to do this but I didn’t know what to do and had no support it felt like. I felt so helplessly alone and unable to reach out to my family nor her family for guidance.
After she got out, she did not remember most of what had happened per se—she can remember the events but the timelines and details escape her. She blamed me for so much, and so did I. No matter how much I explained to her I never wanted that to happen and tried to do everything in my power, she became bitter toward me and hated me. She cheated on me twice…once with a homeless man that she was “helping”. My friends and family saw it through social media and pictures and I was beyond humiliated. I am not asserting I am better than anyone, nor am I saying that man was lowly because he was homeless. But, I didn’t deserve to be treated like that. She divorced me soon after. I miss her to this day and blame myself deeply.
I find myself in such a precarious situation. I have childhood trauma that is emerging from my subconscious; I have deep, soul wrenching guilt about the loss of my marriage; I don’t know how to mend the relationship with my mother or tell her about what happened to me. I am so lost. I lost my job, most of my friends, my marriage, my house, my savings, my 401k, even my dog. I feel so lonely but can’t get out of bed most days.
I find that I’m so tired inside and don’t know why life is so hard for some and not others. Above all, I want to feel normal and want to be loved. I want to love myself and feel safe, but I just can’t see how I can recover. I’m a good person but I am damaged beyond repair I fear.
When I reflect on my life, I honestly cannot pinpoint a time when things just fell apart while growing up. For some reason, I was able to suppress a lot of the negative memories and overcompensate by being successful academically (no pretentiousness here, I am a nerd). I always feared men figures; my step-father and I fought never-endingly. But it progressed into manipulation, where I felt I could outsmart him and make his life a nightmare. Why? Well, that will require a bit of a history lesson.
When I was somewhere in the 2-3 year old range, I was frequently at a daycare near my mom’s work. My mother was an incredibly hard worker; she would work her day job, but then deliver newspapers early morning before dropping me off for school. I frequently spent time with my grandmother at her overnight job working at the airport docks. For me, this was the beginning of a sleep cycle that would plague me for the better part of my life. But I also learned a lot about work ethic, the strength of women, and sacrifice.
Despite my family’s best intentions, something terrible happened to me at that daycare. To this day, I cannot fully recall everything. Throughout my life, more and more has revealed itself to me. Therapist call these “repressed memories”, but to me it is a hidden nightmare. What I do remember is being trapped within the tunnels of the playground equipment (much like a McDonald’s play area) by two boys that were much older. Do I ever want to remember the rest? I don’t know. But I fear one day I will know whether I want to or not.
After that, I started acting much different. I had this sudden curiosity about sexuality and knew about sexual acts I should never know at 3 years old. I rarely share this, but another boy in the neighborhood and I began acting out some sexual acts and were caught by a neighbor. I blamed myself for years for this, but how does a child know sexuality and the likes? It was forced upon me somehow and while begin caught by the neighbor was hard, the reaction by my family scarred me forever.
This portion of my life is what is blacked out the most. I have fragments of memories, but mainly I have feelings and emotions that I can feel as clear as day that overwhelm me when I think about it. When I was 29-years old, I was reading a book about childhood trauma. The quote that shattered everything for me was this: “Sometimes, children are so overtaken by the fear of what they perceived has happened that they may even beg and plead for the parental figure to not disclose or address the abuse…” I had my first flashback: sitting at my parents table explaining what I was caught doing with the neighbor boy….my mother was enraged that the daycare event had happened (though she has never disclosed what actually happened), but the real defining moment was the reaction of my step-dad. To him, I was now a faggot. I was gay, I was an embarrassment, and most of all, it was public. Ironically, I am not gay. I was a confused child. The torment that followed has scarred me beyond belief.
Through therapy, I realized my fear of needles actually stems from my step-father. After most of this occurred, he became addicted to pain medication. Eventually, he found it amusing to inject me with “allergy shots” that were actually mixes of heroin and morphine. He would put on masks and chase me; I have reoccurring nightmares of him trying to “find me” during games. I would burrow under beds, in towel closets, even outside. The outdoors became the only place I felt safe and I routinely ate outside and slept outside.
After we moved away from the neighborhood where the “incident” happened, my step-father decided a faggot child didn’t deserve to eat inside. I was forced to eat outdoors at a wooden table and could not come inside until my step-father inspected my plate. Once, when I could not finish everything, he stabbed a knife through my hand and told me I could come inside when I removed it. I still have this scar…I was 5 years old.
I have very weird, fragmented memories from this time. I do not remember seeing other kids often; I have memories of all 3 of us (my mom, myself, and step-dad) in the shower and my mother looking shamed. She once tried to leave and he chased us down the middle of town telling us to come back. We did….and this is where a rift happened between my mother and I.
She told me eventually to “stay with a friend” and the next day he was dead. I almost didn’t know what to feel…I felt so unworthy of love and was ashamed to be me. My mother did little to help…she immediately remarried (and I mean within a year) and I never understood why she never took the time to help me heal.
The man she married is a good man deep down but constantly triggers me. He is rough, abrasive at times, and as compassionate as a rabid badger. He undoubtedly loves my mother, but I have never shaken the feeling that I wasn’t worth the time to help…being married for my mom was more important than helping me cope. The byproduct of this is my mother and I never spoke much about this until my life fell apart about 25 years later.
Social interactions can really be hard for me at times, but I managed throughout college. I graduated college with a BBA and was able to secure a job with a great company. I really, really tried my best to be “normal” and make my family proud. I found a wonderful woman that I fell in love with immediately a few years after graduation and we got married, and my life felt like it was moving forward. We bought a home nearby and eventually remodeled a home in a prime area. My wife was navigating through law school and all seemed to be as planned. But, something terrible happened. My Wife was raped…at a party. She was never the same. I was never the same…I never forgave myself. Memories I had not had in an eternity began to flood my mind.
But that wasn’t the end. During her recovery, she developed some sort of psychosis associated with her PTSD from the rape. She nor I knew this was the case and the entire situation was traumatizing for us both. Her family wanted to commit her to a hospital, but I did not. She told me her greatest fear was becoming some wacko, and I did not think she was that at all. I tried everything, but her family threatened to sue me for power of attorney to make it happen. I was able to get her to voluntarily admit herself, but she never forgave me for this. It tore me apart having to do this but I didn’t know what to do and had no support it felt like. I felt so helplessly alone and unable to reach out to my family nor her family for guidance.
After she got out, she did not remember most of what had happened per se—she can remember the events but the timelines and details escape her. She blamed me for so much, and so did I. No matter how much I explained to her I never wanted that to happen and tried to do everything in my power, she became bitter toward me and hated me. She cheated on me twice…once with a homeless man that she was “helping”. My friends and family saw it through social media and pictures and I was beyond humiliated. I am not asserting I am better than anyone, nor am I saying that man was lowly because he was homeless. But, I didn’t deserve to be treated like that. She divorced me soon after. I miss her to this day and blame myself deeply.
I find myself in such a precarious situation. I have childhood trauma that is emerging from my subconscious; I have deep, soul wrenching guilt about the loss of my marriage; I don’t know how to mend the relationship with my mother or tell her about what happened to me. I am so lost. I lost my job, most of my friends, my marriage, my house, my savings, my 401k, even my dog. I feel so lonely but can’t get out of bed most days.
I find that I’m so tired inside and don’t know why life is so hard for some and not others. Above all, I want to feel normal and want to be loved. I want to love myself and feel safe, but I just can’t see how I can recover. I’m a good person but I am damaged beyond repair I fear.
