Isolated (One Of A Hundred Ways To Introduce Myself)

[Llama]

So, as I'm sure many people have felt when joining the community, I'm feeling a great deal of anxiety over starting a thread to say hi. I feel like what I have to say isn't important enough to warrant creating my own thread (lack of self esteem), I fear that I'm somehow doing something wrong and will get into trouble for it (fear of authority figures), and I definitely don't want to make myself the center of attention because it's so hard to escape if everyone is watching you, isn't it?

I'm lucky enough to be far enough along in my treatment that my rational voice is at least loud enough to be heard. Sometimes I can not only hear it, but believe it too! Rationally I know all these fears and worries are, well silly is a demeaning word though it's the first to come into my head. Irrational, I think, suits better. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who feels that there are a minimum of two selves living in one body.

And look, I've got avoidance down to an art form, because I'm two paragraphs in and I've still not introduced myself in any way.

I suffer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There are many compounding issues that lead to this, but the biggest culprit would be the sexual abuse I suffered at the hands (and other extremities) of my stepfather. The abuse started approximately when I was 12. I have a hard time with time lines so everything is approximate in my world. My mother walked in on it a few times, and each time she made him promise to get help. My two brothers had no idea of what was happening.

When I was 15, my mother found a video tape of him abusing me. That was, apparently, the point where she felt that it wasn't going to be changing and she kicked him out of the house, went to the police and got a restraining order.

One would think that this would have been the end of things.

In the mornings before he would go to work, I'd here a tapping on my window (I lived in a basement room). The tapping wouldn't stop until I'd let him in. I tried to ignore it, but it just wouldn't stop. I knew that if I let him in it would be over soon and then he'd go away, so at least I'd get the rest of the day to myself.

Sometimes that didn't happen. At one point he tricked me, calling in a different voice saying he knew my mom and wanted me to babysit. He gave me the address to a house, but when I went to find the house the number just wasn't there. He was waiting for me, and took me to his apartment.

This went on until he was finally forced to leave the small town I was living in.

You'd think -that- would have been the end of it.

During the summer I went to a sports camp 8-10 hours away from where I lived. It was heaven, I loved it, until the day he pulled up beside me as I was walking back to the sleeping quarters. He stalked me the rest of the time I was at the camp. The town was 15 minutes away from the border of Canada and the US. The police couldn't follow him across it.

The case finally came to court, he pled guilty (video tapes are hard to ignore) and was sentenced to the maximum sentence at the time. Two years plus 1 day. That 1 day meant a lot to me, it meant that instead of a provincial prison, he would be going to the federal prison.

That was right before my 16th birthday.

13 years later I found out he was being charged with first degree murder. That really turned my world upside down. You see, I'd convinced myself he was harmless. I'd convinced myself he was a pedophile and just couldn't control his urges, that he was sick. This meant that I wasn't in any danger from him. The fact he could commit murder meant that all those years that I was convincing myself I was safe, I'd been lying to myself. The entire system of belief I'd built for myself came tumbling down around me, and if it hadn't been for my partner I don't think that I would have survived it. I was very relieved when he was sentenced to life in prison, no chance of parole for 20 years. Now I'm 30 and still trying to deal with something that happened more than half my lifetime ago.

As a side note, I'm gay. This may come up when I refer to my partner/girlfriend. (You see that? I am a master at Avoidance, especially when it comes to emotions.)

Well that's my basic back story. There's a lot more of course but that's enough to start with.

As to the title of my introduction, well that really boils down to the fact that I have no one in my life who really understands what I'm going through day to day. My girlfriend is wonderful and supportive and she understands on a theoretical level a lot of what's happening. She suffers from anxiety a lot, so she understands that. She gets frustrated though, with a lot of my symptoms, especially the ones that I don't even know are symptoms.

I've been looking, for many years, for a local support group and haven't been able to find anything. I've looked online and all I've found (until now) was a bunch of people who were more concerned with being victims and revelling in their trauma with each other. What I wanted was a group of intelligent people who could understand what I'm going through, could communicate on a more intellectual level than what I'd previously encountered, and could talk about and discuss the issues we face, and ways that we can learn to cope with them.

I have to say that what I've seen here so far is very promising, and I'm so glad that I stumbled on this place. I think that it will be a great fit.

So yeah, Hi :)

 

[Clydiechick]

Hi

Welcome to the forum. You have come to the right place. You have been through so much. Look forward to seeing you around the forum.

Clydie

 

[Deleted member 541]

Welcome to the forum.....


Yes, your stepfather was sick, more than sick, but as a child, you had to do/think what you needed to, to survive....he is now where he belongs, and you are safe from him.....

Avoidance is a tool that we have all used at one time or another. You are aware that you use it, so you can now learn how to deal, without using avoidance...hard, but it can be done...As far as your sexual preference, that is your choice, and no one here will judge you, if you are afraid of that. We don't judge here...

You will find also that we don't do the victim mode here either. Oh, sometimes we can get down, sad, whine, and bitch, but for the most part, most of us are here to work on our trauma, learn new things, and to be supportive.....There is also an occasional kick in the ass from one of us, if needed.....Firm, but done with knowing that it helps, and it's the best way....Sympathy, keeps a person in victim mode, and stops them from moving forward in their healing.....

 

[avictor]

Llama, it reads to me like you feel guilty over the abuse you suffered.
Like you could have stopped it but chose not to.

You let him have his way partly because you KNEW all along he was capable of murder.
It wasn't you gave in to make him give you peace - you were both scared and emotionally manipulated (and no that does NOT make you stupid)

Everything and all the vocab you have learned during your treatment you can't avoid that. Nice try though sweetie.
(hope that's not a trigger word for you - I use it to show understanding)


You only told yourself he was harmless so you could deal with his abuse.

I remember all to well thinking my Dad would only kill me on accident, you know when he would lose control.
You are healing which is wonderful one step at a time.

But you are at the point where you are trying to hide behind intelligence.
Recognize that is because only now you look back and see the ways you could have stopped that abuse.
Shit I had to write a whole book and get an offer to publish to feel worthy of telling my story.
If that sounds silly to you then understand you are sorta exhibiting the same mindset.

My point is wow, you have been through a lot!
And you are amazing for what you have become despite of it BUT and you know this is true I even think you want someone to call you on it...
you are hiding behind a fake you.

Learning to identify and use the terminology for the break down of the symptoms of your PTSD probably gives you a sense of control but if you want to really break through and be able to be the person you would be with out PTSD you need to be 'real'.
I know you wanted me to tell you that.

WE all know now you are smart depite the fact you 'let' (and i cannot emphazie the quotes around 'let' enough) this sick F word abuse you.
Huge Hugs, Amber

 

[Llama]

You're so right in a lot of ways Avictus. I hide behind scientific fact, and cold hard facts when I'm relating my story, because it shields me from feeling the emotion of it. For many, many years I didn't feel emotions at all because I'd blocked myself from them so well.

I was such a precocious child, the reason I never told anyone what was happening, and the reason I let it go on was because I didn't want my family to have to move. You see, in the town I grew up in there were two coal mines, and the houses in the town were owned by the mines, not the people living there. One of the mines would allow anyone at all to rent them, but the other mine (the one my step-father worked for) would only allow people who worked for them to live in their houses.

This meant that, if I were to have told someone what was happening then something would have been done to stop it. If it was stopped then my step-father would be removed, and we would not be able to live in that house anymore because no one would be working for the mine. We'd be homeless, I was sure.

Oh I thought that we might figure something out, or at least live with my dad for awhile (he lived in the same town and he and my mom were still friendly), but we'd lose the house that we had all come to love, and put so much work into making our own.

Also, I was afraid that I would lose my cat.

My fears were not unfounded because once my mother told the police it all turned out exactly as I had thought. My step-father took the cat, we were kicked out of the house and my mom, a single mother working at a grocery store bakery, had to try and manage rent and bills on her own. We lived in a different house for a almost a year I think, and then she couldn't afford it anymore and we went to live with my dad.

I was always afraid that my step-father might be violent, but I always convinced myself that he had never shown any sign of violence towards me and that meant that he wasn't a violent person. I think part of me knew I was lying to myself, but I wanted to believe it so badly that I let myself. And of course there is a part of me that feels partly responsible for the murder of this poor woman, that I should have somehow done something more to make sure he couldn't hurt anyone else the way he'd hurt me, or hurt them worse.

We tried our best to keep him away from other children. Many of the people in the town I grew up in tried. People kept tabs on him. It was found he was working with children teaching first-aid. Someone sent an anonymous story to the newspaper about him, it was printed and he was fired. He was teaching kids in Cadets (similar to boy scouts but sponsored by the Canadian Military), when I joined the military I told my interviewing officer we had discovered this and he put a stop to it immediately. We found out he was dating a woman with a 12 year old daughter, but before we could warn her we learned that she'd left him. Smart woman figured it out on her own, but hopefully not too late.

He was still in public though, and I feel betrayed by the justice system, because a psychopath was allowed to continue hurting people. It shouldn't have taken a death to keep this man behind bars.

 

[therubyslippers]

You're displaying such courage posting about your story - thank you. I can't imagine what it's like to go through something like you did. You may have previously blocked out emotion, but as Amber said, healing is one step at a time.

You were a child, who was taken advantage of and you are NOT AT FAULT for anything that happened to you or the woman he killed. You didn't cause anything. That monster did. There is only so much that a traumatized person, especially a young person, can do about a situation like that. And your actions attempting to keep him away from kids probably saved numerous children from going through what you did. You're right, it IS the justice system's job to make sure people like your step-father are kept in prison. It shouldn't have taken a death to keep that terrible person off the streets. I am refraining from swearing and calling him the names I want to call him in an effort to not get kicked out of the forum :) Ugh, he sucks. I'm really really sorry you had to go through what you did.

I relate to some of the things you're feeling - especially when you say that you feel like no one understands you, and that you feel like your girlfriend is getting frustrated. I've been with my boyfriend for about 2.5 years now, and I was with him the day of my accident. In the last few months, I sense that he sometimes gets frustrated/annoyed because he doesn't understand why I act the way I do sometimes or why I can't control my emotions sometimes. It is the major problem we have in our relationship, and I can't tell how much of it is me being overly sensitive vs. him not being as understanding as I'd like him to be.

And as a side note I have a cat myself, and I always worry that something will happen to her. I would be devastated if I lost her :(

 

[emote]

Llama,

I relate in so many ways. We quite possibly all relate in our own ways; it's why we're here after all.

It's sad to think that so many young children are manipulated and emotionally abused (as well as physically and sexually) but it's the emotional scarring that's the hardest to heal. And it's sad to think about that. I feel as though being sad is such a vulnerable emotion; one, in which, I have no time for. I've built up this gigantic wall around me so no one can see how tortured and my emotional scars. It's like a physical scar; I'm ashamed of it.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

 

[ISupportHer]

I am not going to try to advise or anything. I just have a few statements, I guess.

One, that I fully can understand that things happen and sometimes people just have to survive. I can only imagine the conflict of feeling that a victim should have "done something" when, if fact, they could not when they were not in the position of power.

Gotta agree with SheCat about trying to get out of the victim roll in you can and maybe needing a "kick in the ass" sometimes. Well, I have referred to it a little differently, LOL but we all sometimes need a little jolt to be able to perhaps see things in a slightly different perspective. And that is not a bad thing.

And last, that each and every one reading and responding to you cares.

ISH