I Survived: My Story of Abuse & Trauma
How I Managed to Stick Around for 47 Years of Life
(Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse. Child Abuse.)
When I was in my 20’s I travelled in different social groups in college. Typically they all had one thing in common: they were sort of misfits.
I had my buddies from the Marine Corps Reserves who I’d occasionally hang with. A small circle of friends who were way too up our ass about movies, music, and television. We could be insufferable assholes. And I had my table top role-playing buddies. They could be insufferable but in a fandom way.
None of these groups overlapped but I typically hung around with a certain type of person from each one. They were exclusively men. They didn’t do drugs on social occasions even though some of them liked to drink.
And we all liked women without exception.
For the most part we treated women respectfully given the dating climate of the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s. We weren’t gentlemen by any stretch of the imagination but we weren’t misogynistic either. Well not more than what passed for normal back then.
We weren’t really big club guys though we’d occasionally do that. Because as much as it probably remains the same today the sole purpose for going to a club was to pick up chicks for a one night stand. What they refer to today as hook up culture just without the online dating.
And even though we went about picking up women in different ways the dudes I ran with adhered to a similar set of norms and ethics.
It wasn’t a code we wrote down or agreed upon. It was just a set of unwritten rules. There weren’t any roofies involved. Drunk chicks were a no-no, or getting a chick drunk for sex was a major no-no. And above all lying to get laid was considered “weak” or “lame”. It meant your “game” was weak, and thus you were too as a man.
You could be up front, even crass with a heavy dose of dickishness. That was fair play but nothing that would take away or diminish a woman’s decision whether or not she wanted to have sex with you.
As a man in his 20’s that’s essentially how I travelled through the sexual marketplace.
One Saturday night I found myself drinking in a mixed group of guys. Some were my usual friends and a few were friends of friends. It was an apartment hang where someone brought a nice bottle of good moonshine.
(Note: I went to college in East Tennessee)
By this point hellraising every night of the week had become passé. Plus we all had jobs in some form, and sitting around drinking moonshine talking about Karl Marx, Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and the Cappadocian Fathers was the thing you did your senior year of undergrad.
That night we were listening to Fiona Apple. Before that we’d listened to Ani DiFranco. I wasn’t into the women singers at that time. Again my artists were exclusively men but I didn’t mind. Women artists didn’t speak to me back then because I didn’t think they had anything relevant to my lived experience. I wasn’t very enlightened at that time. I was about a decade away from reading Ariel Levy and Jessica Valenti.
About the time we were heavy enough into the liquor the bravado started to show.
“I’d fuck the shit outta that chick,” Greg said outta of nowhere.
”Fiona Apple?” I said more to make sure I heard him right.
”Fuck yeah man. She’s fucking gorgeous man,” Greg said emphatically as if that would up his chances with the singer-songwriter.
Greg was a mousey fucker. Scrawny, maybe five and a half feet and 150 if he was lucky. He was the guy who desperately wanted to play the guitar in the common area of the dorm, but couldn’t strum more then a few chords.
”Hey man do you,” I said with a chuckle. I didn’t really find her attractive. She was too little for my taste.
I’m 6’5” and at that time I’d given up the clubbing scene. I got serious about school, at that point anyway, and I’d been going to a full contact kick boxing school three times a week including weight training. I was about 230 lbs at around 10% body fat. I’d gotten it checked and wanted to get down to around 7% or 8%. I had fantasies of becoming a professional kickboxer and maybe going Force Recon in the Marine Corps as an officer after graduation. A lot of what I did back then revolved around “manly” pursuits.
I got some shit from the other guys as I knew I would for the Fiona crack.
“Fred you’re so full of shit! If Fiona fucking Apple was giving you the green light you’re tellin’ me that Big Nasty is gonna be ‘Nah I’m cool girl’?” my buddy Tom called me out. Big Nasty was my nickname because I was tall and I didn’t really have a filter on what I said. I’d claim I didn’t care what people thought even though I desperately cared what they thought. I’d cultivated an acidic personality more as a defense mechanism, and as a way to seem cool. It wasn’t cool. It was more often than not off-putting.
I would also sleep with any woman who’d have me. I had standards but they were pretty low.
”I’m in training my dude. Like the man said ‘Women. Weaken. Legs.'.” I said in my best Burgess Meredith from Rocky.
“Dude whatever. I’d fuck her. I would fucking rape that chick,” Greg exclaimed matter of factly.
It was a like a record scratch out of a movie. All the laughter, the conversation, even the air in the room was suddenly sucked out.
I wasn’t sure I’d heard Greg right. “What chu mean? Like rape-rape?” Maybe he was just being shocking. Using rape instead of wreck. Just trying to one up the room. That happened a lot. I had to be sure. He couldn’t be serious, right? Who would be serious about something like that?
“No man. I mean I’d fucking rape that chick. No way I’m passing up on that pussy,” He said as if he were ordering burger. He took another swig of moonshine.
I felt my heart rate pick up. A burning in my chest starting to spread.
“Hold up. So you’re saying that… That if Fiona Apple. Or fuck it any chick you wanted and she didn’t wanna give it up you’d just take it?”
I was leaning forward in the chair now. No more relaxed posture. Fight was kicking in. Flight had been locked out of the room. I set my glass of liquor aside. Greg’s answer depended on where this was gonna go.
“Dude if I knew I wouldn’t get caught. I mean I wouldn’t if I knew I’d get caught but…” at this point Greg noticed the rest of the room wasn’t going along with this. The others weren’t sure what to do. The silence was heavy, like the pulse of a white noise you know is there but you can’t hear.
“Not getting caught? That’s your fucking standard huh?”
Now I was just furious. I was literally on the edge of the seat. I pictured myself getting up, grabbing Greg by the throat with my left hand and slamming hammer fists down with my right hand like an enraged silverback ape until Greg’s face was a bloody pulp. I wouldn’t have to listen to him then.
Greg had enough sense to see he was about to be physically attacked, but he didn’t have enough sense to shut his mouth and leave.
“Dude what the fuck is your problem?!” He said defensively, but weakly. He was scared now.
“Oh I’ll tell you what my problem is you rapist piece of shit!” I stood up and made a beeline for Greg. Luckily for him he was sitting across from me, and flanked by my two friends who moved to restrain me.
It’s a bit of a blur after that. There wasn’t a fight but not from my lack of trying. My two buddies got me out of the apartment with me shouting every obscenity and threat I could think of at the top of my lungs.
“Dude you’re gonna get the cops called on us!” my buddy Tom said pulling me to his truck. “Shut the fuck up!”
I complied. I didn’t want my buddies to get in trouble.
Tom drove me back to his apartment. I crashed on his couch but I had fitful sleep. I just remember being angry well into the next day. A white hot rage that had nowhere to go so it had to burn off slowly.
I’d learn later I’d had a psychological “trigger” fire off. Basically it’s something that triggers a past trauma and pulls you back to the place you were as if the trauma were happening right then and there.
Greg avoided me after that. He left any group I came up on, or I’d wait until he was gone before I talked to our mutual friends. I didn’t go out to any social gathering he was gonna be at. I’d give him the death stare all night if I did.
I had triggers off and on throughout my life. It was part of the trauma I hadn’t even begun to process. I carried anxiety with me almost all the time which could be set off into a rage. And I would act on that rage especially if someone was perceived as a threat.
When I was eight years old I attacked a boy I’d been friends were for couple of months at afterschool care. He’d snuck up and tried to wrestle me to the ground from behind. Before I knew what I was doing I’d wrestled him to the ground, and was choking him with both hands. A counselor broke it up. We weren’t friends after that.
When I was in sophomore year of high school I transferred to another high school. On my last day at the old school our gym class was sitting in the bleachers for a hygiene lecture. One of a trio of upperclassmen who liked to pick on me threw gum in my hair. It was a pretty lucky shot from where they were sitting.
Of course the teacher decided that would be perfect time for an impromptu lesson on how to get gum out of your hair. Not only did she not get the gum out, but I got to be even more embarrassed by being her prop in the lecture. She also didn’t discipline the three boys other than telling them “your mommas wouldn’t appreciate that,” in her nasally southern twang. She’d actually seen it go down. I sure as shit didn’t tell her.
So I decided to leave early to take care of the gum. I was cleaning out my locker when one of the trio passed by me. It was during the class period so it was just me and him. No one else around.
“You throw that gum at me?”
“Yes I did!” He said laughing walking past me. I followed right behind him. I could still feel that gum hanging in my hair.
“Hey. Turn around for a second.”
When he turned I hit him in the face twice, and followed it up with punch to the stomach. Then I grabbed him and slammed his head into a metal locker. I remember the blood from his nose and lip smearing on the locker door. He’d managed to get free from me and ran toward a class room. I thought better of sticking around and left school. Thankfully I was driving by that point.
The school called my parents and told them about the incident. When they asked me I lied about it. “He threw gum in my hair.” I told them matter of factly as if I didn’t have anything to do with whatever he said. “He was laughing at me and not watching where he was going. He tripped and busted his face open. He’s pissed cause I laughed at him.” It was believable enough, and I didn’t go to school there anymore anyway. And besides fuck him. He got what was coming to him as far as I was concerned.
So I fought a lot. I was definitely a problem child all throughout elementary and into middle school. Less so in high school thanks to basketball. In elementary school part of the reason was I went to public school in Kailua, Hawaii. I was what the locals referred to as a “haole” which was a slur for a white person. Most white parents sent their kids to private schools, but not mine. School was school as far as my dad was concerned. Besides I was the tallest kid in my class and the second tallest was another haole.
What made me a problem child wasn’t that I was a bully. It was that I didn’t play fight. If you fought me I’d straight up try to hurt you so you wouldn’t do it again.
What I didn’t know at the time was I was constantly operating on fight or flight mode. I was always anxious. I didn’t like sitting with other kids especially if I couldn’t see them. I didn’t like being up in front of the class. I wanted to be in the back of the class, or better yet away from the other kids. It was better if my desk also faced the door so I could see anyone coming or going.
I’d also fight other people’s battles for them. There was a kid in my 4th grade class named Jay. Jay had autism so Jay would get picked on. I didn’t like that. So when other boys would pick on him I’d stand up for Jay. Often that meant fighting. I became good friends with Jay after standing up for him a couple of times. His mother actually called my mother from the phone book. There weren’t too many Poag last names in the white pages in Oahu. We became good friends for a summer. After that he moved away with his family and that was that.
I would also stand up against any boy who picked on a girl. Didn’t matter what it was over. If they were pulling her hair, or just being a pest I made it my business. That more often than not ended up in a fight.
It’s not that I wasn’t scared of fighting. Truthfully I was scared all the time. I had a constant redline of anxiety. So if things needed to be handled I handled them before things go worse. My dad encouraged that. “Boy don’t start any fights, but if a fight comes your way you finish it.” I just had a more liberal interpretation of what constituted “starting” a fight than your average elementary schoolboy.
Though if I’m being fully transparent I started my share of fights. I don’t consider myself a bully because I didn’t fight just to fight. I didn’t pick on anyone even the bullies. But you insult me, insult my friends, insult a girl or you touch me in a way I perceived as a threat you might find yourself in a fight especially if you caught me on a particularly anxious day.
Eventually I was sent to the school counselor. They’d put her in a classroom instead of an office so the space was a pretty good size. In the school I attended it was all open walkways. Classrooms were closed single rooms but there were no closed hallways. The walkways had coverings and metal wind breakers on one side. I guess the wind only came from one direction.
And the doors to each classroom opened to a shared outdoor common area. It was Hawaii so there was no air conditioning, and the windows were slats that let in the breeze. I don’t think they even had screens in them.
The counselor was an asian woman. Maybe Japanese descent. She always wore a corporate looking blazer, skirt and heels. She was very professional looking more at home in an office building in downtown Honolulu and not an elementary school in Kailua. At least that’s how I remember her.
I remember being terrified when I went to see her. She had a very soft voice, soothing even. Or it should’ve been soothing but it wasn’t to me. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t even really speak when she talked to me.
I just sat in a chair, and hugged myself tight. I remember squeezing my thighs together so hard I’d hurt my genitals.
“Why are you always fighting with other boys?” I remember her asking gently.
I don’t think I said two words to her. I might have shrugged my shoulders. All I knew is I didn’t wanna stop hugging myself. I didn’t wanna relax my legs. I had to keep pressing them together as hard as I could. And I definitely did not wanna be alone in that room with her.
One day she cut the session short because I couldn’t stop shaking. I told her I wanted my mom as tears streamed down my face. I didn’t wanna talk. Hell I hadn’t said more than maybe two words in previous the sessions but that day I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to crawl under my bed at home. That’s what I did after my mom came and got me. I slept under there that night. I pulled my Return of the Jedi bedspread over the opening so no one would find me.
The counselor recommended to my parents that I needed therapy. My father was adamantly against it. “They just wanna say he’s messed up and then that’ll go on his permanent record. They’ll kick him out of school and then what?”
My parents tended to catastrophize everything and looking back they didn’t know how to deal with what was going on with me. Therapy was viewed with suspicion back in 1986 especially in my household.
So I didn’t see the counselor after that. I went to fifth grade and we moved to Texas in the middle of that school year.
I think I was around 21 years old. It was before my issue with Greg for sure.
I had a friends with benefits arrangement with a woman my same age. Jesse. She was a dance major at another college. She was sweet, and loving. She had a goodness to her. I wasn’t dating any other woman at the time, and I liked spending time with her.
I’d get off work, and head up to her school to spend a whole weekend with her. I treated her like a good friend that I really liked having sex with. I supported her in her dreams to dance. She wanted to move to New York City but she was nervous about it. I told her she could make it there. So many others did so why not her? She was amazing. Of course she could! She hinted here and there that I should make the move with her but I’d just laugh it off. She wasn’t serious. She was just scared. She’d be fine.
But it wasn’t fine. At least it wouldn’t be for me.
“I love you,” she told me one night as we were curled up in her bed together. We’d been “hanging out” for about six weeks.
My heart started hammering in my chest. I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t really done anything special to “earn” her love. I hadn’t sent flowers. I hadn’t taken her out to a fancy restaurant. Sure we went out. I opened the car door for her. I pulled out her chair. I wasn’t a selfish lover. I liked spending time with her and I supported her. I even took her to an appointment she needed to go to. She didn’t have a car.
I did that because that’s what you were supposed to do, right? I mean… love?
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same,” she said softly.
I guess I did. I didn’t know. I didn’t really have a concept of what love really was.
While that sort of thing existed in my house it was dysfunctional at best. It was toxic the rest of the time. To say I was raised feral is an understatement. My father told me he loved me twice in the 21 years he was here for my life. I think he told my sister that once after she’d gotten into West Point. That summer after my 4th grade year I was allowed to stay out until 9:30 at night. A lot of days I wouldn’t check in at all. I’d be gone from the time I got home and wouldn’t come home until that night.
And my mom said she loved me occasionally she’d also tell me how awful I was too. “If this is how you’re gonna act you’ll never get a wife. No one will ever want to marry you.” I started hearing that around 12 years old. I heard it routinely whenever I got an attitude with her.
See my dad was anything but emotionally stable. He was a powder keg just waiting to go off. I’m pretty sure he had undiagnosed bi-polar disorder. He’d go through manic stages where he’d start a project and work on it sometimes eighteen hours a day for multiple days straight. Then he would crash and the project would stay unfinished until he hired someone to do the rest of it.
The projects would be crazy shit that was unnecessary like painting the concrete around our pool in Kailua. Or tearing out the interior of the doors in his Thunderbird only to replace them with actual stained wood with poker chips glued to them. Not joking.
And my mom was much the same except she was always at some level of anxiety. It would fluctuate from moderate to severe but it was always there. And when it was severe my sister and I got the blame deserved or not.
See how you survived in our house was you stayed in your room if you couldn’t get out of the house entirely. If you were in other parts of the house you’d only bother mom and dad. Best to leave them alone unless you had no choice.
Watching an action movie in the living room with dad? Fine. All good. Just don’t ask questions. And don’t talk to him unless he talks to you first. If he talks to you first he’s likely in an “up” mood. Gotta be careful of those “down” moods. With mom you could tell by the corners of her mouth. If the frown lines were set she’s anxious. If the corners are relaxed she’s probably moderate and okay. If she’s talking to you first then she’s in a good mood.
Mom could be the worst one though. If she’s in a bad mood she’ll start needling you. Could be about anything. And if she’s needling then you better try and get out of it as fast as you can because she’ll keep hammering away. She’ll raise her voice and then Dad comes in and starts handing out physical punishment.
Again you’re better off staying in your room, or if you can be out of the house entirely.
That’s not to say it was always bad. There were good times. There was guidance. Laughter here and there. But emotional support? Not really. Better learn to function on your own and let the chips fall where they may. Better learn to take punishment and pick your spots.
If I learned anything about love it was from friends and entertainment. I knew how to be a good friend because I had good friends. I learned about right and wrong from movies and TV shows. I didn’t know what intimacy and emotional closeness were though. Hell I didn’t trust anyone who wanted to be emotionally close to me. One day my mom is telling me how special I am and the next I’m never gonna find a wife because I’d done something she hadn’t approved of. Or she’s berating me until my father comes in with his leather belt, or hits the top of my head with his big silver ring with the turquoise stone in it.
Now I’m not trying to demonize them. I’m not excusing it either. That’s just the way it was.
Both my parents were victims of abuse I’d later learn. They both were survivors with unexamined and unhealed trauma. Turns out I would be too.
So when Jesse told me she loved me my fight or flight kicked in. I got really scared. I didn’t know why at the time but I was terrified.
“I love you too,” I told her. And I did. I cared about her. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. But how could she love me? I wasn’t husband material. I’d been told I wasn’t. That shit had sunk in. Plus the people who were supposed to love and care for me always flipped at some point. Saying they loved you was just a way to get you to drop your guard. Because when you least expected it bad shit was gonna happen so you had to keep your guard up at all times. They drilled that into you in boxing. They say it before the start of every fight! Life absolutely was a fight to me.
I can’t point to anything specific where it went wrong with Jesse. It just went wrong, and it was my fault. I know it was me. I was colder. I was more demanding. I absolutely sabotaged things. I didn’t cheat on her or anything. I just… I wasn’t the man she fell in love with because I’d shifted the dynamic between us. She loved me. I didn’t know what to do with that. All I knew about love was that it was unreliable. You couldn’t trust love. Friendship you could trust. Not romantic love, or familial love.
She broke up with me when I was driving her back to campus one night. We’d gotten in an argument about something. Probably something I made a big deal about that didn’t need to be. I remember yelling at the top of my lungs in the car. The pain pulsing through every inch of me. I could feel the entirety of my eyeballs in their sockets they hurt so much. I didn’t yell at her. I kept my eyes straight ahead and yelled. I couldn’t look at her. Of course that wasn’t much of a distinction in the heat of the moment.
She cried. She was scared. She’d never seen me like that. She just stayed quiet. I felt the tears on my cheeks but I forced my mouth to stay tight. I wasn’t going to blubber. I forced myself to breathe through my nose like a fright train barreling down the track.
“I still love you. I just want you to get some help. Okay?” she said pleading with me after I dropped her off at school. She wanted me to get help even if she wasn’t going to be intimate with me anymore. Like I said she had a goodness to her.
I said something cold. I didn’t cuss at her. I just made it final. This was it. In no uncertain terms wouldn’t we talk again. She wanted out? That’s fine. She was out.
She burst into tears and told me she still wanted me to be okay. That I could call her if I needed to talk. I never called her.
She was better than I deserved. She could see I needed help even if I couldn’t see who I was at that time.
I still feel the shame of how I was twenty five years ago. She didn’t deserve that, and I knew it back then as much as I know it now.
I’m five years old. I’m at daycare. I’m outside on the playground next to the daycare center. I remember the building being wintergreen painted cinderblocks. A square building with pane glass windows the kind with four panels in them.
I see my reflection in one of the panes. I feel a rage boil inside of me. I put my fist through the lower left pane. It shatters. I’m damn lucky it broke inward and didn’t leave jagged pieces to slice my five year old hand to ribbons.
My dad came out a few days later to replace the pane of glass he purchased himself. He didn’t say anything to me. Just did the task and that was that. I don’t think my parents spoke to me about it. Even if they did I didn’t have answer as to why I did it.
I just did it. I never understood why. I just remember rage and then BAM!
I’m five. It’s probably a few months before I broke the window pane. I remember standing in line with some kids at daycare. I was giggling along with my buddy Stevie. We’d met a year prior. He was my first friend I can remember having. I actually met him on my own wondering around in the neighborhood after I snuck out of the house one morning.
I feel a hand grab me roughly by the arm from behind. I was near the back of the line.
“You’re in trouble!” the grandmotherly woman said. I later learned her daughter actually owned the daycare. She hired her mother to help out.
Before I could even comprehend what was going on Grandmother dragged me to the office.
It was a small office with a large window that looked out to the parking lot off to the side adjacent to the playground. It had tile floors. That awful pea soup green with white, red, and black flecks in them. Everything was cold, and concrete. There was the desk Grandmother sat at and a wooden chair in front of it.
She told me I was a “disgusting little boy”. That I broke rules and I had to be punished. I think one time it was for picking my nose.
She made me strip down to my underwear. She told me to sit on this wooden chair, and not to get up and to not leave the office. She would then leave. I remember watching her take my clothes to the dumpster outside, and put my clothes just inside. She’d retrieve them later. They always smelled horrible.
She caught me looking one time. I remember getting spanked hard that time with her hand on my butt for getting up from the chair. I never got up from the chair after that.
I can’t remember if she touched me. I’m pretty sure she did. I’ve had a problem with physical touch for most of my life. Handshakes are fine. Bro hugs with the one arm and a clenched fist on the back are fine. But I tense up whenever women hug me especially if I didn’t know them. Even if I know them I’m not a fan of it. I don’t get comfort from a hug. I find them to be confining. I’ve gotten to where I’m okay with a side hug. My family weren’t big huggers so I always figured that’s what it was.
All I remember is that room. I remember shaking. I remember being nearly naked or naked. Feeling defenseless. I hug myself tight. I press my thighs together as hard as I could. I hunch over and curl up. I remember getting hit on the back and the butt.
I’m not sure how many times it happened. At least three or four. I know it stopped after I broke the window pane.
I don’t know if I told my parents. I don’t think I did. I remember going back to the daycare when I was twelve. My parents were friendly with the woman who ran it. I remember seeing Grandmother and feeling terror and rage all at once. I was surprised at just how old she looked then. Almost frail. She was laughing and hugging a little girl in her lap. I wanted to snatch that little girl from her.
But I didn’t.
I just stood there in a rage.
“Go over and say ‘Hi’.” my mom all but ordered me. She was a stickler for social norms.
I just shook my head. I went outside and waited by the car. I stared at the dumpster that was still there until it was time to leave.
I ended up marrying a good woman who helped me through a lot my trauma even though I was angry at her for not doing the impossible and healing it. I couldn’t push her away so I left her instead.
About six months after our divorce she told me she felt more like my mother than a wife when we’d been married. I honestly can’t dispute that charge. Sure I supported her. Encouraged her to get a Masters degree. Helped her study when she needed to take a state exam she was struggling with. I got extra work here and there when the bills started stacking up. And she could confide in me. I never ran her down for who she wanted to be, or the personal struggles she was going through. So in that sense I wasn’t a bad husband.
But I wasn’t a good husband. I didn’t own my mental health struggles. I piled my mental struggles on her. I blamed… Well… I did a lot blaming and not enough working to heal. Shit, I didn’t really know where to start. I didn’t know about complex PTSD from sexual abuse. I didn’t know about anxiety or depression other than “sucking it the fuck up” as they told me in the Marine Corps. I didn’t recognize the self-esteem, self-confidence, and trust issues I had.
She did help me break a lot of destructive habits. I stopped punching holes in the wall when my anxiety overwhelmed me. I worked on my explosive hair trigger rage the Marine Corps honed to a razor’s edge. The fact I worked on my anger at all throughout the last two decades of my life is thanks to her getting the ball rolling.
If there’s any grace to be found it’s there. I definitely didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Doesn’t mean I didn’t do it. I just never started from that intention.
It’ll always be the thing that I carry with me. The guilt and regret I have for hurting others because I was hurting.
The last speech Red, played by Morgan Freeman, gives to his parole board in Shawshank Redemption really hits home for me. Not the bitterness and resignation he feels at what he perceives as a farce but the earnest expression of regret for past mistakes especially when his voice softens to just above a whisper.
“I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid… I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense to him -- tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that.”
Red served 40 years of a life sentence when he gave that speech. I’m 42 years removed from that horrible office with that shitty tile floor. It will forever contain a part of me.
I never really understood what happened to me. Not for a long time. It wasn’t until just recently that I put things in perspective thanks to therapy and anti-anxiety medication.
I’m a survivor of sexual abuse. I have trauma. I’ll always have trauma. But I don’t want it to define me anymore. At least as much as I can.
I still have trouble showing affection in an intimate way. If we’re friends or we’re colleagues I’m pretty damn good. I’m a team player. I’m ride or die with the homies. Being in leadership positions has really helped me. Because it’s not about me. It’s about the team, the folks I’m leading. I’m good in a professional setting.
But when a woman say she loves me I have a hard time trusting it. I used to be terrified she’ll see the real me. Now I just make sure the whole me is better than I was before. I keep working at it, and I’ll always work at it.
At forty seven years of life I’m at the best place I’ve ever been. I’m much more calm now. I have a lot more patience. I’ve always had empathy and compassion but it’s coupled with understanding and hard won wisdom. I wasn’t a monster. It’s why I was able to get girlfriends or get married in the first place. I just wasn’t healed and so I wasn’t the best man I should’ve been to my partners. I never wanted anyone to feel like I felt on a daily basis. To not want to be alive which I felt far too often even when I was loved.
I’ve learned to take a compliment, and just say “thanks” instead of arguing that whatever they’re saying isn’t true. Or that I don’t deserve it even if I don’t feel like I do. At least now I feel like I do some of the time.
And I now actually feel joy. I feel love and affection from people and for other people. Those feelings are like gifts. I’m actually thankful they’re still within me. Like a small fire that you keep your hand near to shield it from a harsh wind.
I haven’t dated in eight years. I’d come off a few rough break ups where I’d done better then in the past but I was still too distant. One woman referred to me as “aloof”. Again I can’t dispute that. I wasn’t the angry young man I used to be but I definitely wasn’t affectionate. Those break ups weren’t anything dramatic. Just timing, a career I was way more focused on, and… well fear if I’m being honest.
Fear of seeing that wounded warrior pop up again. Fear of hurting another good woman who was just doing the best she could. So I just never made the effort to make a romantic love real. Fuck… Yeah there’s that sabotage again.
When I think about my trauma in that hard tiled room I don’t feel anything. I carry that trauma in other ways. I still sit with my back to wall if I can help it. I don’t like people coming up behind me but now I take a few heartbeats to respond. I’m still uncomfortable giving affectionate hugs, but I’m doing better with that. Side hugs are still more comfortable.
And I’ve done well for myself overall at least in terms of finding a purpose. I have great friends, and loving family. My sister and my mother have all worked with me to help each other overcome our traumas. And I love my work. Creativity was the thing that saved me. It was an outlet that kept the darkness away. Now I do that as a career.
But romantic love is still a ways off. It may never come again. I’m actually at peace with that. I’ve had about half a dozen romantic relationships with good women even if they had their own baggage just like me. That’s way more than any one man really deserves.
At this point I just want to be a better man, a kinder human being. Sand down the rougher edges of my soul, and patch over the hollow space in the middle with that office with the pea green tile floor.
I make sure to watch out for that little boy though.
I talk to him.
I tell him he’s gonna be okay.
Because he survived.
Thank you for the emotional labor it took to write this. I know it is not easy. Your words are brave, and I hope you’ll find, freeing.
Respect, man!