Abused to Abuser, is it a myth all the time?

            This coming June will mark twenty one years since I got married and thirty four years since we have met in an old fishing camp on the shores of Oneida lake. She was eleven years old and I was thirteen at the time but when your camping friends are easily made, and they always come and go unless they return the next year and you get to meet again. Our friendship started out as a telephone relationship until she was about sixteen years old when we were both able to spend the night at each others home, go camping or meet up to do things.

            For someone who has been sexually abused for just about their entire life, the acts and the situations almost become normal and this is one reason that the question comes about as to if I asked for it or not. My wife and I at that age had already been talking about things that happened during my life as she was starting to see how my family was and acted. What seemed to be normal was not exactly normal in her eyes and while I would make comments that it’s no big deal looking back now it was and I feel as if I brought her into my abuse through acts of love but not in a normal way. Normal was what happened between her and I however something’s did happen that to me was not a big deal however she was bothered by it and asked that I ask my Father to stop his actions. My fathers actions were when ever she came to visit, he would grab at her breasts in his demented mind as a way to say hello. In fact when I did approach him and asked him to stop he became upset and from that day forward stopped really liking her. Looking back now, I can see that she was being sexually assaulted every time my father did this and to me, I did not see a problem with it as to me it was normal as I lived it my entire life. It is amazing however that my brother never made any sexual moves on her or talked her and I to engage in anything in front of him so he could watch.

            For years while we dated she saw a whole lot of my family and their actions, and by being around us she started to become more comfortable letting her guard down not to be attacked but when sexual acts happened around her she would laugh just as the rest of the family would. An example of this was my brother would stand on the outside of the sliding glass doors and press his genitals up against the glass for everyone to see. It became a joke and it was called the Doughnut, as that is what we referred it to. She was there and saw this and other acts that my family gave no respect to her and I never stopped it because it was normal to me. My father and brother would walk around the house in their underwear, my brother would walk from the bathroom downstairs nude with no towel covering himself and other little that I did not think anything about it. One Christmas we had her parents over to the house and I had gotten a pair of underwear and I was made to fashion it off in front of everyone including her parents. By the time she had reached seventeen years old, we made love for the first time which everything in that was normal. What became not normal however was very normal to my sister and I, yet on some occasions when my wife was over to visit my sisters boyfriend would also come to visit. Because everything was normal to me, and it had become a normal for my wife the four of us would engage in sexual behavior (Not as a foursome) in different parts of the living room where we could see each other, there was no sense of privacy and it was not something that was important. My sister and I had been abused all our lives and what we did was to transfer our poor morals into my wife where she too became so comfortable that she thought nothing of it. One time, when I had my own apartment and we were making love a friend opened the door and came in to talk. Yes, we had been drinking at the time but we were not embarrassed at all and continued after he left the room.

            Being that my wife grew up with me, she also saw that my father was an alcoholic and that he was abusive and always drinking. She also had seen how my mother would control my life, charging a credit card I had to the max and refusing to pay it, She would also at the last minute refuse to allow me to leave the house which once left my wife stranded at her work once with no ride home and no way for me to contact her. Many times things like this would occur and even though I old enough to do things on my own my mother had this control. We were always told what to wear, when we could do things, where we could go and if she did not want anything to happen she would make sure it did not. During this time my father worked at a Bar on the Polish side of town which was about a 10 min ride. It happened almost every weekend but the most embarrassing was when my wife came to spend the night or weekend. My mother would always was me up and my wife to go with her at three or four in the morning to go searching for my father because he had not come home. She was there for a lot of what happened but not there for the severe sexual abuse at the hands of my brother yet had in a way was passed down to my sister and I as normal activity.

            Several days ago my wife had disciplined one of my children as she has done to all seven of our kids since they were able to start getting into trouble or touching things they should not and we were teaching them how not to do things. I don’t know why this one time it triggered me back to when my mother was beating me with the wooden spoon and as I was trying to stay grounded I had asked her not to spank him again. Her reaction was to become very upset going to the bedroom and slamming the door behind her. I asked her what her problem was and she said I was making her out to be a child abuser and that she is sick of having to be worried about triggering me in everyday life that she could not deal with it anymore. My problems and reactions that I live with everyday was and is becoming mental abuse to her because life is changing and it is a result of what I am going through and putting the family through as well. Just tonight my eleven year old son woke up my six year old and when I spanked him as he climbed into his own bed he referred to me as my mother. This is not the first time the kids have tossed my past into my face since I became disabled and I cannot express the pain I feel hearing that I am and have been abusing my wife, to hear my problems tossed into my face. My wife even stated that I had asked her where she was during all my abuse, which in essence was placing some blame on her that I was abused. I do not recall ever asking this and this in not something I would ask but I must have because she feels that she could have stopped it had she known what the full extent was.

            So basically even though the person who is dealing with PTSD from CSA, it affects everyone else who is living around them. My greatest fear all my life that I was going to become an abuser as this is one of the myths of abuse has actually come true in the fact that through this all and my flashbacks, depression and the triggers has put a great mental strain on my wife and that by all my actions I am in fact mentally abusing her. I looked back today at all the things she talked about which I wrote above and what I was actually doing without realizing it was abusing her sexually and making it normal just as I was taught to believe. She cried today asking if she was a monster because back then she thought it was normal and truth be told it was my Sister and I who were the monsters that took this innocent girl and brought her into our life. Today, it is my actions that are abusing my children mentally the same way. I am not the father they need, my one daughter even told me that I should kill myself because of the way I am I will not amount to anything, Just as my son said by spanking him I am becoming my mother not thinking about how a slap would be something just as my mother did. So the real fact is that I am dealing with my own past of being abused and because of this I have now become the abuser. I always vowed to never do this to my family and that it was going to stop here, with me however in all my stress I am loosing sight of what I did not want to become. I do not know how well I am dealing with all this and I will be honest I think it is better that I leave this house until I am better enough to come back. I don’t want to take my own life but then again to live knowing that I am what I am it would be the only way to stop the cycle which I vowed so much to break and if I cannot break it now, that may be the only option which I do not want to do.

            For now I am going to end this posting because even as I write this my mind is racing faster and faster and I am falling deeper into a state of depression. One thing I know is that I can no longer turn to anyone to discuss how I am feeling. She is sick of me having bad days which happens 99% or the time. The kids don’t even know how to deal with me being down. I just don’t know anymore and I don’t know how to get over this one. Until Next Time….