When Family does not Understand.

       What does one do when Family Members find the truth about the past and how do some handle the healing process that goes along with it? What happens when the person you love so much finds it difficult to deal with the setbacks, the flash backs and the memories.

       This is the problem that I get faced with every once and a while. I have an aunt who tells me "You need to just forget about the past, move on and stop thinking about it", a wife who understands and is there to help but once and a while becomes overwhelmed over the problems that fight often occur or a sister who was also abused who tell you "No one is going to understand unless they have been abused, they will not have a clue why you do what you do or feel the way that you do.

       Although I have been married for many years and before I was married I revealed what had happened, the mental breakdown seems to be bringing up old memories, flashbacks and thoughts that to me are new yet I told my wife years ago. Her first reaction did not understand why these things were bothering me as I have already shared most of what I am feeling to her already. There are  a lot of new ones that we are both dealing with including the realization that not only did my mother know, you could very well show that she did nothing about it which had my brother put away for life plus 30 years for child molestation.,

       This breakdown has severely affected our married life as well as our intimacy in our marriage. I have withdrawn in many ways from the depression I have on almost a daily basis, and when I withdrawal I have a tendency to spend most the day in bed or on my computer in almost a vegetable state. We sometimes will get into heated arguments over the fact that I have become this zombie under the control of what is going on. She has admitted that she has actually considered leaving me a couple days ago because my attention towards her needs, her emotions and basic partner time has been almost null because of my state of mind. When I am depressed it takes away, not only me and my mind but the interaction between my family and me. My children comment that Daddy does not do anything any more with them and it's basically the depression that is doing it. I can't get a grip on the depression and it has me so low I am getting so sick of it you cannot imagine.

      I do know this, that aside from my family not understanding the emotional roller coaster I am on, trying to find help for my family has become very hard. On several occasions my wife has contacted services to inquire on issues to try and get help on how to deal with me and on every conversation she is told they can help her but she is not allowed to discuss me or my medical problems. How does this help her to not only assist her in being able to handle my ups and downs, but how can she get the help to be able to discuss what she is going thru with me in this state and still be able to discuss her own emotions that she is dealing with. Not only does she have to deal with her own emotions thru this but she has to continue to be a mother, taxi, parent and everything also that she does. How does she cope with my problems when my ability to be a father, husband and partner is diminished because of the depression along with the flashbacks, lack of sleep which only makes matters worse?

       This is definitely something that not only takes over ones life, consumes a person but also severely affects every family member in the house. They don't and almost can't feel what it is like to experience what I am going thru and that really makes it hard for them to understand and to fully be able to support the issues at hand. How am I able to help them to understand when to be honest, I don't even understand what has happened to me and I don't fully understand what I am going thru. Till next time...

Depression, how it feels to me.

       **NOTE** Since I write on my blog mostly around or after midnight this post is going to be referring to Wednesday October, 27th, 2010.

       Yesterday was one of the most depressing days I have had since all this started back in February. It was for sure up in the top 10 of depressing days where I was so low I would have to look up if I wanted to look at an ant. Depression for me is the second most debilitating thing that I am going thru, it takes everything I have just to breathe and force myself to make it thru the day. These are days that I find I will end up fighting with my wife, not dealing with the children and staying in bed just about the whole day. It becomes a major struggle to bother to sit up to eat or get up to go to the bathroom. Believe me, this is one thing that I know a whole lot of people deal with and I am no different yet even knowing that on the outside, the inside still needs to understand this.

       When I become depressed it seems to start out as an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. From there it just blows up like a new balloon hooked up to a tank of gas that is thicker then air so I drop fast. I often tell my wife the best way to describe how I feel when I am depressed is that my body implodes. It is like a black hole in the center of my body or soul that just sucks everything inward, my thoughts, my happiness, my feelings and all my energy. My body thru this will actually feel as if the weight of everything becomes a part of my body. It will actually feel my shoulders start to droop and become very heavy in weight. My arms and legs will start to become almost numb from the lack of energy I have and that I can't even seem to hold them up, all I want to do is sleep. What makes it worse is that my mind starts spinning, my thoughts and vision almost becomes black and white with almost a tunnel like vision where I just seem to zero in on one thing or object although I don't really focus on it.

       I am one that does not believe in suicide; however the thought has crossed my mind several times. Some people cut, some people do other things to deal with the pain they are feeling on the inside. Depression is not really a pain yet it does have the same affect on ones self in the fact that where pain is localized to the spot of injury depression is a real bodily feeling felt inside. I do realize that I do act out when I am depressed. For example, yesterday I deleted everyone off my personal Facebook who was not a direct relative and I then went and completely cleared out my wall. I mean there are no posts, no links, no videos nothing to show that I have done anything on Facebook. I then turned around and deleted all chat programs off my computer like Yahoo and MSN Chat. I went thru my email address book and started deleting numbers and addresses I had saved for future use like Wal-Mart, my insurance company and old friends. Numbers that I can't replace or people on Facebook that I used to play games with. I used to go shopping and buy something that made me feel good no matter if I could afford it or not, which put us a little in debt that took a little bit to get out of.

       I am on medication for my depression however they don't seem to work a lot of the time. I have been on them for several years however since February came about the depression has become so deep that they don't seem to be working too well. I have felt better on some days but the depression is so easy to come on that it often just takes over before I realize that I am depressed. That is one weird feeling is to be something that you don't know you’re heading into. It's like, why am I so depressed now and what caused me to become depressed. Problem is, most times I do not know, like yesterday I don't know what took me so low. It was so bad, I called and canceled my appointment to my Counselor. Pretty bad when the depression forces you to not go to the one source that is helping me to get out of it. You might say that Depression seems to take on a life of its own. I once met someone who was DID as I am and also goes thru the depression as I do. She told me that if she catches it soon enough and treats it like an alter she can have some control over it, but I have not been able to do this, stay grounded as I do when I start to drift off into another place or alter. But the difference is that when one of my alters comes out, I can feel when the change is starting to take place and my wife can also see a change in me, my face and personality.

       I will be most honest with you and open as I can. I know I am not different then anyone else who suffers from the same things as I do but I have to say I hate depression. I hate the way it makes me feel, I hate what it does to me, I hate the way I act out when it hits, and I regret after every bad day I have of the things I did while in this state which are something I can't get back. It is better then cutting or ending it all, but no matter how one feels or deals with it, depression is all the same. It brings you down, your self esteem goes down, you hate yourself, you hate others, you feel alone, you feel lost and most of all you begin to think that it is never going to get better. I can't say that it is going to get better; I do know it is going to have to get worse for me before it gets better so I know I am on one heck of a heavy road when it comes to my road to recovery. Bottom line, depression stinks but it is one thing that controls my life and I hate it more then some can imagine. Till next time......

Am I really a Survivor?

     This afternoon someone on the boards made an excellent comment as this is something I have been dealing with for a while now. I have had my counselor say that I am a survivor as did my Psychiatrist and I say I don't feel like one, and the truth is I don't. My abuse that I remember started back when I was 7 years old, but I have many questions about things that go back as far as age three. And with the physical and mental abuse lasting longer than the sexual I question if I am or not.

       Now I know that I survived the abuse, and sometimes I really feel it was close. An example of this is back when Dad was stationed in Japan I came down with symptoms of my hair falling out, falling off chairs, falling from standing and unable to control my arms like holding a fork. I was told that I would go to the Japanese neighbor’s home and we would play match cars. Mama-sun would then give us cookies and milk and we would eat. Well, I was told that along the walls was rat poison and I would ingest it and this was the reason for my problem. After reading my medical records it was found I had a small trace of Arsenic Poison in my system and the other boys she told the doctors had no problems and tested negative for any poisons. So you see where my questions come from on how I really got the poison and I am not sure I really want to know the answer.

       I made a comment about someone who has cancer and has surgery to remove it. Up until they have the surgery that person has cancer, they are not survivors until it can be verified that all the cancer has been removed. These people are known as cancer survivors and not cancer patients anymore, however if the cancer reoccur’s I have never heard as someone who has the cancer back as a survivor. In my mind this is how I feel about what I am going thru and being a survivor. Yes, I did survive the abuse as I am alive to be here to type and breath however what I am going thru reliving everything all over again puts me back in that place of being abused. Now you might think that is different because there is no real abuse going on it is just flashbacks. If I were to cut, it would be considered self harm true? If my mind creates these physical and emotional flashbacks and I do not want them to happen and have no control I look at it like the abuse has reoccurred and I need medical attention to help me get past this end of this.

       Now I am not downplaying that to say we are not all survivors, because I know I survived the abuse I am just saying how I feel about being called a survivor. In some ways this is somewhat worst because I am living some part almost everyday, it is effecting my wife and children now and it has changed the person I am before this all came crashing down.  I don't act the same way I did around people, I am afraid to leave my home, I am on more pills then my father had when he died at age 67 and I spend most of my days alone in my room on the computer with only one light on. My wife refers to this as the cave, I am down in my cave just living.  Problem is that is so much a true statement, I am just living now. My depression is so deep that my self esteem has hit rock bottom, I don't have any energy and most times I just don't feel like waking up and getting out of bed.

       This is the reason I kind of view it this way, because of the now and not so much the then. This is if you consider my Disassociation Disorder, I am no longer one person but I am the voice of several now. I know now that my inner child was not really killed as I once stated before but that he lives in a special part of my mind. What I can really say is that my inner child survived the abuse by learning how to deal with the abuse at the moment it was happening. This is the reason that I don't remember a lot of what went on except now thru flashbacks and triggers that I am starting to remember. Things that my inner child and other alters have lived true and now are starting to have me remember so I can heal. This is no doubt one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life; it is the heaviest cross that I have carried. And now it is the reason I am on the Heavy Road to Surviving Sexual Abuse......

Bad day, for no reason.

       Today I had a really bad day, and the problem is I don't even know why. I fell asleep last night about 2am and normally I will wake up around 11am. Today I could not wake up, I forced myself out of bed at 2pm almost a 12 hour sleep. I woke up feeling very depressed with the feeling that something had happened, maybe in my dream or a flashback that I was not aware of. The rest of the day I was depressed, unhappy and my mind just would not stop spinning around in circles. The nice thing is that I did not experience any flashbacks throughout the day, which is a good thing.

       But I have a question for you, they placed me on a CPAP Machine to see if the lack of sleep was caused by the Apnea that I have or the Depression. To be honest, I have been wearing this machine for two weeks now and I have not noticed any change in my mind or body. I don't have anymore energy nor do I go the full day without feeling tired and wore out. I really don't think that the problem is the Apnea but it was worth the try as I am willing to do anything to get out of this slump.

      I did not discuss last night some things that came to mind thanks to my sister, who I love very much. We were talking on the phone and she mentioned how mother would dictate who we could see, who we could talk to, what we could wear, where we could go and how long. Even as an adult living at home at age 23 I had curfews that I had to abide by. Of course, I was so used to mother being the controller it never bothered me. But the reason I bring this up is that she did have me remember something that I took for granted. After I was married a couple of years I flew down to visit them, my family. When they saw the clothes that I had packed my mother and brother said they would not be caught dead walking around with me, took me to the mall and made me get new clothes. The funny thing is that my brother purchased them with a check that bounced so I it went out of site. These were some of the mental things that they had done well into the years after I moved out. Of course, mother and her suicide threats every time I did not take the path, agree with her, not give her what she wanted were always the one that did me in. I once flew down out of fear that she was going to do something, I told her I wanted to surprise her because I was so scared.

       Now I told you that I had turned my brother into the DA once I heard he abused my nephew. Oh how my parents disowned me, this was 2004 and it really hurt to be left the way I was. Mind you, up until now I never fully understood or admitted that I had really been abused. I never knew or admitted that my mother knew about all the sexual and physical abuse that went on. So when I was labeled as "The Uni-Bomber" because it was the bombers brother who turned him in I felt like a little child who had been beaten by his parents all over again. I would get letters in the mail from my mother and brother that went up and down me for betraying the family. My father spent the last 3 years of his life only saying so many words that I can count them on my hands. Once my wife and sister-in-law drove down to visit her parents with all of the kids. My parents REFUSED to allow them to visit them, my wife was not even allowed to drop the kids off and pick them up later. Because of what I had done, they wanted nothing to do with my family. I know what your thinking, why would I even bother to want to be a part of them. You must remember, up to this point  I was still trying to obtain their approval, to be told they were proud of me, basically I was still a young child looking to be loved which after all these years I was never given as a child or teen. My wife always said that I was looking for something from my parents that I would never get, I never believed her however now that I am going threw this I can see why she would say that because I was. And to top that off, even though we were married when ever my parents came to visit my brother (they have NEVER stayed one night at my home) I mentally changed and would become that child again putting them first in front of my wife and children. I never really noticed it but my wife sure did. She would deal with it until they left and would then bring it to my attention. Heck, if she did while they were here we would fight really bad and I would really slam what she was telling me. Looking back, she was so right.

       Yeah, I referred to mother as a Travel Agent because she booked guilt trips. She was good at that and knew how to control me 1400 miles apart. Even when my brother called my inner child would go back to what they refer to as the "Stockholm Syndrome" and cower to him as well.

       Well, that's going to be for now. I know I may repeat some things when I write in this blog but this is how my mind works. I forget what I wrote so I write what is on my mind at the moment. Tomorrow at noon I have an appointment with my counselor and we are going to discuss my last journal that I had emailed her. I don't remember which or what it said but going to find out. Till next time......

Why me, Why now?

All I have heard is someone stole my innocence, someone abused you, someone beat me, someone used me, someone took advantage of me, someone tortured me, someone treated me like hell. But the one thing that I have not heard is that someone has changed me. For the last several months I become something that I never was before. Something that I hear how I am no longer there, no longer the man I used to be, how my wife is getting tired of doing things alone and just how much she is alone in this house. I have heard from the kids how they think I am doing a lot of this to get attention, comments like at lease I am not afraid to go out, had the depression tossed into my face, had them all become so upset that they stop talking to me. They get upset with me because of the medication and how it makes me sleep. They tell me to go take my meds when I am feeling low, they tell me to go take my meds when I am hurting or upset. They tell me I take to many meds.

I know that if I continued about how I was treated I could write a book. Most kids are petrified of a cellar because of the darkness; we had an attic where I was locked in many times with no lights. The sex was the fear, but so was the beatings, spitting into my mouth over and over as he held me down. Putting his finger in his anus and putting his finger into my mouth, eating worms there was a ton of stuff. And yes, I have has all this buried for many years. Mother always told me to get over it, bite it off, one day I would grow up and be able to beat him up. Maybe that’s what helped me bury it for many years. Maybe that was my hope that I would be able to do to him what he did to me one day.

And now, all these years later it has all come to haunt me in ways that I could never imagine. When I was in the hospital, My wife told me how she cried herself to sleep, I am not the man she married, and she needs the man she married to be there now. Why can’t I do some of the things I need to do, why can’t I think some of the things I thought? We married for better or for worse but what happens when worse become hell? What happens when the hell becomes mental abuse for her? She will deny it but when she has to get so pissed off and angry just to get me out of bed you cannot tell me that in her mind I am doing just that. And it does not matter what has happened or is happening.

 Is this the man I have now become? Is this the man she is now married to? She tells me we will get thru this, but how long will it take? How many days, months or worse yet years will we loose because of what I am going thru?  She can’t handle me now and I know she is loosing control of her strength that she uses to support me and her mother. I wish she would not yell at me as much. So I guess that goes back to my question that made me start this letter, I am on a path to becoming suicidal? Am I starting to give up? Am I just feeling so unable to be helped? Are these head aches becoming to much? Am I becoming to depressed or is the change in meds doing this to me? I have no idea but all I know is I am truly tired and feel weak but I don’t want to lay down. I so don’t want to fall asleep but I have no choice. I have to face what my mind has in store for me this I know…..

I have no feelings.

I borrowed these two sentences from a post on a board I am a member of:

• "Nothing seems real to me. I don’t really feel emotion at all. It’s like i am dead inside. When I look straight ahead, it’s like there is this wall blocking me from reality and trapping me inside my own head."
• "My perp may not have killed my body but he certainly murdered my soul."

       OMG that sounded like I was posting those two comments. I have always wondered why I never really have no feelings, feelings that make up a person. I was a member of a Fire Department and to deal with loss of life, loss of property and loss of loved ones never bothered me and to be honest I had no opinion about. Even in my relationship with my wife, I knew I was very happy with her when we were dating but it was not until a moment that I would never see her again that a feeling hit me. I knew this was love and I reacted to this feeling and have been with her now over 20 years. If we did not make the decisions we made back then I wonder if I would have realized it was love and it was her that I wanted to be with.

       Several years ago I had an affair with a woman that she and I were friends with. When I was faced with the situation I could see what was going on, I knew in my mind what was going on but I had no control over what was going on. This was a person, who I would have never touched had I been in control, and yet after it was over and I was on my way home I really had no feeling about what had just happened. For years prior, I was taught that there was a difference between making love and just having sex and to me this was just sex. Just like you do not feel guilty over eating a doughnut even though you know it will help you gain weight and is not good for your body. I felt no guilt about what had happened. One thing I knew in my mind it was wrong and that was the reason I went to my wife and told her what happened. This was a woman that I had no feelings towards and yet it happened.

       Was it my disassociation that caused me to do this? Is it an excuse that I have to explain what and why it happened? Fact is, I was not diagnosed with DID years after this took place and yet the same lack of feelings that the other person described above that I had or did not have. This is the worst experience I have had with what I know now is Disassociation Disorder. This explains too how many things have happened in my past that I did not and do not remember. I do know that currently I have three alters that have come forward in one way or another. The youngest is Keith who is 8 years old, which just so happens to be the age that my sexual abuse started. The other is Robert who is 11 years old; who I think is the age that most the horrific things happened to me. Last is Michael who I do not know much about. I do know that he sits on what I call a plate, spinning in circles and does not talk. I have no idea what this means but I am sure it will come to me someday when he is ready to let me know who and why he is here.

       I do understand and can fully relate to what this person had said. When my mind went on me back in February 2010 I kept telling people that I felt as if I knew what was going on yet I had no control over what was happening. It was the only way I could describe how I felt, how I was acting and why some the things I said all came out. I described that it was like I had a little boy inside me, it was June, 10 that I found I was DID. When I first learned I was in shock and did not believe it could be true and happening to me. What my wife and I did find out thru reading my medical records is that I had this problem for many years going back to the age of around 8. They had done 3 EEG's before I was age 18 and it was the last one where the doctor commented that I should be referred to a Mental Health Professional, which I was never taken to.

       Well, I am going to sign off for now. I read this and had to get what I was thinking out as soon as I could before I forgot. Which I wish I could stop doing, forgetting. It is becoming so bad that sometimes I don't even remember saying things that I said even 2 min prior. That stinks, believe me.....

Family and bad moments.

       Here is another journal page I wrote last month about a bad night I was having. I talk also how my family sometimes deals with me although I have their full support.
      

Tonight is now September 24^th and it is 12:33 in the morning. I am sitting up watching a DVD for no reason at all. I am not tired, then again I was up late and slept till 2 in the afternoon. What I am right now is paranoid, scared and in a panic attack that has been going on for the last several hours. I don’t know what is making me this way but I do have a feeling. My family is getting really sick and tired of me being this way. my wife tells me almost everyday how she can’t deal with me sleeping the day away and not having any time for her. I know that she is right; I know I am doing what I don’t want to be. Hell I am getting sick of how I am. I am sick and tired of my fears, my depression,  my sleeping all day long, sitting downstairs and not going upstairs like I used to, the kids fears about me, and just how they think I am going to turn out. One daughter really said it right when she said that I am nothing and I am going to turn out to be nothing in the state I am in. My problem is I don’t know how to get past it or how to make it better. I really don’t. Everyone thinks I am happy where I am and what I am doing but the thought of how I wish I was allowed to take my life or leave them fill my mind everyday now in between the flash backs that are all the same now and some new. I feel like I am loosing a battle to keep my mind sometimes. The shaking that goes on is starting too really to get on my nerves. My wife asked me tonight if I had any contact with my alters, I told he no but I know that Robert is my main problem in my life. I believe he is the one who was there to see the abuse to my sister; he was the one who got beat up for trying to stop them. He is the one who saw one of the friends over top of my sister in the kitchen; He is the one who saw dad leaving us alone to go to bonnie’s house. He was the one who saw the girl being rapped on the floor in the living room. This about the same age that I ended up in the bedroom of the teacher with the door closed. I am pretty sure that this is the one who was most victim of this and why there is so much anger and fear inside me. My wife says there is no one out there to hurt me but my problem is I believe it is a fear of running into people who knew me at a younger age. People from high school or something, maybe it is the fear of cars going by because before the thing with the teacher she would pick me up to help and family services in the military I know she used to put her hand on my knees as we talked. Maybe it has something to do with the minister from Connecticut who took me to that parking lot and fondled me. Maybe it is the fear of the sex offenders that the schools announce that makes me so afraid to go out side. Everyone says that there is no one out there to harm me; however I always had this fear that I had “I was abused” written across my forehead. Just as when a guy looks at a woman and thinks how good she looks, I fear someone is driving by and thinks that when they look at me. Maybe it also is the fact that it was my brother who abused these children and I am afraid to go out with the same last name. Maybe it has to do with everything I typed, or maybe it is none of the above. I wish I knew to be honest with you because it is not getting better by far and to hear my wife hurting so bad that she told me this is the reason she is in counseling. I am not a father to these kids anymore and lord knows that I am not a husband to my wife over this either.  Personally I don’t feel I am a person anymore to any of this shit going on.  I am hoping that the shock treatments with lesson my depression, which will lesson my thoughts and will help me get back on the road I was on before. One big problem is that it won’t get back the last 7 months of my life and the things I missed of my children. I don’t think it will bring back the life I had with my wife either. When I get upset, she now asks who I am and she even has one daughter asking the same question. She does not know that I am afraid to admit I have alters, I am afraid to contact them because I don’t know what my mind will do once we start talking.  I am more comfortable knowing that they do come out in front of my wife and that she is building report with them. I am afraid to admit I am as sick as I am. I am embarrassed to be out of work, I am embarrassed to be on the very low end of money coming in, and I am embarrassed with the people who do know what my problem is. I know the kids have told their teachers, the guard people, family knows and some friends know. I feel like I want to crawl into a hole and die most times I go out because I don’t know who knows, if I will run into people who do know or if I will run into people I know who ask why I am not working since I walk and talk like there is no problems. What is worse is my memory sucks and I try not to admit a whole lot to my wife about that. It seems every time I tell her something it is something that happens to her and she explains to me how to deal with it. Almost as if I am not sick, as if I am pulling this to stay home or something. She did admit to me that she cannot understand why things are happening, like afraid to go outside when it happened in the house. It happened in the house, it happened in his car, it happened in the camper; it happened at friend’s houses, it happened in the woods. It was not just the house or at the place he babysat. I was just thinking that it happened on a row boat out in Oneida Lake because he could look to see if boats were coming. It was the first summer we were there before I met my wife. And the camper, I remember now that it involved family friends at least the younger one who I think was my age. A lot went on at camp that most of it was a blur. I know my dad smoked hash; there was a lot of drinking, for some reason we were taken out to the camp and left alone with him. I am not sure if he was driving at that point or not but he very well could have been. Maybe that explains when we go camping I am always looking to go driving or just stay in the camper. I have no idea why my mind thinks the way it does and I do not know why I act the way I do but one thing I do know is that I wish I never got married or had children. It hurts me so bad to see them all hurting, I feel like a monster in their lives. Yes, my wife can say that I am not a monster but if I am human and the husband I was once before then what do you call what I am now. I know the kids are hurting, hell one daughter told me to go kill myself because I am not worth anything. And when we were fighting and I told her to get on all fours so the cars and hit her in the ass, she even stated just like you got it when you were a kid? My problems, my past is in their minds and they use it against me often. I get so hurt, angry and stop talking to them which really gets my wife really pissed off that she yells at me. I am suppose to  remember they are kids, but it was kids who treated me the way I was treated, like in school. She does not think that it takes me back to that age when it happens and I am supposed to shrug it off. I have become to the point where I really do not want to live here any more. I know it will hurt the family if I leave but the one thing they will not have to worry about is me hiding down in my room, they will not have to worry about me not going shopping with them, they will not have to worry if it is me or an alter acting out. my wife won’t have to ask who I am, she won’t have to complain that I am no longer a husband to her as I sit and do nothing; she won’t have to worry about me sleeping too much. There is a lot of things they will not have to worry about. Yes, I won’t be around but sometimes I feel this could be the best answer for all of us. No, I cannot live this way anymore and I am sick of staying up, sleeping in, all the panic attacks, all the fears, all the memories, all the worries about my family, not having anymore family, and being the joke of some neighbors. Yeah, my neighbor asked me “what you got some mental problems” and I wonder who told him that. I am sick of going to counseling once a week and feeling like I am not on a track. I go to the doctor and see my psyciatrist but there again it's all about the medications. How do I find direction when I can’t seem to find what direction I need to go in self healing? How can I self heal when I don’t even know how to combat the feelings that I have, worst yet how can I fix the feelings if I don’t even know where these feelings are coming from. What is even harder on my mind, is I look back and I was the way I am now but only very little. It was the volcano that tossed me to the wayside and made me worse to where I am today. How do I turn back the clock, how do I get my wife to believe me, how do I get her to understand, how do I stop hurting her by being afraid. Like the old saying, you can’t help someone until you can help yourself. If I can’t help myself how in the hell can I help my family? And if my family does not understand me, how do they truly know how to love me for who I am and not worry about what I am. So the real question, how do I live the way I am in this house and still have a house full of love when I am as distant from them as they have all said. No one really talks to me except to express their feelings of anger and discuss. Like tonight I tried to talk to my wife about how I was feeling, I stopped because she walked to her desk after telling me that in order to get over it I need to do something other then play on the computer which I use to get my mind off things. She did not sit and listen to me, then again I know she is sick of listening to me all the time. She is sick of me not being there for her. Basically the whole house is becoming sick of me and that only deepens the depression.

What happened?

       I am sure that you are asking yourself what happened that I say I have to recover from all this abuse I speak of. Just what kind of abuse went on that after all this time my mind has gone thru a breakdown and I am on disability?

       Well, as you might have read in my "Nite Writing" post it started what I can remember at the age of about 7 years old. My brother forced my sister and I to have intercourse one day, and then later told on us. My mother beat my sister and I for doing the act and then for lying to her because we denied the whole act because we did not know what sex was. From there it went on, growing from him just fondling me to having sex with the dog as he watched. Everything you could think of happened in between, and this lasted until I was 15 years old when he raped me and beat me really bad while making my sister watch. During most of these sessions he would bring other male friends into our home to participate in these acts. My sister was also abused and was also part of these acts. One of my most vivid images was my sister on the kitchen floor while all his friends had their way with her. She was only 9 years old at the time. It is most vivid to me because I tried to stop what was going on and again I was beaten. Knowing that he beat me and often told me he would kill me if we ever told anyone, he was free to do what he wanted and when. We lived in fear for most if not all our childhood years.

       There was another person who abused me on one occasion and this was a school yard teacher in 5th grade. I was friends with her daughter and was over one day when she somehow got me into her bedroom with the door closed. She fondled me and told me how she heard I was a great kisser and proceeded to kiss me. I have no memory of how I was able to get out of the room but my last memory was riding my bike home as fast as I could. Again, I don't know if it was the fear placed in me by my brother or something else but I never told a soul about this for many years.

       The other person who abused me was a youth minister from a church in Connecticut we had met at a conference in Ohio. We exchanged phone numbers and he came to New York to visit and stayed at a campground near by. I have no idea how he knew I was abused but he got me talking about it, he then proceeded to touch be both on and under my pants telling me it was normal, not to be ashamed and that I should not let it bother me. Again, I have no idea how I got home or how he left as that is the last memory I have of that situation.

       I always argued with my sister saying that my parents knew nothing about what was going on which she claimed they did. It was after my procedure in February and all my flashbacks came out that I realized that my mother did know. I do remember going to confession and having to tell the priest that we played nasty, and of course he would ask what I meant and I would have to tell him. The other memory I have is that I told her he forced me to give him oral sex and her reply was next time bite it off. When my brother was 19 and still living at home, he would sneak younger boys into his room at night. My grandmother found pictures hidden of these boys naked on his bed and gave them to my mother. She would only tell him that one day he was going to get caught.

       Now my mother thru all this was very abusive and my parents fought a lot over things I don't even know. My father I know had an affair and mom knew it but did nothing about it. Dad was also an alcoholic and when he was not working he was always drinking getting drunk. He would become very violent when he was drunk using fists, belts, 2x4's and other things in his reach to beat us. I still remember how mother would hide behind the couch crying as he came looking for her. One night as I laid in my bedroom, the only one on the second floor my mother came up and went into the bathroom crying and screaming. I went to see if she was okay and that is when I saw her start to cut her wrist. My father even tried it once using a shotgun but that jammed and never went off. We took some very bad beatings from him and my mother, once beating me with a wooden spoon which back then was 1/4  inch or bigger in diameter. I don't remember the whole beating but I remember I could not cry anymore as she beat me until the spoon broke. My father would often disapline us by stabbing our hands with his fork at the dinner table if we were bad. My mother was the one who held my hand just above the stove burner untill I told her something. There was alot of things like this  that happened that even today I am getting flashbacks or learning from my medical records that bring back memories of things I do not recall or was told different stories about the scars or bone breaks.

       Right up until my mother passed away she used her suicide attempt over me to get her way. When we spoke or we saw each other she would always have negative things to say about me. I grew up with her telling me what to wear, where I could go, who I could be friends with and once even picked me up at 9pm from Pizza Hut while out with friends because it was my bed time, at 16 or 17. There is so many things that happend that I can't go into them all in one blog post. What I am going to do is mostly post about my days as I have said. Some of these posts I will probably tell more as each day is a new or renewed flashback for me. Today was physical flashbacks of pain in my head, not anything like a headache but sharp pains in certain spots on each side of my head. These would always bring back the image of one beating or another, which mostly I just take a nap and sleep it away but today I helped my son clean out the garage which helped alittle with getting things off my mind.

       Well, that is my post for today. I just wanted to start with a bit of explination of my background. This week I have an appointment with  Social Security Phyciatrist and my counselor so it is not going to be a busy week for me, thank God. Till next time....

Nite Writing.

Before I head off to bed, I wanted to share some writing I did after I watched a clip on Oprah after my sister called to tell me about it. It will really give you an idea of what this blog will be like. This was written on October 20th. Below is this note.

            Tonight is Thursday October 20^th, 2010 and I sit here very depressed and feeling so very low. I cannot begin to tell in words how low I feel. I talked to my sister who also shares my abuse. She told me about an Oprah show that just made her cry; she said I needed to watch it. Well on the web there was no place to watch the whole show, only excerpts of the show. He talked about the worst beating that he took and it brought back memories of beatings that I took. I have no idea why I was beaten with the wooden spoon in VG. That’s where the spoon broke over my leg. I don’t even remember the whole beating, only the part where it broke. I mentioned to my sister about being beaten with the spoon and she said she could remember when I was beaten really badly with a wooden spoon after he told on us that we had sex. He was never in trouble, even though we both tried to explain that we did not even know what sex was. This I can remember vividly. I am numb right now; I don’t even know how I am typing. I was about to mention that at age 8 I was taken to the hospital for rectal bleeding. I have this very overwhelming numbness as I can vision that on that day he placed his finger into my rectum the day he made my sister and I have sex. What I can tell you is that my shoulders feel so weighted down; my face feels like it is drooping, I am shaking, my lips feel numb and I feel like I am going in slow motion. Even my eyelids are heavy. I really do sit here and wonder how in Gods name I lived to be 44. I have my medical records and things that I have been told do not match anything that is written in the records. I question, and I have no idea why I question this but the rat poisoning I wonder if it was my mother trying to kill me. I say this because the levels of arsenic were stated to be low levels and the other kids who I was said to have played with did not have any problems. I was told we all had it however I was the only one. There are things in my records that show things that I have no recall of. When I was 12 years old I had fractured my pinky finger, you would really think I would remember this but I do not. I have no idea how this happened or any details about it. The same goes with the fact that they thought I had dislocated my shoulder only to find it was a strain. I would have remembered that as well I would think. Oh another voice, I am sitting here with headsets on and I heard my name again from the door area but no one is there. I have a feeling that Keith is sitting on the side as I write this because I feel like I want to cry, yet I can’t cry. I stopped crying when my mother beat me with that spoon in VG. You know, I watch a video from Eminem and I can remember being dragged out of my closet. I can remember being pulled along by my hair. Just as his mother took pills, mine did as well. She was always popping Valume or Xanax because she was always upset or stressed or so I was told. She knew too that I saw her cut her wrist and she used to use this for many years, even a year after Dad died she said she was going to stop taking her pills because no one is there for her and that no one wants to listen her. Even though she would call me at all hours of the day, she always would use suicide as an excuse to get her way with me. You cannot imagine the fear I grew up with, right up until High School scared that I would come home and find her dead or that my brother had beaten her up. There was a day I came home to find the police at my house because he had hit my mother. So I never felt safe at home, could not feel safe in or out of school because of the kids who picked on me or would chase me because my brother announced that he was gay. I never really did have a safe place to live. No matter where I went I would be scared someone would know me and I could not get away. I often wonder what would have happened if I was not able to get into that old folks home when that car load of kids were after me. God, I sit here and think about all the sexual acts that I had to perform or take part in. Oral, anal, animal, masturbation and I even wonder about mutilation. Yes, in my records it spoke about a split penis and bruised scrotum. My question and my feeling is that I do remember when he preformed oral sex on me it would hurt because of his teeth and I wonder now if I have a cut or tear on my penis from that. I really do not know because I do not remember this ever happening to me. And to say that I fell on the ice just does not make sense. The scar on my head, the laceration on my face does not make any sense to me either. How did I end up with one on my face and eye with a belt buckle? Was it my brother or my father? I do not believe it was my brother because he never hit me that I know of with a belt. That was a tool my father always used, and to have to go to the hospital it must have been pretty bad. You know, speaking of tools I remember too how he used my mother’s vibrator on me but I do not know when or how old I was. It sucks because everything in my life and past is so such a blur. I remember the BB gun and the darts.

            I just sit her and think about the sexual abuse by him and the two others. I sit here and think of the physical abuse by my family. I sit here and think about how mom would use suicide to get her way. I think of all the traumatic things I saw growing up. I think about the searches for dad when he worked the bar. I think all the things kids did to me after my brother announced he was gay. I think about the photos of the kids he snuck in thru the window, which mom saw and did nothing. I think of all the beatings I took from him which she would do nothing but say “one day you will grow up and take him down”.  Her comment about “Bite it off” when I told on him forcing me to do oral on him. The beating my sister and I got when he told mom that we had sex. I think about seeing him rape that girl. I think about camp where he would smoke drugs with Dad. I think about all the fears I had to come home. I remember always being told how kids would be killed in bathrooms of restaurants so I never would ask to go in. How he treated others like at camp burning all his cloths. I think about ways my parents would embarrass me in stores when I would get yelled at and people would watch. I think of the school counselor who said I should have committed suicide at age 16. No one ever did anything to stop what was going on. If my own mother did nothing about the sexual abuse what reason would I have to go tell anyone else. When this teacher fondled me in her room, what reason would I have to go tell anyone what happened to me? Even when the youth minister took me to that parking lot I did not tell anyone because I was raised to believe nothing comes from telling. What reason did I really have to tell any adult? He was able to abuse Tyke and other kids mother babysat. We were all made to watch this, and everyone asks where my parents were when all this happened. Well, they were not home. How it happened, I remember now that mom and dad cleaned houses which would take all day. They would also go out a lot, to the starlight inn, VFW, friend’s houses or CB Parties. They had the social life one would not believe in the Military not like the one they had when dad retired. Here in NY they would go play cards at family homes like the our cousins. There was more then enough ample time for him to have his way with my sister and I. What hurts the worst over all this is that my own mother knew.  How can my mind keep doing this to me, why won’t it stop or slow down so that I can have my life back?  Why does my mind keep playing things over and over, not just one flash back but the same one over and over? Every once and a while a new one will appear but it only gets added to the mix. I can’t stand the feelings I have inside of me, how upset I get at my wife when she gets upset with me. I know I am a father, I need to be a father, but these feelings overcome me and I just can’t be who I was or need to be. I know she is right but it is not easy to do things when there is absolutely no ambition or drive to even move. I yell I don’t care because my mind cannot deal with problems on the outside of my body.  Is it the way I was taught not to care?  I always cared like when my sister was in the kitchen with those boys how I fought to stop it and yet ended up getting beat. This is one image of many I cannot get out of my head. I picture how things were back then. Right now my body and mind are so low it is hard to tell how I am feeling. Tonight I got scared because I was looking for my phone, I was in a panic and I really thought I was loosing my mind. Here it is 2am, I have been up since 8am and again I am weak but not tired. Three times I have heard the door open while it is locked; I have heard my name twice. I have a headache yet I am numb. Weird would you not say or agree? I feel like I have regressed over the past week and tonight I feel like I have regressed almost back to after I had the rubber bands. I am sitting here in a state of fear, afraid to go to sleep. Afraid to go upstairs, afraid to move from where I am sitting, stupid I know and I know I have nothing to be afraid of but the mind and the body work separate and not together like most people thing. This I can speak of with authority because I feel it and I sense it. I often ask myself why I waited to hear my nephew was abused to speak up, the reason is that my mother knew and I really thought that she was protecting them. Yet, I found that when he had his nude parties they would get his daughter out of the house. I now wonder why I did not question it and why I fought my wife to allow my kids to spend the night at his house. I was blind and dumb to the whole situation, the world and myself. Who knows…. But I am going to stop typing because I should try and get some sleep. I doubt I will be able to go to sleep with my head turning around in circles. Like I said in the beginning there is so much that I have seen, so much has been done and so much has yet to be said I just don’t know if and when or how long it will take if ever to really get over it or back to just dealing with it. I just don’t know………

Start of my blog...

       Tonight I decided to start a blog about my road to recovery from years of abuse. The posts here will be what it feels like to have been abused, accounts of flashbacks both mental and physical, what happened in my past, what caused me to become disabled and out of work since February 12th, 2010, what happens during my day here at home with my family, comments about how my family feels and how they react to different things that happen.

       First off, my sexual abuse started when I was eight years old when my older brother (Older by 4 years) forced my sister (Younger by 3 years) to engage in intercourse while he watched, and placed his hand down to make sure I had entered her. It continued until I was 15 years old when he severely beat me as he raped me anal with painful and strong force. I was also abused by two other adults, one a teacher and the other a youth minister. My brother abused me often both sexually and physically with both his hands and other objects. Objects such as shooting me with a BB gun, throwing darts into my back and legs. I have obtained my medical records from when I was born till I was out of my home at age 19. There are pages and pages of emergency room visits from cuts and bruises to broken leg and hands. Some of these I have no recall of them happening nor do I remember even being treated for them. Example I was taken to the ER for an upper respitory infection; however the doctor made a note about a Split Penis and bruising of my scrotum. The comments stated that I fell on the Ice and this is what caused it, I was 11 years old and have no recall of this and question how I could fall and do this damage.

       My abuse also came from my parents, my mother who was fully aware of the sexual abuse my brother was inflicting on my sister and I, and my father who was an alcoholic and often beat me. Some of these beatings I remember and also have them confirmed in my medical records such as cuts to my face from a belt buckle, lesions that required stitches where the doctor was told stories where it was not true. Mental abuse as I witnessed my mother try and commit suicide by cutting her wrist (I was the only child who saw it) and my father who tried to shoot himself in front of me when the gun gammed. My mother held suicide over my head till the day she died even though I was married and living 1400 miles away from her. After being abused for so long they had such control over me I did not even know it.

       I never spoke up until my brother abused his son, at which I became so angry I turned him in. They found 30 other children he abused (My mother knew about these as well) and he is serving a life plus 30 years. His wife, who was also involved in this became states witness and served 5 years for her roll. The DA stated at that time "This is the most dangerous pedophile I have ever convicted or have seen in all the years of being a DA"

       What caused me to go out on Disability is that in February 2010 I was admitted to the hospital for rectal bleeding. Bleeding that has come and gone from what I thought was age 16 till now, but medical records show that it started at age 8. They found an unhealed tear in my rectum known as a fissure, when I asked if it could have gone so far back to age 15 when I was raped and he said yes. This cause me to become very depressed but not over the edge. I was sent to a rectal surgeon who preformed a procedure that felt the same as when I was raped and I was forced to walk around for 3 days with this pain that no med or cream would take away. It was then that I had a mental breakdown, had flashback over flashback, nightmares, loss of weight and appetite, fears of sleeping, leaving my home, loss of memory, shakes all over my body and physical flashbacks where I am forced to feel the pain as I relive the abuse over and over.

       I do hope that these posts will help others out there; these posts will come from me and me only. They may be way off to the left one day then off to the right the next. They may be in forms of letters to family members or just blurts that is very hard to understand. The reason I say this, I have also been diagnosed with Disassociate Disorder which the brain stops time in my mind at a point of severe abuse and continues on like a new part of me. Currently I have 3 parts, Keith who is 8 years old, Robert who is 11 and Michael who I know nothing about. The reason I mention this is when I type they often will come out and take over the writing so much that I will not remember what was written and will also learn of new things. So all I ask is patience where you may have to read over again to catch the idea that is being written.

       Well, I will sign off for now as it is 03:45 and I am going to go check some emails and my Facebook. Another night of not being able to sleep because today was one of the worst days for flashbacks, blacking out (where I just don't remember what happens when I go thru this including not knowing my wife is next to me trying to talk to me) and shakes. So until my next post I hope you will start to get to know me thru my writings and also somehow understand what it will be like to be on this road to sexual abuse recovery..