Anchors Aweigh

the two posts i made yesterday, one looking at control, and the other on the unresolved post traumatic stress of growing up in our chaotic and dysfunctional incestuous family system really opened the aperture of my mind's eye full blast.

previously, i had been so intent on working to project the image of recovery perfection, that all my endeavors on recovery road focused on that end: maintaining the appearance that i was OK. the strides i made were more in terms of intellectual understanding of my pathology. that was not necessarily a bad thing, though. it was just the necessary path i had to take to get to the heart of the matter.

but now, with the recent work i have done exploring the roots of my own roadblocks to intimacy, and in tandem, taking into consideration the influences of unresolved early traumatic experiences, i now descend into the feeling level of recovery.

what a fantastic thing, to actually feel the effects of the fallout; to be the subject, and not just the passive observer commenting on the path----no, to actually be back in those moments, reliving the truth of the feelings, which were too strong and painful to accept at the time of the first exposure to the traumatic events.

what a freeing thing, to be able to see the angry furrowed brow of a stranger, and recognize the angry furrowed brow of a stressed out parent. to feel an imagined rejection as invalidation, and be catapulted into a depressive state with no explanation. now i know that every situation that arises to cause me stress and anxiety, is simply an echo of a former unresolved situation connected via emotional response and lineage to an earlier similar experience that was fraught with fear, and lacking the comforting reassurance of safety.

to feel that feeling of terror striking the heart as it rises to meet in the moment of now, but knowing that this time, i have options. that i can provide the reassurance i need to know that i am not trapped as i was then, with nowhere to run, forced to stay in place, powerless to defend myself. i no longer have to dissociate from the pain, merely because there is no apparent recourse.

these 'anchors' are everywhere in the psychic tapestry of my early life. and now i know their genesis, i can go back with this new flashlight, and discover them in all their little compartments and secret hidey holes. i can arrest them one by one, and remove the secret power they have held to tether me to them.

with this new knowledge in hand, i can eliminate all of the invisible automatic "NO's" that arise to inhibit me from reaching outside the bars of my own prison, when new person or situations are encountered, stirring old patterns of reactivity.

i don't have to flee or freeze any longer. i now have the power to stand ground, to confront and to fight if need be; to act in my own defense....... omg! what a responsibility! i have such little practice with that. what are the risks? will i be rejected, or respected? will i be destroyed, or will i prevail.

i must fight for the freedom, for release from the tethers of these emotional and psychological anchors.

i must, and i will be free of them; then, the true ron can emerge.

PTS Uncovered

the previous post on control provoked a day long reflection on the unresolved stress lingering from my pre-conscious years with my family of origin. reflecting on that also led to a sequence of thought links leading me to reflect on the unresolved stress that still lingers from the experience of my brother's death.


it was quite enough to have been brought into the situation that i was born into at the time. our house was always super stressed out, and i can only imagine that that was the case from day one. indubitably, things only got worse as my mother's chores increased yearly, as she was pregnant 12 times in the first 13 years of her marriage.


so she had my older brother [my perp], then immediately got pregnant again, and carried that child to term, but lost it along the way. stress. of course she still had her first born....nothing could change that. then next thing you know, another year later, i was born. sorry mom, you wanted a girl, but you got me. you already had a boy. and he was your golden child. i wonder how you handled your disappointment. how did you keep from subtly transmitting it thru your touch to my skin when you bathed me, fed me, dressed me?


never mind, 1 year and 10 days later, you gave birth to my sister....finally, the girl you had been waiting for. well, i guess you didn't get very much time to spend doting on her until my next brother was born a year and two months later. but at least, you had that year........


where did the time go? 10 years later, your family was complete. even though you lost 3 more. i still can't help but wonder.....what did you do with all the stress you were under during that 13 year time span. making and having babies, clothing feeding, cooking, cleaning. why don't i remember any fun? could it be because there was none? could it be because our life was so regimented, that the only way to stay sane was to control our behavior by ruling with violence? was that the only way you knew to keep us 'in line'.


of course, dad was no help. he had his own stress to deal with, working 2 and 3 jobs throughout the child rearing days. then shortly after the youngest was born, and the doctor told you that if you had any more children, you would die? yet you felt extremely guilty about having to have your tubes tied, good catholic woman that you were.


how would all these mouths be fed? of course, the family income had to be supplemented and so you went to work fulltime, leaving us to fend for ourselves. and you put 'the captain' in charge of us, the oldest brother, your golden child, who would, away from the watchful eye of any adult monitoring the situation, go on to sexually abuse no less than 4 of his younger siblings, the youngest being 3 years old.


what a mad existence. then on your days 'off' from work, you would make us all catch up on the chores that did not get done during the week, and you would have us all scrubbing walls, doing laundry, cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. and only after the work was all done, would we be allowed to go outdoors and 'play' for a couple of hours, until the dinner hour.


i thought mom about how when i was 16, and i started working part time at the college cafeteria. you got a job there when dad worked there on the maintenance staff. after he left there and got a job working for the port authority, you and the supervisor got close. i remember discovering his love letters to you underneath your clothes once when i was tidying up your dresser drawers. i know how neat you liked everything to be, and so i would always be trying to please you by ridding up whenever i could. i was devastated when i found those cards. i confronted the supervisor, and he could not deny it, but he did say it was totally 'pure'.


fast forward to bill's death. i'll never forget the night we found out he had died in his apartment from a cerebral hemorrhage, and how you collapsed. we all needed someone to comfort us, but you were inconsolable, and so our needs got no attention.


then there was my pain. i'll never forget the smell of that apartment. the reeking odor of death, from bill who laid up in there for two days before the smell alerted his landlady that something was amiss. when me and a few of the sibs went with dad to claim bill's belongings, it was an experience that i will never forget. but i never thought about the impact of that experience until today. my last memory of him, my perp and first lover, was of him rejecting the relationship that i held in such high regard for almost 8 years.


it just dawns on me now, that was the beginning of the end of my life. the night after his death, i am sure i never slept the same again. i am sure, i lost my heart and soul when he died, i died.


i tried to reach out and share my pain. i told about what he had done. something i could never do as long as he was alive. and when i disclosed it, i sealed my own fate. because on top of the trauma of losing a first born son, now shame would become the hallmark of our family history. and i would be blamed for bringing the terrible secret to light.


where do the accumulated unresolved feelings of a life time go? they don't go anywhere. they just get buried, piling up like a huge composte heap, silently doing their toxic damage, poisoning the soul from the inside out. all the years of unresolved fear, rejection, anger, abandonment, deceit, guilt and shame. what have they wrought?


pain and suffering. ah, the legacy of poverty and abuse. *sigh*

The "C" Word

kay suggested i write about the 'c' word.... you know...... control.

i've been scratching my head and drumming my fingers all week about this, and finding it difficult to begin to talk about it. hmmmm...... where to begin .... where to begin ... where to begin.....

maybe with a definition? 1. To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over.

that conjures up a feeling reaction similar to being grabbed violently by the arm and either being forced to perform a behavior, or being restrained from some action. force and restraint; rigidity and no room for compromise or flexibility.

from one perspective, the element of control contains a capacity for contrasting characterizations. one, resulting in force and rigidity, and the other aspect, more cooperative and conjoining.

actually i prefer the gentler implications of the word: conduct: 1. To guide the course of; manage or direct.

however in this context, it appears control, in one sense, is about a dominant force exercising power over a weaker, more submissive object/subject. so there's the inroad for my discussion on 'control'. how did control impact my life, with me being the weaker force having power exerted upon me by a stronger force? how and why did i develop coping strategies in reaction to the experience of being encroached upon as a victim of someone's control pressure, the exertion of their will over me as a dominating force? did i fight, freeze or flee?

looking back into the origins of my life, where patterns of response and reactivity would have had their genesis, i can clearly see how the mode of response would have been 'freeze', for me. the first perceived encroaching force would have been that of my parental figures who would enforce their wishes upon me, and who would use force as a regulating mechanism in order to get me to adjust to their behavioral expectations.

prior to language, sensory impressions registered as an overload of sight, hearing, touch: big, looming, punishing, angry, threatening forms, emitting their scary powerful energy at me, tense facial expressions, violent physical contact, loud words with clicking consonants spit out, their volatile energy resonating against the target of my soul. barking out do's and don't's; orders and warnings of consequence: do, or die. nothing tender in contrast to balance or neutralize the impact of the fierce,fearsome temperamental energy thrust upon me.

no options, but to conform. no way out. nowhere to run to escape the raging storm of 'influence'. a helpless dependent infant creature, powerless to do anything but to conform to the demands of the powerful force overseeing my life. what would such an infant creature do? how would such an infanct creature defend itself against such affront? it could not escape [no legs yet]. where would it go even if there was an option for egress? no, there was no way out. all the infant creature could do, was abandon its own need set, and replace it with conformity to that of powerful overlords. it would become scared silent, and rendered impotent to express its own life force. eventually, it would have worn the yoke of suppression for so long, that it would forget it ever had a choice to begin with.

its power had never been recognized, nurtured, and honored; never encouraged; but rather, was stripped; replaced and supplanted with the will of the 'governers' of the system in which it had been born and bred: a system of rewards and consequences.

even before language develops as a means of communication, the creature learns not to touch that hot oven, or bear the consequences. if it is docile enough, it learns very quickly, that to insist on having its needs met is suicide. so, out of fear of being punished and/or deserted, in order to protect itself, and advance its own survival, it yields and ultimately surrenders to the power of force, which establishes, shapes, enforces and reinforces and conforms its patterns of relating to power systems that demand adherence, or risk rejection, abandonment and obliteration. it is rendered devoid of its own power.

then....the child turns two. all that in perhaps less than 700 days of reinforced treatment. thus describes the situation of a life born and groomed in the factory of such a controlling governance.

and so, the stage is set for repeating lifelong patterns of self abandonment, retreat from aggression, avoidance, and isolation. curiosity is strangled; creativity crushed. the creature becomes an automaton taking it cues for survival from powers that would control and curtail its highest expectations and deepest aspiration: to be and to become a person, fully human and alive.

my head hurts now ..... to be continued...

Adonis Complex

i believe this complex to be a strong anchoring component of my own obsessive compulsive addiction to contextualizing everything. everything for me, in order to be recognized as real, has to be understood in terms of how it got there in the first place. in other words, what are the circumstances in which a particular situation arose in the first place?

following the progression of thought and understanding laid out in this journal over the last year and a half, i, in tandem with little ron, the first witness of events, have come to an understanding of the cause and effect of my own deep issues. i believe for me, that this complex is rooted in a sense of inferiority. a sense of feeling that i was not good enough, and that in fact, i would never be. since my most basic need for love and nurture remained unmet in the earliest years of my development due my mom's preoccupation with extenuating factors, i struggled subconsciously with deep feelings of abandonment throughout my entire childhood.

over time, as this desire/need was continually met with frustration, it became natural to learn to live without having the expectations of mother love met. i imagine i came to know life as many other children who have felt left behind in some way, shape, or form. i may not have been aware that the hunger was there, and it may strike some as odd that in these entries i rarely mention my father, but that is only because there is no personal connection, no memory outside the fear state that he elicited in me. i have no memory of my spirit reaching out in desire of him; but my mother on the other hand, i felt the emptiness of that unrequited connection all my life. at some point, i resigned to the fact that she would always be unattainable.

i saw that so clearly as i watched from the crow's nest of my playpen the bond build and strengthen between her and my older brother. then i watched it build and strengthen between her and my sister, born a year after me, the girl she had wanted, and finally got.

something in me that is beyond words, knows these things. the language of clairvoyance, prior to verbalization and semantics, knows these things in the heart.

in the eyes of little ron [LR], his older brother WAS a god. he must have been very special indeed to have been worthy to have the relationship with mother that LR was denied. and so later, LR felt so 'special' to be given the 'special' attention he gave LR. he gave it to LR at a time LR was sorely starving for it, as he had been denied it all his life. when LR was introduced to the attention of his older brother/god, he felt complete. this was before LR's psyche had reached maturity.... actually it was when he was on the brink of adolescence. so LR's primary self-image developed as a concubine to sate the sexual intimacy desires of an older brother. LR grew along those lines emotionally and psychologically for 10 years, in a imagined 'marriage' with the older bro.

just months before the older bro died, the older bro, at the age of 23, abandoned the sexual relationship, stating, 'that was just kids fooling around'. LR was devastated; he felt the pain of rejection. when the olderbroperpgod died, LR felt abandoned.

LR was not able to recover from that rejection. he internalized the rejection, wondering why why why? what did i do wrong? why did this happen??? and so then he took steps to answer that question by making his body the primary importance.

the abandonment led him to overeat, to replace the 'intimacy' that he once had, which was now refused him. he did not know how to stop stuffing himself with food and drink, because he did not understand why this was the case, and there was no one available to confide in, no a shoulder of compassion to lean on. when LR's bro died, he told his family support system about it, and they then too rejected him. LR had no one to love him then, and no one to support him emotionally or psychologically. his entire life became a quest to find value and worth again. and since the only way he knew how to do that was by giving his sex away, he over focused on that and made having a perfect desirable body the chief aim of his existence. he came to believe if he could regain that one thing which made him desirable at one point in his life, everything would be 'OK'.

LR verifies this to be a true and accurate recounting of all that he remembers about the progression of his life.

The Wounded Critic

scratchpad work in progress

title: the anatomy of a complex situation

after the intensity of working for the last 16 months to get to the root of my depression, i feel exhausted. i literally feel as if i have no strength to type everything i want to say. the new lens has sharpened its focus to such an extent that it captures far more than i am able to comprehend all in the glimpse of one moment.

layer by layer the onion of me has peeled over these months, and now, ultimately, reveals that core issue which has belied all my attempts to understand the genesis of my own personal pain. after years and years of striving to understand 'why' the pieces of the puzzle are now falling into place, revealing the big picture.

like an obsession in its own right, i have spent my entire life asking 'why', question followed by question, day in and day out, leading back thru a labyrinth of feelings, beliefs, assumptions, striving to discern their connection to some past event or situation that would identify their origins. believing that once that was identified, i would reach some promised land of peace and truth where only reality would prevail; not some pretentious world of my own construction.

having resolved the issue of anger with my family of origin, and accepted that situation without rancor and remorse as immutable, and irreconcilable, i reached a point where i came to understand how and why my inner child languished in confusion, feeling his basic needs for love unmet for all these long years.

i pondered his response to that, the hole in his heart and spirit for longing to be loved and cherished, and i saw what that frustrated need caused him to become: the elder ron, a jaded and cynical critical judge, who would find his worth measured in terms of external feedback. back then, he wondered, am i as lovable as bill [my older brother and perp]? am i as smart? he never needed to be appraised higher in value, just equal. but no, mother's own words "everyone knows the first one's special" stuck like a knife in the gut all these years, as a promise that he would never measure up to his big brother's standard.

so when big brother initiated me into the world of sexual behavior, i was finally worth something. i was worth something to HIM, my supreme demi-god. as long as he 'wanted me' i had value.

i spent my entire adolescence enamored of him, and founded my entire sense of self-worth on his existence. then the day came he died at the age of 23, my ground collapsed beneath me. i didn't realize at first, how all those years, while i loved him, i secretly hated him, and envied him all at once. i secretly wanted to occupy his place in the pecking order of our family system. after all, i was the second in line, born male, though my mother wanted a girl. yes, she used to dress me up in my cousins dresses, then when my sister was born one year after me, well, then....next.... ?

after he died, i had no sense of compass; subconsciously i began to characterize myself a loser. i was left to deal with a set of feelings that i had been out of touch with for so many years and i did not know how or where to begin. that was when my career introduced itself, and i would compensate for being a loser, by exchanging my obsession with him, for an obsession with achievement. i would use this career in music to give me the sense of usefulness and purpose that i had lost in the death of my brother/lover.

yes, i became the black sheep of the family after his death when i outed him by disclosing his predatory behavior of me and 3 others of my sibs. i defamed the golden child. my family has never forgiven me for that.

[insert emoticon for swoon....]

in all that, little child ron got forgotten; lost and buried beneath the suppressed feelings of pain, shame, rejection abandonment and anger that smothered him all these years. the ignorance and denial and the compensatory, overarching, overachieving elder ron, caused him to be forgotten. as a result, little ron became a wounded, anxious, frightened vagabond shuffling the streets carrying that wound to all the people, places and things he encountered along the way. with his cup outstretched, to beg for his 'daily bread' he would do a little dance or sing a little song, and he would be gratified by the sound of the coins clinking in the bottom of the cup.

as the elder ron surface crust is torn away, little ron emerges from the shadows, an emotional feral child trying to find a way to cope with life, while the emotions pour out as the aforementioned knife is removed.

i'm not even sure why i'm still talking at this point...... need to go rest in the emerging feelings

to be continued.....

Letting Go the Idealized Family

for today, i have surrendered to the understanding that my family's unwillingness to participate in psychic excavation of the dynamics of our emotional relationship, though unsatisfactorily serving my needs, meets their needs perfectly. done. it's just simply not a requirement for integrative balance in their mental health schematic. i had to accept the futility of expecting blood from a stone. instead i get stone from blood, and it feels like a kidney stone [if you've never had one they hurt like a mofo].

accepting that possibility for me was hard, because in doing so, meant i had to let go my romanticized notions of who my idealized family were, and that was very painful. gratefully, acceptance of their emotional disability reduced for both of us the growing stress of expectation for something that could not be, and doing so released me from that negative energy which had ruled my emotional life and caused me to paint all my relationships with the brush of emotional color dipped in that shallow palette inherited from my family.

so now what do i do? where do i go? how do i, in a healthy way, satisfy this starving need for bonding to those with whom i share psychic DNA? i don't know if i can. but i am believing that i can get the need quenched through other means, even though they will be mere replacements. that sounds daunting and does not have a lot of appeal, because when i hoping for a simple remodel, i am beginning to see that i may need to start from scratch.

i don't know if i have the energy for that. at any rate, i am coming to the point where i am able to accept the terms of their endearment. as crappy as they are, the consequences of choosing to hide in shadows, secrecy, avoidance and denial will be theirs and theirs alone. in the meantime, i have moved on toward other realms where family of choice cherishes me, and honors my need to ask the deeper questions.

in the meantime, i say thank you to those who have shown the true value of friendship and love, especially my friend family with whom i share spiritual community at mcc. you dear people make me feel 'cherished'. wow....... what else is needed?

Were You Cherished?

i had spent several weeks of grousing with kate over my family's inability to address my need for emotional resolution, and in my cul-de-sac post gained a lot of understanding. but the time has come to move completely out of the head, and start looking at my life through the lens of the heart.

last week was very difficult emotionally. kate asked me point blank: has there ever been a time in your life when you felt 'cherished'? dead silence.....um, let me see...... tick tock tick tock tick tock.....hmmmm....tick tock tick tock tick tock tic tock....., um, no....*sigh*.

so my last post focused more on the acceptance of what my family can't give me due to their emotional incapacity to do so.

the next post unpacks that a little more.

Little Ron: How.Could.You?

it's not easy. i have lost motivation and impetus to propel me forward into the new day. a bit stuck in the molasses of transitional spaces. wrote a poem the other day while spending time away from the interference of visual media:

how. could. you?
how could you leave me
alone at the door
in the cold
with the rain
pelting down my back?

how. could. you?

how could you?
how could you leave me like that
in a nest
of relentless
suffocating
dark devices

wondering

where were you?
i pounded and pawed
scratched and i clawed
for you to come
but my pleas
pregnant with hope
dashed in slow motion
to the ground
as the sinking revelation
overtook me
like an unwitnessed death
this terrible truth

there was no you

i was alone

how could you?

how.

could.

you?

in the trance of this poem, i was empathizing with my brother in law's dog who loves to yelp and whine when she wants let into the house. my trance made me identify with her feelings of abandonment, and i realized as i was writing the poem that it was being written to several people: my mother, first.

i wrote it to my mother to express the sense of abandonment felt as a young child ron. ron the infant and ron the toddler. stuck in a playpen, an unengaged and passive watcher. wanting desperately to be let out, to join in the fun and festivities with her and my older brother. but nope, i was just left there to witness the blossoming relationship between my mother and my older brother, my perp. yea, i imagined myself inside the brain of that dog and i could definitely relate.

Cul-de-sac

i recently found the understanding i needed in order to move beyond obsessing over my family's incapacity, due to their own state of emotional disability, to give me much needed support all these long years.


however, with that primary addiction now defunct, as i look back over my life with more head space and a different and clearer lens, i now wonder if i have indeed authored my own life's narrative into a cu-de-sac. how much of it was true, and how much it was contrived in terms of the way i blamed my family for failing to give me the resources i needed to make better choices for developing my life. i wonder now, did i just think it up, then take steps to construct and live out the dream or nightmare i concocted in my own head? i allowed their closed mindedness to limit my potential for growth by giving them the power to do so, and wailing and bemoaning that made it a stumbling block for my own personal evolution and development.


as of late, i have pondered the wisdom of disclosure, and wondering did it truly advance my cause, or rather cause me to shoot myself in the foot. did it give me a vision, a plan for escaping the dark thick forest of delusion, or merely cause me to misplace the blame for my own misguided failings. was my upbringing really the source of all my woes? or am i just a grouse dissatisfied with the terms imposed upon me in life, with all its inequity and limitations.


surely, in some strange convoluted way, the SA experiences i had which formed and shaped my life's decisions had both detriments and benefits for myself as well as for the others whose lives were touched by mine. still the sad truth is that i can't know who 'i would have been' without the experiences i had. i can only now continue to uncover and recover my own deep potential that was always present in the essential core of me. i have no choice but to just keep digging the tunnel toward the sunshine of enlightenment, and continue to keep alive the hope that i am not being led on a ruse.


yet underneath it all, there is a restless gnawing feeling that the life i am left with will always be a second best alternative to the one i was intended to have, the one i 'should' have had, without the interruption, the side track of meeting this 'wall'. at one point in the aftermath portion of the recovery process, i admit i did feel like a prisoner walking out into freedom on the first day of release, there was a head full of hope and a heart full of possibility. now.....i just feel 'bleh'. the world and the life it offers was never meant for the likes of survivors....or perhaps it was, and i am merely refusing to accept my allotted portion, my destiny.


regarding achievements found and lost along the way and in spite of encountering 'the wall', those simply are not serving me at the level i need to be served. perhaps, in order to keep moving forward, no matter how 'good' things appear to get for me, the task remains a primary responsibility to keep adjusting my lens as i move from stage to stage.


i can no longer live my life in reaction to the damage wrought in the encounter with 'the wall'. now, more than ever, it is encumbent upon me to write a different reaction and live a different reaction rather than one that tells me i failed. if there is a 'failure' on my part, perhaps it is more a failure to correctly assess the situation in the first place. and now with hindsight and a different level of understanding i must needs readjust the focus, and edit the narrative to more accurately report the memory of the past, and redefine the cul-de-sac as a temporary detour, rather than as a permanent roadblock.


much in the same manner that i had to forgive my family for not being able to give me what i needed when i needed it the most, i now must be careful in the next chapter that i write, to avoid getting trapped as a new character, continually thinking, and living out the idea that my life is a total waste because of my encounter with 'the wall'. if it's true as they say, that water seeks it own level, the challenge will always be mine, to keep authoring a narrative with positive episodes, lest i fall into and remain in the self abrogation trap that characterizes the doleful melancholia of obsessively mourning the past.


true though, the mourning of the past is not an event, but rather a process. and as a person who suffered the inability to control my own SA experiences at one point in life, it makes sense that i would want to engage every power within my ken to regain it by attempting to manage the grieving process itself.


i am confident that i will rediscover the place which exists within from which chapters of achievements previously and successfully had been launched. that place was not killed, but perhaps forgotten. it can and will be rediscovered again and again, as the lens is continuously adjusted and as new perspectives are revealed.


[ more to come on the suject ]

It's Their Loss

Prologue:

it took a week to write this journal entry which started as an assignment that kay had given me. here it is, in is meandering, disjunct form.

======

final thoughts on my emotionally disabled family and their inability to cope with 'me':

i've been facing and dealing with kay the long term impact the incest had on me in particular, and relationships in general. i'm sure i'll have more to say about the relationships part at a later date, but for today kay asked me to journal on the topic as it is relative to my systemic family.

we talked the other day for the entire hour about how the family's denial and avoidance has led to the fact that by their refusal all these years to enter discussion about the abuse and the collateral damage inflicted by it, they have missed out on the opportunity to come to know a truly incredible and unique person.

i am the product of an incestuous family, which spawned a child who in his emerging adolescence came to serially abuse no less than 4 of his 7 other younger siblings. a family that preached adherence to puritanical values, yet practiced something quite different. it was a family that controlled its subjects using fear and violence. it used shame guilt and ridicule. then in order to ensure its protection after those devices would no longer work to keep them in line, it resorted to denial and avoidance to escape the judgment of complicity.

....to be continued..... too painful to go on at the moment.....

[back again 3 days later; i am much calmer now, and the soul burn dredged up by thinking about this has subsided.]

it is a bit confusing but i am finding myself stuck on how to proceed in my writing about this. and as i ponder which direction to take, i begin to realize how difficult it is to write about what it is exactly that was lost.

perhaps one thing that would be considered is their loss of the opportunity for personal enrichment. by keeping me at bey all these years emotionally, they failed to increase their capacity for love and compassion. in doing so they chose to remain locked up in the prison of their own dark fears and shame. it is unfortunate, that we missed the opportunity to expand our capacity for love. the family unit is the primary school for learning how to love, support, encourage; to nurture and to build bridges from heart to heart, soul to soul; if that lesson is not learned in the smaller paradigm of the family, then it cannot be translated into the larger paradigm of society. such families remain a closed system, unable to be affected by any air outside their own cloistered walls.

i was born the second son of a family of 8 children: 6 boys and 2 girls. my older brother was the 'special' one [my mothers words] and i was what happened on the way to my parents 'trying for' a girl. it was somewhat of a disappointment when i was born, but my sister was born one year after me, and she was doted upon, while i was more or less left to my own devices, without the benefit of having my basic needs met for love, nurture and affirmation. all the focus was on the special one and the long awaited girl. eventually, year after year, over a period of 10 years, the remaining 8 siblings were born. eventually, the stress of managing a household of 8 children, many 1 year apart, became too great, and the resulting stress was released in the form of physical acts of violence against us, in order to control our 'behavior' and to keep us in our places by fear and constant threats of violence if we did not conform and comply.

[final part, written monday 9-28-09]

i'm coming to the end of a long and winding road, and this post will be one of the last that i make decrying the emotionally disabled state of my family system. after much introspection, i have decided to walk away from my addiction to commenting on their negative influence on my life. i have decided to move on now, with a deeper understanding. my intention is not to 'write them off' so to speak, but rather to write off my old prescription for coping with the pain.

the glass that was once half empty, is now officially half full. when i do write about my family, it will be merely to report on the impact of being related to an emotionally disabled family [thanks an, for that terminology]. at this crossroads i finally understand how i got to be who i am, because of where i came from. and now, empowered with this knowledge, i take full responsibility for any of the future choices i make in my life.

i left my family at age 18, joined the navy, and never looked back. i did not turn into a pillar of salt as they did. frozen and impotent, unable to become leaven for a world and its people. i went on to dream dreams and to pursue them, and to realize them. but yet, i thought i was still part of them, though i did not realize that we, unceremoniously, we had parted ways.

my family's focus was on having children, and not for the purpose of generating new seeds of fruit for the enrichment of the world, but merely to satisfy its own shallow purpose. am i presuming there should have been more to it than that? i answer that question with a yes. looking at life all around me, i see this marvelous intercourse transpiring on every level. it is what life is all about. the mathematics of creativity in the social discourse, the intermingling of hearts, souls and minds in processes of addition, multiplication and division. but that did not happen in my family. my family is too closed in on itself for outreach. it was like a root trapped by a rock, refusing its deeper reaching.

and so, while i decided to set my sites higher, their basic survival tactic remained simply to meet requirements necessary for sustaining their protective shell from scrutiny by the outside world. i needed more and i wanted more. a family is supposed to be a womb which forms its members within its sphere of influence, nurturing the growth by maintaining its own state of health during the gestation period, and ultimately birthing to the world a new being capable of enriching it.

however, in the stultifying tomb of my repressive family, i was reduced to a one dimensional character in their life. in the family tomb of existence, there was no joy expressed, no individuality tolerated, no deviation from the family ethical mindset. neither extraneous nor implicit interferences would be tolerated.

what was lost for me in this experience is evident in all i have written over these years, in terms of what they have taken from me.

but what was lost for them was the experience of coming to know and be touched by my warmth, my faith and spirituality, the experience of my compassion and empathy, my joy, my peace, my wisdom, and my humour.

but ultimately, everything that they failed to recognize as good and worthy in me, is their loss. in all the excluding, marginalizing and avoiding me, they lost the opportunity to experience all those wonderful characteristics mentioned in the previous paragraph.

but, for today, i reclaim the life i was meant to have upon entering this mortal coil. i claim it as my gift to the world, and for those that refuse it, well, all i can say, and without judgment and without rancor, and without self-pity: 'it's their loss'.

Fitting In

i do have a lot to say about this subject of 'trying to fit in', and you may be sorry that you asked. i have actually spoken about it in a couple of places on this discussion board.

i have a couple of different theories about why this is.

first of all, it seems that there is an issue within you that is longing to be addressed; a need for resonance, consolation and emotional support. we all need that, that's why we're here.

but this need, while indeed universal, will not be met for each of us in the same way. why? because we are complex human beings who, because of our wiring, are very biased and therefore limited in the ways that solutions may impact us. we hear only what reinforces something we already believe, much in the same way that we see only that which we already recognize as apparent forms already existing within ourselves.

the 'fitting in' difficulty comes because of the scripts that are installed in early development periods that become more or less blueprints from how we continue to seek out relations though our lifespan.

for many of us who are survivors, and particularly in cases where we have not had success in resolving the issues that grow out the original lousy blueprint models, there is a tendency to become more isolated as time goes on, simply because those blueprints are not effective as plans for engaging and intersecting with others.

when i think of what i means 'to fit in' i have to also think about it in two directions: one, what are my presumed expectations for fitting in, and two, what are the conditions for that to take place.

considering point one, what do i expect to get out of being able to see myself as 'one who is fitting in'. how will i know i am in fact fitting in at all? i think the answer to that is simply, when i feel a sense of fulfillment, a sense that i am a viable factor contributing to the healthy function of some 'machine' greater than myself, when my sense of purpose is being fulfilled by my involvement in relationship to and with something, then i am comfortably fitting in. i am 'home'.

regarding point two, what are the conditions for fitting in to take place? diarmuid o'murchu states in 'quantum theology' that the attraction and interaction that characterizes many relational modes suggest that all relationships happen within a system or network of influences. what i interpret that to mean is that in order for me to find others to qualify as relational partners for satisfying the need to fit in, i must seek them within my own fields of interest.

the fields of influence are like electromagnetic fields that serve to attract and organize wave particles into certain realms of belonging. and if that is true on the physical plane, it must be true on the invisible mental and emotional plane as well. talents, ideas, emotional schemas, are all made of energy, and they are all residing in their own realm of influence, gravitating magnetically in a sense toward similar forces.

in order to build relationships, there must be some type of relationship with the object or person i am attempting to navigate towards. shared interests such as hobbies, ideals, etc are fields that have the power to attract people to each other. people's bonding galvanizes to the extent that these explicit characteristics emerge from and resonate with similar implicit values existing in both subjects involved.

using survivors as an example [no one in particular], person one [me] is single male homosexual formerly married with grown children, abides by a less is more mentality, has always lived and thought 'outside the box' of traditional heterosexual values, is open minded about some things most others find taboo, will find it challenging to find resonance and deep friendship with others who are repelled by such character.

person two identifies as heterosexual, is married, struggles with homosexual feelings, is a business professional who has not disclosed to anyone outside their recovery circle, is highly invested in self-image, and fears the loss of everything should they be 'discovered', out of self protection, would most likely avoid seeking deep relationships with others who would not resonate or intersect with their sphere of influence, and who may expose them to a vulnerable state.

so you can see there is nothing wrong with 'you'. there are many factors that rule you out as potential 'fitting in' material. what needs to happen is that a plan needs to be devised for establishing yourself in relationship to/with some/thing/one.

but in order for these relationships to bond and blossom, they must be approached with a clear understanding of the motivating causes for seeking them out in the first place. speaking of my own circumstances, because my early bonding needs were left unmet in the formative years, i was stuck there until i learned how to get the needs met from other sources. i was so starved for love all my life because i didn't get it from my primary nurturers, that i looked for it in all the wrong places. in doing so, i wanted to believe so desparately that is was fitting in, but soon enough, i realized i was just using all those things as replacements in an attempt to fill that deep void.

so last year, when i had that realization, i started on a quest to begin to resolve that need once and for all. that was when i joined the mcc church and began to develop a bond with an entire community of people. i realized that if i went there looking for romance, that my fixation would not be addressed and healed, but only sated, and that eventually, i would be left where i started, still hungry for love, and looking to have it fed, rather than healed. so i decided to focus on and explore the root causes.

remarkably, over the year + that i have been involved with the community, though participating in worship, social activities, helping with the food bank and fundraisers, that hole has been filled, and i no longer feel the need to 'fit in', but rather, that in fcat, I DO 'fit in'!

that settled, i am finally able to move on, and now my next 'thing' is to try to cultivate personal relationships and find ways to 'fit in' to friendships, but those too must be approached as stated above, by finding others who share fields of interest, and in that way expand my horizons of belonging.

i realize that since i have found a place where 'like' feels at home with 'like' there is so much potential for more growth. i no longer need to be over focused on my onw brokenness, since i have experienced mendedness. being validated and appreciated has helped me learn to care more about others, and has opened me up to ask how can i help them to better feel the safety of 'fitting in'.

On Social Connections

justscott inspired this post, and i wanted to include it here as my commentary on the topic of social connections and how they occur and develop.

i see social connections as a matter of simple progression [clarification: my post is NOT referring to romantic relationships specifically, but rather any relationship in general, although the explanation works for both]:

inspection, affection, connection [then later defection, or rejection ]

and yes, like layers of the onion, each stage has its criteria that are satisfied before moving deeper to the next level.

inspection: you meet a person. something about one another attracts each to the other. there is a taking and a giving that occurs. an exchange of psychic currency. as you deepen communication, an assessment process is taking place that is subconscious, and it is a barter system. at some point, if someone begins to realize that their needs and expectations are not being realized, the potential electromagnetism fizzles out for one party or the other or both. lots of judgment going on at this phase. is this person trustworthy? can they serve MY purpose for this engagement? can i serve THEIR purpose for this engagement? in this phase something beyond the subjects is making the connections happen. the pair is 'us'd' by the principle of connection working beyond them both. you probably can verify this looking back on you experience with your wife and how this preliminary stage progressed. as soon as one begins to control the process by anticipating meeting the imagined the needs of another by projecting their ideal onto them, the relating loses its ground, as individual control usurps the creation of the relationship from the hands of the connection principle.

what is the 'electromagnetic' material constituting this clairvoyance drawing the individuals into this field of commonality? it may be a magnetism that emanates from their values system as a field of influence drawing one to the other. and in the initial phase of connection, there is a sorting/sifting process occurring that keeps the subjects engaged in this process that is 'us-ing' them. and the process continues until the attempt to recognize resonant values pans out or dissolves, at which point phase two is entered.

before moving on, it is important that one thing must be understood about the 'inspection' phase. and that is what the magnetizing particles are essentially, that attract people like magnets into the field of influence in the first place. are they strongly psychological, emotion, physical, or a combination of all of them? for myself, what has impeded me from deepening intimacy, is the fact that my emotional needs are so much greater than the other person's. as in the inspection phase, i tend to project an unintegrated ideal onto them, and my interests seem to attempt to color them as the answer to my needs, and this bias factors into the inspection phase, albeit subconsciously. unbeknownst to me, i begin to secretly assess determinations as to whether or not they are going to be friend worthy in the first place, and worthy of the energy investment.

my initial attachment imprinting didn't take place during the regular course of development, so my emotional needs far eclipse those of potential friends, who perhaps managed to proceed developmentally to the point where their needs rested more in the field of special interests, such as grew out of their own resources and talent DNA. in that sense, i am more like the interrupted child trying to strike up friends with adult people whose need sets are advanced to a different realm.

this needs a lot more reflection, but it is the cause that i believe, for my own lack of bonding ability. and even as i intersect with other people with whom i share similar realms such as recovery people, i find there are still too much diversity of interests and values, that impede me from connecting with them. there are so many fields of influence at play: ageism, sexuality, career, economic status, personal values system.... it is truely rare that people, especially the older they get, will make the connections that were made in earlier times of their life, when the magnetic fields of influence has far fewer factors interfering with the unification/connection process.

what i understand for today, is that if i can learn to connect in higher realms, then chances are i will meet and begin to resonate, with more frequency, others who share the magnetism of specific fields of influence. in order to make healthier connections, i needs to resolve earlier unmet emotional needs. the big problem for me: i've gotten used to being alone, and i kinda like it, and i am not sure i want the 'bother'. that is where i need to do a lot of my work.

affection: this is the next layer of the onion. since initial connections have assessed and projected a positive potential for fruitful future exchanges, then the practicum period is entered and bonds are strengthened thru the practice of shared mutual experience.

connection: it happens and is only questioned when the values specific to each individual show themselves to be at odds with the other.

defection: happens when insurmountable stumbling blocks [usually 'blockheadedness'] occurs and the synthesis of contrasting values becomes improbable, or compromise is impossible.

Reentering therapy

well, last week i decided to give myself a new birthday present. i made arrangements to begin a new course of therapy.

i found kay and i was absolutely thrilled with her bio. out of all the therapists in the area, hers resonated with what i needed:

Quote:

“Have you been worried about the same issue for a long time or are you carrying a grief too heavy to bear?

since i have been doing deep delving into the issues of attachment, i have finally gotten to the core of my discomfort and unrest, my low burner anger issue. it was such a relief to see such a compassionate question. i needed that, for sure.

the worrisome issue, packed with grief for me, of course, is the inability to reconcile myself with my family's denial. i have dealt with the sexual abuse by my older brother, and even healed from the trauma of the rapes in my later teen years. but what still remains unresolved for me, is the relationship patterning that became modeled as a result of being part of my particular family system.

i have realized for a long time now, that my next hurdle to jump in recovery, is that of relationships. i'm not talking about romance, although that would be last on the list of those which would need attention. i do realize that once i fix the relationship to my primary caregivers, then i will once again begin to engage in my own developmental process, rather than being stuck in self defeating and repetitive patterns of relating.

learning how i transfer the models of the relationships patterned from within my family of origin onto my friends and others will help to dissolve the offense/defense mechanisms that have kept me safe all these years.

kay will provide the safe and compassionate sounding board for helping me recognize the obstacles to growth. i have needed emotional and psychic support for so long, i really don't know what that will feel like to finally have it.

i went to my first session this evening, and after disclosing my history, and sharing a dialogue with kay, we both feel that this relationship is happening at the right time.

i felt good coming out of the session, and something 'bad' must have been left there, because i noticed there was something different about my attitude for the rest of the evening.

Rebirth Pangs

i posted this in another place the other day, but i really want it to be part of my on going process journal, because in retrospect for me it helps the pieces fit together better:

it's such a struggle to maintain a natural appreciation for things that interest me. abuse ruined the natural and healthy tendency to be inquisitive about the world. it was a time of wonder, when the food of daily bread was all inside me, in my head, heart and soul.

i remember when i was much younger, i used to love to go outdoors into the woods, and play among the wildflowers, climb trees, explore new boundaries of the areas where i lived. i was kept on a short leash those days, because my parents did not want us outside for too long or to go far away, but when i was allowed out, i would go and never think about the stress of 'home'.

same thing when i started learning to play the piano in the summer prior to entering 8th grade. i would sit and play for hours on end, and get lost in the experience of enjoying music. while all my pals were outside soaking up the sun, i was busy practicing the piano. they would come to the house to ask if i could go out and hang out, but, no, i couldn't tear myself away. music was my rock, and my magical kingdom, my oasis: my food.

after my older brother introduced me to the 'pleasures' of sex sometime in the next year, i lost interest in those things, and entered an era of 'fast food'.

from that time on, everything that i did became a path to self-gratification on some level. even though drug use was not a part of our sexual relationship, i was aware that he was doing drugs, and so i sought out drugs as a way of connecting to him, to deepen the intimacy and make me feel even closer to him.

my love for him became the most powerful drug, and i did not even know it until years later. in the meantime, everything that could give me good feelings got enfolded into this larger love, and they became a metaphor for it. the need for love became my food.

when others were being exposed to new ideas and concepts in high school which were piquing their interests and inspiring and inseminating them to evolve into their full and range of capacities, i was rather hoping to meet some pot smokers who would validate me and make me feel through my body that i was worthwhile.

after high school, i would not pursue a track for developing the raw materials of my own innate resources, but rather, i would hang out in bars looking for people to love, and ways to get my affirmation through the drug subculture.

my focus got really misdirected because of the abuse. soon everything became a game of me trying to get my love jones fix. nothing else matter, but to recapture that initial powerful release of endorphines in the first orgasm, and the sense of closeness, desirability and worth i knew in that first moment with my older brother. i was deluded into thinking that that form of daily bread would be enough.

everything else in my life that followed was an attempt to recapture and retain that moment.

while others were off exploring the world and pioneering the world of their own inner resources, building bridges to those around them, building networks with others to reinforce and germinate more possibilities for creating and realizing their inner visions, a veritable smorgasboard of new and fresh possibilities, i was satisfied with just doing the next thing to get the next high satisfied, the next quick fix. a pat on the back was the only reward that i needed to get me over.

so now, as i look back over my life, i feel as if i was only pretending to live all along. i was only imitating others who were truly living.

today, i want so much to be captivated by a desire to create things from my own natural resources, but i don't seem to have the strength nor can i muster up the interest to engage in anything that does not give me immediate gratification.

food and sex....anything to create a feeling sensation. those are the types of 'food' i seek.

it's really a struggle to break out of this learned cycle of hunger for sensation...living from moment to moment trying meet and to recapture the one that i remember so clearly on that day when my brother first introduced me to the most powerful reward a human body could ever know: pleasure.

i want to be free from the power it has over me. i want to be free to meet and drink of the deeper mysteries and become a scientist in the laboratory of my soul. instead i feel like a vagabond in my own life going from garbage can to garbage can scrounging for my next food fix.

i want to find other daily bread, and i am so tired of the struggle to find it.

=================

this post was a birth pang, and in response i wrote that i have more or less approached life like the mountain stream who wends a way around rocks it meets in its path on the way down the mountain, so in reality it is not so much a post about someone who is being held captive by a past that never should have been, as much as it is showing evidence of a spring of new hope for a future life yet to blossom.

uncovering what is behind all this has been a very slow process for me, and since i made the deeper realization of how i had been 'surviving' all these years parenthetically as a victim, i have moved moved on. as the old vestiges arise, they must be confronted, acknowledged, and expelled, as i have done in this post.

so i will probably be focused on expelling the victim from my life for a long time [or maybe, not so long .... even better].

i look forward to letting go completely this victim who had no idea before recently how much he held 'me' in his sway. and i fully believe that all these years of spent walking my recovery road, with all of its peaks and valleys, has indeed been leading me in the direction of freedom and liberation from the effects of the experiences of sexual victimization and assault. geez, that sounds so biblical......just like the israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years.....my 40 years is just about up.

I'm A Work In Progress

i just had a light bulb moment: i am a survivor, somehow thriving within the parenthetical framework of a victim mentality. how do you like them apples!

i was pondering the victim/survivor mentality, and thinking about how i consider myself to be in survivor mode. several years back, i had made the realization that i was definitely seeing myself as the victim of my past, and i made a determination from that point on that i would start to walk and talk like a survivor. no more victimization mentality for me, so siree bobtail stinkeroo!

now here comes the hard part: i actually did do that. i began to act 'as if', and there's the rub. "ACT" 'as if'.

while i realize that acting 'as if' has had a valuable place in my actual recovery path, and has really advanced me out of the bondage [as i interpreted bondage] of the past, now i am seeing, with a wider periscope, that my acting 'as if' arose in the framework of a victim mentality! it's almost as if my abuse experiences caused this parenthetical framing of my life, and leaving me blind to the fact, unable to see it objectively, since i myself was the subject.

the clincher for me is in the realization that by saying i'm a survivor merely REINFORCES the label of 'victim' that i had come to place on myself in my mind, by verifying in my own head that there was something to survive in the first place. declaring "IM NOW FREE" only reinforces the notion of victimhood!

this post is an attempt to put the sequence of coming to label myself 'victim' into context.

>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM Early Life ]<<<<

what happened: major life chapters/influences in this period:

+ grade school: having strong palpable experiences of god's
presence in my life; stress of being 'different' than other males;
liking to be with, and preferring girls as playmates.
+ high school: abuse taking place; parents stressed out and
emotionally, psychologically and physically unavailable and
abusive; sexual abuse by my older brother occuring
+ stress of realizing my 'difference' as being homosexual, and
fearing being discovered by other males in the peer culture.
+ blossoming as a musician, developing musical tastes and identity as a musician.

in my early life i 'felt' myself to a victim of my economic
social status, my parents physical
and emotional violence. later my brother's sexual abuse,
and later the rapes i endured in the service. i was starved
emotionally, and desperate to find 'love' and acceptance.
this became the foundation for all my choices and actions:
the desperate need to have my emotional and psychological
needs met. to be loved, and to get it in the only way i
had known up to that point in my life: by using my body, and
projecting an image of worthiness. i began to cultivate a life
that would serve these purposes, and my entire life's trajectory
would be propelled toward resolution in this ultimate purpose:
to apologize for not being good enough!

>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM/SURVIVOR Pre-Recovery Life ] <<<<

feeling bad...need to escape it: major life chapters/influences in this period:

+ joining the navy, and began to label myself 'gay/bi', and
embraced my essential self, tho not accepted by my family.
+ being raped on at least 4 occasions, once by a civilian
at knife point.
+ out of the navy
+ i turn 21 and start hanging out in bars
+ perp rejects sexual relationship and dies
+ i disclose to family his abuse of 4 of us
+ realizing their fury at me for outing him, i
desperately try to get back into their good
graces, by rejecting my gay nature, hoping to win
their approval:
+ i marry my ex-wife, the lead singer in our band
[incidentally, the 'attraction' was the bond we
shared thru her mom's relationship to my mom as her
hairdresser; also she was the former one time girlfriend
of my secret heart throb buddy growing up]
+ i spend several years developing my career in church
music, while drowning in drugs, alcohol, shame and
making babies.
+ life is miserable, and my 'marriage' goes south.
+ i discovery AA, leave my marriage of 7 years, and begin
my recovery journey at age 31.

prior to recovery and having developed recovery language,
i did not 'know' myself and in my own head to be 'a victim'
and so had not labeled myself as such at the time
at least consciously. it seemed to be
what i needed to do in order to cope with the
unnamed pain i was feeling at the time, which led
me to seek 'recovery' solutions: such as would lead
to freedom from entrenched and imprisoning behaviors.
in recovery, i came to see myself as victim of my past experiences, and ultimately the choices that i exercised as a
result of those, which ultimately became regulating
patterns in my life. addictions abounded and
became the pain management tactic, eventually
culminating in the form of negative bonding with
substances and processes such as oral fixations
with smoking, eating, drinking and other processes
that sought to sate my need for closeness, ie,
relationships, obsession with weight and body
issues to become more worthy, engaging in religious
practices bartering with god, trying to fix myself
so as to be more acceptable to others.

>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM/THRIVER Phase II Recovery ] <<<<

ok now! let's fix all this stuff!: major life chapters/influences in this period:

did all the things i thought i needed to DO in order to BE ok.

i had come to see my life as a big bunch of knots that needed to be untied, unlinking sequelae one by one until i got to the genesis of the thought seeds that germinated entire pathologies, which could then be surplanted with new trains of thought rooted in reality.

i conquered many addictions, achieved success in my career, increased my education beyond that of any of my family members ..... see how OK i am now?????? all arising out of the framework of the victim mentality. i am broken and i need to be fixed in order to be more acceptable to myself and everyone else. what a trap! all that as if to pass judgment on anyone as being 'less than' who did not share in what i perceived to be 'worthwhile' endeavors. as if personal value could be quantified and qualified by some standard of weights and measures.

living life now outside the parenthesis of 'victim' modality

>>>> [ I'M A SUVIVOR/THRIVER Phase III Recovery ] <<<<

realizing i was victimized [and that there were surely consequences of that] is NOT the same thing as perceiving myself as a victim! victimzation happened. there is no denying that. but the labeling myself as such became a self-fulfilling prison, because every time i pointed to one of my bonds, investing in the narrative of myself i reinforced the notion that i was imbounded, increasing that belief about myself. i came to see myself as eternally trapped.

BUT

now i realize that seeing myself as trapped, and labeling myself as such, WAS NEVER THE CASE. i was only a victim of my own perceptions. if i was a victim of anything, it was my own inability to
relieve the stresses brought on by the dissonant states that had become part of my previously fractured self.

when i began to author this self-referential narrative of me as victim, then all other possibilities in my life came to be ruled out as the aperature of my mind's eye slowly narrowed by the labeling of
myself as victim.

how could i truly be a survivor, when the underpining belief upon which i would build the foundation survivor/label was the sand of victim/label?

the only way i could really get back on track to being the 'potential ron' was to disinvest in the idea that i was ever trapped to begin with, that i was ever REALLY a victim. i had to burn this book
and begin to author a new one. i had to debunk the ideas that i had come to believe about my own systemic grooming stop blaming the past as if to apologize for something [investment in victim mentality] and just move on to other options, and stop looking back at past, lest i turn into the proverbial  pillar of salt.

too bad i wasted 20 years trying to figure all this out, thinking i was trapped all along, not realizing that the bars were of my own mind and that i could have walked thru the bars at any given moment.

oh well, better late than never....... maybe someone can skip a couple chapters in their own life by reading this.

Matter Over Mind

from an earlier posting, but one i want to conjoin as part of my recovery narrative:

mind over [brain] matter, or [brain] matter over mind? a sense of psychological vertigo leaves me feeling as if i am standing on the edge of a precipice peering into the impenetrable darkness looking for an answer. always acting on the thought that the answers lie in following and unpacking the pathology of some mental process which led to a current fixated state of thinking.

but since i have fallen in love with the study of neurobiology, i have taken it out of the realm of mental and begun to understand it as a function of the ingrained neural wiring patterns of the brain. and they are not really playing tricks on us. they are just firing synapses according to the way thought and feeling perceptions compute and form their circuitry which we reinforce every moment until we do something to change their regular paths of behavior.

i liken it to this old joke about the dog who will not be house trained. the master comes home every day from work to find that the dog has soiled the carpet. angry, the master opens the window, picks up the dog by the scruff of the neck, and tosses it out the window [don't worry it's a first floor window.....]. this happens repeated day after day. then one day the master comes home from work, sees the same thing, begins to go through his regular process, but on seeing his approach, the dog runs to the window, opens it, and proceeds to jump out.

that's what happens in our brains. eventually the neural transmitter take over, and since the power of decision is no longer necessary, it is removed from the process, which ultimately become involuntary.

in terms of the social connection, i did the same thing. my brain never fully developed that social connectivity, because it was never imparted originally by my primary caregiver, and thus no paths were in place to expand upon, to generate greater potentiality. as a result the dysfunctional patterns of attachment that were wired in me as a result of a lack of contingent relational interactivity, left me in such a state as to interpret all new situations i encountered throughout my life as being strange, and therefore a threat to my sense of well-being and security. without having developed a palette of flexible responses in relation to strange situations i encountered, i was left to, like the dog who throws himself out the window after soiling the carpet, to fall back on the old regular and now involuntary reactions that had been reinforced though out my life.

understanding this as the primary shaping criteria for many of my actions, reactions and seemingly selective behaviors helps me to take an active part in restructuring my old automatic choices.

in terms of social anxiety, what i have come to realize, is that because i never developed the initial pathways that would lead to expanded social connections, and because these were further impeded by the experience of sexual abuse which interrupted my mental capacity to engage in relations that did not fit the model established by my abusers, i would be destined to keep repeating what was already a pattern established in my brain, that being withdrawal.

patterns of withdrawal provided the solution for a security that could not be found in my attempts at connecting with others. sure, i used my mind to trick myself into developing the talents of my own natural resources, but i always lived my life hiding behind my puny powers as a shield to protect me from participating in the larger culture. as long as i felt strong and powerful in my vocational role, then i didn't need anything else.

until, that is, i began to sense a gnawing unidentified anxiety that told me i was missing something. adn the something i was missing was my connection to larger causes than those in my own narrow world.

it was realizing that that turned on the switch for me. in my own tiny safe world, i had climbed many mountains. i chose the ones i knew were conquerable. i learned how to avoid withdrawal in my own small circles.

but now i am being beckoned to greater causes than my own safe one. and this is where i must begin to deny the tendency to withdraw from the new strange situations that present themselves daily, and challenge myself to muster up the courage to approach new situations without the accompanying fear and trepidation that precipitates a sense of dreaded rejection.

as i realize that i begin to create new wiring, giving myself the smallest goals each day: see a stranger as a potential friend, see a new situation as an opportunity for expanding my limitations. and all of a sudden old depressions subside, and spring arises in the brain as it blossoms once again in new realm of possibility, where hope and creativity nest unimpeded.

patterns of withdrawal can be eliminated when replaced by the new approach practices. it is scary, and challenging, and yes, it takes a loooong time, but at some point i have to become the champion in the conquest and triumph over all that the experience of sexual assault and abuse has levied in my life. as you say, we must do it ourselves. but i submit that we not change our minds, but our brains, and the mind will follow.

Hometown Blahs

I think it has a lot to do with the psychic cooties that linger, acting like brain rats in the associations to certain people, places and things in a given location, that happened in approximation to my victimization experience.

I moved away from my hometown pittsburgh back in 1999, and I was never so glad to leave a town. Pittsburgh was the place that bore and bred me. It became the place I was physically and sexually abused, psychologically traumatized and emotionally aborted by my own family. I had moved to Minneapolis and created a new life, one that had no connections, no semiotic referential points in regards to the external signifiers which represented victimization, self-loathing, shame and defeat. In Minneapolis my life and self esteem flourished under a banner a freedom that could not be attained as long as I remained bound in chains of ensconced subliminal associations to persons places and things of my hometown. I needed a fresh outlook, a clean slate. But I needed also to face and resolve the unrecognized schemas and seculae that connected me from one moment to the next, triggering reactivity, keeping me blind to the objectivity I so desperately needed, were I to truly know freedom from the tethering past.

Part of my process led me to return to my hometown Pittsburgh, and now that I am back, I want to throw up; all I see is dead people. I see so clearly why I left in the first place, and without my children here, except my son Chris, there is really no purpose for me to be here. I had romanticized my reasoning for returning to my hometown, like an elephant seeking its graveyard, a resting place to make peace with ghosts of the past.

But, now, here all I find is that I have arrived prematurely. That I am not ready to die, but rather, I feel the potential for giving up far too soon to be a very real possibility; an inner urgency makes me wonder if it's time to leave again, to seek and seed a new perspective.

I had always thought that at some point age would force me to return 'home', but from where I stand there is no 'home'. There is only negotiating compromise. I have been back here for almost 2 years, and have very little to show for the experience. Yes, I have unraveled huge mental/emotional knots, and I have started to make a few new connections, and perhaps I have not given them a fair enough shake yet; and while I am thrilled that my life is intersecting on a musical level with that of my son, as I am a member of his band, still, I feel that I have one more attempt at flight to make before I yield to the inevitable call to put down my life's burden once and for all.

For today, I want to leave this nesting town, this place that has such great significance for others; its breathtaking landscape, with its hills, trees and rivers, flowers. But for me, it seems its fresh meaning will always elude me, because of the reasons mentioned above, the potential of its culture to further form and shape my ideals and hopes and dreams will be forever tarnished. I can never wipe clean the slate as long as I live in Pittsburgh, and I am torn between two quests: should I stay and simply face my demons, risking allowing them to devour me, as I challenge myself to live beyond their tendrils that keep me inexorably linked to the past, or should I turn my face toward a new Jerusalem.... a new set of questions, challenges, crucifixions, deaths and resurrections.

Transitioning to Resolution

since this i somewhat of a journal for me, i wanted to post what for me is a turning point in my recovery from the effects of incest/sexual abuse. this writing deals mainly with the incest from my brother, and not so much from the other rapes that took place outside the family. the pain that grew over the years was from never having any emotional support to help me get over the pain. the family in which i experienced the abuse could not deal with its own grave sense of shame.

at any rate, as i looked at isolation 1 , and isolation 2, as a big factor contributing to my increased tendency to avoid others, and after posting about it, i immediately found respite from that which i've wrestled with all these many years. so i made this post in response:

friends, thank you all for your input in the topic. i found seeing the points of intersection in this concept to be an immense help in moving quickly beyond the pain that precipitated raising the question in the first place.

it was almost as if after years of gesticulating inside me, the moment i articulated the words of my post, the emotions that were behind them were born.

but my pain leading up to the birth of that isolation post was relieved once it was born. articulating the dilemma in words spelled it out in such away that gave me the closure i needed. i had spent days crying deep heaves of acceptance over the death-loss of my childhood dream-need for mother love. i wanted so desperately all these years to get back the wholesome family that was lost in disclosure of what my older brother did to 4 of his siblings so long ago.......and finally, though much trial and tribulation, the realization dawned on me, that my disclosure of his behavior years ago broke all ties/bonds with that family, and from then on, we would only be tied to each other through denial and deceit, and yes blood. but i had not realized that all these long years, and went on secretly loving /needing them, hoping, driven by a misguided need to mend the breach in the torn garment of a family system, by making up for it as i strove to prove myself worthy.

yes, it's over, and i am in the place where i am modulating back and forth, shifting in and out of anger and sadness, and i can finally feel the rallentando of the shift as this chapter finds its repose.

what a relief to know that in both my head and in my heart. what a relief to know that the rest of my life does not have to be lived in counterpoint to the experience of being born into a family in which circumstances arose to make me its lifelong victim. what a relief to not have to give a crap about them anymore. and what a relief to be able to remove the stumbling block that has stood in the way of making freer, wiser, and more honest choices for the way in which i will continue to spend the precious currency of ron in future chapters.

what i have come to understand from this, is that i may never find the true bonding i seek, but that if i ever give up on that my life will be over. it is the one thing that drives the forward trajectory of all life: the hope of bonding. seeing that resolves what was for me, for so many years a dilemma that was lived out in metaphorical relationships to false replacement matrices.

all the work i have done over the last year in participating in my mcc church group has not been for nothing. it has been the practicum for this great life's lesson, and has given me the strength to reach down inside and find the power i needed to take the risks of being vulnerable, to face the potential for rejection, and yes alternatively to open myself up to the possibility of acceptance and unconditional love, such as i would never have from my family of origin.

without that support, i could not have reached the conclusions and resolutions i have found for myself for today, and i just want to thank each and everyone of you for being part of the story; for helping me by sharing the best of your heart and soul, your love and wisdom, which is more precious as gold to me as it was born out of the crucibles of such deep pain and suffering from your own experiences with sexual abuse and assault.

Attachment Part II

the last couple weeks have been a transitional time for me. as you may know, i have been scarfing up the brain food in bonnies book, 'brainwise therapist' and it has been so seminal for me. i have gone thru it twice already and the margins of nearly every page are lined with penciled in notes and comments which stirred ideas about how her statements relate to my life. the subject of attachment as brought up by her in her book, has led me to the next level of understanding of how this unmet need has contributed to my own lifelong social phobia and dysfunction. the understanding i have been pondering is how my frustrated relationship to my matrix/mother/primary care provider never got resolved, caused me to avoid new/strange situations thoughout my life, and left me in such a fearful and anxious state, that i never felt comfortable or confident enough to risk the rejection that would inevitably become a part of approaching strangers for social connection. so i withdrew essentially, and spent all my energies only involving myself in controlled situations where i could interact with people safely in terms of my relationship to them through my musical talents.

seeing this now, and realizing what a big hole this left in my life, is making me rethink my entire approach to life and people. now, i understand how important it is to risk seeing and being myself as not surrounded by the protective wall of my safely cultivated characteristics, and begin to develop the willingness to branch out of that comfort zone. not as scary as i thought it might be, but really just don't know where to begin to allow new experiences to create new wirings to overwrite the old patterns in my brain. ah well, this i will allow time and space to work itself out.

but this past week, severely wounded by the deeper realizations of the incapacity of my family of origin to meet any of my deep needs for true intimacy safety validation and comfort, i have been suffering in grief of understanding the effects of such abandonment of the essential me. yes, they brought me into this world, then aborted me from their systemic circle after i disclosed my brothers perpetrator behaviors after his death in 1975, and have been the outcast ever since. it dawns on me recently how i have spent all these years blind to that, yet lived solely to invest all my energies in reestablishing myself in their good graces. and now i am done.

my mother, who last year after recovering from two knee surgeries went to live with my brother and his family in san diego, the other day came back to pittsburgh to stay for the summer. i was never informed about her plan. i heard about it when i randomly ran into one of my cousins last week who made mention of it. it seems that there is a very closed circle in my family who has the inside skinny on what's going on, and i am not part of the circle. only the sibs who are in the inner sanctum exchanging and sharing pain meds amongst each other are included. i was severly disturbed and deeply troubled for a few days as it dawned on me, and i made the connection as to why my mother doesn't respond to my emails, return phone messages, and when she does, she is always just going out the door, or carrying on a conversation at the same time with someone else in the room on her end of the line. i think her behavior is a way for her to manage avoiding talking with me about anything significant......such as abuse in our family.

so now, i have actually laid to rest the final notion of my mother as ever being a capable true source of nurture, and turned to the new matrices that i have been cultivating in my life, such as the metropolitan community church family, AND also, just recently joined the pittsburgh primetimers, an over 50 gay mens social group.

so i am feeling a lot better this week. trunking off bonnie's book, i picked up a copy of daniel seigal's 'mindful brain' and have been consuming more of the same concepts bonnie extrapolated in her book, but his focus is more on the mindfulness aspect of brain grooming.

so there is ron's inner life in a nutshell over the past couple of weeks. feel like i just had a psychic birth, and the poor offspring was stillborn. BUT, in this death there is a seed of hope for a new chapter to begin, unhindered by secret schemas implicit in the regions of subjectivity of my own thought.

hejira is such an apt theme for my life right now......leaving normal....

change the brain, the mind will follow

i spent most of my life post abuse feeling like i was standing on the edge of a precipice peering into the impenetrable darkness looking for answers. always acting on the thought that the answers lie in following and unpacking the pathology of some mental process which led to a current fixated state of thinking.

but since i have fallen in love with the study of neurobiology, i have taken it out of the realm of mental and begun to understand it as a function of the ingrained neural wiring patterns of the brain. and they are not really playing tricks on us. they are just firing synapses according to the way thought and feeling perceptions compute and form their circuitry which we reinforce every moment until we do something to change their regular paths of behavior.

i liken it to this old joke about the dog who will not be house trained. the master comes home every day from work to find that the dog has soiled the carpet. angry, the master opens the window, picks up the dog by the scruff of the neck, and tosses it out the window [don't worry it's a first floor window.....]. this happens repeated day after day. then one day the master comes home from work, sees the same thing, begins to go through his regular process, but on seeing his approach, the dog runs to the window, opens it, and proceeds to jump out.

that's what happens in our brains. eventually the neural transmitter take over, and since the power of decision is no longer necessary, it is removed from the process, which ultimately become involuntary.

in terms of the social connection, i did the same thing. my brain never fully developed that social connectivity, because it was never imparted originally by my primary caregiver, and thus no paths were in place to expand upon, to generate greater potentiality. as a result the dysfunctional patterns of attachment that were wired in me as a result of a lack of contingent relational interactivity, left me in such a state as to interpret all new situations i encountered throughout my life as being strange, and therefore a threat to my sense of well-being and security. without having developed a palette of flexible responses in relation to strange situations i encountered, i was left to, like the dog who throws himself out the window after soiling the carpet, to fall back on the old regular and now involuntary reactions that had been reinforced though out my life.

understanding this as the primary shaping criteria for many of my actions, reactions and seemingly selective behaviors helps me to take an active part in restructuring my old automatic choices.

in terms of social anxiety, what i have come to realize, is that because i never developed the initial pathways that would lead to expanded social connections, and because these were further impeded by the experience of sexual abuse which interrupted my mental capacity to engage in relations that did not fit the model established by my abusers, i would be destined to keep repeating what was already a pattern established in my brain, that being withdrawal.

patterns of withdrawal provided the solution for a security that could not be found in my attempts at connecting with others. sure, i used my mind to trick myself into developing the talents of my own natural resources, but i always lived my life hiding behind my puny powers as a shield to protect me from participating in the larger culture. as long as i felt strong and powerful in my vocational role, then i didn't need anything else.

until, that is, i began to sense a gnawing unidentified anxiety that told me i was missing something. adn the something i was missing was my connection to larger causes than those in my own narrow world.

it was realizing that that turned on the switch for me. in my own tiny safe world, i had climbed many mountains. i chose the ones i knew were conquerable. i learned how to avoid withdrawl in my own small circles.

but now i am being beckoned to greater causes than my own safe one. and this is where i must begin to deny the tendency to withdraw from the new strange situations that present themselves daily, and challenge myself to muster up the courage to approach new situations without the accompanying fear and trepidation that precipitates a sense of dreaded rejection.

as i realize that i begin to create new wiring, giving myself the smallest goals each day: see a stranger as a potential friend, see a new situation as an opportunity for expanding my limitations. and all of a sudden old depressions subside, and spring arises in the brain as it blossoms once again in new realm of possibility, where hope and creativity nest unimpeded.

patterns of withdrawal can be eliminated when replaced by the new approach practices. it is scary, and challenging, and yes, it takes a loooong time, but at some point i have to become the champion in the conquest and triumph over all that the experience of sexual assault and abuse has levied in my life. as you say, we must do it ourselves. but i submit that we not change our minds, but our brains, and the mind will follow.