The More It Hurts the More Sense It Makes
Note: Of everything I've written about me and there is a lot I've written about me this might be the most over-sharing. It has been disturbing and difficult to write as it deals with sexual assault of and by children and its effects on my sexuality. If you'd rather not read it, I wouldn't blame you in the least. That's why it's behind that clicky thing over there.
When I told my therapist I hated myself and was a shitty person and I didn't know why anyone liked me she asked why I thought that. I couldn't answer at the time. The bad thing is I actually do have really good reasons as to why I'm a shitty person. They seem like good reasons to me, at least. It's hard to say them on demand because it's always hard to speak on demand. It's hard to say them at all because these are the things I hate about myself, the things I am most ashamed of. These are the things I lie about to everyone.
Except me. I don't lie to me about them; I lacerate myself with them. They work well for that.
Some of them didn't make a lot of sense. True, a whole lot doesn't make sense. The world doesn't make sense. Other people don't make sense. But I'm used to me making sense, more or less. Sort of. I'm not always rational but I can usually follow the connections.
Around when I was eleven or twelve I started doing and feeling and thinking some really sexually inappropriate things. I'm mostly not going to tell you or anyone else about them in any kind of detail. Or outline. What with that inappropriate thing. The enormous piles of shame don't help much either. I want to not have these things in me. Any of them. The one I can talk about is that I react to some of my worst thoughts as if they were sexy fun times thoughts. These are thoughts of abuse, pain, humiliation, death--my abuse, my pain, my humiliation, my death. There isn't a lot of comfort in the knowledge that at least I'm not turned on by the thought of these things being done to someone else.
The verb in that last clause is important: Too often abuse and assault and murder are described as things that happen to victims; this language removes the actor--the abuser, the assailant, the murderer--from the description. These are things people do. They don't just happen. It removes moral responsibility from that actor and with nowhere else for it to go, it attaches to the only person who was there: the victim.
(How does BDSM fit into this? How can I say I'm not turned on by the idea of someone else's abuse and pain and humiliation when I switch and like to do things that hurt to other people? Maybe I am rationalizing and lying to myself and I get off on hurting people and I should probably not be allowed out in public. But I can't top with just consent. I need active enthusiastic participation. I need a lot of feedback from the other person to let me know what I am doing is pleasurable. Without that feedback--some people don't move and don't make noise and that doesn't work for me at all--I get uncomfortable and nervous and panicky and will call a scene. That safe word thing is for everyone, not just for bottoms.
(I have a really hard time playing with humiliation and fear on the receiving end. Each time I've tried I've ended the scene early crying and not able to stop for hours. I don't even want to think about trying that on the giving end.)
Word from my therapist is there's not really a lot can be done that will change this imprinting. And I do find stuff that doesn't make me hate myself arousing also. So that latter bit is good, I guess. It's just. I'd like orgasm and masturbation to come with less self-loathing. While other stuff works to get me going, nothing works near as well to get me off as the things mentioned above. I'd like to have not done and not thought and not felt some of the things I have memories of.
Much later, like in the last ten years later, I learned that these kinds of thoughts and emotions and behaviors were not uncommon in children who had been sexually abused. That made sense. I could trace the connections from kinds of trauma I'd experienced to thoughts and emotions and behaviors and though things often came out warped, the connections were still there.
I hadn't been sexually abused. My grandparents--who I lived with after I couldn't live with my mother any more--had some unhealthy messages about sex but they came way too late to have much effect. My mom was actually pretty good on sex and outstanding on masturbation. When she noticed I was masturbating, she told me that it was normal; everyone did it; it wasn't wrong though other people might tell me it was. But it was something I should do with the door closed. So where had these sexual things I disliked so much come from? I was just fucked up and wrong all on my own, I guess. Hooray, more self-loathing.
Except. My first sexual experience with another person was when I was eleven. Maybe ten. I'm not good with time and it depends on what one considers sex. There was a boy two or three years older than me down the street. I remember his name, but we'll call him V. (V's is a wildly unremarkable name in the U.S.; putting it into Google almost certainly would not find the V I shared a street with.)
V had access to porn--probably his father's. This was in the early eighties so porn was barely on videotape; DVDs were well over the horizon. V had magazines: Penthouse, Hustler, some magazines with lower production values I can't remember the names of. He used them to get close a boy whose name I forget now and androgyne and so not out me. We were younger than V by at least two years. I was just starting to understand that what I'd been doing that felt so good my whole life could involve other people and I suppose the boy V was showing porn to was also. We'd look at the pictures. I'd read the stories though the boys didn't like them as much. We'd all masturbate in the same room.
Then there was the stuff that was me and V alone. I don't know if V did these things to the boy also. I'm sure he tried. Alone, V talked me into giving and receiving oral sex. He talked to me about anal sex but we never tried actually doing it. He didn't kiss me; that would've been gay. (Really. His reason, not mine. I'd find out eventually I liked kissing boys only slightly less than I liked kissing girls.)
I didn't think of it as abuse. Abuse was what my relatives did to me. I never thought about people who weren't my relatives abusing me. I never thought about someone almost my age abusing me. It felt good when we were doing it: how could it have been abuse? I'd agreed to everything: how could it have been abuse?
I was eleven. V was older. At that age, two or three years make a big difference. Yeah, I'd agreed to all the things we did. I wanted desperately to be liked, to have someone like me, and would have done anything anyone asked for that. I did do anything anyone asked, hoping they would like me, with V and with others. Sex, smoking, stealing, drugs, begging. I was good at begging.
Small wonder people took advantage of me. I may as well have put a fucking sign up reading "The Queue for Predators Forms Here." The aftermath of V showed pretty clearly that eleven was not a good age for me to be having sex and V wasn't a good person for me to be having sex with.
I don't want to do this any more. My life making more sense the worse it sucks is getting really exhausting. I would like it to stop hurting, even if it was just for a little bit. I would like to not feel like a complete asshole for not knowing how to not hurt. And it'd be really nice if I didn't kind of dread going to therapy because I know I'm going to get to feel like a complete fuckup because I do in fact hurt all the time--I'm talking emotionally here but of course I hurt physically also--and I shouldn't. Somehow I am supposed to be able to not hurt.
I don't know how this works. I don't.
When I told my therapist I hated myself and was a shitty person and I didn't know why anyone liked me she asked why I thought that. I couldn't answer at the time. The bad thing is I actually do have really good reasons as to why I'm a shitty person. They seem like good reasons to me, at least. It's hard to say them on demand because it's always hard to speak on demand. It's hard to say them at all because these are the things I hate about myself, the things I am most ashamed of. These are the things I lie about to everyone.
Except me. I don't lie to me about them; I lacerate myself with them. They work well for that.
Some of them didn't make a lot of sense. True, a whole lot doesn't make sense. The world doesn't make sense. Other people don't make sense. But I'm used to me making sense, more or less. Sort of. I'm not always rational but I can usually follow the connections.
Around when I was eleven or twelve I started doing and feeling and thinking some really sexually inappropriate things. I'm mostly not going to tell you or anyone else about them in any kind of detail. Or outline. What with that inappropriate thing. The enormous piles of shame don't help much either. I want to not have these things in me. Any of them. The one I can talk about is that I react to some of my worst thoughts as if they were sexy fun times thoughts. These are thoughts of abuse, pain, humiliation, death--my abuse, my pain, my humiliation, my death. There isn't a lot of comfort in the knowledge that at least I'm not turned on by the thought of these things being done to someone else.
The verb in that last clause is important: Too often abuse and assault and murder are described as things that happen to victims; this language removes the actor--the abuser, the assailant, the murderer--from the description. These are things people do. They don't just happen. It removes moral responsibility from that actor and with nowhere else for it to go, it attaches to the only person who was there: the victim.
(How does BDSM fit into this? How can I say I'm not turned on by the idea of someone else's abuse and pain and humiliation when I switch and like to do things that hurt to other people? Maybe I am rationalizing and lying to myself and I get off on hurting people and I should probably not be allowed out in public. But I can't top with just consent. I need active enthusiastic participation. I need a lot of feedback from the other person to let me know what I am doing is pleasurable. Without that feedback--some people don't move and don't make noise and that doesn't work for me at all--I get uncomfortable and nervous and panicky and will call a scene. That safe word thing is for everyone, not just for bottoms.
(I have a really hard time playing with humiliation and fear on the receiving end. Each time I've tried I've ended the scene early crying and not able to stop for hours. I don't even want to think about trying that on the giving end.)
Word from my therapist is there's not really a lot can be done that will change this imprinting. And I do find stuff that doesn't make me hate myself arousing also. So that latter bit is good, I guess. It's just. I'd like orgasm and masturbation to come with less self-loathing. While other stuff works to get me going, nothing works near as well to get me off as the things mentioned above. I'd like to have not done and not thought and not felt some of the things I have memories of.
Much later, like in the last ten years later, I learned that these kinds of thoughts and emotions and behaviors were not uncommon in children who had been sexually abused. That made sense. I could trace the connections from kinds of trauma I'd experienced to thoughts and emotions and behaviors and though things often came out warped, the connections were still there.
I hadn't been sexually abused. My grandparents--who I lived with after I couldn't live with my mother any more--had some unhealthy messages about sex but they came way too late to have much effect. My mom was actually pretty good on sex and outstanding on masturbation. When she noticed I was masturbating, she told me that it was normal; everyone did it; it wasn't wrong though other people might tell me it was. But it was something I should do with the door closed. So where had these sexual things I disliked so much come from? I was just fucked up and wrong all on my own, I guess. Hooray, more self-loathing.
Except. My first sexual experience with another person was when I was eleven. Maybe ten. I'm not good with time and it depends on what one considers sex. There was a boy two or three years older than me down the street. I remember his name, but we'll call him V. (V's is a wildly unremarkable name in the U.S.; putting it into Google almost certainly would not find the V I shared a street with.)
V had access to porn--probably his father's. This was in the early eighties so porn was barely on videotape; DVDs were well over the horizon. V had magazines: Penthouse, Hustler, some magazines with lower production values I can't remember the names of. He used them to get close a boy whose name I forget now and androgyne and so not out me. We were younger than V by at least two years. I was just starting to understand that what I'd been doing that felt so good my whole life could involve other people and I suppose the boy V was showing porn to was also. We'd look at the pictures. I'd read the stories though the boys didn't like them as much. We'd all masturbate in the same room.
Then there was the stuff that was me and V alone. I don't know if V did these things to the boy also. I'm sure he tried. Alone, V talked me into giving and receiving oral sex. He talked to me about anal sex but we never tried actually doing it. He didn't kiss me; that would've been gay. (Really. His reason, not mine. I'd find out eventually I liked kissing boys only slightly less than I liked kissing girls.)
I didn't think of it as abuse. Abuse was what my relatives did to me. I never thought about people who weren't my relatives abusing me. I never thought about someone almost my age abusing me. It felt good when we were doing it: how could it have been abuse? I'd agreed to everything: how could it have been abuse?
I was eleven. V was older. At that age, two or three years make a big difference. Yeah, I'd agreed to all the things we did. I wanted desperately to be liked, to have someone like me, and would have done anything anyone asked for that. I did do anything anyone asked, hoping they would like me, with V and with others. Sex, smoking, stealing, drugs, begging. I was good at begging.
Small wonder people took advantage of me. I may as well have put a fucking sign up reading "The Queue for Predators Forms Here." The aftermath of V showed pretty clearly that eleven was not a good age for me to be having sex and V wasn't a good person for me to be having sex with.
I don't want to do this any more. My life making more sense the worse it sucks is getting really exhausting. I would like it to stop hurting, even if it was just for a little bit. I would like to not feel like a complete asshole for not knowing how to not hurt. And it'd be really nice if I didn't kind of dread going to therapy because I know I'm going to get to feel like a complete fuckup because I do in fact hurt all the time--I'm talking emotionally here but of course I hurt physically also--and I shouldn't. Somehow I am supposed to be able to not hurt.
I don't know how this works. I don't.