My Life -- A Living Nightmare

Thursday, May 22, 2008 -- 7:55 PM I saw my psychologist yesterday. It was the first time in three weeks. We talked about what had being going on in my life during those weeks. I have a hard time accepting compliments, but she gave me one, which really meant a lot to me. She said that after all I have gone through in my lifetime, including that which I am going through now, she did not know how I turned out to be such a "nice man." To say that I was stunned by that is a great understatement. I thanked her, and then said that I had a problem with accepting compliments. She said that she knew that already.   No matter what anybody may think, I do have a lot of feelings and emotions. Most people do not see, or hear, them because I try to keep them bottled up inside me. For some unknown reason that I have not yet figured out, I have a fear of letting others know exactly how I feel. I was brought up in a strict manner, whereby talking about feelings (or talking about much of anything) was frowned upon.   I have been physically disabled since I was born. This may sound strange, or even hard to believe, but I never really thought about my disability for most of my life. I took it for granted, just as most people would take for granted their skin. I was taught to live with it and not to ask questions about it. Asking too many questions was not looked upon favorably in my family. It could result in a slap on the mouth. Getting enough of those turned out to be a good deterrent.   My mother was the first of many of my sexual abusers. She initiated me into sex even before I had any idea of its existence. From there I was cast into the hands of several men. Today they would be known as pedophiles. My contact with them lasted from my childhood, through high school, and then into college. Only after I graduated from college was I able to escape their grasps.   I suspect it was during these years that I first learned about emotions. The first ones were anger and pain. The pain was inflicted upon me frequently, and it resulted in my anger. The anger of a child is much different from that of a man, yet they both have some similarities.   As a child, I cried when I was hurt. As an adult, there have been times when I wanted to cry, but something within me has held me back. It is not because I do not have any feelings. I was taught that crying was a sign of weakness. That was drummed into me from the very early stages of my life. I have never forgotten that.   Love was another emotion I learned at an early age. I was taught that by my mother. She taught me, by example, how to be kind and caring to others. I have never forgotten that. Through her actions, she also taught me how love could be perverted. I was a good student. I learned well from her -- too well for my own good.   My father was a good man. He taught me the real meaning of love, and I will never forget that. When he died, I learned the meaning of grief and loss. As long as he was alive, I was never alone. When he left this world, a large part of me went with him.   Although they are probably not aware of it, both my brother and sister has shown me the meanings of abandonment and loneliness. My brother was close to me until he graduated from college. We were living in Indiana at that time. He said I could go to college and live with him. Before that ever happened, he got married, had a child, and went to Colorado. He left me behind with feelings of being abandoned.   My sister and her husband lived in Indiana for many years. There came a time when my brother-in-law and my sister moved to Memphis, Tennessee. I felt that I had been abandoned again.   A few years later, they moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1974, I also moved to Virginia along with my parents. We lived 20 minutes away from my sister and her family. I became close to my sister, brother-in-law, and their two children. In 1981, my brother-in-law accepted a job in Denver, Colorado. They moved away from Virginia, and for the third time in my life, I felt abandoned. I also developed a sense of loneliness. The combination of the two drove me into the hands of a psychologist.   One year after that, my father passed away. That was the worst thing that ever happened in my life. Gone was the one person who believed in me. He gave me true nonjudgmental and unconditional love. He left a large gap in my life that could never be filled.   Some years after that, I learned what it meant to be careless and vulnerable. I met some men who I liked and with whom I thought I could be friends. At that time, their meaning of friendship and my meaning of friendship were different. After knowing me for a while, they began sexually abusing me. It was similar to that which I went through in my earlier childhood.   This time I was an adult, and thought I could get away from them. I was wrong. Their behavior was every bit as evil and mean as my previous abusers had been. They took pictures of me in what could only be thought of as pornographic poses. I was told that if I did not do as I was told, they would see to it that the pictures made their way to my family. I could not bear for that to happen. I gave in to their demands, just as I had given in when I was a child.   My mother died in 1994. Upon her death, I hired a young girl to give me the help that I needed. She was very good with me -- too good, in fact. It did not take long before I fell head over heels in love with her. I was in my 40s, and she was 21. Marriage would never have worked, but as the saying goes, "Love is blind."   I was so infatuated with her, that I did not see her using me. She emptied my bank account, maxed out my three credit cards for more than $25,000, which I did not have, and got me hooked on crack cocaine. This was happening during the same period that I was being abused. I was being bashed in two different ways and almost losing my mind in the process.   In August and September of 1997, my life was in the process of blowing up again. This girl I was in love with, and who helped me, informed me that she had gotten three DUIs in 10 days -- she was on her way to jail. I replaced her with one of her friends, who I knew also used crack cocaine. As I said before, I was well hooked on crack by then, so I wanted to make sure that whomever I got as a replacement was someone who also used it.   This girl moved into my house with her fiancé and brother. Unknown to me, they began methodically ransacking my house and selling almost anything they could find in order to get drug money.   After they had been there about a month or so, that was a knock at my front door. It was someone from the Adult Protective Services, along with a police officer. I let them in and we sat at my kitchen table. The police officer told me that they were there to check on my safety and welfare, and not to put me in jail. He also said that the Commonwealth Attorney (with whom I had been a friend) had sent a message that no matter what was said I would not be arrested and brought up on any charges.   They asked me if I had been using drugs. I said yes. They asked me when I had last used them. I said about 10 minutes before they got to my house. We discussed my overall situation, and the officer asked if I would give them permission to search my house. I knew that this would be a crucial moment in my life. I could go on living the way I had been, and sooner or later die because of my use of drugs, or I could let the police come in and search my house. I chose the latter.   By the time they were finished, there were eight police cars in my front yard, along with a canine unit. They gave me a list of all the drugs and drug paraphernalia that they had found in my house. The officers asked me if I wanted to stay at the house or go somewhere else. I said that if I stayed home, the girl and her fiancé and brother would probably kill me. I told him I needed to leave. He arranged for them to take me away from home without anyone else knowing where I was going.   Telephone calls were made to my family in Colorado. They were shocked at the turn of events to say the least. I was asked to move away from Virginia and to Colorado where I could be near my family. I spoke with one of my nieces who knew how to manipulate me. She wanted to know if I would come to Denver where I could be "surrounded by your family, who wants to love you." Like a dummy, I fell for that.   I have now lived in Denver for 10 years. The first year I lived in a nursing home because my "lovable" family did not seem to have any accessible homes for me in which to live. I struggled and fought with the "system" for nearly a year. I finally found a way to get out of the nursing home and back into real life.   During the past 10 years, I have been fighting the problem of crack cocaine addiction. There is a saying that once you try it, you are hooked for life. I am not sure about that, but I do know that I met a girl here who certainly liked it as well as I did, and helped me keep that habit. She is now out of my life.   Since then I have had some ups and downs in my life. I learned to be self-sufficient. I have managed to live alone in three different apartment complexes with the help of home health care agencies. I became a writer/editor for a local newsletter. I also became the President of the Board of Directors for the company that owned the newsletter.   I have made two trips to Washington, DC where approximately 500 people join twice a year and work for rights of people with disabilities. I have made one trip to San Francisco, California for the same purpose. (I have stopped making those trips because of an extreme fear of flying.)   I learned about fun, enjoyment, and pleasure. Five years ago, I went on a six-day trip to Honolulu, Hawaii. It was a vacation all the way. If I ever run away from Denver, I can probably be found somewhere in Hawaii.   Thanks to my unexpected membership in Daily Strength, I have managed to stop using all illegal drugs with the help of several members here. I have regained some self-esteem and self-confidence, and am working hard trying to work through the memories of the sexual abuse I sustained throughout my life.   This journal entry started one way. It is ending another. I meant to write about my feelings and emotions, and how difficult it is to express them. Somewhere along the way, I seem to have gotten sidetracked.   I have been told that the things that happened to me when I was a child are connected to what I am going through now. Maybe that has some merit, and I am slowly beginning to put it all together. There is one thing I do know for sure -- I have a long way to go in my healing process.