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01-07-2003, 11:59 AM

# 53 (permalink)

Victortaz

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Join Date: Jan 2003

Location: Eastern, NC

Posts: 20

MG, I'm going to use this forum as an opportunity to share my story as a Complex PTSD survivor. Like you I suffered CSA, and a lot of it, so that is the focus. It's lengthy but its here for those who want to read it, and it helps me to write it down. So thank you.

*******NOT GRAPHIC BUT MAY TRIGGER FOR INCEST*******

My 1st time being sexually abused, not unlike the other incidents, took a long time to remember coming in bits & pieces, body & feeling memories, until the flashbacks started following T, about 18 months ago.

For years I remembered being in bed, being scared to death. I also remembered seeing a shadow of the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock reflect from the TV onto the wall I could see thru my bedroom door, & being scared. For years I connected these 2 memories.

Then the memory came to me in flashback year before last that I was in not my bed but my parents', still scared to death.

Well, Hitchcock may have been on TV that night, but he's not the one that scared me or drove me to my parents' bed.

I don't know how I got there. What I do know is that I was not scared of who & what was outside of the bed. I was scared of who was in the bed & what was going on. Of that my memories are still vague as far as details (thankfully), but what happened is all too clear.

My mother & father incested me that night. I was no more than three, becuz by the time I was four my father was gone never to be heard from again (I think the two are connected). From then on, with occassional & partial interruptions by a few boyfriends & a stepfather (none of whom lasted very long), I became my mothers' surrogate husband--in every way--until she put me in a children's home when I was 12, tho the last incident of overt sexual incest occured when I was nine or ten.

She put me in the home soon after I was raped by friends of hers, a gay couple, in their apartment. She said it was becuz I was getting too hard to handle and was gonna get put in juvenile detention. Yeah, I was getting to hard for her to handle--read: control.

In the home, I continued to have a recurring nightmare I'd had for years, later I realized, it was since the time of the above incident.

In this night terror, I am falling down what looks like an endless hole. As years go by I sense its not endless & start getting closer to the bottom. The times I have the nightmare & the timing in it accelerates. I begin to be able to see the bottom of the pit speeding toward me as I'm falling. Then one night I am there, actually feeling myself hit bottom...and then I wake up. After about five years, I never have this nightmare again.

My first clear & extended abuse flashback came about 18 months ago, right after a therapy session for issues I thot were unrelated. It was the memory of the homosexual couple raping me, so vivid I more than once had to pull the car over, stop, and bawl and pray during the hour plus trip home. :greencry:

As I began working on my recovery, I 1st thot the nightmare had stopped becuz it was right after this gay couple, whom I had not seen in years, stopped at the home to try to take me out with them, but I refused to go & never heard from them again. Now I know different, or at least more.

In the course of recovery last spring I went to a retreat. Flashbacks of incest by mother had justed started. I was processing among other things why I was so angry at my mother for what the gay couple did to me. I just thot, becuz they were her friends & she should have know, should have helped me. But I had such rage at her, far more than at them.

After the retreat talking to my wife, it all came together & hit me like a ton of bricks. My wife asked me, "Did your mother sell you to them?"

I remembered again an exchange of something between them; this had been a recurring memory for years, but never connected to anything else so I couldn't make sense out of it. I thot maybe she was giving them money for babysitting me & she didn't know what was going on. But no, they gave her the money!

That nightmare didn't stop when her friends left--it stopped right about the time she left to go out west and didn't see me anymore--for years, except briefly for my brothers funeral a year or so later.

Now the flashback became my nightmare in broad daylight. As I mumbled the answer "yes" to my wife, I was staring at a favorite calming picture on our bedroom wall. In that picture I started to see in detail everything that had happened & how it all came together.

My mother had sold me to these rapists for drugs or shoes (she had a closet full; I remember complaining about more new pairs she had gotten soon after the incident) or something.

I laid on the floor & cried for hours, feeling like my body & my soul were being ripped apart and to pieces. :cry3:

Since then I've recovered & put together flashback, visual, body & feeling memories of several other incidents, most perpetrated or encouraged by my mother. A couple of babysitters & a babysitters' younger sister (about my age at the time). A young aunt who stayed with us a while & also seduced me. At least one incident of incest by my mother & a boyfriend; I was nine or ten. And around that same time, the one incident of incest with just me & her that I clearly remember, tho I know it wasn't the only one.

This sexual & emotional incest, as well as verbal, physical, emotional & sexual abuses of other kinds by multiple persons, went on from at least age three to age twelve. There have also been in my life 4 major auto accidents; thankfully the 4th, in 1993, was the only one involving my family. I have also suffered trauma from work & frequent moves. But the sexual abuse was the worst.

The results have been Complex PTSD, various sexual dysfunctions, difficulty relating to men or women or anybody, hatred of women & of men in general, self-hatred, stunted inner growth, the loss of my childhood, severe depression, severe allergies, fibromyalgia, sleep apnea, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, OCD, etc etc ad nauseum.

It took a long time to put it all together. It took a while to know what to do or even want to do anything. The diagnosis much less proper treatment of & healing from all this has mostly started only within the last few years, especially the last year. It took a while to find the right T, a pdoc who is also a chronic pain (and OCD!) specialist, a good massage T, a good chiropractor, and good online support, tho live support is scarce around here.

Last fall I did a couple of sessions of two-chair therapy and a couple of processing sessions. In 2-chair, my T invited my mother into a chair (no not physically, but very real!) with me & the other, and him there as a guide & guardian who could alter or halt the proceedings at any time, even kick her out!

Thru all of this & since this 2-chair therapy, I have been able to begin to forgive, really let go of the past, & start really living in the present with joy & some optimism for the future. I still have chronic pain, compulsion & other things to deal with. I may still have flashbacks, & have had one since--an ugly & unwanted detail of an already remembered incident--but I can deal with it much better now.

Another recent big step I took was going to Manhattan a couple days over Christmas vacation with my family. I was born in Manhattan and lived there till I was 4; my abuse began there. So 9-11 was a huge trigger for me; setting off, soon after I’d begun recovery, a flood of flashbacks & flaring symptoms that only subsided in the late spring of last year, with a brief flareup around the 9-11 anniversary.

I did not go to my birthplace, just a mile or so from Ground Zero, but I did go to Ground Zero. Moving; helped me remember there are people far worse off than I; a little perspective.

The other main thing we did was go to Central Park, some of which I actually remembered, including the old (still) $1 carousel that held my best clear memory of Manhattan. Riding that carousel, much to the embarrassment of my wife and daughters, and the astonishment of other riders, I finally released my inner child freely on Dec 27, a slightly late Christmas present for myself, Big Victor & Little Victor.

A bonus was in returning home to realize how well I’d handled the traveling, crowds, traffic, changes & everything else. Gives me, and my family, hope for my recovery!

I know I continue to need, and will continue to get & to use, ongoing therapy, counsel, support, massage, diet, exercise, meditation, prayer, music, humor, writing, reading, and whatever will help me in my own recovering of my true self, and in my relationships with my family, friends, and the rest of the world.

I am learning to rejoice that at least in my family, this destructive vicious cycle has been broken! My wife & I have not abused our children, they are out on their own doing very well, and I am confident they will not be abusive to their children or to anyone else. I also know they will be & are cautious & capable of taking care of themselves. One is studying to be a nurse. One is in communications, and has been volunteering with a rape/violence/abuse crisis center.

I am learning to really love & appreciate my wife, the most loving, lovable woman in the world. After 20 plus years its about time!

At last I'm beginning to not just survive but to thrive. I've only just begun, its only the beginning, but it is a beginning--and I'm glad its not over yet!