Comment for Tamara (and other "survivors")
Preface:
I originally began writing this in response to a friend request I received on a social networking website from someone using the moniker “achildabusesurvivor.” The requester turned out to be a woman in her mid-thirties named Tamera, who claimed to have been a victim of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, father and step-father.
As such stories go, hers didn’t sound all that horrific. But, of course, children living in their own little world inevitably arrive at a belief that their situation is unique and worse than anyone else’s. That happens because children usually won’t talk openly about things they feel are shameful or threatening to themselves or someone close to them, and their scant experience in life provides little basis for ranking their personal fear and pain. Her purpose was to lobby for a more aggressive child protection system, and harsher punishments for perpetrators of abuse. Meanwhile, she took satisfaction from the fact that her father was in prison, and would remain in confinement for the rest of his natural life, and seemed to suggest that her mother’s suicide was a well-deserved end.
The responses to her post ranged from politely supportive to viciously collaborative, one “Christian” writer even wishing he could go into that prison and murder her father. Assuming hers was an original appeal, I also felt somewhat sympathetic, but not for the same reason. Indeed, here was a person who had evidently embraced a “victim” identity early on, and has been wasting the best years of her life on a self-defeating hate campaign. That, indeed, is a sad situation. I found it disturbing that of all those who responded, none suggested there was anything wrong with her obvious obsession. And an obsession it turned out to be. Googling her moniker turned up hits on other sites where she had copied and pasted the same story.
Here’s my comment to Tamara, and many of those who commented on her blog.
Dear Tamara ~
I was also a severely abused child; physically and emotionally by parents, sexually by others. The physical and emotional abuse affected me much more than the sexual abuse. That might have been because I was a boy, I suppose, and was, most of the time, an accommodating "victim" of the sexually abuse. But the result of it was that I wasted the better part of my life hating my father, seeing myself as a victim, believing that my case was unique, and feeling that I was somehow "different" than everyone else.
Because of what went on in my childhood home, I developed what psychologists call "Avoidant Personality Disorder." Personality disorders always arise as a way of coping with low self-esteem. I did not begin to grow out of that until I was 36-years old.
At that point, people thought I had it made. I'd become a successful young executive, the resident "boy genius" at the small corporation where I worked, single, handsome, well-built, always tastefully dressed, cool car, money in the bank, great apartment, admired by all the cute young girls - all the things any normal young man would dream of.
Living on the West Michigan shoreline, I spent lots of time at our wonderful Lake Michigan beach watching those other guys come out in the evenings and pay with their kids. That really began to hurt as I began to think 'That'll never be me. I've let that opportunity slip away.' In fact, I did not have it made at all, or at least that is not how it felt to me. In spite of how much I achieved, it was never enough. I was still always lonely, hopeless, self-loathing, and clueless. I had no idea how I had gotten to that age and never been able to find anyone who could love me.
At the end of my 37th summer, I couldn't stand it anymore. By that time, I had finally come to realize that I wasn't any different than anyone else, just severely screwed up attitudinally and emotionally. I'd actually known that for quite a while. I had seen a couple of shrinks and read lots of books. None of that did much good because I wasn't able to accept the fact that the situation I'd gotten myself into by all the stinkin' thinkin' I'd been doing over all those years was my own fault - nobody else's. Like all neurotics, I blamed others for the way I was, rather than accepting the reality that the responsibility for making a life for myself was, and always had been, mine alone.
As long as I continued to blame others, nothing in my life could change, because I had no power to change other people, or to rewrite history. I did not realize that then, so only knew that I was a hopeless case, and nobody, least of all me, knew how to fix it. During that time in my life, most nights I went to bed hoping that I would not wake up in the morning. Nevertheless, each morning I did wake up, disappointed and frustrated at having to cope with yet another day. Suicide was not an option, because I was sensitive about the good opinion of others. In my goofy way of thinking, I thought a natural death would be seen as tragic; suicide as idiotic. So I had no choice but to get up, slog on, and hope to die in my sleep the next night.
Early one evening I finally turned tearfully to God (something that was not characteristic of me at the time) and pleaded, "I know I'm a loner and a looser, but I know I don't know how to change it. If You are not willing to change me, for Christ's sake let me die! I don't want to go on like this anymore."
Within a day or two, I young waitress at a restaurant I frequently dined at sheepishly handed me an envelope containing an "I just want to be your friend" greeting card. I did my best to let her down gently, because I wasn't into flirting with the young waitresses at the restaurants I frequented. I did not care to be seen as a dirty, lecherous old man.
Then one night my "cool car," a bright red and white Oldsmobile Cutlass S, suddenly died. Something went wrong with its electrical system, and it was just totally stone dead. My neighbor owned a garage, so took it to his shop and tore it all apart - just before he had a minor heart problem and wasn't able to work for weeks. The young employee that he entrusted his business to in the meantime evidently wasn't capable of finishing the job, so the car sat there in the garage, in pieces. At the time, our town didn't have much to offer by way of dining places, so I usually frequented higher-class out-of-town restaurants. Now, without wheels, I was stuck with the few in-town choices. I never did "fast food" back then, and the restaurant where the girl worked was the only place open on Sunday in our town. So while the car was broken, I got into the habit of going there.
She was only 19 when she handed me that sappy "just wanna be friends" card; I was almost 37. We have been married for just over 30-years now, and have five wonderful children, four of whom are already all grown up, two with kids of their own.
When I look back at my life, I am never sorry about the way things have turned out, but I do regret all the years I wasted, and all the good things, and all the good times I was given that I never appreciated because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself and blaming others for my miserable life. I had indeed achieve much, but could never take any pride or find any satisfaction in those achievements. I did indeed "have it made," having a life that was the envy of many, but never took any pleasure in that, or felt any appreciation for having been so blessed.
And what of the villains in the story - those devils who were so abusive to the sweet, wonderful boy that I was?
Well, what of them! They were just neurotic, like most other people we see passing us on the street every day - suffering the pain of being imperfect, as it were. They were, perhaps, more imperfect that the typical man on the street, and their behavior was certainly not good. But the way they behaved never had to be defining of me. I just happened to have had the bad luck of being born into a bad situation. I suppose the same was true of them. For his part, my father was in the military for the duration of World Was II, doing convoy duty with the U.S. Coast Guard and watching the merchant vessels they were supposed to be protecting being sent to the bottom by enemy U-boats. That he was so volatile and mean might well have been a manifestation of PTSD; something we never heard of back then. But whatever their situation, they never had the good luck - or perhaps the blessing - that I had of being able to eventually overcome that bad beginning.
Now, their lives are over. It's too late for them. But as long as you are still breathing, the opportunity is still there for you.
How Christian is it to seek revenge, and revel in someone else's prosecution? How righteous is it to glorify the destruction of any of God's children; and we believe we are all - even your parents - children of God. We are all fallible, and it is always quite correct for any one of us to say of another's failing, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." We are taught that God understands this, and makes allowances. How does it profit you to remain angry and vindictive?
The need to point fingers and blame others is always a hallmark of neuroticism, which always arises from low self-esteem. It's simple; we feel badly about ourselves, and are able to find some solace, albeit a sort of sick solace, in pointing out how much worse others are. So-called "sexual abuse" has been elevated to such hysteric proportions that any child involved in it cannot help but feel shame at having been involved in something considered so vulgar and improper, and especially when in their hearts and the privacy of their own conscience they also feel some culpability or complicity.
I know that is a very touchy and debatable subject, and one that victims and professionals involved in the system are rarely willing or able to address. But no matter how the child-adult roles are rationalized, that underlying feeling is often present, and what happens to the child as CPS interrogators and prosecutors attempt to build an iron-clad case usually only exacerbates it. No amount of explaining to a child that they cannot be considered responsible in any way can change what they know about their part in the relationship. Even worse, when the "perp" is a family member, close relative or friend, others close to the "victim" are often hurt and resentful, with the result that investigations and prosecutions destroy relationships well beyond the one in question, giving the child even more cause to feel guilty and blameworthy.
Finally, let us revisit these fairly well-known realities: the majority of all child abuse allegations, for all of the pain and embarrassment they cause, never have enough merit as to result in formal charges. Moreover, of those that do, few result in actual convictions. Of those few that do, even fewer are actually found guilty through the trial process; most cases being settled by plea agreements, usually offered by prosecutors who don't really have what they think is a sure-fire case, and accepted by defendants who are lacking either in the courage or the financial wherewithal to fight them. And again, the children involved are always dragged through these nasty proceedings, often by people willing to use the most damnable strategies and tactics to get things out of them or elicit their cooperation in order to obtain a conviction.
Taking the long view, is this not also child abuse?
State child protection laws are all patterned after the federal law, which was originally the product of politicians pandering to lobbies and public hysteria. The federal law requires states to fall in line, else loose federal funding. Government funding has engendered a vigorous cottage industry, much as has "the war on drugs." Rather than fix anything, it actually exacerbates the problems, while costing everyone a lot of money. Like any other industry, it needs customers, and to assure a supply the law actually waives what we have always trusted to be sacred protections. One only need pick up a telephone and make a quick call to CPS to launch an investigation and cause a lot of trouble for someone they merely suspect, or perhaps just don't like.
Perhaps it is time for a more enlightened approach. We need no special laws regarding cases of rape or assault. The current laws are as protective of children as they are of adults. But what if we were to think of nonviolent sexual relations between adults and children as grossly bad behavior on the part of the adult, but not criminal? What if we thought of such adults as being unacceptably neurotic and in need of dealing with that, instead of being dangerous non-emendable monsters in need of incarceration and permanent stigmatization? Would this not be more compassionate for the children and considerate of their real long-term interests?
And what of you, Tamera? Bad things happen in every life. To grasp such a thing and cling to it as your life's defining moment is a fatal mistake. One cannot grow any more after that, so the only other alternative is to abide, waiting for the moment that death finally ends the agony. After all these years, might it now finally be time to recheck your premises? The woman who coined that phrase (a famous atheist, by the way) also offered this:
[-=glw=-]
I originally began writing this in response to a friend request I received on a social networking website from someone using the moniker “achildabusesurvivor.” The requester turned out to be a woman in her mid-thirties named Tamera, who claimed to have been a victim of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, father and step-father.
As such stories go, hers didn’t sound all that horrific. But, of course, children living in their own little world inevitably arrive at a belief that their situation is unique and worse than anyone else’s. That happens because children usually won’t talk openly about things they feel are shameful or threatening to themselves or someone close to them, and their scant experience in life provides little basis for ranking their personal fear and pain. Her purpose was to lobby for a more aggressive child protection system, and harsher punishments for perpetrators of abuse. Meanwhile, she took satisfaction from the fact that her father was in prison, and would remain in confinement for the rest of his natural life, and seemed to suggest that her mother’s suicide was a well-deserved end.
The responses to her post ranged from politely supportive to viciously collaborative, one “Christian” writer even wishing he could go into that prison and murder her father. Assuming hers was an original appeal, I also felt somewhat sympathetic, but not for the same reason. Indeed, here was a person who had evidently embraced a “victim” identity early on, and has been wasting the best years of her life on a self-defeating hate campaign. That, indeed, is a sad situation. I found it disturbing that of all those who responded, none suggested there was anything wrong with her obvious obsession. And an obsession it turned out to be. Googling her moniker turned up hits on other sites where she had copied and pasted the same story.
Here’s my comment to Tamara, and many of those who commented on her blog.
Dear Tamara ~
I was also a severely abused child; physically and emotionally by parents, sexually by others. The physical and emotional abuse affected me much more than the sexual abuse. That might have been because I was a boy, I suppose, and was, most of the time, an accommodating "victim" of the sexually abuse. But the result of it was that I wasted the better part of my life hating my father, seeing myself as a victim, believing that my case was unique, and feeling that I was somehow "different" than everyone else.
Because of what went on in my childhood home, I developed what psychologists call "Avoidant Personality Disorder." Personality disorders always arise as a way of coping with low self-esteem. I did not begin to grow out of that until I was 36-years old.
At that point, people thought I had it made. I'd become a successful young executive, the resident "boy genius" at the small corporation where I worked, single, handsome, well-built, always tastefully dressed, cool car, money in the bank, great apartment, admired by all the cute young girls - all the things any normal young man would dream of.
Living on the West Michigan shoreline, I spent lots of time at our wonderful Lake Michigan beach watching those other guys come out in the evenings and pay with their kids. That really began to hurt as I began to think 'That'll never be me. I've let that opportunity slip away.' In fact, I did not have it made at all, or at least that is not how it felt to me. In spite of how much I achieved, it was never enough. I was still always lonely, hopeless, self-loathing, and clueless. I had no idea how I had gotten to that age and never been able to find anyone who could love me.
At the end of my 37th summer, I couldn't stand it anymore. By that time, I had finally come to realize that I wasn't any different than anyone else, just severely screwed up attitudinally and emotionally. I'd actually known that for quite a while. I had seen a couple of shrinks and read lots of books. None of that did much good because I wasn't able to accept the fact that the situation I'd gotten myself into by all the stinkin' thinkin' I'd been doing over all those years was my own fault - nobody else's. Like all neurotics, I blamed others for the way I was, rather than accepting the reality that the responsibility for making a life for myself was, and always had been, mine alone.
As long as I continued to blame others, nothing in my life could change, because I had no power to change other people, or to rewrite history. I did not realize that then, so only knew that I was a hopeless case, and nobody, least of all me, knew how to fix it. During that time in my life, most nights I went to bed hoping that I would not wake up in the morning. Nevertheless, each morning I did wake up, disappointed and frustrated at having to cope with yet another day. Suicide was not an option, because I was sensitive about the good opinion of others. In my goofy way of thinking, I thought a natural death would be seen as tragic; suicide as idiotic. So I had no choice but to get up, slog on, and hope to die in my sleep the next night.
Early one evening I finally turned tearfully to God (something that was not characteristic of me at the time) and pleaded, "I know I'm a loner and a looser, but I know I don't know how to change it. If You are not willing to change me, for Christ's sake let me die! I don't want to go on like this anymore."
Within a day or two, I young waitress at a restaurant I frequently dined at sheepishly handed me an envelope containing an "I just want to be your friend" greeting card. I did my best to let her down gently, because I wasn't into flirting with the young waitresses at the restaurants I frequented. I did not care to be seen as a dirty, lecherous old man.
Then one night my "cool car," a bright red and white Oldsmobile Cutlass S, suddenly died. Something went wrong with its electrical system, and it was just totally stone dead. My neighbor owned a garage, so took it to his shop and tore it all apart - just before he had a minor heart problem and wasn't able to work for weeks. The young employee that he entrusted his business to in the meantime evidently wasn't capable of finishing the job, so the car sat there in the garage, in pieces. At the time, our town didn't have much to offer by way of dining places, so I usually frequented higher-class out-of-town restaurants. Now, without wheels, I was stuck with the few in-town choices. I never did "fast food" back then, and the restaurant where the girl worked was the only place open on Sunday in our town. So while the car was broken, I got into the habit of going there.
She was only 19 when she handed me that sappy "just wanna be friends" card; I was almost 37. We have been married for just over 30-years now, and have five wonderful children, four of whom are already all grown up, two with kids of their own.
When I look back at my life, I am never sorry about the way things have turned out, but I do regret all the years I wasted, and all the good things, and all the good times I was given that I never appreciated because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself and blaming others for my miserable life. I had indeed achieve much, but could never take any pride or find any satisfaction in those achievements. I did indeed "have it made," having a life that was the envy of many, but never took any pleasure in that, or felt any appreciation for having been so blessed.
And what of the villains in the story - those devils who were so abusive to the sweet, wonderful boy that I was?
Well, what of them! They were just neurotic, like most other people we see passing us on the street every day - suffering the pain of being imperfect, as it were. They were, perhaps, more imperfect that the typical man on the street, and their behavior was certainly not good. But the way they behaved never had to be defining of me. I just happened to have had the bad luck of being born into a bad situation. I suppose the same was true of them. For his part, my father was in the military for the duration of World Was II, doing convoy duty with the U.S. Coast Guard and watching the merchant vessels they were supposed to be protecting being sent to the bottom by enemy U-boats. That he was so volatile and mean might well have been a manifestation of PTSD; something we never heard of back then. But whatever their situation, they never had the good luck - or perhaps the blessing - that I had of being able to eventually overcome that bad beginning.
Now, their lives are over. It's too late for them. But as long as you are still breathing, the opportunity is still there for you.
How Christian is it to seek revenge, and revel in someone else's prosecution? How righteous is it to glorify the destruction of any of God's children; and we believe we are all - even your parents - children of God. We are all fallible, and it is always quite correct for any one of us to say of another's failing, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." We are taught that God understands this, and makes allowances. How does it profit you to remain angry and vindictive?
The need to point fingers and blame others is always a hallmark of neuroticism, which always arises from low self-esteem. It's simple; we feel badly about ourselves, and are able to find some solace, albeit a sort of sick solace, in pointing out how much worse others are. So-called "sexual abuse" has been elevated to such hysteric proportions that any child involved in it cannot help but feel shame at having been involved in something considered so vulgar and improper, and especially when in their hearts and the privacy of their own conscience they also feel some culpability or complicity.
I know that is a very touchy and debatable subject, and one that victims and professionals involved in the system are rarely willing or able to address. But no matter how the child-adult roles are rationalized, that underlying feeling is often present, and what happens to the child as CPS interrogators and prosecutors attempt to build an iron-clad case usually only exacerbates it. No amount of explaining to a child that they cannot be considered responsible in any way can change what they know about their part in the relationship. Even worse, when the "perp" is a family member, close relative or friend, others close to the "victim" are often hurt and resentful, with the result that investigations and prosecutions destroy relationships well beyond the one in question, giving the child even more cause to feel guilty and blameworthy.
Finally, let us revisit these fairly well-known realities: the majority of all child abuse allegations, for all of the pain and embarrassment they cause, never have enough merit as to result in formal charges. Moreover, of those that do, few result in actual convictions. Of those few that do, even fewer are actually found guilty through the trial process; most cases being settled by plea agreements, usually offered by prosecutors who don't really have what they think is a sure-fire case, and accepted by defendants who are lacking either in the courage or the financial wherewithal to fight them. And again, the children involved are always dragged through these nasty proceedings, often by people willing to use the most damnable strategies and tactics to get things out of them or elicit their cooperation in order to obtain a conviction.
Taking the long view, is this not also child abuse?
State child protection laws are all patterned after the federal law, which was originally the product of politicians pandering to lobbies and public hysteria. The federal law requires states to fall in line, else loose federal funding. Government funding has engendered a vigorous cottage industry, much as has "the war on drugs." Rather than fix anything, it actually exacerbates the problems, while costing everyone a lot of money. Like any other industry, it needs customers, and to assure a supply the law actually waives what we have always trusted to be sacred protections. One only need pick up a telephone and make a quick call to CPS to launch an investigation and cause a lot of trouble for someone they merely suspect, or perhaps just don't like.
Perhaps it is time for a more enlightened approach. We need no special laws regarding cases of rape or assault. The current laws are as protective of children as they are of adults. But what if we were to think of nonviolent sexual relations between adults and children as grossly bad behavior on the part of the adult, but not criminal? What if we thought of such adults as being unacceptably neurotic and in need of dealing with that, instead of being dangerous non-emendable monsters in need of incarceration and permanent stigmatization? Would this not be more compassionate for the children and considerate of their real long-term interests?
And what of you, Tamera? Bad things happen in every life. To grasp such a thing and cling to it as your life's defining moment is a fatal mistake. One cannot grow any more after that, so the only other alternative is to abide, waiting for the moment that death finally ends the agony. After all these years, might it now finally be time to recheck your premises? The woman who coined that phrase (a famous atheist, by the way) also offered this:
"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity ..."
To that I would add that nobody can be happy so long as they're making it their business to cause pain for others.[-=glw=-]
posted by BoysMind at
9:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home