I want to thank everyone that posts here and reads my posts. I went to therapy for a long time before I realized how much it helped.It hurt too.I feel like my recovery is on a scale from 1 to 500. My shrink got me to maybe step 200, that took maybe two years. All of a sudden i feel like I;m on my way and took huge steps, maybe to step 300 in the past few weeks. I still see my shrink but coming here helps alot too.

A few years back I broke a bone in my ankle. The doc put a cast on and said to stay off it til my next visit. He gave me pain pills. A few days later I'm taking the pain pills and the ankle feels good. Since I;m just staying home anyway I figure I can walk around a little on the cast and then a little more and then even more. When I went to see the doc again he knew I was walking on my ankle and had damaged it even more and I ended up needing surgery. I didn;t realize it cuz the pain pills worked and I didn;t feel anything but if I didn't take the pain pills the ankle wouldn't of hurt and I would of stayed off it.

It was like that with the abuse. When I first rememberd it I drank and drugged some. I didn;t want to lose my job so I started to cut back but instead started sleeping around. I posted in Our Stories why I cheated on Kimmie. Now I see that I was hurting and didn;t want to face the truth. It was easier to run away. The booze and the drugs and then the other women felt good like the pain pills but they kept me from seeing what was really eating me up, all the pain and shame, etc that I felt somehow I couldn;t admit to my wife.

Also I see that I was acting like a 13 YO boy, the 13 YO boy that was taken from me by my abuser. What 13 YO boy isn;t completely selfish, they only care about themselves and try to get out of the blame for anything. A boy that;s really good at making excuses for anything. I was acting like a 13 YO boy, looking out only for myself, trying to make myself feel better. I wasn;t being a man. Shrinks are always talking about the inner child. I think that means being happy like a child. I had my kids on Saturday and on the way home we stopped at a park. There wer other littler kids there running around, just running cuz they;re glad to be alive. they;re innocent like we were. I think we get stuck at a kid's age and act like a kid in some ways but some of us did some bad things and try to act like those kids by being selfish and getting out of things liek a kid would do. That;s not what it;s about. We get stuck at how old we were when we were abused and act like that age in bad ways but not always in good ways. Also I see that I needed someone to take care of me like a 13 YO kid and i thought of Kimmie as a mother not a wife. That wasn;t fair. I wasn't pulling my weight. I tried to hide that too by going to other women and pretending to be strong in front of them, trying to look like a man since I couldn;t be a man at home, I felt helpless like a kid. That wasn;t fair to Kimmie or my kids but mostly Kimmie.

Some of the guys been saying the best revenge is a life well lived. I had to write that down. I want to think about what it;ll mean to be almost whole again. Some of the guys here seem pretty together, maybe they;ll chime in too.
This is long, sorry, but I had alot on my mind. God bless.

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: big bear ]

Doug,

I can really realte to a lot of what you said in this post. i did a lot of the same things.

I have always felt like i was a little kid stuck in this big body with absolutely no clue how anything worked, i also believe that my development in several areas was like stalled or stuck at the age when the abuse started, i used to feel like i was 10 or so all the time, when i get in a argument with my wife i turn into a 5 year old and half the time i can not even understand what she is talking about and there is no way i can respond to her intelligently, i have watched myself grow up in some areas over the years and now i see my inner self as older, when people ask me how old i am i usually say i am 17 with 30 years experience, cus thats about how i act most of the time. Which is really strange cus i am reasonably succesful in a lot of areas.

Its been a long strange trip, it just keeps going and i just keep growing.

When it comes to the bit about the best revenge is a life well lived, for me, i am real glad that part of me is still a teenager because i have that youthful optimism still and that energy inside me that always says things like, *hmmm, this is kinda sucky, i dont think i am going to settle for this, i got to figure out some way to get past this or make this a little better* I guess not settling has been the big thing for me, i just keep plugging along until things really feel good to me.

so i figure i have made it from 10 to 17 in the last 30 years, not too bad for a kid that was a total basket case at one time, huh?

To be fair i have to say that there are parts of me that are very grown up and very adult and i do actually act my age once in a while.

Life for me these days is not so serious, i try to play with it, dont get me wrong i do have serious stuff come up on a regular basis, i just dont let it throw me too far like it used to, i guess my sharp edges and reactions have been ground down some over the years.

I am glad your here Doug.

John

I read alot about acting out. I think what I did was acting out but I;m not sure I understand all of it. It looks like more of the guys here have problems and then can;t have sex or can;t get close to people. sometimes it makes more sense then others but I still feel better. Even if I don;t understand it all the time I feel better.