I have a hard time feeling like I belong here. I have interacted with other men here and have read some of their stories and feel like I do not belong here. My story is not even half as horrible and I feel very weird. The strangest thing is that if someone else told me this story (actually something like this happened recently) I'd definitely see them as victims of abuse. However, I cannot see myself as one. It comes and goes. Is anyone else here facing the same questions?

This is SO familiar in my life. I barely remember anything - there are times I doubt anything really happened. So what am I doing here? Right now I'm riding a wave of feeling like I have no right to be here.

What you are feeling is not unique to you. What I have to do when this happens is try to listen to the guys here who say I belong. I figure it's their place and if they say I have a spot here, then maybe they see something I don't?

I don't know that I can offer you any real help - other than say you're not alone. I hate the way this comes and goes - but for myself - I rarely feel I belong anywhere.

m

yeah totally. when i first came here i didnt think i was abused. it was my shrink who told me i was. haha. i dont call myself a survivor. bottom line tho dude, is "recovery" (and i hate that term too) recovery isn't a pissing contest. we dont all stand around talking about whose life sucks more. or whose experiences were the suckiest. its all relative. it all sucks.

All I know is that there are no realistic comparisons of abuse... what affects one person at a particular time in their life is specific to that person.

I have had the same thought many times. My abuse was not violent. My abuse was by a teenager, not an adult. My abuse went on for 6 years and I did a lot to keep it going. I enjoyed many aspects of the sex.... but I've come to understand that a big part of my childhood was taken... altered... I could not trust, I hated myself for my arousal, I believed I was evil, I believed I was going to hell, I believed if anyone found out I would be sent away.... I believed it was all my fault.

RCM, it doesn't matter WHAT happened to us as kids specifically, it matters that we are here, brothers, to support each other and help each other find peace and resolve -

I have read your posts, and I, for one, think you bring a lot to the site, so in my opinion, you belong here as much as any of us.

Dan

Oh yeah...you can look up my posts and see that it is a common thing. I think the best thing is to just not obsess about it.

It comes and goes with me too,sometimes I feel like what happened to me was not abusive and other days it seems like abuse.Like bp83 said I think its a common thing,like feelings of guilt.

Post deleted by nicky

One second of abuse is one second too many, and it is all it takes to belong here.

I was groomed, then abused. Before I came here, I had thought that if I had been beaten up and abused, it would have been better, because I would not have had mixed feelings about the abuser. I would have just known that someone using physical power over me was evil. Someone that was nice to me to get what they wanted just didn't seem as evil, and that is what confused ne for many years.

Since joining this site, I have realised that all abuse is evil - there is no better way to be abused - every single way leaves scars. Some scars you can see, some you can't!

Best wishes ..Rik

dude i know exactly how you feel. I brought this up in the chat room the other night when i had to vent. It took me months to actually post something here cause i wasn't sure that i belonged. But seriously though man i'm glad i did. The people on this site have helped me more than i could have ever asked for. They'll definitely be there for you too man.

Everyone,
I am overwhelmed by all your messages and support. I never expected this but thank you thank you thank you thank you
RCM

What one of the older moderaters here use to say, 'what happen to you is the worst thing in your life, what happen to me was the worst in my life, what happen to him the worst in his life'. There is no comparison, only sharing and support. He is one of the best and wisest people I know, so I think he is very right in what he say.

Andrei

rcm................................

I'm going to give another point of view here that some people don't like, but it very well may apply to you.

There ARE degrees of severity when it comes to sexual abuse. (beatings, torture, humiliation, violence, fear, threats, etc). And of course there are some here that would argue that victims that get talked into accepting and trusting their perps and keeping it a dreaded secret have it even worse than victims of outright rape and violence.

But I digress. YES there are different degrees of abuse. BUT and this is a BIG BUT, we as victims don't get to just "choose" how well or even HOW we deal with the emotional turbulence that's left in the wake of sexual abuse. What it's impact is on you and your life is LEGITIMATE, and every bit REAL.

If, because of the abuse, you're crippled in ANY capacity, (more than one is likely) then we're here to support you and offer insight and MAYBE, just MAYBE some answers that will address what is troubling you.

And you know what? I think you just might find that help here, I know I did. It just took one person to say the right thing in the right circumstance in my life to change the way I see things and for what I might actually hope is possible for me.

Yes, there are different degrees of violence and torture in abuse, there are different ways people have been groomed, there is differences in how young people were when abused, or how long the abuse continued. But still, as people here say, it is YOUR life, and what happened to you, and someone who feel like 'well, it was just this, and just one time', they deserve the same respect and understanding of anyone else here. I think what I am trying to say, you may feel it is 'minimal' abuse in comparing to someone else here. But it is what happen to YOU, and any abuse, it is not minimal. You deserve help in your healing just as anyone else do.

VN

Ive dealt with this issue off and on since i first became aware of my abuse. There certainly are times were I go "why is this effecting me so much? Its not like my abuse was like the abuse cases you see on tv." I once read the case of a boy that was raped so brutally that he suffered massive anal fissures. These fissures bled so profusely that he got an infection and almost died. Don't mean to be graphic, but I wanted to illustrate why sometimes I feel bad considering I did not have anywhere near as bad as that poor boy. Even if you did not suffer substantial physical trauma that does not diminish the seriousness of the abuse. Whether you brutally raped or fondled you were still violated. Likewise, all abuse also has the potential for adverse problems later in life, so you should not feel bad if your experience was "not that bad." Ultimately all experiences really are that bad.

There are lots of guys here whose experiences make mine look like losing a game of freeze-tag. Four in particular astound me that they lived and retained sanity at all. Don't think I should name names but seriously - badasses whether they see it that way or not, just by waking up each day.

But I think it's just "not done" to try to upsize / downrank folks' experiences - like you're Quint and Hooper having a scar-fight in Jaws. Was the moray eel bigger than the thresher's tail?

First of all, it just seems tacky.

More importantly, invalidating a person's experiences can be a form of re-victimization - and that's just as true when it comes from within. You "count". Your experience counts. The crime against you counts.

And besides, it's plainly a waste of time because Robbie Middleton "wins".

Well-stated SoccerStar(esp. the Jaws reference). CSA isn't a contest. Everyone who has experienced it in whatever form or degree is left to contend with the demons it leaves behind. When I first found MS Survivors, I felt like my story hardly measured in comparison to some of the truly horrific stories on here. I was quickly assured that comparisons are both meaningless and counterproductive.

Will

Ditto what the others have said above--it makes no sense to try to count up "experience points" for the various acts that each perpetrator perpetrated. Some of them may sound "worse" than others, in the sense that a criminal code prescribes harsher penalties, but that doesn't help US. It doesn't even describe US.

What matters is the negative effects that the CSA experience has on each of us. Experience isn't something that happened in the past, it's what we carry with us now. Each of us has been affected to different degrees in different ways by CSA, regardless of whether it was violent or not, protracted or brief. It's obvious from this discussion board that some have been harmed more than others, and some have struggled more than others--that's the only meaningful sense in which one guy's CSA can be "worse" than another's.

John

CSA is not just a physical abuse but also an emotional and psychological one. No one can measure the abuse--it impacts each of us differently. But it is abuse and our lives were forever changed. It is not the amount of physical abuse, duration or grooming that is important. What is important we were violated and robbed of our lives. Healing is now what is important, like our abuse, it was different for each of us, how we reacted was different, how we were effected physiologically and emotionally cannot not be measure. We should not compare our abuses but rather look at the healing, support and hope this forum offers and what we offer to each other.

I absolutely agree with everyone here. There is no way to measure trauma or pain. Therefore, no one can ever say "mine was worse than yours". Playing that game will only cause more damage. If you feel a need to be here, they you belong here. It's as simple as that.