Hey guys,
For the last week or so all I can do is think about the places my abuse occurred. I don't know why, but I have had this urge to go and visit these places. I went so far as to drive by one of the places, but when the time came, I couldn't bring myself to stop the car and get out. I don't know, maybe this is part of coming to terms with what happened. What do you think?

Scott

Scott,

I did this in February of last year and it was very helpful to me. I posted about it on the Members side and put up some photos as well.

I would just say try to prepare yourself as much as possible and go with a safe person who knows your situation. I went with my sister Cathie and man, she was a lifesaver at a few points. The experience was very emotional for me, but it helped me enormously to see that what was evil was the abuser, not the church and scout cabin where things happened.

Much love,
Larry

That's strange- i was thinking about the exact same thing today. I don't live far at all from the site of where my 1st abuse occurred, if i wanted to i could simply drive there and look- yet though i think of it, i am not ready to do it, i still turn away mentally at the thought of seeing that house again, or the spot where it was- i haven't been by it for years, i don't even know if it's still there. Paradoxes everywhere for us...

Scott,

Sounds like part of you is getting ready to work through another level. I think it’s great you got as far as you did. In time, when you’re ready I’m sure you’ll try again and I’m sure there will be healing and growth as a result.

I look forward to hearing about it when it happens. Take care.

Larry, if you don't mind answering, I'd like to know if yours was a planned visit or was it something you did on the spur-of-the-moment? ****EDIT- Larry I just read the your posts from last year....thank-you for telling me about it ****

The reason I ask is, although I had been thinking about these places, and wondering if I should go, I really did not plan on going when I did. It just sort of happened.

As you know, my GF is the only person around me to whom I have disclosed, and, because of this, I'm sure she would be willing to help me through the experience. She was in town for the weekend, and was with me in the car, but I don't think it would have been fair of me to just drop this on her without any warning.

Now, having gotten this close, I feel as if this is something I need to do. I'm thinking that when my GF is in town again this weekend I'll discuss this with her to find out how she feels about it.

Do you think this is a good plan? Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Scott

I did the same thing a couple of months ago. I had to deliver a wedding gift to an old friend's dad, and he still lives in that same house that was two doors down on the cul-de-sac after more than 30 years. I told him about the abuse and the abuser and he was shocked to hear it. He knew both of us very well, and one of his sons was actually good friends with the abuser. It feels good to vent the "real story" to those I grew up around.

I stood and stared at my house and my abuser's house with very mixed emotions. Everything sure looks smaller than I remember.

dgoods,

Thanks for the reply. When I feel a certain way, or something happens and I want to write about it, I know logically that I can't be alone in how I feel. Unfortunately, part of me always feels like I'm crazy for thinking, or feeling, or doing things the way I do. So I find that there is something comforting in reading a post like yours. Sometimes I need confirmation that I'm not alone. Thanks.

Scott

Grunty1976b,

Thanks for the words of support. I hope to be able to go through with this very soon. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again,

Scott

Scott,
I went to see my brother to confront him three years ago. That didn't bring much satisfaction because he didn't really come back with much. So, a year later, I went to my childhood home, hoping to see my house where I grew up. To my shock, the house had been torn down. I drove up, in a cold, pouring rain, and there was a strange house sitting there where my house used to stand...kind of an odd metaphor for moving on I suppose? So, then, I drove over to the house where I was born. Got out of the car, went around back, in the rain, to the back yard where I used to play. They had built a garage that literally filled the tiny backyard. This guy was in the garage, doing some woodworking. He talked my ear off about his gun cabinets and stuff. Ruined it for me...not at all what I imagined what the experience would be.

I totally understand your thoughts about the places of your abuse. Now that I'm in deep therapy over my abuse and the resultant depression, I've been having tons of dreams about the now torn-down house, my parents, and the actual space where the abuse occured...the upstairs bedrooms where the five of us boys lived. It's totally weird.

And, yes...cbfull...everything WAS much smaller.

Hang tough.

Russ

Wow, cbfull, that is wonderful. That you could tell people you knew the truth about what happened must have felt great. I am so happy for you.

I'm not sure how it will go, but I can tell you as I sit here and type, the place still feels larger than life to me. In my mind I still feel like the 7yo boy who had to endure. I do hope that once I visit this place, I will be able to feel differently.

Scott

Russ,

I'm sorry everything didn't go as you had hoped. I know that if it were me, I would have been disappointed to not get the answers/closure I was looking for.

Thank-you very much for sharing your experiences. You have helped me better understand how I should be approaching my situation.

Thanks,

Scott

Guys,
I wonder, after reading about your experiences, if how I approach these healing events might be keeping me from getting everything out of them as I could.

What I mean is, I tend to express things as absolutes. Like when I was planning my disclosure to my GF, in my mind I would tell myself "once I disclose, things will be better". Well, disclosing helped me, and things did get slightly better, but it wasn't the life altering event I had built it up to be.

I'm trying to not do the same thing here. I'm trying not to tell myself things like: "Once I visit this place, I will have closure" or "Once I see this place, I will be able to understand why things happened the way they did". I'm trying to approach this like it will be just another piece to the puzzle. It will help, but it won't fix everything.

What do you think?

Scott

Scott,

It certainly seems like you have decided you still wish to revisit that old house. When will be when you are ready.

I think you’ve thought through very well the impact (or lack thereof) of making these milestones in your recovery e.g. telling your GF. I know so many of us do the mental gymnastics of “what will they say? How will I respond to xx? How will I feel afterwards, what will it end up achieving?” etc etc.

As you’ve already found, the outcomes are most often not what we envisaged. They can be better, neutral, or sometimes less favourable. To approach each of these events with as neutral a mind as possible I think is the ideal. How well you end up preparing yourself in that regard is another matter altogether!

I guess, try and not expect anything but know that it is important for you to do. I think the overriding thing here is that it’s what you feel you need to do. Perhaps the outcomes are immaterial. Maybe it’s in the doing?

I've decided to try and go again tomorrow.

I'm feeling apprehensive, but, at the same time, I truly feel like this is the right thing for me to do.

I guess we'll see.


Scott

Scott,

I was near the place where I was abused yesterday and a couple of days before. The fact is my grandfather lives there, and I was visiting him for a vacation.

I had gone to that place many times, but only once I was where the abuse exactly happened. I was with two friends at the time.

It was difficult to went there, and I was feeling weak after visiting that place, but in the long run this is ok, and I think I did a good job.

Good luck to you.

Alexey

Scott,

Whenever you go it will be a risk, but if you have your girlfriend with you that will help a lot, that's for sure. But here's a suggestion.

Before you go, talk to her about how you feel and what you hope to get out of the visit. Maybe you don't know right now, but look inside and ask yourself why this visit is important to you. Is it a symbolic confrontation of the abuser, an effort to show yourself it's all over and in the past, or what?

After the visit, talk things over with your girlfriend, if you can, and see how you feel then. Also, talk it over here, if you feel you can do that, and let the guys here help you process.

Just some thoughts.

Much love,
Larry

I have been thinking about little else all week.

I know there are very real risks. I have asked myself why I want to do this, and every time I ask, I come up with a different answer. My latest answer is that I think I need to physically connect with this place in order to move forward. All I have right now are things I can't physically touch. Flashes of memories, dreams and feelings in my gut. Although these are real, I think I need something else to help me put them all together.

I could be completely wrong and I may not accomplish anything positive by going there, but I feel like until I do I will never know for sure.


Scott

Scott,

Your feelings about this remind me of my experience back in 2005, when I began feeling that I just HAD to go back to PA and tell my Dad what had happened to me. But at that time I couldn't put my finger exactly on WHY this was eating at me. That only became clear after I had actually done it.

Perhaps you are in a similar situation. I would say go for it, so long as you have someone safe with you and have given some serious thought to the possibilities and the risks.

This sounds like one that isn't going to leave you alone until you make your move.

Much love,
Larry

******TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!******

Events leading to and including my visit to the place where I had been abused...








About a week and a half ago I started feeling like I needed to visit the place where I had been abused as a child. At the time I didn't know why, I just felt like I needed to do it. A few days later, as I was driving around with my girlfriend, I drove by the place without having really planned on going there. I did not stop the car, I just drove by. For the next week I tried to make sense of what I was feeling (you guys helped me through this) and I decided, with the help of my girlfriend, to go again this weekend.

Early Saturday morning we drove to the school I attended from the age of four to the age of eleven. I parked the car and we walked around the school to the back where the playground/sports fields are located.

The first thing I noticed was how much everything had changed. We walked through the playground and off of school property to a park area managed by the city. This is the park I had to walk through in order to get to/from school.

It is also the place of my abuse.

As we walked further away from the school, and closer to the exact spot, I started to get more nervous. I noticed that my breathing was becoming shallow and I was only seeing what was directly in front of me. It was like tunnel vision.

Again, things had changed and everything looked different to me.

We walked to the spot where the large old tree used to stand, the tree is no longer there.

This is where it happened.


I looked around and started to see everything around me in greater detail.

I felt very exposed at that moment.

I saw a man standing in the park, he was at least 100 meters away.

Is he staring at me?

Can he tell why I'm here?

I was extremely uncomfortable.

My girlfriend and I only stood there for a few minutes and then I turned quickly to walk away. I had originally turned to begin walking back towards the car but when I turned, something changed. Something stopped me from walking away. Instead, I turned around again and began walking further away from the car, towards the far end of the park where it ends at a street. This is how I used to walk to/from school.

We reached the street and continued walking until we were in front of the house where I grew up. My parents still live there.

I didn't know why we were there.

As we walked towards the house and up the front steps, the door opened and my father stood there in the doorway. Again, this just happened, I had not planned going to visit. In fact, I had purposely parked the car close to the school so that I wouldn't see anyone I knew before or after I visited the site of my abuse.

Up went my protective wall again. I couldn't let my parents see me this raw and exposed. I tried to hide the fact that I was upset.

We exchanged greetings and I came up with a lame story about what we were doing there. We sat around and talked for a while and I started to relax a little. Then something else happened.

My father picked up a section from the newspaper and handed it to me. He asked me if I recognized the face in the picture. I looked down, and right there above the picture of a man I did not recognize, read a headline announcing the involvement of a local church in a sex abuse scandal.

I didn't know what to say.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe he was talking about a different picture. There was another picture of a young girl...does she look familiar? Maybe that was the picture my father was asking about.

I tried not to act different. I tried not to let my emotions show. I said that the girl did not look familiar.

My father said, "No, not her. The man from the other story."

Shit.

"No", I said, "He doesn't look familiar"

I should have stopped there, but I didn't.

Instead, I asked: "Why? Should he look familiar?"


As it turns out, my father thought this was the same man who lived across the street from us when we first moved to the neighborhood.

The man who lived across from us had been accused of abusing his step daughter.

My head was spinning.

I quickly changed the subject and then looked at my watch to make it seem like we had to leave.

We quickly put on our shoes and we left.

I didn't know what to think about what just happened. I hope my parents didn't notice my reaction. I have not disclosed to them, and for complicated reasons, I do not plan on disclosing to them.

During the walk back to the car, my GF asked if she could ask me some questions. She was concerned about my reaction to the story in the newspaper. She said that she noticed an immediate change in my behavior and was worried that my parents may have noticed as well.

When we reached the car I just sat there. I seemed to zone out for what felt like hours, but in reality it was only a minute or two. Once I came back to my senses I drove back home.


I have been trying to understand everything that has gone on the last couple of weeks. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can't help but feel like there is a greater force at work here. I do not believe in coincidences and I feel like there has to be a reason for things happening the way have been.

I'm stumbling on a few key points...

1. The desire to visit the place of my abuse just comes to me one day.

2. I just happened to drive by the park without having planned it.

3. I decide to go and see the place but nothing else.

4. Instead of walking back to my car, something makes me walk all the way to my parents house.

5. While at my parents house I'm confronted with this story from the newspaper.

6. I find out details about a perp who lived right across the street.


All these things are swimming around in my head.

And here I sit trying to get work done...

Scott - I went back fo the first time a few years ago. I think it was around May 2004. I made a post here, I think it was called '2 Steps Forward', however I cannot find it as I can only find posts going back to when the site format changed.

It was a very positive step for me, and I went back several more times afterwards and updated the post as I did so.

The place holds no fear form, and has lost some of it's tarnish. It wasn't the place that did things to me, it was the perv!

*PS if anyone can dig my post out of the archive, it may be beneficial to post a link here! (THANKS).

Best wishes ...Rik

I'm angry at myself right now. I've wasted another day at work just staring at my computer screen.

And for what?

What good has it done me?

I wish I could look back on what I did this weekend and feel like I gained some kind of positive result.

I just don't feel that way right now.

I feel like somehow I messed everything up; that I should have done things differently.

At this moment, I feel like going there wasn't such a good idea, and I'm angry at myself for doing it.

I feel like I'm just trying to fool myself.

Maybe there is no greater force at work.

Maybe I need to accept the fact that sometimes things just happen and nothing I do will change that.


Scott

I went back home this summer to give my brother some support for an issue he was dealing with. I also had a lot of free time. I felt this need to go to as many places I could remember growing up. I did drive by the places where three of my abuses took place. The first I grew up in and the house was still there, built in 1909 and still standing. Had a lot of good memories there some were bad but most good. The second was a little freaky like I was a mile away as I passed by and hoped that nobody would see me as I drove by really slow. Felt danger and got the heck out of there. The third place was no longer there. The house where the worst abuse happened was gone as well as the surrounding houses. I was relieved when I saw them gone, and much fear was released. Like the evil neighborhood was replaced by good. It was a nice thought. I don't think I would have handled the last one very well if it had still been standing. It was not planned and I was alone. I don't recommend going it alone.
peace
Rick

Guys,


This experience is affecting me more than I thought.

I'm sorry for my rant yesterday.


Scott

I went back to the house i used to live in, were most of the abuse happened. Both myself and the wife stopped off on the way back from visiting our sons. I felt ok for the first part but i started to feel very uncomfortable, i sat in the car and started to feel scared. After we drove away and continued back on the journey home, it took a while but i started to feel ok.
Since then the flashbacks and nightmares have gotten stronger and more often.
With hindsight i wish i had never gone back.

Hi Guys,

We all have so much fear buried deep down, don't we? I also went back to visit a couple of the places where my abuse happened. I actually moved back to one of the towns for a job, and I was stunned by the experience. In my mind the whole place was a dark memory. But it turned out to be a beautiful sunny place (an island in the Carib.). And living there again helped me reclaim my own memory. The pain had changed my perceptions so I couldn't see the sun!

I can also relate to the feeling that everything should get fixed all at once. Like when you think that going to the old place will clear things up. To me experiences like this are mostly only helpful because they clear the memory. The places are really just places, not sites of abuse. And seeing them fresh helped me at least to appreciate that.

But the real healing for me is in changing my internal monologue and the daily habits of my life to reflect the me I would like to be rather than the poor kid still suffering from the abuse. I find that's the real problem; not so much that the abuse happened but what happened to me as a result of living with the abuse afterwards. I somehow built a self in response to the pain rather than just growing up.

Danny

Was going to post some pictures of when I went back, but for some reason they didn't copy over!

I did the same thing about 5 months ago and then i went to my so called mothers grave but not before i went to home depot and purchased a 20lb sledge hammer and smashed her headstone and it fell over and i then left and never returned.


It was real hard for me tp pull up in front of the house where it all happened so many years ago yet i too could not bring myself to stop and get out of the car although i circled the neighborhood several times and each time i passed by that house i felt numb all over....but i can see why you did this i believe we all need to allow ourselves to go through our process when we're ready and not be influenced by other people and their commetns about what they think you should do or not afterall it took alot of courage for you to confront your past.

God bless you and i wish you peace and comfort in your healing.

Coop

I have been reading about everyone's experiences going back to the place where their abused took place and it started me to begin thinking about my own experience. I was abused in my own bedroom by an older boy in the neighborhood. The abuse occurred multiple times and all in the same location. I remember saying things to my mother trying to bring her attention to what was going on and hopefully for her to stop it. Unfortunately, she never picked up on my comments and calls for help, and the ensuing years have been very painful and filled with complusive sexual behavior and all the other problems associated with CSA.

Approximately 14 years later, I moved away from that house when I got married. My bedroom was located upstairs and I can't remember every going back upstairs to go into that room after I left. After my mother died, I always found a reason not to go back to my old house where I grew up. I always found a reason to have my father visit us at our house. In my own mind, I could never figure out why I didn't want to go back there. I remember when ever I did go, I would get this very uneasy and scared feeling. I never understood why I felt that way, until now. It is only within the last year that I have been able to confront my CSA and emotions. I think that I was unconciously experiencing what you have been describing in your postings. It always seemed strange to me I never wanted to go back and visit the house where I was raised and nver wanted to show the house to my children.

I have to say, being on this site has really helped me get a better understanding of what I have been through and also helps to make sense of my feelings and emotions.

Thank you all for your candor and honesty.

Dan M.