I’m done!

For those of us who have been at it a while, we’ve come to know that recovery is a long, often tortuous, road that demands a consistent commitment on our part to achieve. I have always tried to remain true to the promise that I made to myself twenty three years ago that I would see the journey through to its end and that success would be mine. Like we all, I have scratched and clawed my way from mile marker to mile stone and have been blessed to accomplish much and I am proud of that.

However, I do not feel that I have yet grown sufficiently to claim the success that I was shooting for and it has become apparent to me of late that I have reached the end of my personal recovery journey. There is no where else to go with it and nothing else to reach for; I’m done!

Recently, I undertook what was for me the last and only hope of getting well through professional help in the small city that I live in. My doctor recommended that I see the head of the psychiatry department at our local hospital and that I undergo an evaluation so as to determine what course of treatment would best suit me and my needs.

The long & short of it that I’ve been prescribed medication to keep me calm, to help abate the flashbacks and to minimize my nightmares…..Oh, and this: “We feel, Mr Rosset, that enrolling in the local support group for formerly sexually abused children would be of great benefit to you”. Said support group is comprised of seven women and one other man!!!

So that’s it, the whole plan consists of keep me stoned while I try to explain to a group of women how it feels to be emasculated and to have my very sense of identity taken from me subsequent to being gang-raped as a child. Well now, there is a cure if I ever heard of one! Yeah, I’m done.

OK guys, I hear all of my MS friends telling me “You still have us, we care”, and I do know that that is true and I am profoundly grateful for everyone’s concern and willingness to support me. My MS friends, my cyberspace friends……….

What I need is an end to the isolation that I am imprisoned in – what I need is to no longer be the freak amongst the people that I know because somehow I just never really it in with ‘normal people’ – what I need is flesh & blood communion with other guys like me……

What I need is stop deluding myself that recovery work is helping me achieve a life worth living – what I need is to stop pretending that there is an end to this journey and that at that end, happiness and fulfillment are waiting for me and I will claim them as my prize for a race well run. I’m done!

(((Joel)))

"What I need is an end to the isolation that I am imprisoned in – what I need is to no longer be the freak amongst the people that I know because somehow I just never really it in with ‘normal people’ – what I need is flesh & blood communion with other guys like me……"

I hear you loud and clear brother! I want so desperately to communicate in person with other guys who just udnerstand what this hell is like.

And yeah, you do still have all of us and we do care.

Hang in there Joel.

Peace,

lars

dear heavens, where did you get that nonsense? there is no end. it is your daily bread and breath to suffer this tension ceaselessly, with only mild and temporary periods of relief when otherwise preoccupied.

the healing is in acceptance of that cold hard fact.

alternatively, you can put this issue on ignore for a time, you can allow it to cause you to make choices that will determine a new chapter for you, where your life goes on automatic, and you don't have to bother doing anything but construct newer, more interesting and creative ways to convince yourself that you are figuring out how to make said baggage lighter. you could hide yourself in a contemptuous relationship, where you slowly smother your soul under a million of buried compromises.

or you could just face the music and feel the pain, and accept that it is what it is.

i too have been doing a lot of legwork in my recovery, surrounded myself with people who 'get' me, where i don't have to keep rehashing the old crap. and that helps, truly it does.

but, what will not change is the immutably altered state of being that occured one fine day, so long ago, yet so nearby.

there, feel better now?

i didn't think so, but try to stop subtracting and begin to add instead. there's that glass half-full/half empty.

add up the potential in the power of friendship by phone, email, facebook, whatever medium. add up the hope that your life may never be more than the not so empty promise of a new land to be discovered just up ahead over the next nob, thru the next clearing, around the next pass. and while you may never live to see your promise land, yet, you can take some comfort that your adventure has not been for nothing, but to prepare the way for those who will follow......and disgustingly enough, as the statistics show us, they will follow.

in the meantime, let's make a plan to visit together in toronto this summer, or late spring.

hang in there joel, it's not over yet.

your buddy, ron
[ps sorry for the cold water in the face]

Brother Joel;

your posts have been blessing me for quite some time, and from my selfish and self centred perspective I want you to stick around. Enuf about what I want. In my heart we are each here since we have been to hell and are walking away from it, seeing your back shows me hope. If it is God's will for you to take you leave than I thank him for sharing you with me for this time and wish you God's speed in your Journey.

Regardless of whether I see another post from Mes Ami Monsieur Rosset it matters not. You are and always will be part of my journey and my recovery.

Now to the advice piece, and you can feel free to shit-can it if you like. :-) My experience is that I receive from my God in the least likely places... my Al-Anon experience is one; a room filled with women, and the occasional man, who have been or are married to alcoholics at various stages of recovery or the disease... like I fit, I grew up in an alcoholic home and have been away from it for almost 25 years, and he has been a dry drunk for 30 years... I don't fit what I perceive the room is for... but I connect and identify with something in each meeting that supports my healing and growth. Bloody Hell, I have started to look forward to those meetings now, who'da thunk it ...

Love you my Brother, Wes

Ron
If someone has a spear into their body we have hospitals with staff to carefully remove it, clean the wound, stich it up to stop internal and external bleeding and bandage it up. There is a healing process.

And so over ten years ago I asked - when my soul is wounded by the sword of abuse why is there no place, no councellors, no ministry in the church, or whatever to remove the sword of abuse?
Why do so many well meaning Christians tell me I am bitter (actually I am more angry than bitter) when bitterness is like the puss from the abrisiveness of the sword in my soul. It's fine to wash away the puss with forgiveness. It is cleaner, but how dare they send me on my way without removing the sword of abuse.
This is the cause of our ongoing pain, the reason why we arn't seeing more recovery.
"Dear God,
please take this sword out and bring healing to our souls"

Nathan

Joel
I long for an in the flesh support group with men who were, like me sexually abused in our childhood. I did have an 8 week programme a good start but no ongoing. Since joining MS forum I have found men who understand me. Men who share experiences and insight. To those who find me a pain I apologise. Trying to deal with this.

I am trired of women councellors who don't understand. They clog up a Men's Line we have here in Australia. How demining - to be sent to a women dominated group.

Joel - please hang around. It is my prayer that as a group of men with God's help we can make progress. Man I am struggling. In pain. God HAS answers and damm it I am going to find them. hope you can pursue answers also
Nathan

I seem to have left my friends with the wrong impression of just what it is I meant - Sorry guys, but I ain't goin' anywhere.

I like it here and here is where I'm staying!!! Put up with me

I said I'm done and I meant that! I'm done trying to get to where I set out to be from the beginning of this journey.

All I ever wanted from this was to become someone that I could be proud of and that a very special someone would be proud to call his love - I made it halfway, which I recognize is so much more than many get to achieve - I consider myself blessed and I do not regret the arduous path that I trod.

Still and all in order to go the rest of the way I need some serious and tangible assistance - and that is not available to me here where I live. The head of psychiatry's solution is to medicate me and to send me into group with FEMALES of sexual abuse.

Well I don't know from shit about being a raped female and while they certainly have my compassion and empathy for the horrors that they have had to endure, I just don't see myself explaining to the ignorant the trails and travails of being a raped and emasculated boy.

Since when in the fuck did males and females and each other's very particular sexual dynamics become interchangable??????????

There are no ressources available to me and I'm done beating my head against the recovery wall in the hopes of breaking through - that's what I meant, nothing more. I quit, but I'm not leaving. Jesus Fuckin' Christ, please someone hear me - MS is my entire social outlet.

I am trapped in my appartement and go days on end without seeing or speaking to another living breathing soul - this is my reward for such dilligent recovery work after twenty three years? And now they wanna just keep me medicated so I'll stop bitchin' about the lack of ressources.

I think I said this already, but in the event that it got missed - I'm done.

I am not hurting myself anymore just to try and get well.

BTW, Ron? I owe you a bitch-slap

Well Joel, I've sigged one of your posts, and I'm grateful for what you wrote as it was inspiring but have you been helping others like me, more than you've helped yourself?

My two cents; don't take the meds and screw that group.

The one I attend was set up by two survivors following a retreat weekend with Mike Lew when they found no groups in London, it wasn't there, they had to build it and we came. What does it take? The hire of a hall and a set time to attend, and see what happens? You can't be the only Quebecois survivor, so you'll have to use this board to see how many of you there are, meet up, and start small from there.

If you've done it once already in 23 years and it hasn't worked, then try again...but only when you feel strong enough.

Thanks for that comment in the AA thread.

i'm not sure what the connection is to my post, but that's ok! i don't need to, but i will say your analogy makes my point beautifully.

for me, not only am i dealing with the 'scar' of abuse, which will not go away, i am also dealing accepting the stigma of aging as being something of a victimizing process that is not going to go away either.

there comes a point in one's life where, having worked thru the delusions of a lifetime, one simply acknowledges and yields to the truth and stops resisting greeting life on life's terms.

for me, i fret less over all the dissonant notes in my life's symphony, and feel more gratitude for the ones that harmonized.

when i think of all the other tragic illness humans are saddled with as they struggle for their daily bread, i realize that many people have it a lot worse than i do, and not to minimize my pain or any other creature's, but it helps me to put my own situation more into context, and therefore, my life into perspective.

of course, i live my life from moment to moment these days, and so hold on to no hopes for a 'silver lining of any sort.

every silver lining has its clouds.

as long as i keep getting lemons, i'll keep making lemonade....and you know what? bittersweet ain't such a bad thing after all. living in the realm of detachment enables me to not invest much of my energy in anticipatories such as 'highs' and 'lows', good days and bad, joys and sorrow. they come and they go like those clouds passing in the sky. if a lightening bolt does not come out of the sky and pierce me through, i don't say 'god how good you are!', nor do i stick out my tongue give the raspberries and say tauntingly 'you missed me god'.

i feel like i've written this somewhere here recently, so it must be true for me: i live by the 10th be-attitude 'blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.

i would find something wrong with that statement, if i thought for a second that there was any good to found in 'disappointments' and their thwarted expectations.

ron

well, i feel honored!

you know that i know you to be too strong a person to buy into the idea that you were giving up! i didn't get that from your post.

what i got was a moment of reckoning, and i was just confirming what you already suspect, that if this is as good as it gets, it's time to either accept it, or reject it and create some new meaning for your life.

you are definitely a survivor. i don't doubt that for one minute.

later tater,

ron

We need a blow-kissy smiley!!!

Yeah, I'm sure that'd go over real well

...

Stephan,

I take your point, but for me personally there are two things here;

1) I ain't taking the meds - period,

2) your point about perhaps other guys joining if there were more men present is a good one - call me narcissitic in this instance but if I go to group it is for me ME ME ME. That's how needy I am right now. I have given freely to others over these last years and have never counted what I gave. Was happy to do it. Felt priveledged even.........

This is the time that I reach out for ME - I am needy, I am not saying f*** everybody else, what I am saying is that this time it's me first and should anyone benefit from my implication in a group then it is purely unintentional on my part.

And yeah, admission time - I'm still too much the misogyn to involve myself in a women's group - I don't like broads that much to care about assisting them along their healing journey. I will not apologize for that either - a woman caused me to be this way, let womankind apologize to me for that.

Yea, I am going to catch Hell for this, I know...but doing a group with women in it is like having a women facilitator at a men's retreat...waste of my time and effort.




Dave

Dave, I'll stand with ya and we'll take the mud-slinging together

Just throwing ideas (not mud) out there.

Has anyone ever looked at webcasting a group or at least person-to-person? Anyone with internet, a microphone and a webcam could at least provide some face to face contact for fellow survivors who are in remote or services-depleted locations.

Just a thought,

...

The proof (as though I needed it) of your friendship for me is that you took me seriously. May you be very blessed indeed for your caring of me.

But, Stephan, my friend, I was facetious here, I expect no apologies of any kind. Now where's that blow-kissy smiley when you need it?

Say more! I'm listening - this is something that I've never considered 'till now.

That is an interesting idea: Videophone, etc, survivor groups. I was thinking more of Joel's "victory" motorhome tour of the US. Stop-off in Pittsburgh and Denver, among a few other places. We have several weekly men's support groups here in Denver, so why couldn't we broadcast groups by either videophone or webcam? The technology is available.

Question is??? How much will it cost and how much is it worth? There are already lots of college courses online.

I don't know Joel, just think how much you could help that other guy out, all alone with all of those women???

Victory tour, Victory tour!!!!

Mark

Mark,

I don't know whether to kick you or kiss you - I think I'll forego both, if you don't mind

You may freakin' well be onto somethin' here..................

At the very least, it's possible to set up a private connection between two computers over the internet (regardless of locations) for face-to-face communication but I will have to ask some IT/geek friends about the technology/cost for doing a group connection.

I can already hear some counselors or therapists discouraging counseling over a webcam-broadcast because of risk/insurance/liability concerns.

But at the very least two people from opposite sides of the country (or world) can already agree to meet via webcams. There are a number of host companies that provide that service. My mom bought my family a webcam so she could see our kids and other than the cost of the webcam it doesn't cost anything else. When I get home tonight I will send a PM with the company/host we have on my wife's computer. Webcams vary widely in price but I'm sure a low end one probably runs at about $20 now.

Let me know if you do the Tour though!

Yes, because all therapists are so freakin' qualified and capable when it coes to our issues!

And it's not like we would be offering professional therapy as much as self-help support!

I wanna know more, please............

Im flat out amazed at you guys, you are an inspiration to me, reminding me that I have the power to continue on forward, that the smallest step forward is still great. And mindful about the journey itself.

I think this is a wonderful idea.

How can we run with this?

I always felt like my hands were tied in previous groups as we waited for each other to type our messages.

I also think group size should be limited. It has been proven that groups larger than 12 cannot communicate effectively.

Allen

pufferfish

you can conference with yahoo messenger, which is a free download. also, ichat has conferencing capabilities as well.

i have both.

and i have had video conferences with a couple of guys from here already.

fancy that! why didn't someone think of this before??????

probably because it is something that would have to take place outside the aegis of the organization.

but i would definitely be open to having group chats. we could look into it and maybe start a new thread, now this this one has grown organically shedding it's original s[k]in.

ron

There was a commercial on TV lately for an outfit called Go To Meeting.com. I wonder if that is a video-conferencing site?

Mark

personally, i suggest avoiding such sites. most of them try to appeal to a wide variety of people, and often times you have to be careful not to trip over the naked bodies as you try to get thru the door.

the yahoo messenger does not require using a particular webportal from which to conference with others, and functions only within the interface itself.

does that make sense?

ron

Wow, that was stated with much conviction. Good post. I did notice you seemed rather angry and fed up with it though. You've been in recovery for twenty-three years and it is only you that can be the judge of the best path for you. Not any therapist, or any of us on this site.

About a year ago, I decided that it was time for me to move on from CSA. I knew that my "graduating" was not the end of my problems and there was no light at the end of the tunnel, for recovery is slow and gradual as you very well know. However, it was the journey that I love the most about it. Yea, many parts of it sucked BAD!!! However, I found out what I was truly about. Beneath of all the fear and lies emerged a great courageous soldier that I never knew lived within me. I bet you can relate to that feeling.

One thing to keep in mind. When I posted my message stating my "moving on", I had a few guys ask me to keep in touch on this site and perhaps help some of the guys that were struggling with CSA issues as well. I was more than willing and I'm still here. Not as often as I was but I feel great satisfaction helping others defeat the very demons I wrestled with for years. I shall pass on the love like so many here have done for me when I was completely lost. It is not expected of you, but, I do hope that if you are truly "done", then you come back and see us sometime. Whenever you think is a good time and if not, that's OK too.

Peace and good luck my friend
Jason

Hey Joel

The program we use is iVisit and we have a Logitech QuickCam.

Go to wwww.ivisit.com - it's a free download to use their program and their site. It shows video conferencing as an option - I've never done video conferencing but that's a pretty easy and FREE place to start.

Go to any basic electronics store like Radio Shack or BestBuy and you can find webcams anywhere from $20 to over $100 - ask the techies for all the details but the basic difference will be how good a picture your cam shows - just like buying a cheap digital camera or mid or high end digital camera.

It should be pretty easy - I can play around with it more later today so we can discover it together if you need help.

Hope this helps,

survivn, i checked out ivist which looks cool, but i think you have to have a 'plus' [ie paid] account to create your own room.

i dunno, amybe some others can double check....whuddo i know about this stuff?

anyway, i am still sure that you can conference with yahoo messenger for free without interference. i know it is free.

hey let's get the ball rolling on live chats! then those of us who do not live in colorado will no longer have to be jealous of those who do! huh!

ron

Joel,

When you make your Victor tour you can make your final destination Sunny Ca. I got 5 bedrooms and I am sure I can make room for you. In fact you can have own private bathroom attached to your bedroom. And we will start our own csa meeting. Shit I even have apool table were we can relax and visit and play pool before and after the meeting.

Keep me updated on this webcam idea I would be interested too if it is open to str8 Ca guys.

Mike

If you are male & CSA - you're in!

This is truly an idea that I'm now considering.............

Sounds like Yahoo Messenger is the way to go then - I've only ever used one program and only then for one-to-one communication.

I know Yahoo is free - I will download it tonight and play around a bit - have to find the damn webcam again lol - not something I leave around for little hands to decide it's a good baseball.

When I was five I "flew" this expensive model of a Piper Cub of my dad's down the basement stairs, and was genuinely surprised when it landed poorly. So my advice is that you had better hide that webcam.

Mark

Take a look at google chat. It has pm features as well as video and there is no downloading like yahoo has with tracking cookies

yea, but that does not work with powerpc's such as mac

bummer

Thanks, will do.

First thing in the morning

Joel,

I didnt reply first time as i didnt think that what you meant was that you were leaving MS. Anyway, i aint been around for a while as i had some stuff to sort out... all i wanna say is that i'm glad you aint going anywhere.

Hope everyone is well

Dunc, x

Thanks Dunc,

I'm not the giver upper kinda guy!

There are those here who do regret that, I admit - but until they physically throw me off MS, here I am!!!

I didn't get to the very end but I guess with google.chat it goes through their email accounts, gmail?