I've been thinking about all the testimonies of "what I would have been" from other survivors. What did YOU lose?

- As a small child, up till age 8, I could actually sing...I mean really sing. My mother and her staff all would comment with great enthusiasm that I needed to sing for the church, or sing for $, or develop a career while I had the voice.

I remember feeling then that signing was very very personal. That it was heart & soul exposure. Singing in front of people gave them a shields-down view of you. I always felt naked while signing for people...like a party parlor trick for my parents.

After the older boys kicked me out of normal life with all the sexual abuse, I refused to sing --- ever. I felt fully exposed while singing even to myself. I could no longer even expose my soul to me. I've never been self-assured enough to ever sing since age 8.

Since my voice didn't change till I was 15, I think I could have had a good time --- at least for another 7 years.

Waht did I lose:

1. My childhood - still can't remember chunks of it.
2. My Family - I distanced myself from them....just starting to work on getting this back.
3. My Friends - I lost touch with most of them after college.
4. My ability to make friends
5. My trust in people
6. Affection
7. My hobbies - loved playing tennis and I was really good at it...have not picked up a Raquette in years.
8. My ability to effectivily communicate feelings
9. Enjoying sex - Understanding and feeling the good of it
10.Expresing myself to those who are the most important in my life
11. Enjoying hugging and affectionate touching
12. Self respect and worth
13. Joy
14. Being Happy
15. Living my life

Still a long way to go but getthing there,

Shields

robby, i had a very similar experience as far as singing went. I was recommended to go to a cathedral school as a chorister at age 8, but didn't due to losing most of my site in operation. The ironic thing is if I had! become a chorister, I wouldn't have ever gone to the school where my abuse happened, indeed sinse my own voice didn't break until i was 18 or so, I really! would've had time as a boy soprano. Yet at the same time, lots of the most prejudiced, snooty, and arrogant people I've ever met have been those who grew up as choristers, and now when they sing, you can here that their voices are all training and no magic, ---- not all, but perhaps most. So, perhaps I can see some good in this situation.

I'd actually really advise you to start trying to sing robby. It's been the one thing that's kept me going for years, indeed in 2008 performing in the Mikado was the only good thing I think that happened through the entire year. If your uncomfortable with singing in front of people, just do it to yourself purely as pleasure, ---- indeed the breathing and muscle exercizes can be helpfull, though one very ironic thing I find myself is that however scared I am, however intraverted I am, once I step on stage and start singing, i really feel a connection to the audience and to those around me, and all my nerves just melt. This is a fantastic feeling, indeed it's what I'll be basing my life around once my thesis is done, and if any surviver has the inclination I'd really recommend it, ---- heck here in britain if you can just hold a tune your virtually half way there with singing anyway!

So Robby, perhaps you could considder finding a reasonably nice singing teacher, even if you just do it to yourself in private for your own recovery.

As regards what I lost, here is a list:

1: Ability to have any sort of romantic relationship whatosever.
2: Ability to have any sort of pleasure or enjoy7ment of s/x.
3: Ability to enjoy giving or receiving physical affection from another human.
4: Sense of worth.
5:Any sort of chance to have a normal adolescence. I used to sit in my psychology group when I was 17, listening to people complain about relationships and school work and not being taken seriously by their parents and really! wish those wer emy problems too.

6: any feeling of acceptance within a group at all. yes, having a visual imparement makes it difficult, but as child I'd just take this in my stride, not after my abuse showed me what being alone in a crowd really! meant.

7: Enjoyment of any sort of nudity. As a child I used to love summer, running around in just a paire of short trousers or swimming in the sea. not any more. In one sense i feel sort of jealous of nudists, sinse having that sort of confidence and unconcern about your body must be amazing!

8: feeling of self worth.

9: ability to blend into a crowd and feel part of something greater than myself.

Besides everything that has been listed above,
I lost a marriage that should have lasted a life time.

You and the others have nailed such heavy items fall into a sort of debilitating category. I/we seem to all have those on a grand-scale. The "Self-worth" thing for instance. For me it was gone...vanished from the earth.

But #7; Maybe it was just an age thing for me, or perhaps the abuse, but I was quite an in-house nudist and outdoor "open" swimmer until age 8. Then I had lots to hide and/or think I had to hide. But wow...I had never thought about that loss. I still remember the bliss that went with it. God, what a loss.

As for singing. T'will never happen again. My voice and my sinuses are destroyed from $180K worth of cocaine in my 20s. And I think I'll be dead by the time I feel well enough to bare my heart like that again (as in never).

This post is timely since losses is what I am currently working on in therapy. What did I lose? Innocence, definately. My identity since the abuse came to define me. My sense of carefree play. My feelings of safety and security. Unconditional peace of mind. A sexuality that I can be comfortable with. 25 years addicted to drinking, and an 8 year relationship with the one and only person I've ever been in love with. While looking at this list saddens me I am cautiously hopeful that thru my recovery I am working toward getting some of these things back.

I lost friendship. i never had a friend after the abuse. Withdrew completely from everyone unless i was having sex with them. Its been a lonely 42 years.

Yep robbie, there are some running themes here. the main problem I have currently is that I don't actually get any of these back. I can do damage controll, self worth for instance, 've got really good at avoiding the bad consequences of it, but %90 of the time that is all I do, rather like that scene in the lotr film (and not the book), where golum is talking to the corrupted part of his nature and saying "not listening, not listening!"

Judging by the nightmare I had last night though, any sort of progress with genophobia just isn't going to happen, and that probably means romantic relationships, physical affection etc too.

Sorry, but that was the worst nightmare I've had in a good while so I'm not exaclty feeling positive today.

I'm really sorry to here about the singing, another loss.

Rob,

Your post is very thought provoking, and makes me take inventory of what I have because the thought of what I lost is to painful to recount.
I have a life I know is worth living. I have hope now when I thought all hope was lost. I have the ability to ensure my children will never know the pain I feel. I HAVE AN AMAZING FAMILY. I have the knowledge that I am not alone in this because of thousands of survivors here on MS. We may have lost countless pieces of ouselves, but we do have the future and we all can try to have optomism..... Just an affirmation to myself, thought I would share...

You are awesome Rob...... I enjoy your posts as well as your insight...

-Jay-

Dark Empathy (what a POWERFUL screen name!),

I share many of these items on your list as well:

1: Ability to have any sort of romantic relationship whatosever. -- YES

2: Ability to have any sort of pleasure or enjoy7ment of s/x. -- OR, too much pleasure, addiction to acting out / anonymous sex.

3: Ability to enjoy giving or receiving physical affection from another human. -- SORTA the same as #1, but YES, I can't enjoy physical affection without the fear that it will cause pain.

4: Sense of worth. -- I'm working on getting this back.

5:Any sort of chance to have a normal adolescence. -- A 1,000 TIMES YES. My high school years were painful and awkward beyond words. What a waste of some good years as I struggled to figure out who I was and what was wrong with me. (Wouldn't figure it out until I was in my mid-20s)

6: any feeling of acceptance within a group at all. -- I am always wary of groups and group psychology

7: Enjoyment of any sort of nudity. -- I have gotten this back. Even though I have a negative body image and need to lose weight. I am fine with nonsexual nudity in locker rooms and even outdoors when possible. But there was certainly a time (high school!) when locker room nudity was a constant anxiety.

8: feeling of self worth. -- This is a constant struggle. Even when we accomplish things, it's hard to feel good about ourselves.

9: ability to blend into a crowd and feel part of something greater than myself. -- I understand this well.

But here's an equally important question: WHAT HAVE WE GAINED?

1. Empathy for the underdog.

2. Determination to persevere against all odds.

3. Ability to spot hypocrisy and bullshit from 1,000 yards away.

4. Survival skills.

What else?

This issue of friendship and loss is an issue that's very much on my mind, too. I have no concept of how to be a friend. The example that immediately comes to mind is from when I was undergoing chemo a few years back. It's a very boring process and you have nothing to do really but talk with the people who are also sitting there getting poison dripped into their veins along with you.

So I had a long, friendly conversation with a fellow patient. She was very interesting and we had a fair amount in common. And at the end of her session (I was staying longer), she said we should get together for lunch. I nodded, probably showing how foreign the idea was to me, and said something like, 'yes, we should,' in a way that brushed off the issue. She looked mildly insulted and left. I realized afterwards that she was probably expecting me to give her a number or a card or something. But the reality is my default mode - and when you're doing chemo, default mode is all you can manage - is to not start a friendship.

When you spend so much energy constantly projecting this phony reality -- a facade of normalcy -- the idea of adding one more person to your circle just means another person you have to juggle and manage. It's exhausting enough already.

It’s been coming home to me lately again since I joined facebook about a month ago. All these people – some who I knew before the abuse even – are friending me. One posts about his new grandchild. So what should I post that’s in the same vein. No kids for me, too messed up for that. But I have fucked hundreds of people. Impressed? Someone shares vacation photos. I could share my 550 hours of accrued vacation that I never take. I make ten times what you all do, but of course I never enjoy any of it. Too busy. Give me a 'like' for that!

There's less and less point in looking at it anymore, for me. The issue of loss basically comes down to choices.

My miserable family situation, cold marriage, friends (or lack of), workaholic habits, sex habits, health, etc., etc. all speak to lost opportunities for children and a happy marriage and strong friendships and family ties, and proper work-life balance.

My losses are the result of the choices I've made. And the years of abuse are the biggest single factor in those choices. You come face to face with it, and it is infuriating. But I know that after anger and grief, I must find acceptance if I want peace.

I posted this quotation from Cormac McCarthy a while back, but it comes to mind again: "All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it."

I think that's the situation for me. It's taken a long time to see what I've already lost. I need to get past it, because the longer I don't, the more I continue to lose.

me

What dark empathy and Shields described is the fuller truth of my losses but Markk pretty much sums it up for me.

Thanks for the post and all the replies. It stirs up a lot of stuff for me. There are a number of things that I should be journaling about but can't sit still long enough to do that. So these posts and occasionally taking part in the Healing Circles seem to be the best way to get some thoughts in writing and do more exploring.

Here's the list of my losses as they come to mind:

1) The ability to sit comfortably with myself by myself.

2) The ability to reach out in trust to someone else when I'm in crisis.

3) The experience and ability to form a really close intimate relationship with another person.

4) Self-esteem. Got stuck with shame and self-loathing instead.

5) The ability to follow through on a project or endeavor without sabotaging myself along the way.

6) The loss of innocence.

I appreciate that someone suggested we also take stock of what we have gained. For me the gains include realizing how strong and resilient I am, the ability to keep trying even in the face of little obvious success, and some insane streak of hope that suggests at some point, it will get better. I suspect it's good to know where the gains and strengths are, so I have some anchoring point to deal with the grief of the losses.

Thanks, Rob, for raising the question, and everyone else for you courageous responses.

Jim

Glad you brought this up since my tendency in my recovery has been not to dwell on what could have been. But there's a difference between dwelling on something and acknowledging the way I've felt about it.

I lost my self-confidence.

Granted, a lot of it had to do with the abusive home life. But after the SA, there's a clear delineation. I gave up on just about everything.

I'd been in advanced placement classes in my early teens. My grades declined, I couldn't grasp new concepts. I couldn't concentrate. There'd been a kind of joy in being able to grasp new stuff and build on it. Instead, it became a struggle and a chore.

I'd been very creative, very adept a freehand drawing and often thought of becoming an architect. Thank God I saved my drawings and renderings from those years. (Interestingly, I also saved some of my photography class negatives which I restored a few years ago and a couple of the prints have appeared in magazines). I completely lost interest and never developed those talents further. The math, as easy as it had previously come to me and as much as it had fascinated me, just became gibberish.

I'd been involved in the annual school play every year in various capacities...even designing and building some complicated sets. Come senior year, I was everyone's choice to direct. I couldn't. I already felt overwhelmed. No one understood why. For that matter, neither did I. I felt as if I'd let everyone down.

I eventually found other creative outlets professionally. Even won a few awards. But it hasn't felt quite the same. I've often felt envious of those who excelled in the areas I wanted to explore and in which I felt in my heart I'd be successful. In short, I've felt second-rate or worse.

Often, too, I simply give up.

...and, yeah, as you might imagine, as I write this I'm on the verge of crying.

MY SOUL

Oh Wow Mike. Oh Wow!

That's exactly what I was going to say. So, let me say that I totally agree...

...I lost my Soul. Still trying to find it again.

Jim

My concrete assumption that my mother had my 6.

Not so.

Not so.

Not fkg so.

"I posted this quotation from Cormac McCarthy a while back, but it comes to mind again: 'All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.'"

Well quoted, Dan. You make an excellent point.

I, like many of you, have had huge issues with intimacy, friendship, and have nursed an especially pernicious fear regarding 'loss of control'. Last night, in an effort to help and understand me, my sweet and beautiful wife asked me a question I hadn't even given pause to ponder in all the years we've been together. She asked, "why don't you ever come when we have sex?" I was stunned. I reach orgasm everytime we're together, of course I also pull out, turn aside, and palm the evidence in my left hand like a depraved Doug Henning. What really broke my heart after realizing that i did this, all in an attempt to convince my inner child that "I AM IN CHARGE OF MY OWN BODY," is that through all our years together she must have felt so insecure. I couldn't find the courage to share openly and honestly in the bliss we'd create through our lovemaking because i needed that control. WTF?

I'm learning, slowly, of everything beautiful and precious that I've either defamed or surrendered as a result of what happened to me as a child. No matter how big that pile gets, expounding on Cormac's advice: first, i gotta get a goddamned tourniquet on it, before the last of what sustains me is gone.

who can tell?

i don't know what i had before - so how do i know what i lost?

when you are only 5 - you don't have much to begin with.

lee

because the first abuser was a step-father - i lost any concept of what a father should be.

because her first loyalty was to him, her husband - i lost my mother, too.

i guess i'm a little slow - just now able to anwswer more clearly:

Like MarkK said - "me"

my way of expressing it would be - that i lost any chance of knowing who i would have been if not for the trauma. i feel that loss acutely sometimes - almost like what i have heard about the death of a twin.

lee

I lost me, turned into something that I didn't recognize when I started to really look at myself and just now after 1/2 my life discovering the wonderful person trapped inside me. This makes me angry.

My rightful place on The Red Sox in-field.

Even if it was only to be a dream, it simply could not "be," not after I was shredded like that. Not after being kicked out of real-life.

1. Sense of self worth
2. Ability to trust what people say to me.
3. Ability to express my feelings without worrying about others' reactions.
4. Sense of control over my life.

My abuser was my sister. She used control to abuse me. I was also physically (not sexually) abused by my brother. I get triggered by the smallest amount of control in my current relationship with my longtime girlfriend and want to withdraw.

I can never trust myself, my feelings. I guess I never learned or I lost self trust. Oh right, and my childhood, family, etc....

Thanks for a great topic and exchange, Robbie.

What a lot of great answers...here are mine.

Things I lost:

1) sexual enjoyment
2) Self esteem
3) Self Confidence
4) my virginity was taken when I was 8
5) it poisoned my closest relationship (incest)
6) my childhood
7) trust
8) the abiliy to grow up gay (I thought my CSA caused gay)
9) my family (abandoned by them to incest & a predator )

Things I gained:

1) suicide attempts
2) Numb inside instead of feeling
3) FEAR of many situations
4) doubt in my gay identity
5) depression and suffering

6) a family of choice
7) a close relationship with a T
8) recovery from CSA
9) an unwavering commitment not to lie to myself
10) Al Anon
11) a husband
12) CHOICES to accept it and move on or to LET it KILL me
13) an ability to LOVE MYSELF WITHOUT RESERVATION!

If I state what was lost does that help my recovery? We all lost ALOT. Everyone here. We are all still losing something's maybe. We are survivors of loss. We are stronger than most as at the sametime we are weaker. I use to hear my dad say this to me about getting hit with a baseball of taking a hard lick in football " if that is the worst that happens to you then you will be alright". I wanted to reply " your brother has molested me from an age I can't remember until I was 12 is that bad enough for ya". I don't really know to what extent I lost. I just lived life the only way I knew how. Made the most of it and then when I couldn't live anymore with th past then it was time for a rebirth of sorts you could say. The old left and the new came.

Again and again I read this post and the responses. As with most things I read here it is very triggering. It means a lot to find so many other voices sharing my feelings. Wow, thanks all.

cant_remember I appreciate this list of somewhat negative gains, to which I would add that I gained a unusual capacity for happiness - or a capacity for unusual happiness.

Understanding the sadness of life makes me appreciate very much when I am not sad. it's a kind of determination. "I can do this even though you are trying to destroy me."

Although my happy times are always tinged with hidden tears, still I am able to share joy in a way that other people can feel. For this I am grateful.

The creepy dad who out of his own twisted pain tried to ruin me did not succeed.

I'm sitting alone in my empty house. My kids are not with me.

I had fully lost the path that was rightfully set for me in childhood by God.

I built a path, with God's help, in, around, under and over the debris from that childhood. Then i lost that as well.

Sitting here in an empty house without my kids, my wife, my family...staring down the barrel of questionable future. The internet does not have enough ink to itemize losses I'm feeling tonight. But the losses are very real, and i wish I could cry.

Robbie, we love you. It's OK to cry if you can.

Sounds like me.

My dog is here.

I just can't trust people very much. So they don't sense warmth in me an I'm not fun to be with because I'm morose.

Puffer

I have lost my ability to show my trust and emotions with anyone, except when I am drunk. The child inside of me is able to break free for a little while.
Almost lost my wife this week and know that I need to take my life back.
Just joined today and this is the first board I entered. So I would say that I gained hope today.

Apparently I somehow lost trust with others since I've been finding out that there have been several people, within the last few weeks, that has found it necessary to lie to me.

Perhaps I should just not talk to anyone anymore. That way there's no chance of anyone telling me more lies.

Hey SJD,

Welcome to MaleSurvivor, and sorry that you have to be here. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) we are thrust into a life altering experience, and consequently, development. Recovery from CSA is mystifying, hard, gut wrenching, but ultimately the most rewarding thing you can ever do in your life.

I've been addressing CSA 1.6 years (about the same amount of time I've been here), and I, and many others will tell you you're in for a wild roller coaster as you pursue recovery from CSA.

We're here to support each other, hear each other, listen, discuss, and even debate. But ultimately, our goal as brothers in recovery is to SHARE. It has been the cornerstone of my own personal recovery.

Welcome home, dude. If you've been molested or were exposed to sex before you were ready to explore it on your own, you are a survivor, and thus, we share many of your darkest secrets.

You're no longer alone.

D