So I've been working on this post for days. Weeks, actually, if you count the time I've spent figuring out how to put this into words without even thinking of writing it down.

But I can't keep going like this. It is like a hurricane running through my mind, going round in circles, threatening to destroy everything in its path. I have to let it out. So I'll just come out and say it.

I wasn't my father's first victim - my brother was. My older half-brother, that is, not my twin. He was about 4 years older than me. I've always known that. I watched my father abuse him months, perhaps years, before he started on my twin and me. He was my hero. I idolised him. I didn't know about half-brothers and step-parents, to me he was simply my older brother and being abused and neglected by my parents, I latched onto him instead. But something inside him died when my father started raping him. I could see it happen, and although I still idolised him, he was no longer there to take care of us. I never blamed him for this, and I have always felt a sense of loss at being separated from him when we went into foster care and he went to live with his father. He joined the military and went "missing in action" before I turned 18, and although part of me have always clung to the hope that he is still alive, somehow, I have also mourned the loss of my hero.

*** SERIOUS TRIGGERS TO FOLLOW! ***

Lately, however, I've been haunted by different images of him. Images of my father forcing him to abuse my twin and me. My father making us suck him until he ejaculated, and making us swallow it. I can forgive him for doing it under duress. Also, I understand the mechanics - I don't blame him for having orgasms. I know he was as much a victim as we were.

However, I also have had flashbacks of instances where it appears he was abusing us voluntarily, without my father being present. Like he enjoyed it. That is completely different.

I'm really not sure. I've always believed that I had complete, continuous memories of the abuse. This whole thing about recovering memories and having flashbacks of events I never remembered is very new to me and very hard to understand.

I can't stand it. I can't stand the thought of my older brother, my hero, abusing me. I've come to terms with my father doing it, but this is different all together. It is driving me crazy!

I'm not sure of the timing, or how long it went on. Logic tells me he must have reached puberty when it started because of how he looked and his ability to ejaculate. I know we were 13 and he was 17 when we were separated and I never saw him again. I don't know how many times if happened. I could have been only once or twice, or it could have been a continuous thing over several years. I really don't know.

I haven't spoken to my twin about this. I don't know if he remembers. I'm scared to mention it to him. Half of me is hoping that it isn't true, that it is just something I made up in my subconscious. God knows, everything I think he did was already in my frame of reference by then. He didn't do anything that my father didn't do before him, so knowing what it felt like doesn't prove anything...

((((( Gecko )))))

Here for you, buddy.

Cant

Heros are not perfect. That doesn't make them any less a hero.

((((CG))))

This is horrid either way; either your idol figure failed you or your memories did.

But if you can comprehend him abusing you under threat, after he'd already been getting it himself... well... you said he was never the same after your dad started in on him. And you perceived that at SIX. Maybe the damage was even worse than you knew, maybe there was more going on... maybe it ruined his mind and this was all he had left. Maybe he was still being threatened - under orders, a minion, an "alpha victim."

This is not to make excuses for anyone who abused you. It isn't about protecting him, it's about protecting YOU. If you're not quite sure it happened and you know he'd been forced into it at some points, and if you may not ever find out the full real truth... this is a way to conceptualize it that doesn't have your hero inexplicably turning evil and hurting you "voluntarily." If you'll never really know, why not give yourself the MERCY of a fully plausible alpha-victim scenario, where he still never would have done it, if not for some even more hideous tortures and threats you never knew of? He didn't fail you - he was forced to every time, even when you couldn't see the puppetmaster there.

Again, that's just one possible scenario but IT IS POSSIBLE, surely you've read of stories like that here before. You don't have to lose your hero, don't have to see him turn into a monster, don't have to think that he ever believed you deserved it.


Matt

Thanks for the support, guys.


It is a possible scenario that I would take any day over him actual perpetrator! It's kinda pathetic, I suppose, but I don't want to face the possibility of him having turned evil, of him continuing to do it because he liked it...

But how do I know? I just don't know how to cope with the uncertainty... I know there are guys on here who remember little to nothing about their abuse, but I never imagined I was one of them. I remembered, right? Wrong. I remember most, but this bit - this one, terrible bit, I didn't remember. And now I feel like I've believed in lies for most of my life...

CG -

there is a line in a book i read that haunts me - i think is relevant here - "What if everything I believed was false?" that is the two-edged sword - not knowing can be terrible - but knowing can sometimes be worse. and you don't know which it is - until you know. and then it is either a big relief - or too late not to go there. how will you ever prove or disprove it? memories are not always accurate. and it doesn't sound as if there are any objective observers who can tell you. if you can, try not to pick the scab off that wound. if it becomes clear, then deal with it. if it doesn't, i'd say, try to leave it alone. i know - easier said than done.

feeling for you,
Lee

Thanks Lee.

Yes, I'd love to leave it alone and not dig deeper, but it really isn't that easy when you keep getting flashbacks...

The only person who may or may not be able to give me information is my twin brother. If her remembers. But I don't want to trigger his memories if he had also blocked it, and I don't know if he had...

Hey gecko, it could be easy that you have truthful memories and feelings about your older brother.
Those very fragmented memories that are suddenly showing are bringing confusion as you can't put it in overall picture and you are seeing it from distance and your current shoes. And you are different man now, you have some knowledge whit which you are interpreting those scenes and you are way more aware about abuse and it's hurtful impacts. So in some sort we have counter of your inner feelings about your brother and suddenly discovered memories that are not fitting with those feelings.
Maybe it could help you to talk about your T about latest memories and to try to explore it more in some safe environment and from point of view of lost boy that you found recently?

I have many memories of me and my brother doing some similar things and my brother at one point came to think that he was abusive to me (which is not complete true) as he has introduced me to some "plays". I knew that we are doing wrong things, I knew that I didn't try and that I could stop it, I knew that some times later I also was looking for such "fun". Many times later we felt tempted and couldn't resist and we do it more like in some compulsive manner.

My point is that it is very easy to destroy boy's world by bringing sexuality in it. It becomes overwhelming and it can easily overshadow all other aspects of boy's life as we as kids were not fully developed persons nor mature enough to be able to fully understand it.
Some of those are reasons why I can't see child (even 17 year old boy who was abused) as abuser in real term of that word no matter on things that he/she did.

Please trust that inner boy inside and his feelings about your older brother. Give him some support, he has had more than enough doubts already and with your brother he was more than sure that he sees his hero...

Just my two cents.

Pero

I also don't want to bring up anything with my twin brother for the same reasons. At least not yet. I have lots that I need work on that I don't have to go that route yet.

Candu I didn't know that you are twin too, must say that there rare bunch of us here...