Good Sunday Morning -

1. I am realizing that a huge component of my abuse and feeling like a victim has to do w/ Loneliness. I was an easy target bc I was lonely. Loneliness Hurts. And some of things that have happened to me when I was a lonely boy, hurt. And yet despite that hurt, even still today I find myself thinking about wanting to be in situations which could be potentially hurtful, just to 'explore', to satisfy a need.

2. There is a tall woman w/ a pretty smile in my life I could ask out. She has gone out of her way to introduce herself to me, twice. There is a man I met who I could ask out and get to know, to see if I could have an emotional (not just sexual) relationship w/ a man. I have work friends, church friends and volleyball friends.

3. The feelings of Loneliness are the worst on Sundays; I guess due to connecting Sundays to 'the priest'. I have a 'fail safe' which engages and keeps me from really indulging in unsafe behavior. But the feelings of Dis-connection and Loneliness persist.

4. I don't have to feel Lonely. I just don't have a real person to talk about my deep-down feelings to. It would be so beautiful to have someone to talk to who is Real and tangible (not 'a dissociated part'in my head), and not a therapist.

5. Time to close the computer-window of gay porn which was looking so inviting a few minutes ago (now I just feel sad). Time to get ready for church (not the church I was abused in) Time to smile and pretend I have it all together. I usually go running after church, but alas, running alone. This Loneliness hurts more today. What am I supposed to learn from this?

Me Again ...


1. Ok its like 2:30 pm local time and I am still in the boxers and t-shirt I slept in. I talked on the phone this morning w/ a woman from church who I have a crush on, but who likes someone else, then I got depressed, skipped church and have been looking at the gay porn since 11:00 am this morning and chatting. I won't allow myself to hook-up so I just chat, tease and run.

2. I feel sick and dirty and turned on and confused and I want to accept that this is just a phase and accept myself and still love myself and not let myself be dragged away into some sick and scary place where it takes me days to recover myself (whoever that is). My roommate suddenly came home a few minutes ago and my heart was terrified as I tried to in a rush, close down the gay-sites. My roommate is some Bible thumper who if he knew I was thinking about anything gay, might ask me to leave. He wouldn't understand that I was abused and that this happens sometimes.

3. I am metaspiritually and psychologically resisting something, by getting in a stupor in this behavior. Resisting accepting something or resisting feeling something. Part of me wants this. Loneliness Hurts; Alot.

4. I'll leave my roomate to his NASCAR and go upstairs to my room to ponder and maybe cry. I could've predicted this 'phase' based on the past experiences of when I have begun to talk about 'the priest' in therapy. But this time I am NOT going back into my intellectualism defense. This time I am facing it all. And I Commit to Love myself no matter how low this process may take me.

Feeling lonley only makes me feel worse about the SA. It's gotten worse as I've gotten older. I'm 33, below average to average looking, and have only had one girlfriend since I was 17. Like Sonlite I soooo want to have someone to love and be intimate with to my partner in life. I don't know how much of being without someone is that I'm not that ideal guy most women look for or how much of it is the effects of my abuse. The end result is that I'm lonely. I've managed to get by with "friends with benefits" type of relationships. Now that my friends and family members my age are married and/or have children I spend a lot of weekends by myself. When I don't have my friends with benefits to occupy my time its very difficult and I can begin to spiral. I try to spend less time with my friends with benefits so I can have time to start a real relationship but so far nothing.

I know that I am not alone in the sense I have friends and family who are there for me and will listen to me if I call them. I'm very grateful for them, but there is still a different type of loneliness they can't fulfill. I want to have a relationship that leads to marriage and kids someday. I want something more to look foward to other than another lonely evening spiraling with the negativity of the abuse by myself.

As always I have hope but each year that goes by it disappears just a little bit more ...

And as Sonlite points out it seems to just make that much more difficult to recover from my CSA.

Engaging with my feelings of solitude/loneliness are a major part of my recovery. As an only child who lived far away from my father with my mother most of my life, I have always felt "alone."

The shame accompanying the CSA and the shame of not revealing the CSA have compounded my feelings of loneliness. I have disclosed to my mother, my father, my g/f and a few close friends, but I still feel lonely. I remember going to parties and clubs as a young adult in New York City and feeling incredibly alone despite being surrounded by hundreds of people.

I know that when I feel less alone, I'll feel much better. I have alot of support now, but it'll be even better when I can open up to more people. That doesn't mean I have to tell everyone about my past, but that I recognize that there will be great benefits from genuinely allowing people into my life rather than setting up so many boundaries.

1. Thank you for responding BornToResist. I am uncertain about what to say. Everything I could think of seems trite and not-able-to-touch the level of sadness you conveyed. Let me see what comes to mind when I don't think and just type.

2. Loneliness is maybe part of the healing, if it is a force which motivates a person who has already survived, to reach inside oneself to give a hug and a smile within, just before a step is taken to share a smile and a kind comment w/ someone on the outside.

3. I don't know if that made any sense or not, but its what came out.

Thank You Again for Responding, your comments made the day less lonely.

1. Thank You AuthenticMe for mentioning engaging the feelings of solitude and loneliness. I often tend to want to numb those feelings. Thanks you also for mentioning the effects of Shame. You made a good point about how feeling Lonely can have nothing to do w/ how many people are surrounding you. I suppose that is the Shame part.

2. It is a fine line and perhaps a different place for each person to find, to learn how to open up and receive support and care, w/out hemmoraging ones story. Ultimately none of us is just our story. In the big picture every survivor here has strengths and wisdom and grattitude when we allow ourselves to see the good in us.

3. Sounds easy enough and encouraging enough to say. Perhaps it really is easy.

sonlite,

Your response (see #2) made me realize that so much of my self-isolation has to do with lack of trust and betrayal. I am afraid that if I open up to support, I am making myself vulnerable, which feels less safe.

In a session with my T I once had the realization that we are at our strongest when we are most open to the world. My attempts to control my existence and only allow "safe" people in has been too narrow a filter. I am committed to the process of allowing more and more people in as time goes by. Coming to MS was a step in that direction.

This is a really powerful thread. Thanks, Sonlite, for starting it, and the rest of you guys for the really honest and painful responses.

I have often felt this strange ache and now I can see it's loneliness, perhaps rather a feeling of solitude or "otherness", so perhaps it's worth mentioning here.

I can so identify what Authentic Me says:

I would go to parties and feel so out of place I would just get as wasted and high as I could as quickly as possible. That I could share. Not that this helped, of course. I just drifted into a circle of other self-destructive people.

Since starting to deal with all this I have disclosed to a small circle of people: my wife and daughter, some other family members, a few close friends. That always helps. But as soon as I am out "in public" it is back to battle stations. After awhile I feel exactly like Sonlite:

Not to lecture or moan to, but just to be "real" with. Like coming out of a store and saying to the person you're with: "Man, I'm so glad to be out of there and not being touched and bumped around." Instead I just gulp and keep going. Today I welcomed 27 new students to our department and afterwards I was thinking, I wonder how many of them have gone through what I endured and are now suffering in silence. Who can I talk to about that? No one, at least not right then and there, and in fact not until I get back here. Even when I am talking to my wife I think: I bet she's sick of hearing all this, and wonder if I should retreat.

I wonder do we ever stop feeling like outsiders? Or freaks? Or whatever? Will I get back to being just Larry, or do I get only as far as as "screwed up but now more or less healed" Larry?

I can see me at some point offloading the feelings of shame and insecurity and even the guilt. But this feeling of "otherness", I just don't know. Sometimes I wonder if a "just plain ordinary Larry" actually exists somewhere in me (if that's how I should put it), or ever will. It's not like I want to forget everything; I don't, and I know that even if I did that isn't going to happen. What was done to me will always matter to me; isn't that how it should be?

I guess I just wonder sometimes if I'm not just playing a huge cruel joke on myself.

Take care,
Larry

Wow,

sonlite, Born to Resist, AuthenticMe, Larry, I have so been there!

It continues to amaze me how all you guys are like me in the emotions you express and the fears you have. It's sort of like I've come home, you know? I've finaly found people who know and understand me. Larry where's that handkerchief you were wiping tears with a while ago? Bring it over here will you?

Courage,

John

WOW....

It is like you guys have looked inside of me. I am feeling lonely but I am also hopeful. In recent days when I get depressed about not having a wife, family or messing up friendships and career (It is a huge burden but I will be the victor) I have been able to place the blame with the bastard who abused me. I talk and scream outloud and allow myself to be pissed off with him. I mourn all that has been stolen.

I now realize that I must make a slow, steady upward march and recover all that seems lost.

THANK YOU AND REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE THE GREATEST!