haunted by childhood experience

LegacyUser

hi,

i am posting this in the hope that i can perhaps find some closure on this thing. ive never told anybody about this.......and i feel that the only way that i can let it out is through the anonymity of this place. ive carried this with me for over 2 decades and i need to try to let it go.

ive tried to tell people, past girlfriends, best friends etc but i have never been able to work up the guts to do it. its been a secret for the whole time since it happened.

im male, almost 30, and i still haven't fully let go of this.

when I was 8 I was manipulated into a sexual situation by another guy in my school who was slightly older. i won't go into too much detail but in the context of how serious it was, it couldn't have been considered too bad, compared to really bad abuse cases, however, it has left emotional scars. it wasn;t forceful, but at the same time, it wasn't consentual or welcome. my problem as a child was that i was overly trusting and easly led and i found myself in this situation and extremely uncomfortable with it but froze up. i never stood up for myself and i was bullied relentlessly in school. it was in the midst of the bullying when this happened. afterwards he told me never to tell anyone etc. i didn't understand what had happened until after. and I never told anyone out of shame and fear. he told me to go into a room, which i stupidly did, he closed the door and tried to do things to me. it happened 2, maybe 3 times and then the final time, he exposed himself to me and urinated on me which led to me kicking him, and after this it never happened again. he literally never came near me again, just like that.

this led to me spending my teens questioning my sexuality. i thought i must be gay, simply for having been in the situation. i realised that the only thing i ever tought about that was homosexual, was the act in which I had found myself involved in, I was amost fixated, it made me very unsure and uncomfortable about myself. I have read about how people who were abused (i don;t even know if i could call what happeded me abuse, but it feels like it for the emotional torment i have from it) will often recreate this abuse over and over in an attempt to take control of it. i have never done that, the thought of being in any way intimite with a man, disgusts me, not out of homophobia or prejudice, but just out of disgust for what happened and because it doesnt appeal to me. even after i realised that i am only attracted to women, i still found myself haunted by it.

as well as this, i was so afraid of being touched. i also had myself convinved of having some form of disease from it and took an AIDS test in my late teens before i was ever intimite with anyone. before then i had myself almost convinced i was sick. that kind of irrational stuff has happened a few times to. i never did anything except kiss a girl until i was in my late teens and even then i found it incredibly difficult. i started that relationship out with erection problems as i was nervous as hell about being that intmite with someone, but she gained my trust and everything went well after that. however that was followed shortly after by panic attacks and fear of being around people. it took a long time, nearly 3 years, for me to learn to control those attacks. in the meantime my relationship had ended and i was back to square one. i have found being intimate with every girl since to be nervewracking and i have had recurring problems with erectile dysfunction. over the years, my doctor prescribed me valium for panic attacks and viagra for the other problem. i have learned to live without the valium but have found myself having to use viagra in order to let me relax and avoid freaking out. and i do this because i want to lead a normal life and do the normal things that young men do, and do the things that i have never been able to be comfortable enough to do.

im in tears writing this, as i have done nothing but block it out over the years, and its so hard to be open about it now, even in an anonymity. i just want to let go and move on from it. on the outside i appear happy, relaxed and friendly. ive moved past the bullying and would be considered outgoing and have a lot of friends, but on the inside im ugly and plagued by suspicions and trust issues and i;m not as confident or happy as i appear.

i don;t even know what im seeking from ye from this, i just need to let it out and move on, im tired of being afraid, i want to feel the same way i felt with my first girlfriend when we were intimite. i want to feel comfortable and carefree. i don;t want to feel fear anymore.

im going out with a new girl for a year now; i love her but I can;t tell her about it. she doesn;t know about the viagra use; and she has no idea that Im a nervous wreck when we;re intimite; and i don;t know how to explain that to her without telling her about this ..... but i can;t tell her. i dont think i have it in me to tell anyone directly; so i just want to let go of it, embrace who i am now and move on with my life, i guess i hope that letting it out like this might do that for me. sorry for the long post.

Miss Fluff

Aw you poor thing, what an awful old burden for you to have carried around and kept to yourself all these years. And such a shame that it has had such a knock-on negative effect in so many aspects of your life.

You should not feel ashamed, none of this was your fault.

I think you would benefit enormously from counselling. I know that you don't want to discuss it hence expressing yourself anonymously through PI but if you go to a professional to discuss this and work through the plethora of issues it has left in its wake you will be armed with mechanisms to help you cope and to finally move on and achieve the happiness you deserve. Would you think about going for counselling OP?

FoxT

Hi OP, This is torturing you, and it is impacting your quality of life & your relationships. Writing about it here anonymously is a brave step for you. Well done.


I really think it would help if you could talk with somebody about it. If you are not ready or able to talk with a counsellor, you could call the samaritans, they will listen & it is completely anonymous. Even to be able to say it down the phone to another human being might help you to gain some confidence, and it would be a next step forward for you after posting here.

I hope you can do something like this, as a next step.

The very best of luck.