oh, yes.

to it all.

i offer you this latest writing of mine.

this is the girl i sob for now. deeper sobs than i’ve ever known.

– – – – –
the secret task

she runs in small frantic circles, wide eyed and working. she’s busy.

she’s small. her hair is wispy and long. she has on a dress, creamy colored and hard to notice. her feet are bare, she likes it that way. her eyes are big. her mouth is opened bird like. she isn’t hungry or dirty or cold. she’s been fed homemade yogurt and bathed in ivory soap and allowed to wear what she wanted. she’s been hugged and talked kindly to and reminded of her goodness. unknowingly, she has been amply prepared for her secret task: to look beyond for safety.

she sees it in a relaxed-smiled person, a bird who calls back and forth, a dog with slow wagging tail, a low-branched tree, a pile of blankets. her eyes notice it, her heart swells for just a second before the openness is too big and it clamps down.

she can’t settle in those. this isn’t her task. she is to look beyond safe. she is to look for danger.

quickly organizing the danger into a vertical tier of threat, she can move this order with incredible efficiency. the bottom is low threat. the top is high threat.

oops, the way you raised your eyebrows at me just made you a little more scary, up you go. wait, you just reached down and pet that dog, okay, down you go. you are a baby. you are lower than the bottom. i like to be with you. yes! you smiled back at me, but since i had to work so hard to get it, you stay right where you are, and you’ll probably move to the top…so i’ll keep a little extra attention on you. uh ho, i thought you were sitting on the sidewalk reading but really you’re asleep and the newspapers are your blankets! up you go. you are the president of the united states, so you go to the top. but since i can’t interact with you, i just fantasize that you’re my grandfather. then you’d put a tarp over my house and no nuclear bombs would hurt me. hey! you ignored me when you walked past. thank you! down you go…but i’ll look over my shoulder a few times and see if you’re looking back at me…your final position to be determined. hmmmm, you are pushing your shopping cart, but you’re not looking at anyone, you go just below center. no wait, you just put fresh fruit in your cart, you go just above center. you are my friend, you are at the bottom.

wait. you’re touching me under that hard to notice dress, you soared to the top.

wait. no. now it’s over and you’re being nice and talking to our other friends…so i will pretend you’re at the bottom but really you’re at the tippy top…and you earned the first fixed position there.

(little did she know that in the coming years, the tier would grow to have a gravity defying shape of wider at the top, several people who proved the world of her body was dangerous sharing the fixed position of the tippy top)

ok. new plan for everyone:
the further you are at the top, the more i will act like you are at the bottom.
the further you are at the bottom, the more i will watch you.
i will get to you before you get to me.

and now to make it simpler:
if you are smaller than me, you are at the bottom.
if you are bigger than me, you are at the top until you prove yourself otherwise.
i will start at the top and work down the ever shifting tier of danger.

kind of hard since she’s so small. her calf muscles are developed from standing on tiptoe. her neck is limber from straining to see. her arms are flexible, busy with daily work in order to keep her task hidden. her face is toned from forced expressions of change. her heart is strong from swelling at safety and the immediate constriction of fear that follows. every time.

don’t let your guard down.
work from the top.
win them over.
keep them happy.
stay alert for clues.
stay alert for surprises.
keep the work secret, no one can know where they are on the tier.

well, that little girl, a bit feral, has been approached.
the tier of old memories is bathed in light.
the same primal love of soap and food and kindness has corralled her.
so now she scrambles a little more.
her well worn paths are reduced to choppy segments.
her legs used to more space, she’s awkwardly stumbling.
her eyes used to darting further on the landscape, things are too bright.
her heart used to the familiar dance of swell and constrict feels oddly numb.
her ears used to waiting for startling sounds, quiet things are louder.

scrambling and peering through cracks,
it’s getting harder and harder to see beyond the fence of love that moves closer all the time.
backing away from love lands her only against more love.
the corners have disappeared.
she’s losing her job of organizing danger.

she’s still little. little enough to hold. and show things to. and hide.
love edges in, crouches down, arms outstretched, promises repeated:
i promise it’s over, i promise it’s over, i promise it’s over
maybe while standing under a tree.
and hearing birds perched low.
and noticing a pile of blankets.
knowing the places to land
where the heart can swell and remain open.
knowing she’s been found
and it is safe.

“here is the world. beautiful and terrible things will happen. don’t be afraid.”
-frederick buechner

august 2013
kristin neufeld epp

Reading this forum had helped me so much. I have suffered great pain in my life at the hands of an abuser. It’s good to know that there are so many of you that have managed to overcome this great hurt. Thank you!

Hello all,
I have been following this thread for quite some time but have been avoiding writing a response to it. This was on purpose. Everyone sounds so brave, everyone sounds like they’re on this fast-track direct path straight to healing. This has not been my experience. This is a journey I started about 3 years ago. At times I feel that I am healing but other times, like the past few weeks, I feel stuck and completely back where I was before – stuck in shame, in fear, with a heart that is closed off and a mind that is frustrated, angry, and hateful. Sometimes I get so sick of trying to heal – and I think at these stages I am in CONTROL mode where I try to control my experience, control my emotions – through thought. And then I deny the truth of my emotions. “I am tired of feeling this way – I’m going to force myself to feel or do this…” But of course I can’t and just end up feeling frustrated. I am really afraid of my emotions in a way. I think that I might explode with rage or shrink into a hole with shame or cry and never stop.

It’s been hard for me – being a heterosexual man who was abused at a very young age by boys much older than me (one being my brother). There’s a loud voice coming both from the inside and the outside screaming, “That should never happen! What happened to you is not something that happens!” It’s crazy right? I called a women’s center one time because they had a group that would meet to provide support as they had been victims of sexual or domestic abuse. The woman on the phone knew that I was a man and so she said, “This is a woman’s only group but we do have groups that meet too for abusers”. I’m not an abuser! I’m an abused! Sometimes it feels like there is no room on this planet for people like me. Men who were abused by other men. It makes me extremely angry. I’m filled with so much anger sometimes, it’s unbearable. And then I read about how you guys have healed and are healing and it all sounds like flowers and sunshine. I am happy that you have all made such progress in healing but a voice inside of me is saying, “see, they can heal – but you can’t – with you, there’s something ESPECIALLY wrong”. I know how that sounds and I am in no way trying to minimize ANYONE’s pain. I hate it that you all went through what you did. I also see how this voice thinks that my circumstances are “special” and of course they really aren’t. THere’s nothing special about my pain or my suffering or my trauma. But a voice, an energy source in me somewhere THINKS that way. I know it’s just a voice in my head but it reaches over and grabs the steering wheel from me so often it is really hard to live a life free from despair, fear, anger, and hopelessness. Maybe I’m just not healing enough – maybe I”m not doing enough to heal myself. Maybe I’ll never heal. That’s what I’m afraid of. I so desperately want my heart to be open and to have compassion and love for myself and for everyone. Really, that is my deepest aspiration. To experience that level of freedom is what I want more than anything. But how to do this? I seem to be making progress and then my heart CLOSES down and I’m filled with terrible thoughts and feelings again that seem insurmountable. I can barely do counting meditation at that point without getting distracted by a million voices in my head. Is this normal?

I’m afraid that after writing/saying this people will exclude me from their hearts. Is this shame or truth? It’s really hard to tell sometimes.
Thank you everyone for being brave and writing about your experiences.

-J.D.

JD,

My heart is open to you. I’m also a heterosexual male who was abused by males, and I can relate to a lot of what you’re saying and what you’re not saying. I also felt like a stranger in a strange land, like an alien/human crossbreed that no one could understand or relate to.

For me, it was a combination of things. I have known from a young age that I form romantic connections with women. But my body seemed to prefer the intensity and feeling of being taken by a male. There was a surrender that happened within me that was very appealing, and my body would become overwhelmed with pleasure. This happened to me for the first time around 10ish? My memories are a little hazy that far back. It was something that didn’t happen to me in a sexual experience with a woman, and yet I fell in love with women, never even feeling attracted to a male. What a crazy predicament!

At first, I thought I was gay and simply repressing it because of shame. Then I thought perhaps my attraction to women was envy. Then this and that and whatnot until I finally said “screw it” and dropped labels altogether and started simply exploring. What I found has been very remarkable. You, me and everyone are a mix of masculine and feminine energy. Yin and yang. My feminine side was alive and well, and had healed from a lot of the forced penetration and abuse. The body feels pleasure, and my body felt pleasure. It wasnt sex though, because the openness and maturity that is part of sex was absent. It was one man penetrating another for pleasure, and one boy feeling pleasure from being penetrated. As I saw the difference between that and sex, the femininity inside me settled and learned to be peaceful.

However, the masculine side was not healed. I was so scared of passing on my abuse… to either my partner or my kids, neighborhood kids, even friends through my “twisted mind”. I didnt trust men, or the man inside me. To protect others from my abuse, i had something similar to what you describe. One of my teachers called it a “shame core” or a knot of energy inside my mind and body which tried to shut down contact with others. For instance, I would see a beautiful woman, and immediately see them as sexy and vibrant. But it didn’t feel safe to have that feeling, because that leads to abuse (I often sought my abuser for stimulation). So the whole system collapsed and I would “turn away” from their beauty. Or, I would see a beautiful girl, say 12, and as soon as I would see her beauty shut down, because men cannot be trusted with children, and I am a man.

This caused soo much painfulness and isolation. When I would talk to people, a nagging itch would scrape at me “please don’t abuse me, please don’t let me abuse you, please no sexual feelings for this person, please just platonic kindness”. This dialogue would shut down my heart, disrupt my communication, and produce the isolation.

I felt very aligned and awake to the Leonard Cohen lyrics in hallelujah: “I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch and love is not a victory march, its a cold and its a broken hallelujah.” Yes, there was a heart inside me. But yes, it was wounded. This made me feel what I did have to offer was broken love, wounded love, a depressed and icky sexuality to my partner.

The solution for me was threefold. The first was the words of a friend, who said that our history is something we can’t change, but we can change the way we relate to it. I started looking closer at who I was and what my mind was doing in each moment, and started to actually heal and let go. I found that the problems I had as a kid turned into an amazing kung-fu. Sure, there was abuse, but there was also surrender.

The next thing that helped me heal was metta practice. It is difficult to sit with shame and not be swept into it. So instead, we can generate a stability of warmth inside us. As we become more and more practiced at metta, the confusion melts away, the agitated mind melts away. It produces a quality of mind which is free from aversion, free from greed… smooth, peaceful.

From a state of stable mindedness, after cultivating metta, that is when I do concentration meditation, such as counting breaths. Your “my mind is chaotic” noticing is very normal at first. Before I even got to 10 the first few dozen times I did it, I felt like I was pushing toward a signpost in a windstorm. Then, I would lose concentration after the first round, and be fighting sleep and mindlessness during the second round of 1-5,1-6,1-7 and found myself starting over again and again without even seeing 8. Normal, usual, expected. Keep at it! Metta first helps. Actually many Buddhist meditation groups start with metta mantras first for exactly that reason.

Finally, we are all different. We have different histories, genetics, and perspectives. No matter where you come from, there is nothing in your body or mind that is unlovable or unworkable. We were little kids, and as we grew into men encountered a lot of painful and confusing moments that many don’t have to go through. So not only do we have little cartography available, but our uniqueness means even maps of others out of the maze don’t always work. Consider that my heart and wisdom are here for you, and I am not enlightened, but I have walked away from many mazes and consider it a sacred honor to help in whatever way I can. If you wish to be more specific, I will aim my best. Namaste, brother. You are loved.

With warmth,
Matt

Aria,

Thank you for your post. It brought tears to my eyes as I read it, thank you so much for sharing. I’m especially impressed how you’re so young, and yet still carry with you a dignified maturity. Bravo! Your dilemma brought something to heart.

“Now I feel like I am stuck in a dilemma, on whether to acknowledge this and move on, or whether to reach a better resolution with him, or on my own. More than this I am unsure how to process what I am feeling, or rather evaluate what I am feeling. I feel nothing at times, and everything at others. This emotional roller coaster has lead to avoiding food, insomnia, and a small amount of drug abuse. ”

I know this view, this pattern, and was stuck in it for a long time. It happened in the interim between seeing the abuse as abuse and forgiving my abuser. The way I finally saw through it was “there is nothing on earth which is not natural, not part of the whole” Whew, even typing that still is very powerful for me, and I’ll try my best to explain.

All actions and effects are part of the natural process of life. Being abused is quite natural. Its painful, confusing, and sad… but it is natural. The abusers suffer with boundary issues, narcissism, sexual addiction… all sorts of issues. Let’s face it, healthy people don’t abuse children. On the other side, abused people feel violated, ashamed, scared, guilty, confused, angry. All of this is still natural, normal. Cause/effect. Action/reaction.

One of the results on the abused side is the feelings of resentment and anger for the people who abused them. That is also normal. However, resentment and anger feel icky inside us. This is also normal. Icky feelings inside us are like associations. If we get mad every time we see red, then we suffer every time we see red. To protect our heart, our mind tries to create a fog so we don’t see red. This leads to ups and downs in our feelings. Sometimes we feel fine, when there is no red. However, when there is red around us, we don’t see it because of the fog, yet feel “empty”. The fog is being maintained by our energy, depleting us.

Consider what a family party might look like for you. You look at mom, no fog. You look at him, fog. You don’t see him, you see an icky conglomerate of past actions… or, you see only fog (which arises as anger or shame or whatever). This is like a fracture in our mind. There are parts of nature we accept, and parts we refuse to accept. The refusal hurts us, because we push it away. This is why we forgive our abusers. Its not about their peace of mind or because its what God or Shiva or Buddha would do, we do it to clear the fog, take back our power.

For me it started as “even though you’re an asshole, I will forgive you because I am a better man.” Then it was “I forgive you to reclaim the parts of me held back by you.” It progressed deeper and deeper inside me (a journey for you to take in your own time) until the fog lifted.

Then view that arises is deeply peaceful. What I see are victims. Some victims of urges, of ignorance, of others… but the fracture of abuser/abused healed. People pass down abuse like a twisted family heirloom, and we lucky few can put it to rest.

Remember that settling it is about you. It makes us suffer, naturally, consistently, when we want others to suffer. Its just painful to our bodies inherently. Buddhism teaches “do no harm” which includes setting down the arrows, and accepting that our abuse has injured us long enough. Now we can settle, heal, forgive, and find inner peace. After all, it is far more invigorating in our own bodies to love everyone, unconditionally.

With warmth,
Matt

Matt,
Your description of the abuse as being a kind of “red” is very interesting. Have you read “Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson? It is about this very thing that we are talking about and she uses the color red as a way of relating to it. Very very beautiful book.

-JD