Today, I've noticed a change in my mindset when it comes to sexualness. After finding that beautiful quote last night that compared sex to a dance where the partners melt into one. With that idea in my head that that is how healthy sex should be like I felt very cheated. When a dance with a specific partner ends up feeling like that, it is so amazing. It is by far one of my favorite things about social dancing, and why I love it so much, because there is that ability. It makes the dance so much more exciting, it feels great, there is an emotional high even to it. Afterwards the two partners are almost always so mind blown and happy that they did that, and share their enthusiasm for what just happened. So knowing what that feels like, I feel very cheated out on that kind of experience when it comes to sex. It' makes me sad to think about it. Also even more betrayed by those who hurt me because they didn't just abuse me and hurt me, but they took away years that I could of had that kind of connection with someone, years that I could of had the chance to form a healthy relationship and sexual relationship with someone. Years that sex wouldn't of been dirty, sinful, bad, scary, and painful for me but instead another way to share love with someone, a bridge of loving communication that words couldn't describe.
Right now I'm not just feeling angry at this but also sad and hurt, as the day continues it seems the sadness and hurt take over more than the anger. Although it sucks to feel such emotions it is also good, it shows me that my thoughts and beliefs on sex are starting to change. So although it is hard, it is good, it is a process of healing and I do welcome it.
I've noticed this week since I've really started heading on this new healing path that my attitude towards men has changed. I am much more annoyed and even angry with them, but I'm totally okay with the guys that are already in my life, that I am close with. So this last weekend I was totally fine being with Nathan, that one guy that I talked about in earlier posts, I've decided it's way to confusing just to be like "that guy" so I'm just going to use names. Anyways I was fine being with him last weekend, and with hanging out and sleeping on Travis, Chris and Keenan's couch and hanging out with all my vallis guys. Saturday when we went out dancing though I was NOT okay with any guy coming up and dancing with/grinding on me. Which I am usually not okay with anyways but that night it striked a fury inside me so every single guy that came up to me and started rubbin' his nasty body against mine that night received an unforgiving elbow to the ribs, or solorplex, or just right into the gut, whatever was closest... I'm very amazed I didn't end up starting a fight or getting kicked out. But then again I think every guy who tried something and everyone who saw just accepted that the guy semi deserved it. Most of us believe you should introduce yourself before grinding on a girl or at least slowly move into it. That night these guys were just jumpin on it, no nice polite way in, no seeing if the girl would be okay with it. If you are wondering, no I still don't feel sorry, also Sean and Travis found it very amusing to see those kind of tools actually get what they deserved for acting that way.
Yesterday I went to the gym at 6am to run on my low impact running machine. Well there was this older guy there, it looked like he was "training" a younger guy in less shape than him. A few times he looked over at me it what seemed to me like a kind of trying to figure out a way in to offer his "skills" to help me out. Thank heavens he did not though because I would of blown up on him. I dislike guys coming up to girls in the gym acting like they need help and need to be shown how to do things or be "trained." I'm sorry I'm an ex-ballerina, ex-ski racer. I'm use to working out hard core, also I've spent lots of time in the gym doing weights and cardio, and even use to train some of my guy friends and help them out with their routines so they could achieve their goals. I in no way want some old guy who's done so many weights to make his old body seem somewhat acceptable and semi tool like coming up to me trying to help. It's insulting.
I'm doing another early morning workout tomorrow and am hoping he won't be there. Anyways, so my attitude towards men has become very intolerant and angry with them right now, at least men that I don't know, or don't know well, or just don't like. I'm not too surprised by this, I know as my healing continues it will get better.
My whole life I've always became friends with guys much faster and easier than I do with girls. I've always wondered about this, but threw this process I've figured it out. Out of all the abuse the ones that did the most damage to me where the ones the women committed. Joan blaming me for being sexually abused when I was 2-3 year old and done by her son, telling me it was bad and dirty. Stacy neglecting me and all the emotional abuse she put me through on top of the physical and for years. Those words and actions caused a lot more damage with me mentally. My biggest issues over the years that I've dealt with were all damage that Stacy caused. So although I learned guys were sexual fiends it was the women who caused the most damage to me.
So lately I've been picking up some shifts in a different cottage than the girls I normally work with (psychiatric, high risk, i.e. "the crazies") and I ended up working in the SRP cottage, which is the Sexual Responsibility Program. In other words, the sex offenders. It was... eye opening. The girls in my cottage usually stay around 5-9 months and are either discharged home with all of us praying that their situation remains stable enough that they don't relapse, or get sent on to a facility with a higher level of care for their particular needs because we're just not equipped to help someone who is seeing demons. The guys in SRP usually stay for years. The program they work through is intense and they are allowed no secrets while they are in treatment. You can seriously tell the difference between the ones who have recently arrived and those who are getting to the end of their treatment.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find really interesting is that the treatment that they're putting these young men who have, for whatever reason, decide to act out against another person sexually, though sounds very similar to the things that you're discovering in your books and your own journey. Maybe healing is something more universal than we previously thought.
Hardest part of working over there was that those are the only kids on campus I've had NO dealings with before, I so I didn't know any of them. Funny thing, they tend to keep my girls (sexual abuse victims one and all) far away from the sexual predators. ;)
I would say yes that healing is more universal than what we may think.
ReplyDeleteIf you think about it most sexual predators were once victims themselves or witnesses to such crimes, thus how they learned such things. They didn't get the chance to learn how healthy interactions should be, the saw the bad, received the bad and in comping ended up abusing others. So just like me they will need to change the way they think about what sexual interactions should be and realize that what they know is abuse and not healthy.
It is the circle of abuse. There is the abuser, and the victim. The abuser in most cases was the victim once, and the victim has the chance to become an abuser.
It is that circle of abuse that makes me terrified that I might abuse my own children if I am to ever have any. A thought that makes me weep, cry and sob every time I think about it. When I was seeing a therapist I shared this deep fear of mine, totally broke down in her office sobbing about how I was so scared that I'd continue that cycle of abuse and might hurt my own kids someday. I asked her what I could do, what was the likely hood of that happening.
She smiled at me and calmed me and told me that the fact that I am fully aware of the cycle, the circle of abuse, that I haven't acted out as an abuser, that it scares me and everything else she had learned from me and how I've dealt with the abuse that happened to me, she had full confidence that I would never do such a thing and would be a great parent. I do believe her, and I know, even then that I wouldn't ever even come close to such a thing but the idea scares me so much. Especially since with one of my abusers I know the people that abused him, and the person that abused his abusers. That same top person was the one that abused my mother. She herself has had that fear of that circle continuing, yet she has never abused any of us children. Her and I can safely say that we are the circle that broke. We have done everything in our power to make sure that that cycle stops with us.
Sadly though some victims don't see the cycle, and some of them follow in that cycle and do what was done to them, or what they witnessed.