Meursault 2.0

[meursault]

Well, I'm basically going to pretend I have an inner child with polio, or is autistic or something, and have to work extra hard parenting him.  So I went to yoga yesterday.  It was good.  Then I asked three different women I know if they'd like to go for a coffee this week.  One has gotten back to me and said yes.  I think Valentine's Day is going to be a bummer, though.  Maybe I'll go and get a bunch of those cheap "Be My Valentine" cards and fill them out from a bunch of fake women to the little boy.  That may be an all right thing to do.  I'm going to go to a poetry slam on Wednesday and read some of my poetry.

***TRIGGER WARNING****

So, I was walking to yoga again this morning around 5:30, and a building before this bank, I looked up to see a woman hitting the ground and scrambling up, then as I came up, I was taking off my headphones, and she was grappling with this guy in the entrance to the ATM.  I said "This $#%@! ain't going to happen!" to them, and she said "He just tried to rape me!".  I asked her if she wanted me to walk her somewhere.  She was pretty angry and wound up, and he was very sheepish and distant.  He threw a knife on the ground and said "She just tried to stab me with this."  Yeah, right, then why was it inside your jacket?  I picked it up and told her I'd walk her if she wanted and she was just swearing at him, so I pulled out my phone and dialled 911.  She said "I don't want the $%#%@ cops" and started walking away.  He started walking away in the other direction as I talked to 911.  They were both gone by the time the cops showed up ten minutes later.  I dropped the knife on the ground and told them what happened and described both of them.  One cop got out and took the knife, and I headed off to yoga.  Ten minutes after I was done talking to the cops, I was laying in Savasana.  It was very weird.  That's the start of my week.  Don't know what happened really, but I feel pretty good about getting in the middle of it.  I was thinking as I walked:  how often have I had things like that happen?  15 or 20 for sure.  And I don't really understand it.  No-one gets aggressive with me.  I'm not small, nor big.  Five ten, one eighty pounds sort of thing.  I am completely relaxed in that sort of situation, though.  I think maybe I learned as a kid how being afraid and upset when in violence or being threatened just antagonized my Mom and my sisters, so I can just sort of completely relax and be accepting of whatever happens.  Maybe that throws people off and it comes across as supreme confidence when I'm faced with violence.  I hope the cops caught up with the guy.  I could still see him shambling along way down the street two minutes before the cops came, and told them so.  If they put in any effort to actually get him, they would have had no problem.  The guy was not fast, and there's no real way to evade them with how those streets of the city are laid out, and I gave a good description.  Feel pretty bad for the girl.  She is native, and where I'm from, I don't think I'd want to have any interactions with the cops if I were her, either.  All the envelopes and papers in the ATM were thrown around and all over the floor in the ATM.  Feel this huge sadness somehow about that, but glad I showed up when I did.

Anyhow, I'm home now, and am kind of letting little boy me sit in an awareness that I can protect him.  That there's a pretty tough Dad he has. 

Meursault

[Three Roses]

That's awesome! Thank you for being there and helping her.

[sanmagic7]

warrior spirit to the fore, meursault!  i'm really glad you were there.

[meursault]

Definitely TRIGGERS....  graphic...my childhood etc...

I don't think I ever really described my past growing uphere , in one go, so I'm going to do it now.  I think I've edited the language appropriately, but there is still some harshness in the stuff I'm recounting, even without profanity.  I wrote this last fall.  I don't know, the thing that happened this morning makes me feel like I'm allowed to actually bring this up, stupidly, I suppose.  Sort of, because how I helped that woman today, maybe people won't just see me as a monster when I tell them about growing up.  I've definitely mentioned some of this, but the following was an attempt to sort of write it all out.  Also, I think I subconsciously provoked my Mom last week, and have spent the last few days feeling quite a bit better, thinking that might be the final straw for her, and maybe she won't talk to me again.  Feeling kind of like this stuff can be addressed or something now.  Anyhow...

My Mom and Dad split up when I was five, but it was kind of weird, and the whole family was together weekends and summer holidays. I have three older sisters. So mostly I grew up with my Mom and three sisters.

My Dad was an alcoholic, but generally a pretty nice guy. There were only a couple of people he treated like crap, but I was one. There were lots of put downs and undermining from him, and when he was mad, he'd occasionally throw tools at me. That continued into my twenties, and we worked together until he died a few years ago. Once when he was yelling at me, about age 18, he said "Everybody needs a whipping boy, and you're mine! That's how it's supposed to work. Your mother takes it out on me, and I take it out on you. What the $#%#$%# do you think we had you for in the first place?" And then he proceeded to empty a toolbox of wrenches, throwing them one at a time at me. It was that kind of attitude I was treated with by him. He told me he was glad I was around, because my Mom took it out on me instead of him. He wasn't very nice to me unless I was drinking with him or working like a dog. He was the good parent.

My Mom HATES males. She is the stereotypical man-hating feminist. Way more though. She was always in a rage, and would go on at length how men should be tortured, raped, castrated etc. Any misfortune which happened to a man was cheered (often literally). Whether a man got hurt, cut off in traffic, lost his job, was cheated on etc. My Mom was filled with glee about how the "typical male" deserved it. She'd celebrate when she found out some guy was diagnosed with cancer, laugh when a guy's wife left him and excitedly say how he was now going to die alone like the $#@$@# deserved etc...  She'd go into graphic detail of how men should be castrated and raped on pretty well a daily basis. She threatened me with it often enough too, but probably not more than once or twice a week on average. I can't count the number of times she said how the world would be better if "we could just figure out how to get rid of all you male $#%!$#s". She's mellowed out a bit with it now, but from my earliest memories on, that's what I got. I have memories of thinking she'd kill me or worse from four or five, and never really expected to live. The threats were common, though. I remember waking up regularly, from about six onward, wishing I had just died in my sleep. Tons of shame and guilt for being male, but at the same time, I LIKE my masculinity. Mostly, I'm fairly normal, I think, except I get my sense of self-worth from what women think of me, and there's all the crippling anxiety and despair!  Somehow, I still find sex, and my own sexuality, beautiful and tender and open.

Men were all monsters, and women angels to my Mom, and we had that indoctrinated into us. There was daily, rage-filled "oration" about rape and domestic violence, often exceedingly graphic, and how people like me, "typical males", were responsible. "You male $#@%s will get what's coming to you.", "Someone ought to just chop off that little $#%# of yours.", "I ought to send you to jail and then you'd get what you deserve. See how you like it with all those big, tough guys having their way with you."... Things like that were said so much I can't even begin to count how often. I don't remember much from before four, but that was constant until I got kicked out at 18.

My three sisters are older, but not significantly so, and they reinforced my Mom. I was just bad, rotten, no good. Lucky to even be alive, because I didn't deserve it. Because of the different temperaments, I was told I was garbage in all sorts of ways, from rage filled yelling, to "just be reasonable" intellectual arguments, to humiliation and teasing, to playing on my empathy to not make my Mom angrier and have her take it out on my sisters. All sorts of things. I was put down and invalidated from every direction. My Dad didn't care enough. He wouldn't challenge my Mom, he was too scared, and anyhow, I was thoroughly the scapegoat, even to him.  I have no idea how I managed to do well throughout school, and work full time on the farm from about age 12 onward.

I think of having a newspaper article read about a rape read to me at five years old, and then my Mom flying into a rage about what a monster I was, a "typical male" and the ensuing hostility from my sisters, and I just can't seem to connect to it. I don't have any emotions except a low-grade anxiety which surrounds everything, anyways. I bet she read EVERY newspaper article about a rape aloud between the ages of 5 and 15.

There wasn't much physical abuse, though many times, my Mom has proudly retold how she bit me and drew blood and how I was howling (before I remember, so maybe two or three). That was an example of her good and creative parenting. There was pinching and scratching, spanking, pushing, and being thrown around by my sisters somewhat, and my Mom a bit, plus my Dad throwing things at me, but by and large, the threats to kill me, castrate me, throw me in jail etc. were enough.  My whole life she proudly recounted how she refused to name me, and my Dad finally did because the hospital was pressuring them since I couldn't be released without being named.

I don't really know what to say about sexual stuff. The constant discussions of rape, in graphic detail, and blaming me were messed up. That's some of the hardest stuff to deal with. I try to meet women, and I think I just go into a terrible state of emotional flashback. Going into graphic detail about how I deserved to be castrated, hung up by my testicles, sodomized etc. because I am male would maybe fit, but I don't know. Graphic descriptions of how I should be violated were pretty common. I have only one explicit memory of anything actually happening. I was going down on two of my sisters. I think I was four. I remember it wasn't at all unfamiliar, and I remember liking it, but was disgusted by the idea of doing that with my Mom or other sister. From four until probably nine or ten, I remember playing with my teddy bears, taking turns and teaching them how to go down on my sister's Barbie dolls. I have what I'm pretty sure is a cigarette burn at the base of my penis. That's been there as long as I can remember. I've given myself enough cigarette scars since, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Anyhow, I only remember that one time with my sisters explicitly, and I don't know, maybe I initiated it. No idea. I remember my Mom afterwards telling me I couldn't do that any more, and being very understanding, which is so peculiar for her it makes me wonder. Anyhow.  At the same time, a regular threat when I was little was she was going to tie me up naked and hang me by my testicles and let my sisters have their way with me.  [Why do I have a hard time thinking that's abuse???]

So in my family, I was "bad". I always wanted to leave, but was too scared as a kid. I'd run away, and imagine they would all realize they loved me and be better when I got back, but that never happened. I had stuff like my Mom making me pin my dog against the house with a rake while she whipped him repeatedly with a metal wound electrical cord, yelling about what a "typical male" he was. Things like that. My Mom's hatred for males extends to cats and dogs even. She never gets male pets, as they're just "@#$@#$ males". News about rape had to be watched dutifully, with my Mom full of rage, talking about "typical males", "getting what's coming to them", "they ought to be castrated/raped/sodomized/jailed".

Anyhow. I hit puberty and hoped things would get better. They didn't. Girls didn't like me. I had terrible self-esteem, and was short and fat as a kid, so that rejection just ended up solidifying in me the sense of how disgusting and terrible I was. I continued to be unlovable. I had somehow been able to keep a nugget that "It is they who are wrong, and I'm not that bad", but when girls didn't like me, it just confirmed what I was told as a kid.  By about 20, I was diagnosed with Depression, Agoraphobia, and Social Phobia. I tried to talk about growing up at that point of seeing mental health professionals, but was silenced, even once being told "Shut up! I don't want to hear about your mother." So I gave up trying to deal with that. I never lost my virginity until I was 23, then life got pretty good for about eight years or so, and I was pretty good.

After a six year relationship ended in my early thirties, I became very depressed again. I cut quite a bit. I finally saw a brief treatment counsellor, and he was very helpful. I tried to see a private therapist after, but she was not good, so I gave up again. I just settled on thinking I'd work all summer with my Dad, then party and have one-night-stands all winter, which I did for the next few years.  Then the accident happened, and my Dad died.

Then I met my good therapist, and finally I've found someone who seems to care and understand and is safe (ish) and I can trust.  Now I see the hope for maybe dealing with this stuff, so I'm trying.  But it is certainly a lot of ups and downs.  I didn't expect that, I thought there would be these little cathartic moments all the time, and I'd work hard at it and slowly but surely improve.  My therapist says it doesn't work that way.  I kind of knew it didn't consciously, but I still had that expectation.

That's VERY abridged story of my traumatic past. Thanks for reading.  I feel like I am seen as overreacting when I talk about my sense of rejection from attractive women here, so maybe people can see where that comes from a bit.  Trust me, it's much more annoying and troublesome to me!  This is a pretty scary post to make, to be honest.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

Oh Meursault, I'm so sorry that little boy had to endure what you did. It makes me nauseated for you. You should have been cherished, protected, celebrated, adored!

You did not deserve any of that. Your M was a misandrist. To behave this way toward your own flesh and blood is unacceptable, unforgivable. If she had treated anyone else besides her own son that way, she is the one who would have gone to prison.

Your F was only a good parent when compared to how your M treated you.

It is no wonder you are afraid of people. I relate to you and your history so much! I hope you stand on top of the tallest building and shout to the heavens, "I am a beautiful person, a wonderful man!" someday and mean it with every ounce of your being.

You had no one growing up. I grieve with you for this fact - that there are people, like you and me, who were just little babies and were hated for our very gender.

I hope my wording is not too harsh. I realize you may very well still love your parents, as I loved mine. I do not want to insult them in any way! But you should never, never, never, never have been treated so cruelly.

[sanmagic7]

meursault, as ever, you are a brave man with a wonderful heart.  never in my wildest dreams would i ever consider you a monster.  you've shown over and over the kindness of your soul.

may i suggest you go slow on the woman front until you get some of this sorted out.  there is so much crapola that was dumped on you by man-hating women that you not only didn't deserve, but that was a projection by them onto the nearest and most vulnerable male they could find.  you were simply an easy target for them because you were a hostage in your own home, too young to escape, and no resources to protect you. 

it's no wonder, to my mind, why having a loving relationship with a woman seems so important to you.  she would refute all those messages you got so long ago.  the only problem is, until you are able to refute some of them yourself, you'll continue to be unsure, still think of yourself negatively, put out those neg. vibes toward her, maybe even sabotage the relationship just to subconsciously prove your mother was right.

it's a weird dynamic we continue, that of keeping our parents' messages as true for ourselves at the same time wanting someone else to show us they were wrong.  i think this may be what your t meant when talking about having a woman in your life - you have to validate your own worth first, then she can support, encourage, and re-validate for you.  i don't know, i may be off, but that's how it plays out to me.  just my thoughts.

in the meantime, meursault, you continue to move forward, continue to work on this, and for that i give you so much credit.  onward - if nothing else, we are fighters at the same time being some of the kindest, caring people i've ever run across.  that is the warrior spirit to me.    big hug.

[meursault]

Thanks for what both of you said.  I'm really glad you both listen.  I tried reversing the genders and imagining a father and three older brothers treating a little girl the way I was, and saying and doing the things they did, and it seems pretty bad and clearly abuse, but I have a real hard time thinking that it would be seen as abuse in my case.  I have a real hard time with that.  It's just what was normal and I feel like I'm seen as "making a mountain out of a molehill" by having such a problem with it all.

Anyways, I'm currently very nervous.  I am a couple of hours away from going to a poetry slam and getting up on stage to read my poetry.  Hope I don't get laughed off the stage...

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

hey, break a leg.

weird, isn't it, how we can see the same thing happening to another and call it abuse, but can't imagine the same for ourselves.  the insidiousness of this condition!  how abuse has been normalized for ourselves to the  point where we can believe we deserved it, we earned it, it was the right thing for us somehow.  wow!  i hate this crapola!

all i can say, meursault, is that it is the nature of the beast to believe those things, even that you're somehow 'different' from anyone else who has experienced such abuse.  no, it's not exactly the same for everyone, but abuse is abuse is abuse and no one, not any person, not any human being no matter who they are deserved or earned or should have been abused.  it's just wrong.  the abusers are wrong. 

i do believe that as you continue in recovery you can finally picture yourself as just another human, no better nor worse nor different than any one of us, who was taken advantage of, victimized, and hurt badly at the hands of others just because they could.  we're in this together, fighting to get our true selves back.  i have faith that you'll make it.  big hug.

[meursault]

Well, that was horrible.  Apparently I write utterly terrible poetry.  Like Vogon poetry bad.  Probably everything is just as bad.   My poetry was something I was most proud of about myself.  They had a bunch of judges and stuff, and I think my highest score was lower than the lowest any other poet got.  I must be just terrible.  Anyhow, maybe it's like that with everything I express.  Think I should stop coming here.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

Please don't stop coming here! I'll really miss you!

You are an important voice here on this forum, my friend. I've learned a lot from listening to you. Please don't go.

(By the way, I let the air out of all the judges' tires.)

[sanmagic7]

good one, 3roses!

your voice here is important, meursault.  unfortunately, when we put our creative selves out there for someone else to judge, it's not always pretty.  i wondered about the term 'poetry slam' that you used.  does that give those judges license to 'slam' what they don't like?  and who are they to be judging?  i'm sorry you had a rotten experience.  sucks.

this is not a 'slam', tho, so i hope you don't stop posting.  you have that kind of courage that is inspirational to others - how many of us would have put ourselves out there to have our thoughts and words judged?  you've shown that courage, too, with your postings, writing so honestly and showing your vulnerability - inspiring, absolutely!  so, i'm with 3 roses on wanting you to stay.  you are important to this forum.  big hug.

[meursault]

I hate how fragile I am.  It took me until now to get over that sense of how terrible I am, just from a negative response to my poetry.  Ugh.  Anyhow, I am back to a more rational state.  I hate this.  I used to be able to manage and not fall to pieces like this before my Dad died, but really, since then, I lost the ability to contain this stuff.  I suppose I was never great with it when it would be directly related to what women thought of me, but now everything seems to set me off. 

My therapist pointed out that I was prepared for things to be loopy after the trial, but really, I didn't see the form it would take, so I'm being thrown off constantly.  I actually stood up in our session and play acted an illustrative example of how my Mom treated me growing up, and she couldn't completely hide looking a bit disgusted, which is rare for her, she has really incredible self control.  I initially thought: "she's disgusted by me", but think she was just maybe a bit appalled by what I was showing.  I was a a wreck in our therapy this week, but think it was a good session.

A Facebook friend, whom I've only met once, posted about feeling pretty much the way I describe here.  About how she despairs of ever finding that connection, having a family/kids etc.  I responded that I feel the same way, and a mutual friend whom we have both known for a lot of years posted that "there are good guys out there, like [Meursault]"  So I messaged her and asked her to go for a coffee.  She agreed, so we're going tomorrow.  I find her really attractive, and I've seen several posts of hers that make me like her.  She seems to be pretty emotionally open, and clever.  She is also good friends with a guy who was national news years ago, due to being the victim of some really hideous crap.

I sort of think you are right in a way that I am maybe not entirely ready to date, Sanmagic, but I think I have to keep trying.  I think I am trusting my therapist on this one, who has encouraged me from the beginning to try to date, and she even suggests I try online dating sites.  And I was thinking quite a bit about how being accepted by women functions as a way of "refuting" the messages I got growing up.  I think that's pretty close, but it's not quite accurate.  It's more that without that acceptance and sense of being desired, I feel like I'm actively being told by women, universally, that they agree with it.  How can I argue with the fact that no-one actually DOES want me?  I'm alone, no one is interested in me, so what message am I being sent?  That they ALL have deemed me to be garbage and unlovable.  I can't seem to see this some other way, and it looks totally rational to me, but maybe it isn't.  I think that's why it becomes so frantically needy.  I feel like I'm a sham, trying with this woman and the date tomorrow, like I'm misrepresenting myself as someone worthy of her time.  But also there's a sense of "* no!  I have a lot of good things about me, and someone will see them and love me for them."

I guess there are a few things I'm pretty proud of this week.  I faced a guy who had a "stabby" garden tool and stopped what seems to be an attempted sexual assault.  I had the nerve to actually get on a stage and read poetry.  I took the high road and helped someone struggling, despite the fact that she said something supremely hurtful to me, and went to yoga with her becasue she couldn't go alone.  When I posted about the sexual assault to warn people I know on FB, one guy I know posted this smug rape apology comment, so I sort of shot him down pretty harshly, and I had a couple of people send me private messages thanking me for doing that.   That friend commenting about me being a good guy.    I went out for lunch with the woman I went to high school with, whom I loved utterly for years and was rejected by.  I'm in a tournament for a sport I play this weekend.  It's a team thing, and we lost our first game, but we have a few more at least.   I made supper for a female friend and she was impressed watching me prep and cook our food.  She had  a second plate, and was telling me how great it all was.  It made me feel surprisingly masculine.

Sanmagic, your comment about abuse being normal.  I really do have that belief, that somehow I alone am "different' and in any other case, it would have been unacceptable, but I am somehow "Special" (in a bad way), and it was right and fitting.  I suppose that is a child's way of making sense of it, so there is some sense and order to the world, even if it is hostile.  And then if it's believed, there is always a scrap of hope that "if I just figure out what makes me so bad, I can fix it and be loved".  Trying to have some sense of power in a situation where one is really powerless.

Anyhow, I hope I settle down emotionally soon.  This is exhausting.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

I really do have that belief, that somehow I alone am "different' and in any other case, it would have been unacceptable, but I am somehow "Special" (in a bad way), and it was right and fitting.

I feel this, too. However much I tell myself intellectually that I have worth, I don't feel it. But, it's getting easier to wrap my head around it. Or, maybe my heart. ♡

[sanmagic7]

meursault, you're getting there.  you're taking risks, doing things, standing up for what you believe is right, putting yourself out there - you keep at it, keep moving.  i truly believe that as long as we keep moving, we're making progress.  sometimes we move forward, sometimes back, but it's still movement, we're still in the game or race or whatever you want to call it.  and you're doing it.

as much as we want to be special - believe me. i've been on that merry-go-round for far too long, am still on it more often than i wan! to admit - in either a good or bad way, it's hard to acknowledge, admit, and accept that we are all human, sharing all those same kind of human qualities.  what makes us special is our uniqueness as human beings, an innate uniqueness wherein no two of us have identical fingerprints.  we have our own gifts, our own perspectives, our own perceptions, our own talents and our own personalities.  that's what makes us special.  we don't have to go out of our way to prove our specialness, either in our lives or in our minds (sounds good, doesn't it?  maybe if i keep repeating this to myself, i've believe it more often!  lol!!!)

so, we give it our best shot, learn from it, and keep moving.  your dad's death was devastating to you, including all those years of aftermath.  you're just getting over all that.  i hope you can give yourself a break, and begin to enjoy you, who you are in all your glory.  you're worth that.  big hug.

[meursault]

Was doing pretty good.  But I have to admit.  Women utterly frustrate and confuse. me.  I had that date last Sunday.  It was awesome, neither of us had an awkward moment.  we sat around and talked for almost SIX hours.  I asked if she wanted to do something during the week, and she said "#@$#@$@# yeah!"  So We set up another date, and I texted her briefly a couple of times.  Didn't want to be too pushy or invasive.  They I texted her the day before and she said "we'll chat tomorrow".  So I say "Sounds good"  Text her the next day and she says she's on her period and will take a rain check.  So I say "That sucks, I was really looking forward to seeing you again.  Maybe on the weekend or something."  So I text her this morning, asking if she is free early in the week, and she doesn't get back to me.  I am going back to getting drunk all day every day from now on, and if necessary, getting at least a minimal amount of affection via prostitutes.  This is *, and I have no idea what's so wrong with me.  Clearly there is something though.  I give up.  And no one will even tell me what is so bad about me why they don't want me so I could actually change it.  It's a sick game and I can't take this any more.  I wish I had the strength to just kill myself.  Ugh.

I am shaking so badly I have to hold my head to read my computer screen.  Ugh.

Update:  A friend whom I've known since I was four or five texted laughing about me being home alone Saturday night, and I have completely blown up at him and he is now out of my life.  I hate this world.  I think it's pretty clear if I treated women like crap, I would have considerably better chance of women actually wanting me.  I'm off to get drunk.

Meursault