Category Archives: Sexual Abuse

Counterattack

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The two recent pieces I wrote and posted here amount to something of an epiphany.  I have been aware of my addictions and history of sexual abuse and practiced the additions for most of my life.  What came to me while writing them is the realization I have long had a reliable way to deal with the addictions: Pray.

Prayer

I have been praying for years, starting with my conversion.  Praying has continued because it works.  I have known praying works on addiction for all those years.  Problem is, I knew it works but only practiced it intermittently.  Cunning, baffling, powerful.

Insight meditation has enhanced my praying and gives me more focus while praying.  The goal is to clear out the mental clutter I used to survive in a sometimes dangerous world.  Along with developing survival skills, I also create my own world.  Some of our worlds may be congruent with reality, sometimes not.  It takes lots of energy to maintain the personal world, and I am constantly revising and enhancing what is actually an artificial construct.

My inner world is filled with stories about what is going on, what happened, and guesses about the future.  In the process of creating all this, I ignore the present.  All those creations are the basis for my addiction.  The now, right now, is not.  So, it’s only logical to stay in the moment.  It ain’t easy, folks.  I have many years of reinforcement to stay with the mostly imaginary world I created.

I can get to the now in meditation and prayer.  It is said meditation can aid one in staying in the moment most of the time.  It’s called enlightenment.  Watch the breath.  When mind wanders, return to the breath.  Repeat.  I am not enlightened, although I strive to go there.  My mind wanders.  A lot.

I can, however, pray, which is an alternate way of staying in the moment.  Another word for prayer is mantra.  “Om mani padme hum”.  It can be a collection of Sanskrit phrases or English words transmitted by a teacher.  in my case I don’t know my teacher’s name.  He is a long dead Russian peasant who became a pilgrim seeking his teachers in Russian monasteries.  In his travels he used an ancient Orthodox Christian prayer known as the Jesus Prayer.  “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  He suggested starting with 3000 repetitions daily.  With sufficient practice, it is possible to synchronize the prayer with the heartbeat.  This means constant prayer.  How is that for staying in the moment?  His book is entitled The Way of a Pilgrim.

I may have reached 3000 a few times.  I have never synchronized the prayer with my heartbeat.  I do synchronize with my breath.  After writing those two pieces about addiction and spirituality, I had a solid week of prayer, peace, and freedom from addiction.  What a glorious time!  Once I had a year of respite.

Oops! Here came the counterattack.  In these cases, it’s nearly a total absence of prayer and almost constant addictive obsessing along with acting out.  You Tube is a great aid in distracting myself from the moment and reinforcing obsessions.  During this current counterattack I had a dream about finding myself in a room with baggage stacked to the 20 foot high ceiling. That’s my world-lots of baggage.  So, what to do?  One way I have found is to open up about what is going on and not isolate.  Remember George Thorogood singing “When I drink alone, I want to be by myself.”?  That is my addiction mantra.

“Confession is good for the soul.”  Here is my confession.  Now maybe I can get back to prayer.

Posted in Addiction, Alcohol, Buddhism, Current Activities, Insight Meditation, Jesus Prayer, Meditation, My Story, Obsession, Prayer, Sexual Abuse, Stories

Sexual Abuse

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A hot topic these days, sexual abuse and harassment can cut both ways.  Men can be sexual abuse survivors as well.  I am.  As a child, my mother gave me enemas I did not need.  I remember my helplessness as she draped me over her lap and stuck the tip up my butt.

The act itself was bad enough, but what has stuck with me the most about the experience was the seductive tone of her voice.  I never heard that voice in any other context.  My physical sensation was somewhat erotic but was overshadowed by my feelings as I felt the water entering me.

I felt fear, revulsion, humiliation, helplessness, and an inability to move.  I was paralyzed by my feelings.  The fear was most powerful.  I couldn’t stop her, but I wanted to have anything happen to me other than what she was doing.   My fear was constantly rekindled by seeing that red rubber enema bag hanging from the towel rack in the bathroom.  We had only one bathroom, so I could not avoid encountering the thing every time I went there.

The most revolting object in the universe for me is a red rubber enema bag.  I just looked, they still sell the things.  The enema bag was a constant reminder of my helplessness.  Mother was the most powerful person in my world and what she was doing to me was something I could not avoid.  I didn’t feel I had the right to hate what she was doing.  I just had to endure.

As I grew bigger, the enemas stopped.  I felt no sense of relief, I was doing my best to block the experience out.  I actually never thought about the enemas, but my body remembered.  From that time on I have had difficulty with anal fissures, probably from holding myself closed all the time.  I eventually had surgery to deal with the abscess that developed in my rectal canal.

I grew, there were no more enemas.  At puberty, my sexuality awakened, and like almost every young male I turned to masturbation.  I was afraid of girls and their potential power.  Masturbation was my outlet.  Safe.  Then, one day I was in my bed masturbating and my mother walked into the room.  As the door opened I stopped, yanked up the covers, and just laid there.  She came over and her hand went under the covers and then retreated.

She turned and walked out of the room.  As she walked out she said something in that seductive tone I had not heard since the enemas stopped.  Not long after she got ovarian cancer and died after wasting away for more than a year.  She died around the time of my sixteenth birthday.

The entire experience has dramatically affected my sexuality.  I am mostly incapable of sustaining a truly relational sexual relationship.  My recurring fantasies of being in total control almost always surface.  Sexual partners can sense my disconnect with them.  As I mentioned, I remain afraid of women where there is a potential for sexual attraction.  I am most comfortable with lesbians. As I have aged, the problem has diminished, but never left me despite years of therapy.

I was in a men’s therapy group for a while.  We were all sexual abuse survivors.  One evening a new member of the group mentioned he had the same enema experience as a child.  He wasn’t sure whether he needed the enemas or not.  Several of us simultaneously said “Have you ever had enemas since?”  Well, no.

Posted in Cancer, Enemas, Family History, Health Issues, My Story, Sexual Abuse, Stories