8-4-17 True Freedom

I wrote this post several months ago. It was to me a dark secret that I had buried deep in my soul. I was determined to take it to my grave but I just couldn't carry it anymore. So I wrote it all down to a certain point and I expressed myself as that 14-16 yr old teenager that I was at the time. A couple of my closest loved ones already know and have read it. I wasn't ready to completely let it go I needed to work through the shame, hurt, anger, the guilt of so many years. I'm ready now to let it go. I understand what I let it do to my life. The shame and anger are gone. The hurt and guilt are slowly going away.  It's not an easy story to read. Some parts express raw emotions and were painful for me to write and read. I didn't want to have relieved any of it but I had to. I had to face my demons and overcome them. My story.

I really don’t know how to start this post. I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a story that’s way overdue. Forty-two years overdue in fact. I’m not really sure how my family and friends will react or interact with me after they read this but maybe some good will come from it. In fact, if one innocent child is saved it will make whatever I lose ok.

The year was 1972 and our family was on vacation in Bat Cave NC. It was a place that we had been many times before and had happy memories of past vacations. It was only Dad, Mom, and myself this time. Mom and Dad liked to sit around and talk to the Garvin’s they were the couple that managed the place and other guests that were staying there. I was a typical fourteen-year-old boy who always wanted to be doing something so one day I told Mom that I was going for a walk down to Chimney Rock village. Mom said ok just don’t wander off. So I went walking. There was an Apple Cider mill about a quarter of a mile down the road so I stopped and went in. There were only a couple of customers in the mill and I walked around on the inside and was looking at everything. I noticed an older man watching me but I really didn’t think anything about it because adults are always watching kids to make sure they don’t steal anything. After a while, he approached me and asked me if I would like to see how apple cider was made. I said sure and followed him to a back room. He started telling me how cute I was and that he would like to feel of my private parts. He said that he could make me feel really good. I said no but he kept backing me up until I didn’t have anywhere to go. I tried to wiggle away but couldn’t. He unzipped my pants and took indecent liberties with my private parts. He decided that wasn’t enough so he raped me. I didn’t cry or scream or fight. It’s odd what goes through a young boys mind when something like that happens to you. You just go numb and try to block out what’s happening. After he got done he simply said I told you that I would make you feel good and don’t go think about telling anyone. Who are they going to believe you or me and my family? I managed to walk back to the cabins and mom asked how my walk was and I answered ok. That night in the dark I cried myself to sleep. For the rest of the trip, I stayed at the cabin and told mom I just didn’t feel good. Vacation ended and we went back home.

Every night I relived that nightmare. I saw his face and felt his nasty hands on my body and felt the pain of him inside of me. I prayed to God to take it away. I asked him why he allowed that to happen to me. He never answered me back so I decided well I guess I’m just really bad and deserved it. I told him that I hated him and didn’t want anything else to do with him or his church. My life would become a living hell for the next 3 years. School started back and that gave me something else to think about but I felt like everyone was looking at me and talking about me. I felt so dirty and useless and along. I started skipping school and running around with some other boys. One of my buddies introduced me to wine. It tasted sweet and warm and if I drank enough of it the pain and the bad feelings got better. Beer would be next and then hard liquor. I managed to get through the school year how I don’t know. The next school year would be horrific I was drinking now on a daily basis from morning to night. Just enough to keep the demons away and feel good at the same time.  I really didn’t want to go to school anymore. I might go two days a week the rest of the time I was running with the guys. Mom would get calls from the school telling her that I had skipped and I caught hell when I got home but I would go to my room and turn the stereo on and retreat to my own little world. Secretly I think I blamed mom and dad at that time for what had happened to be. They were supposed to protect me but if I had told them they probably wouldn’t have believed me so what would have been the use.

Dad had a 22 handgun that he kept hidden but I knew where it was. I took it to school one day and was standing outside when another boy came up to me and hit me in the face with his fist. I had been drinking as always but when he hit me all the rage and anger and hate that I had for the man that raped me came to the surface. I pulled the gun out and it was only by the grace of God that I guess my guardian angel kept me from pulling the trigger. I didn’t see the boy standing there it was that evil son of a bitch that had hurt me and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to make him hurt and feel the same pain that I had felt over and over again. I was expelled from school for the rest of the year charges were brought and I sent to court as a juvenile on a felony charge. Luckily I had a judge that had a clue and he ordered a psychiatric evaluation. I meet with the psychiatrist and told her some story and she bought it and decided that I had a nervous breakdown and put me on meds which I threw away. She wrote her report to the court the charges were lowered to a misdemeanor and I was put on two year’s probation with mandatory psychiatric counseling.  For the next two years, I maintained some sense of sanity thanks to the alcohol and now valium that the professionals decided that I needed. I went back to school and they passed me to high school. I think they just wanted to get rid of me and pass their problem to some one else. Mom and Dad didn’t bother me I think they just felt sorry for me.

In high school, things did better. I got my driver’s license and mom convinced Dad to cosign and help me get a car.  My tolerance to alcohol had increased and I was drinking a case of beer about every two days. I had a cooler in the back seat of the car which I kept filling up and life was grand. I got a job at the hospital which was ok most of the time and I had new friends to drink and party with.  I had new friends at school that liked to party. There was always plenty of alcohol and drugs if you were so inclined. I liked the downers and alcohol. They took away the pain and offered me dreamless sleep. Mom knew that I stayed stoned most of the time. She let me have a bar in my room in hopes that I would stay home and drink instead of going out. Most of the time I would go out anyway. She would call the police and tell them if they saw me out to please follow me home to make sure I got there ok. Sometimes they did. Things were different back then. I don’t know why people tolerated such behavior then but they did. I don’t how I managed to survive without killing myself or someone else. I can only think by the grace of God. The God that I hated and had turned my back on.

I worked on the same floor as a ward clerk at the hospital and she introduced me to her daughter. She was cute had red hair and freckles and younger. I was going to Florida to an EMS convention near Disney World so she asked me if I would take her daughter along. I said yes. Through high school, all my relationships with females had felled. It wasn’t sex because I didn’t care about sex. I didn’t care about companionship either. I was broken why would anyone possibly care for or love me. I was afraid that I might turn into a queer or an abuser or maybe even a serial killer. It’s funny the lies the devil will feed you. Anyway, we went to Florida and we hit it off. She made me laugh and didn’t make me feel like I was being judged.  I didn’t know what love really was but I fell for her and she felt the same way. When we returned home we started seeing each other. I practically stayed at her house when I wasn’t working and we did what unsupervised teenagers usually do. Her dad drank so I was welcomed to join in so I felt right at home. It was a nice summer but I couldn’t control my actions when I was away from her and I partied and drank and did drugs with other girls and her mom found out so again I blew up another relationship. I really cared about this girl but I was always running away scared of the truth coming out. I knew if it did I might as well be dead because I would never be able to go back to school and face anyone again. Suicide began to look like an option, after all, I was already damned for my sins. We had gone to the movies and seen Ode to Billy Joe. I had no prior idea what the story line was. Wow, Billy Joe jumped off the bridge and committed suicide because he had sex with another man even though he loved Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee forgave him but he couldn’t forgive himself. I couldn’t forgive myself either.   Why in the hell didn’t I do something to stop it? I should have done something anything. And then I didn’t even have the balls to tell anyone what had happened. What a worthless piece of shit I was. These are the lies and thoughts that a teenager has after going through sexual abuse, assault or whatever you want to call it. Female or male it doesn’t matter it’s the same pain they go through. I would have several more years of failed relationships, two tries at suicide, and other horrific events before I understood that I had become powerless over what had consumed me and taken over my life. I had two choices I could die or I could crawl back to the same God that I had cursed and swore that I would never turn to again. I honestly don’t know why I went back to God. Maybe it was something in my subconscious that I had learned in all the years that mom had taken me to church. Maybe it was divine intervention or all the prayers that I’m sure my Mom had offered to God on my behalf to save her son.

Please don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want your sympathy. What I do want is your action. I want you to take care of your children and all the children that you come in contact with. I want you to get mad as hell every time you read a story or see one on the news about an adult abusing a child. I want you to write a letter or call someone in authority and raise hell and demand that they do something to stop the madness. It may not be your child this time but it’s another Mother’s or Father’s child. I hope and pray that you never have to live with such pain. I beg you to please give a damn and do something and help save our innocent children.