Eventually I knew I would have to put some words down about this;… Correction, some emotions down on this. This is as personal as it gets, and it is raw and unfiltered as anything can be because there is no guide or plan to deal with this condition. The internet is abuzz with real allegations, real stories and in the mix of it all a lot of these efforts to tell a story get’s lost. The damn emotion of it is stolen away to the sheer apathy of hearing so much if it. It is still there, it is still raw and it is still causing damage. Getting it out helps, it doesn’t fix things though, it doesn’t give your your life back or your childhood, it doesn’t relieve the fear.
As a child growing up, I was as much wonder as I was filled with surprising talents. The youngest out of nine left me with a sense of security that many would never know. I would always have someone in my corner, I would always have someone to run to to help me, or so I thought. Life was pretty much idyllic and special for me, and I was living the golden dream of white privilege, upper-lower middle class, a mom and dad still together. In the first six or seven years everything was just as it should be I thought, nevermind the part of us that was dysfunctional. The beer and pot parties in the basement by my siblings, and all of the signs that we were not all as it should be.
In the mid 70’s my brother knocked up his HS girlfriend. It was one of those cases where she just wanted a baby more than anything else and my brother was the guy. Yes, there are plenty of women out there who look for just this out of a guy. It was a weird time anyways as the war had just ended, the country was rolling along, and it was still a place where you just get a good job and hunker down and you would make it. It was even weirder for me, because my brother got married to this girl, my sister the next year. The family group that I had growing up all but disappeared in the blink of an eye to a kid. The dynamics changed and what was left was the two youngest, and the two oldest. One of the oldest rarely there, always working, the other always there and alway lurking.
You see my oldest brother had/has mental health issues, and they were much much worse back then as opposed to later. So when the family started moving out, he got either bored or nuttier and decided touching his brother and sister would be ok now?….
Well my older brothers weren’t there to stop him, he may of been the oldest and the fattest but he was no fighter unless you were really small. It went on for a number of years until the truth came out. My parents had to go to court to get to keep us in our home while my brother had to find somewhere else to live. That didn’t last long, but it was enough for the courts I guess. When it all happened though, they were not all that concerned with me and my well being as much as my sister’s. I was a mess and they thought that sending me to counselling would help somehow. Why was I being punished again? Why did I have to keep telling my hurtful story again and again? I was told to squash it all away, I was a man and I had to just act like it never happened, I wasn’t supposed to have emotions on it, turn them off because they are wrong. That entire emotional garbage and baggage was left as a steaming pile of dog shit on my front porch for just me to deal with, because I was a guy. There was no pity for me, there was no acceptance or apologies, just get over it, get over it.
When the hashtag came out, I thought I would have a chance finally to be accepted a survivor finally, I would tell my story and it would be ok. I was a guy though, and my heterosexual life wasn’t in step with what people wanted to see. They didn’t want to hear the backstory of yesterdays, I was a guy, I didn’t count, I just had to get over it. My whole life has been focused on getting over it, on getting by, because the me too in this case is real as anyone else’s. I was resentful for many years, my family turned their back on me and my sister who never really got over it, never was acceptable to the rest of the family after that in her mind. We were the victims almost made out to be the guilty, that we had somehow done something wrong. We had to go through more than anyone else in it all and at the end of the day nobody asked us if we were going to be ok, because they couldn’t see the pain, or the hurt anymore or the open wounds.
The pain of a life put under these conditions, as well as all the others, is full. The suffering complete to the last cell. I have learned to deal with it, to get over it, and let it go after all of these years. The part that hurts the most is having all of my experiences and emotions taken away from me because of an myopic view that men don’t feel this deeply, men don’t have the same hangups. We do, and me too.