Some who read this may know of me from my post elsewhere on these forums. I have been a member since 2008, but post mainly in either the Politics or Science sections. Sometimes Gaming. About six months ago, I guess it was, I discovered this area of Christian Forums. I read through some of the threads, even responded to one in particular. I identified with much of what was being written here. I sympathized. But mostly in silence. After long deliberation with myself, I have decided to be silent no longer. Maybe this will do some good, maybe it won’t. But after far too many years of knowing I should tell this story, I am finally going to do so.
I come from a small family, just my parents, myself, and my older brother. Most of my youth was spent in Tennessee, where I grew up as part of a large extended family. Looking back I figure I was a fairly normal kid, I liked to read comic books, ride my bicycle, play ball or army men with the other kids in the neighborhood. I knew nothing of girls, other than they were different. At eleven years old my mind simply hadn’t gone in that direction. I knew nothing of the world at large, other than what I was exposed to in school, and because my mother tried to shelter me from the evils that men do for as long as she could, I was beyond naïve, I was oblivious. But all of that changed one night when my older brother came into my room and started talking to me about sex.
I was eleven years old. I was sitting in my bed reading a comic book. My parents had gone out for the night, thinking, I’m sure, that he would look out for me and make sure nothing bad happened. There is a sick irony in that, I suppose. But my brother, who is four years older than I am, came into my room and started talking about things which even now I don’t feel comfortable repeating. I can remember wondering even then what was going on, wondering why my brother was in my room talking to me like this. I had no idea where he was leading me. But he was my brother, and I trusted him.
It’s amazing, I guess, what you can talk someone into when they trust you completely. I won’t describe all of the details of what happened, because for most who would read this there is no need. Suffice it to say that back then, as these days went by, I didn’t know I was being preyed upon, manipulated, lied to, and the weapon being used against me to accomplish this was my love for my brother. I knew I should have said something to my parents, but he told me they would blame me. He knew that would work, as my father had a long track record of always siding with him whenever anything happened in the house. And so I kept my mouth shut, and I lived in fear of whenever my parents might decide to go out and leave us home alone.
I was eleven years old.
I grew quiet. I would often just sit in my room on the floor. I had no idea how to process any of this because I had no experience of even really thinking about sex. I had no idea of what sex was or what it was supposed to be. At that age it simply wasn’t a part of my world. I wondered if this was part of all families, if brothers were supposed to act this way. But inside I knew better, I knew better. I just had no idea of what to do, or how to handle it. I would sit at the breakfast table and stare at my food, then stare at my mom. Then I would look at my brother and I knew he could tell what I was thinking. He had a way of looking at me which would keep me quiet.
One Saturday night my parents were planning to go out again. I pulled my mom aside and begged her not to go. But when she asked why, I couldn’t say anything. I told her I just didn’t want to be alone. She told me not to worry, my brother would be home. I went to my room and waited. When he came in I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore. And this was when I finally figured out that he was lying to me, and had been all along.
Back then I collected comic books. I read all of the Marvel line, and took good care of them, not letting anyone else touch them, keeping them in boxes, the whole bit. But it was sometimes hard for me to make the money I needed each month to buy all of the issues I read. I hated to miss an issue, for in those days there were no comic specialty stores around, you just bought them in a drug store when they came out or you missed them. My brother knew this. When I told him no, he promised to buy my comics for me if I would give in. He promised to buy them for the next few months, even promising to give me the money that night, if only I would do what he wanted. I finally gave in.
I think about that now and wonder why. Was it the promise of free comic books? Did I harlot myself out to my brother for ten dollars worth of Spider-man and Captain America, or the Avengers? Or was I just under his influence and thought I might as well get something out of the deal. Was I still giving in because he was my brother. I don’t know. But I do know that this was the exact point he would make a few weeks later when this issue came up on another night when my parents were away, that it was all my fault because I was willing to take his money. I was to blame, he said.
What led to this grand pronouncement was, on the night in question, just before my parents came home I asked for the comic book money he promised. He handed me monopoly money.
I suppose I should have thanked him for that, for it was the act which led me to realize just what my brother was actually doing to me. After this there was nothing he could say which I would believe, and when I told him that, the sexual abuse finally stopped. He finally started leaving me alone. But I remember that moment, as if it happened yesterday, and in some regards I think that was the moment my innocence truly died, was truly and forcibly taken from me forever. You see, up until that moment, I did what my brother wanted because he was my brother, I trusted him, I believed the things he said. I simply didn’t know how to rationalize what was going on other than through that filter, that he was my brother, and therefore I should trust him. But when he tried to hand me monopoly money, with a big smile on his face, I finally saw him for what he was at that moment in his life. I think that, once he realized I had figured out what was going on was wrong, and that he was using his status as my brother to manipulate me, he decided to leave me alone.
But I still had no idea of the horrors which had been forced upon me, or any idea of the horrors yet to come.
I finished sixth grade. By the time that school year was over I had no friends, as I started to hate everybody and adopted an ideal that I was alone in the world. But I didn’t really realize I was doing it. The simplest comment by another kid would set me off, as I was always either extremely sad or extremely angry. I got in trouble at school, and my dad never bothered himself to try and find out why. My mom worried but I couldn’t tell her anything. My brother and I rarely spoke.
In the seventh grade I was first exposed to middle school locker room talk. I started hearing about sex, girls, all the puerile jokes and little comments from other boys. And then one day another kid called me gay.
I remember that moment as if it were yesterday as well. I stood there, not really knowing what the word meant, but knowing it was meant to be bad. The other kids laughed, there were six of them and one of me, so I walked away. In truth, I wanted to kill that kid, kill him right where he stood. But it took years for me to figure out why.
Years went by and I said nothing. My brother moved away when I was a freshman in High School, and even though he was gone I said nothing. I had very few friends in High School, I didn’t fit in and made no real effort to. I was glad when it was over. I went off to college where my peers tended to be a bit more mature, and when they tagged me as a loner they left me alone. I had a few friends, guys I respected who were in the ROTC program, but I never put much effort into real friendships.
I went through as many women as I could find. My relationships tended to be short, and usually ended badly. I didn’t know why, I just knew I didn’t want to get close to anyone. My junior year in college I married a girl from back home in Dayton whom I had known for six years. But it didn’t last, I was still finding other women to run with. I finished college and went into the Army, running as far as the Republic of Korea, trying to get away from the dark demons which pursued me, demons which of yet had no name. Years later, when I received my orders deploying me to the first Gulf War, I remember hoping I would get over there and become a casualty of that war. I really thought it best that I should die, and put an end to the nameless misery which plagued me. In the years between I had married again, only later to suffer my second divorce. She swore I didn’t love her, or at least that was the excuse she used. For the next fifteen years I went through more women than I can remember, even having a child with one of them. But even this couldn’t penetrate the darkness. Which was sad, for I truly loved both that child and her mother. I love her mother to this day. But I couldn’t make it work.
I had a darkness inside, a secret I kept which the only way I thought I could keep its power at bay was to have a woman on my arm everywhere I went. It was self-destructive behavior, and it led me to acts of which I am rightfully ashamed. There were times in my life when I hurt women who said they loved me for no reason other than I didn’t want them to love me.
There was never any physical harm done, but some of the emotional damage I inflicted was severe, and in two particular cases the ramifications of my actions continue to this day.
And I fought. I went through a long period where I didn’t want to think about what had happened to me when I was eleven years old, and so I repressed it. But it always seemed like everywhere I went, there was someone who could just look at me and know. No-one, not even myself, knows how many fights I got into over someone even using the term gay around me. I didn’t hate gay people, I just hated the idea that someone would think that I was one of them. I sent a fellow Officer to the hospital while shooting during a pick-up game of basketball. We never spoke again. I ruined a company Christmas party one night in Virginia Beach because some guy I had never seen before in my life looked at me and called me gay. The fight did over five thousand dollars worth of damage, and I spent the night in jail for my efforts. That’s just the way I reacted. But I had repressed those memories of those nights in Tennessee as a child so far down in my consciousness, I never really admitted the connection between the two events to myself.
During the twenty-eight years which went by from the day my brother moved out of the house when I was a freshman in High School until the day I left the Army for good, I never spoke of what had happened between us to anyone. I lived for those twenty-eight years, but that is about all you can say for most of it. I lived in places far removed from my extended family, and although I wanted to, rarely saw them. My brother, on the other hand, became a well-known and respected figure in the city he moved to. He married once and had two children, lived across town from my mother, went to church, made lots of money, and apparently never suffered from the same demons I did.
I have been to his church a few times over the years, such as when I would take my wife and children home to my Mom’s in Tennessee for Christmas. I was finally able to maintain a relationship after so many years of destroying them, and I wanted my mother to be around her grand-children as much as possible. However, on those occasions when I went to service at my brother’s church, the First Baptist Mega-Church for Anyone who is Anyone, I would watch how the people came up to him and shook his hand and smiled. And I thought, if only they knew.
One night in 2003, while on a visit home to see my mother, I finally told her what had happened all those years ago. She begged me never to repeat the story.
About eighteen months ago my mother died. My son at that time was eleven years old. When my brother called me to tell me she was in the hospital and I had better come quick, my greatest fear was not that I would be going to Tennessee to watch my mother die, but that I would be taking my eleven year old son with me. My son wanted to go, he wanted to see his grand-mother and try and help her. So I took him. He was eleven years old.
I have to say it again. For the entire trip down there my fears did not center around the fact that my mother was dying. They centered around the fact that my son might be in the same room as my brother. Family came in from all over the state, and my brother took on the roll of family lead. He saw to the arrangements, kept up with visiting times, maintained the death vigil over her bed, singing little spiritual songs as my mother lay in a coma. And after she died, and the family started to break up to go and prepare for the funeral, they all patted him on the back and told him how great he was. And as I stood there, knowing I was the family outcast, all I could think of was, if only they knew.
I suppose this is the root of my questions concerning God. My mother did her best to raise both of us in a church, in the ways of God. I have always been grateful for that, but for most of my adult life did not follow that pattern. I always wondered, especially during the years when I would be home and my brother would talk at length of his faith, and his church, and his relationship with God, if it could possibly be real. My question was simple, at least in my mind, and I always worded it the same. If God actually existed, and he was all-knowing, and he had a personal relationship with my brother, how could my brother not know what he had done to me, and how his actions had scarred me for life? How could it be possible that he not know?
There is a recurring dream I have had my entire adult life. My brother and I are in an open field, just the two of us. We are fighting, and I keep screaming at him “how could you do this to me?” To date I don’t have an answer. I just live with the question.
I come from a small family, just my parents, myself, and my older brother. Most of my youth was spent in Tennessee, where I grew up as part of a large extended family. Looking back I figure I was a fairly normal kid, I liked to read comic books, ride my bicycle, play ball or army men with the other kids in the neighborhood. I knew nothing of girls, other than they were different. At eleven years old my mind simply hadn’t gone in that direction. I knew nothing of the world at large, other than what I was exposed to in school, and because my mother tried to shelter me from the evils that men do for as long as she could, I was beyond naïve, I was oblivious. But all of that changed one night when my older brother came into my room and started talking to me about sex.
I was eleven years old. I was sitting in my bed reading a comic book. My parents had gone out for the night, thinking, I’m sure, that he would look out for me and make sure nothing bad happened. There is a sick irony in that, I suppose. But my brother, who is four years older than I am, came into my room and started talking about things which even now I don’t feel comfortable repeating. I can remember wondering even then what was going on, wondering why my brother was in my room talking to me like this. I had no idea where he was leading me. But he was my brother, and I trusted him.
It’s amazing, I guess, what you can talk someone into when they trust you completely. I won’t describe all of the details of what happened, because for most who would read this there is no need. Suffice it to say that back then, as these days went by, I didn’t know I was being preyed upon, manipulated, lied to, and the weapon being used against me to accomplish this was my love for my brother. I knew I should have said something to my parents, but he told me they would blame me. He knew that would work, as my father had a long track record of always siding with him whenever anything happened in the house. And so I kept my mouth shut, and I lived in fear of whenever my parents might decide to go out and leave us home alone.
I was eleven years old.
I grew quiet. I would often just sit in my room on the floor. I had no idea how to process any of this because I had no experience of even really thinking about sex. I had no idea of what sex was or what it was supposed to be. At that age it simply wasn’t a part of my world. I wondered if this was part of all families, if brothers were supposed to act this way. But inside I knew better, I knew better. I just had no idea of what to do, or how to handle it. I would sit at the breakfast table and stare at my food, then stare at my mom. Then I would look at my brother and I knew he could tell what I was thinking. He had a way of looking at me which would keep me quiet.
One Saturday night my parents were planning to go out again. I pulled my mom aside and begged her not to go. But when she asked why, I couldn’t say anything. I told her I just didn’t want to be alone. She told me not to worry, my brother would be home. I went to my room and waited. When he came in I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore. And this was when I finally figured out that he was lying to me, and had been all along.
Back then I collected comic books. I read all of the Marvel line, and took good care of them, not letting anyone else touch them, keeping them in boxes, the whole bit. But it was sometimes hard for me to make the money I needed each month to buy all of the issues I read. I hated to miss an issue, for in those days there were no comic specialty stores around, you just bought them in a drug store when they came out or you missed them. My brother knew this. When I told him no, he promised to buy my comics for me if I would give in. He promised to buy them for the next few months, even promising to give me the money that night, if only I would do what he wanted. I finally gave in.
I think about that now and wonder why. Was it the promise of free comic books? Did I harlot myself out to my brother for ten dollars worth of Spider-man and Captain America, or the Avengers? Or was I just under his influence and thought I might as well get something out of the deal. Was I still giving in because he was my brother. I don’t know. But I do know that this was the exact point he would make a few weeks later when this issue came up on another night when my parents were away, that it was all my fault because I was willing to take his money. I was to blame, he said.
What led to this grand pronouncement was, on the night in question, just before my parents came home I asked for the comic book money he promised. He handed me monopoly money.
I suppose I should have thanked him for that, for it was the act which led me to realize just what my brother was actually doing to me. After this there was nothing he could say which I would believe, and when I told him that, the sexual abuse finally stopped. He finally started leaving me alone. But I remember that moment, as if it happened yesterday, and in some regards I think that was the moment my innocence truly died, was truly and forcibly taken from me forever. You see, up until that moment, I did what my brother wanted because he was my brother, I trusted him, I believed the things he said. I simply didn’t know how to rationalize what was going on other than through that filter, that he was my brother, and therefore I should trust him. But when he tried to hand me monopoly money, with a big smile on his face, I finally saw him for what he was at that moment in his life. I think that, once he realized I had figured out what was going on was wrong, and that he was using his status as my brother to manipulate me, he decided to leave me alone.
But I still had no idea of the horrors which had been forced upon me, or any idea of the horrors yet to come.
I finished sixth grade. By the time that school year was over I had no friends, as I started to hate everybody and adopted an ideal that I was alone in the world. But I didn’t really realize I was doing it. The simplest comment by another kid would set me off, as I was always either extremely sad or extremely angry. I got in trouble at school, and my dad never bothered himself to try and find out why. My mom worried but I couldn’t tell her anything. My brother and I rarely spoke.
In the seventh grade I was first exposed to middle school locker room talk. I started hearing about sex, girls, all the puerile jokes and little comments from other boys. And then one day another kid called me gay.
I remember that moment as if it were yesterday as well. I stood there, not really knowing what the word meant, but knowing it was meant to be bad. The other kids laughed, there were six of them and one of me, so I walked away. In truth, I wanted to kill that kid, kill him right where he stood. But it took years for me to figure out why.
Years went by and I said nothing. My brother moved away when I was a freshman in High School, and even though he was gone I said nothing. I had very few friends in High School, I didn’t fit in and made no real effort to. I was glad when it was over. I went off to college where my peers tended to be a bit more mature, and when they tagged me as a loner they left me alone. I had a few friends, guys I respected who were in the ROTC program, but I never put much effort into real friendships.
I went through as many women as I could find. My relationships tended to be short, and usually ended badly. I didn’t know why, I just knew I didn’t want to get close to anyone. My junior year in college I married a girl from back home in Dayton whom I had known for six years. But it didn’t last, I was still finding other women to run with. I finished college and went into the Army, running as far as the Republic of Korea, trying to get away from the dark demons which pursued me, demons which of yet had no name. Years later, when I received my orders deploying me to the first Gulf War, I remember hoping I would get over there and become a casualty of that war. I really thought it best that I should die, and put an end to the nameless misery which plagued me. In the years between I had married again, only later to suffer my second divorce. She swore I didn’t love her, or at least that was the excuse she used. For the next fifteen years I went through more women than I can remember, even having a child with one of them. But even this couldn’t penetrate the darkness. Which was sad, for I truly loved both that child and her mother. I love her mother to this day. But I couldn’t make it work.
I had a darkness inside, a secret I kept which the only way I thought I could keep its power at bay was to have a woman on my arm everywhere I went. It was self-destructive behavior, and it led me to acts of which I am rightfully ashamed. There were times in my life when I hurt women who said they loved me for no reason other than I didn’t want them to love me.
There was never any physical harm done, but some of the emotional damage I inflicted was severe, and in two particular cases the ramifications of my actions continue to this day.
And I fought. I went through a long period where I didn’t want to think about what had happened to me when I was eleven years old, and so I repressed it. But it always seemed like everywhere I went, there was someone who could just look at me and know. No-one, not even myself, knows how many fights I got into over someone even using the term gay around me. I didn’t hate gay people, I just hated the idea that someone would think that I was one of them. I sent a fellow Officer to the hospital while shooting during a pick-up game of basketball. We never spoke again. I ruined a company Christmas party one night in Virginia Beach because some guy I had never seen before in my life looked at me and called me gay. The fight did over five thousand dollars worth of damage, and I spent the night in jail for my efforts. That’s just the way I reacted. But I had repressed those memories of those nights in Tennessee as a child so far down in my consciousness, I never really admitted the connection between the two events to myself.
During the twenty-eight years which went by from the day my brother moved out of the house when I was a freshman in High School until the day I left the Army for good, I never spoke of what had happened between us to anyone. I lived for those twenty-eight years, but that is about all you can say for most of it. I lived in places far removed from my extended family, and although I wanted to, rarely saw them. My brother, on the other hand, became a well-known and respected figure in the city he moved to. He married once and had two children, lived across town from my mother, went to church, made lots of money, and apparently never suffered from the same demons I did.
I have been to his church a few times over the years, such as when I would take my wife and children home to my Mom’s in Tennessee for Christmas. I was finally able to maintain a relationship after so many years of destroying them, and I wanted my mother to be around her grand-children as much as possible. However, on those occasions when I went to service at my brother’s church, the First Baptist Mega-Church for Anyone who is Anyone, I would watch how the people came up to him and shook his hand and smiled. And I thought, if only they knew.
One night in 2003, while on a visit home to see my mother, I finally told her what had happened all those years ago. She begged me never to repeat the story.
About eighteen months ago my mother died. My son at that time was eleven years old. When my brother called me to tell me she was in the hospital and I had better come quick, my greatest fear was not that I would be going to Tennessee to watch my mother die, but that I would be taking my eleven year old son with me. My son wanted to go, he wanted to see his grand-mother and try and help her. So I took him. He was eleven years old.
I have to say it again. For the entire trip down there my fears did not center around the fact that my mother was dying. They centered around the fact that my son might be in the same room as my brother. Family came in from all over the state, and my brother took on the roll of family lead. He saw to the arrangements, kept up with visiting times, maintained the death vigil over her bed, singing little spiritual songs as my mother lay in a coma. And after she died, and the family started to break up to go and prepare for the funeral, they all patted him on the back and told him how great he was. And as I stood there, knowing I was the family outcast, all I could think of was, if only they knew.
I suppose this is the root of my questions concerning God. My mother did her best to raise both of us in a church, in the ways of God. I have always been grateful for that, but for most of my adult life did not follow that pattern. I always wondered, especially during the years when I would be home and my brother would talk at length of his faith, and his church, and his relationship with God, if it could possibly be real. My question was simple, at least in my mind, and I always worded it the same. If God actually existed, and he was all-knowing, and he had a personal relationship with my brother, how could my brother not know what he had done to me, and how his actions had scarred me for life? How could it be possible that he not know?
There is a recurring dream I have had my entire adult life. My brother and I are in an open field, just the two of us. We are fighting, and I keep screaming at him “how could you do this to me?” To date I don’t have an answer. I just live with the question.
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