SHUT UP

Procession is drawing attention. Does that mean someone would care about what I have to say? The point is probably that if you want to talk about getting molested, you should have something to say about it. Don’t just say - I got molested and expect people to care. What is it that means something to you about it? Because otherwise it’s honestly pretty pathetic. Everyone has bad things happen and you shouldn’t focus on the bad thing that happened to you in your life (yes singular not plural) because you won’t care about others and blah blah. That’s the deeply entrenched thought pattern I have that slides down into a pool of shame that I drown in every time when I try to put pen to paper.
But people are watching Procession. Or they’re at least being told to watch it by some people. Whether or not someone is watching it is another story. At least, Netflix is promoting it because “look at he we care about men who got molested those pathetic pieces of shit”. I wonder what their crown jewel Dave Chappelle would say about it.

Is this my personality? I’m a molested guy who’s not afraid to talk about it! If I go on the way I have been - nothing published, no one listening except my therapist - this is what I’ll be and that is 100% not good enough for me. I once had a strong motivation about it and I still talk about my ambition to tell the story like a holding pattern. I say that all changes tonight.

But even if it’s okay, if I’m enough, etc etc, I don’t understand that phrase. “I’m enough.” How could I ever believe that? It doesn’t make sense because I know with 100% certainty that I’m absolutely not enough. Me, right now, here, with what I have, could never be enough for anything, let alone deserving to take up the space I do, to express myself at all. No - I need to be a lot more for me to begin to even consider that I maybe am enough. Until then, I fight the shame day after day, minute after minute, and hope they I come out on top before it’s too late.

”ME” STATE OF MIND

This morning feels like it’s all getting started again. Yesterday and before I was stuck in a holding pattern of thinking about the people in my life who wouldn’t support me, or who didn’t “care enough” that I endured a long period of sexual abuse. They shied away from conversations about it, except for the first time I brought it up, and to me that meant that they didn’t see me as a real person, they didn’t care about the things that I struggle with on a day-to-day basis, they didn’t believe me, they didn’t think it was all that bad. And honestly I still believe these things about these friends. It’s not how I would act with a friend and I stand by my long-held belief that I need new friends, I need to widen my net, and that’s what I’m doing.

But today is new because I’m not thinking about these old, shitty friends anymore. I don’t need to think about the contradictions in their actions and words, what they’ve said to me, if they’ve lied to me. I can think about where I’m going, with or without them in my life. The times I’d otherwise spend thinking about them, planning to see them, and enduring the drain of hanging out with them I can prepare take time to myself to pursue these dreams that seem to be at a standstill, living on daily to-do lists that I’d rather sleep through than discipline myself to get after. As my sister would often tell me in moments of loneliness, or when she sensed I needed a self-care day, “Light a candle, make yourself some tea, read a good book, journal and think about where you want your life to go!” I love her for this wisdom - another reason to leave these draining friends behind and take time for me, the ones I love and who love me back.

Where does the molesting fall in with all of this? While I can stop focusing on analyzing the Rorschach Test I’ve created as to who’s a good friend and drill down on why exactly I’ve come to the conclusion I have over and over, what is in the life ahead? Is it time to instead drill down on how to tell my story, externally and internally? To write and write and write, talk, network, do everything it takes to take this into the public sphere, all the while making a valuable exercise for myself to confront my fear in talking about this to the world, to delete this blog since it’s attached to one of my social media handles (which I don’t use), and instead to take the opposite action - promoting it, telling people about it. When I go that route, I feel better and more in my place in the world.

But there’s more to life than my getting molested. Right? There’s the industry I work in, filled with stories and meaning and impact and battling ideas and people. There are the people I work with who are passionate about what they do and who want to share their knowledge and power with me if I’d just take it and take the reins in my own career. There’s my loved ones, whose flaws I so easily focus on but who only continue to shower me with love and understanding. There’s books, films, waiting to be discovered, to have their impact on another person.

So I know what I know what I need and, as Billy Joel, said, I don’t want to waste more time.

CLOSURE

My abuser is sitting in jail. Why isn’t that enough? It’s not even close to making me feel closure with this. With getting molested by him for 2 years. It took me 9 years to be able to say out loud to my therapist - “I got molested.” “When I got molested…” It actually feels relieving to even write it now, somewhere that others may see it. It’s such a pathetic phrase. Getting molested - to me it implies a helplessness, an inability to stand up for oneself, a lack of maturity that one would allow themselves to have this happen to them. It’s a thing that happens to children, no more than 16 years old. To happen to a legal adult, a 19, 20-year old - there’s got to be something wrong with that person. At least that’s what my uncle told me when I revealed to him that - yes, I was molested.

The anger I felt when my uncle told me that was momentous. But how can you get angry when you’re the pathetic man who got molested? Who let yourself get molested? What right, or power do you have over anyone who tells you - you’re pathetic, what the heck were you thinking? Why did you keep going back? If they believe that about you, it feels like they already win. THEY didn’t get molested, so why did it happen to you? And please, oh god PLEASE don’t blame your parents.

“He’s sitting in jail awaiting trial, what more do you want?”

“Your parents did their best, parents aren’t perfect and they make mistakes - what this man did was come along and totally took advantage of kids whose parents abused them, manipulated them, made them feel like they needed to be loved by others, needed attention to feel worth.”

First of all - why are we trying to make the parents feel better about all of this? Part of being a parent is preparing their kids for the world - an imperfect world where you need to be cautious to avoid getting hurt. Avoiding scams, getting robbed, being molested by your coach. So do you think a father who yells at his son, humiliates him, intentionally makes him cry, mixes that with praise and financial support, but is relentless when it comes to the yelling, the pointless strict rules, the making you feel like nothing, the deep homophobia, insecurity, projecting it onto others - you think this father is innocent of all of this? NO WAY. This father is as culpable as the molester.

And when you tell your abusive father about getting molested, he acts like it’s a bonding experience. Finally, my son is opening up to me. He acts like now you have a common enemy to hate, to fight against, to talk about as a problem of the world. But the real reason I told my father was out of desperation. I’d surrounded myself with people who didn’t give a shit, who I didn’t have to be real with, and I’d tried to bury it as deep as possible but this ultimately tended to bring it to the surface in the most powerful way. I’d black out and tell strangers at the bar, hoping for understanding, and falling in love with anyone who gave it to me.

So now the only meaning in my life is writing this down. I want attention for it and I feel ashamed. I’m ashamed of myself for getting molested and I’m ashamed of myself for wanting to write about it and I’m especially most ashamed of myself for, while writing about it, feeling the desire to bring attention to this story that every day I realize is familiar to more and more people. But no one wants to say anything. And no one wants to hear about a bunch of privileged men who “got molested.” My own close friends can barely handle when I bring it up. I get the feeling they think I just want attention. So, I don’t talk about it. I don’t say anything to anyone anymore except for my therapist. It’s all we talk about - but for my friends, who I don’t pay to talk to me, I get the feeling they can’t handle it.

So I’m walking up Holloway on a weekend night, heading towards Larrabee where I’ll walk up to the top, to the left and to the dead end where I’ll perch up on the rock wall and sit. I’ll look up at the stars, dreaming of the day when people will care about my story.

WHERE’D YOU GO?

Tonight in my hometown, I drove around the places that I remembered most from when I was a kid. At one stop, a park in Corte Madera where I used to eat sandwiches with friends on Friday afternoon flex days, I parked my car, got out and walked around. I remembered what it was like to be 17 and full of hope, as cliche as it sounds, and I walked by a friend’s house where we’d sometimes sit in the living room unwinding after the week, sharing stories of teachers, other high school dummies, etc. I happened to look towards the window, and I saw my friend’s dad, sitting there reading, it was about 9:30pm. Too late to go ring the doorbell, but not late enough to wonder what opportunity I was missing by sitting outside, seeing him in his living room, who would likely be ecstatic to see me pop in for a glass of water.

But I was in tears. I couldn’t stop thinking - what happened to me? Where did I go, when did I lose this part of me, so carefree, not ashamed to be who I am, only looking forward to the days ahead? The answer is obvious to me and I wonder - would this part of me still be with me if I didn’t fall prey to a 60 year old coach who wanted to get off? If I wasn’t so stupid to fall for his grooming, his tactics that he’d used for 40 years with other kids? Wasn’t I supposed to be smart, full of promise, life, potential, energy? How could it be that I allowed an old man to convince me for 2 years that hand jobs would make me a better runner, a better person? I was so diligent - doing all my reading for my classes, getting excited about International Relations, wanting to make a difference, meeting with professors after class, getting A+’s - but I’m trying to think, what was motivating me? Did I want him to be impressed with me? Was I so focused on his approval, guidance, and training that I did not even consider what I wanted?

Yes. In all of it, the underlying theme was that what I wanted was not explored. I did not wonder what would really make me happy - how could that matter when I was getting hand jobs from an old man? And sitting with this reality is what I feel made me lose the carefree nature I had as a kid. I suppose we all lose that at some point, to something. But as I sat outside this park, walking on the sidewalk, back and forth by my friend’s parent’s home, seeing my friend’s dad in the living room, crying my eyes out, hoping for him to notice me, to come out and say hi, to ask me what’s wrong. To feel bad for me, to tell me that I am strong, that that part of me is still there, that it will never die, that I was all I needed to be. I cried asking how I would get through this and still believe in myself, why believing in myself was so hard, why I couldn’t string together a sentence talking to my boss at work because all I could think about is how stupid I sound. How they must know that I’m fucked up, that I need extra coddling, that there’s something wrong with me and I’ll never ACTUALLY be good at my job but they’ll humor me as long as they need to before I decide to go somewhere else since they politely tell me that they don’t have room for me to make decisions for the company. I wanted my friend’s dad to come out so badly, and to make myself feel better I made a plan to come by at a reasonable time the next time I’m home. For now, I’ll cry and cry and make sure there’s some uplifting music on the rest of the drive home.

SHAME OR POWER?

I re-read my last two posts, also my first posts talking about my molestation experience publicly, and I was embarrassed and not satisfied with my writing. The first one was easier to get over - my thoughts were disorganized, I even made a few typos, and I didn’t give the entries the care I’d typically give to a writing assignment. But the embarrassment, maybe it’s more like shame, was so strong that I strongly considered deleting the site out of fear that someone would read it and know it was me, or even if they didn’t know it was me, they’d think how stupid and pointless it was, like, why would ANYONE ever think that ANYONE would ever care about someone having a sexual relationship with their coach? That’s typically where it goes - I tell myself that the experience was one I chose, and so I shouldn’t be making such a big deal out of it.

While it was happening, it felt like a choice to me. It felt like I was taking control of my life, as I always had, except this time I’d found a mentor and a fucking brilliant coach who was invested in taking me to the next level in athletics, and who also realized the value of working hard in academics. I’d always had a sort of work-hard-and-you’ll-have-a-perfect-life attitude leading up to this, and the determination that came with it led to my ability to walk on to the D1 university cross country and track teams that I competed on for 4+ years. So when the coach introduced what he implied was a new age way of mental training - getting a hand job after a deep tissue massage (much needed, I knew, and valuable - $100 per hour or more), thinking of a race, focusing on the sensation rather than the thoughts that come with the experience, separating myself from the experience of getting a hand job from my coach and just feeling what it felt like - I could believe that the experience was for me. I didn’t sense any sort of gratification that he was getting from it. This was for me, fuck yeah, I’d found the secret that would propel me to be better than everyone else, something I desperately wanted. I hated that other guys would train as hard as I would and beat me in workouts, in races, and how hard I worked led to nothing but potentially getting cut. I wasn’t special anymore after making the team - I was just the worst guy on the team.

So when I think back to it, I think about how determined I was and how I continued that determination to get straight As, and to improve on running times dramatically. I felt like I was doing everything right, I was in my world, I was in control, and no one could understand how hard I worked, how bad I wanted it, how much I was willing to give up to be the absolute best fucking version of myself possible. These thoughts clash with the feelings I have. That I want to cry when I think of his face, of myself studying really hard, going to practice, being a nice, caring guy, and making sure that I made it to coach’s apartment a few times per week for massage therapy and a hand job. Sacrificing social time, time with friends, time I could have spent getting to know people that really cared about me so I could spend time with him, in our sessions. I remember calling him asking if I could have a session, and him even saying no, we usually don’t do sessions back to back days. Of course he started to make exceptions for me to the point where he’d give me 2 hand jobs in the same session sometimes. One of those times really hurt.

The shame that this experience was something I chose, had control over, and thus which cannot warrant any level of compassion, and is not worth writing about, telling to anyone else, feeling bad for myself, feeling anything for myself other than that I’m a worthless piece of trash for thinking that any of this has any meaning whatsoever.

Ugh - how to get out of this? I’m trying. But I know I won’t move forward by hiding. I’m choosing to listen to the urge to scream this to the world, instead of succumbing to the voices telling be to be ashamed and to not speak of it again. It’s hard when the only one who knew what happened to me can’t even talk to me about it now.

PEN TO PAPER

The overwhelming urge to write about getting abused went on for a few years. It started my first job out of law school and I’d write and write. Meanwhile I was working at this small law firm, lawyers at small law firms know what I mean about that. It means that the firm is often controlled by 1 or 2 people, there’s more room for a cult of personality and of people thinking highly of a person despite their flaws as a survival instinct because it’s your job and you need to be there.

the 2 guys who ran this place had a dynamic which led to mostly everyone getting screwed over, and they didn’t seem to care. Firm photos from the last few years showed at least 3 different people every year. From 4 years down the road, there wasn’t one same person there aside from the two partners. No thoughts of remorse or an indication that their practices were anything but polished and professional.

While I worked here I had a little breakdown and finally went to therapy. I’d been having relationships with 2 people who didn’t know about each other and I was miserable. I’d often think about how I was abused and how it must be causing all of this. Therapy seemed like the solution. And it did make me feel better, even though I only went once a month or so. I continued on, and I didn’t have as many breakdowns and I felt less of an alone-ness to everything. Therapy, plus a now growing thought that my purpose in relation to this abuse was to write about it and tell everyone because there must be others who are holding it in like me and it is not a good thing.

meanwhile, the #metoo movement started and I began to see affirmation for my grief, shame, misery - and I felt affirmed that it was important. I told a stranger in another country who I befriended at a hostel, and maybe some others drinking at some Medellin bars. I told people on first dates if the dates were going well. I wrote and wrote. I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker so I quit my job with my abusive bosses and abusive client to find a job that would lead me to a place where I could tell my story in as many different ways possible, so as many people could hear it and learn that the shame is okay.

Meanwhile, I’m not okay with the shame, I don’t think it’s all going to be okay, and I think about it everyday. The only remedy I’ve found is writing it out.

A SURVIVOR’S WAY

Hi - you can call me Angelo. I’m done not saying anything about this. I’m a pretty average person living, working, trying to make a difference. And I was molested when I was 19-20-21 years old. That was 9-10 years ago and I think about it every single day. What I’m going to do with it, how I’m going to rectify it, when I’m going to finally stand up and actually make meaning out of it. Because otherwise what is it but a stupid mistake I made?

I was on a sports team in college. That’s when I got molested. For 2 years I went for massage therapy and some sexual abuse to a coach who my friend introduced me to, who seemed to cast a wide net and who I’d confirmed worked with some professional world class athletes. I used his help to supplement my official training with the team. This way, I thought and the coach affirmed, I’d be able to use my talents to make the Olympics and all my dreams come true. It ended up being 2 years of sexual abuse.

So I’m kind of dealing with some things…still. I’m going to vent about the life I live and what comes up for me being a person trying to live a purposeful life with a past of sexual abuse haunting me. Your attention is so important to me. I keep wondering - if I got molested in a 1-bedroom apartment, and no one knows or cares, do I even matter?