2001-04-18 - 10:48 p.m.

Old Things Don't Go Away

This morning I had another appointment with my therapist. Originally I went to see her for sexual performance issues. While I still would love to find it just as easy to climax as many other guys, more and more I'm accepting what all my friends and my therapist are saying is a much more significant issue: my lack of assertiveness and general trust in my friends.

I'm actually surprised that coming to terms with being molested and feeling free to talk about it with people I trust and consider friends has actually brought a few of them (actually more than most people would like to believe) telling me about their own personal experiences.

I really don't want to say whom or just how many, but in the past month I'm just floored by how many people were molested as children. I've not yet felt comfortable to talk about the details but with a few people.

It is hard. If you've been there, then perhaps you can understand. If not, I guess the best way to describe the emotional feeling is has ultimately second guessing your every thought as well as feeling. It really is something that hangs with you.

I think this might be a common experience, because my friends with similar experiences (at least some of them) have said similar things.

The thought that the people who molested you are gone and in some cases dead, doesn't make that vulerability go away. Nothing really does.

As a Child

The part that hurts the most is I'm very aware I was a child both times, and I really couldn't protect myself. And yet both times the person who did this was specifically there to watch out for me. I can still point to how other adults and friends protect me, but I'm just a bit afraid there always will be a 10 year old wanting to lock himself in his closet in me.

No, I'm not the same person I was a year ago, much less 20 years ago. But those people aren't gone either. In fact, they both here still here.

My therapist actually let me talk about subjects I wanted to talk about and kept telling me over and over how important it is that I talk more. She is now completely convinced that I do have some pretty significant issues to discuss.

I can't help but wonder if maybe everybody is special that way. And why my issues are important. But now when I feel this way I can at least reflect upon another of her observations: that I make it my business to take care of other people's problems in order to avoid my own.

How can I change that? I've taken a job as an environmental engineer to do just that. I spend my life cleaning up the world, a world that I and others really foul up.

She never once said anything against me. In fact, there were a few times I was pretty critical of myself, and she disagreed. So much that she pointed out that these things I believe or do and dislike are actually positive. They are centered and protective of myself.

But some other things she asked me to think about, I just am not ready for. Maybe I am still in denial, but it is just so hard.

I went today not wanting to talk, and skirted the issues, but she did a good job steering me. And now I don't believe I feel any better than I did before I went, with the exception that I know I'm not alone.

If Its Broke, Fix It

The computer model at work is essentially broken still. I didn't get any work on my study finished today. What is eating me up is that Shortround, another engineer in our office, claims he is doing work but he clearly isn't. He is making promises of work to be finished that either has already been done by others or sounds good, so good that our bosses assign more ambitious studies to people like me and ask us to use his imaginary work.

I have talked to Stompy about this. I told her that some of his projects were finished a year ago, and that I don't like working on work he claims is finished, because often it is not. She knows I don't respect him at all. But she refuses to pass this along to his boss. His boss needs to know that he is a morale problem for me.

If I were his boss, I simply would not give him a raise, and I would start to more closely document his work. Fortunately they don't ask me to really work with him anymore.

World War II

So last night, instead of studying I went over to Bronco and Cloud's and we had dinner and then played a World War II game called Axis and Allies.

It was fun, but the experience would have been better if I didn't have that exam on Saturday. Everybody has been wishing me well, and I'll try the best I can. So in another respect I just want it over, but I'm not worried about it itself.

-=-

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