It's weird. It's like I'm damned if I do or damned if I don't. I can go on pretending things were not as they were, yet in the process I end up keeping those walls up that have kept me in and others out since I was younger. Or I tell my story as a means of tearing down those walls, but then I end up risking having said too much. I have struggled with this for a long time, but keep coming back to the need to share. I'll try and be brief (okay, maybe it was not so brief), but then add something I wrote earlier this year.

First off, sorry to anyone in my life in the present that reads this and wonders why I never shared or is thrown off by it all. I've done as best a job I can trying to deal with it. These last few years have been incredible in that I have finally been able to reach out and be heard. It is not that I didn't trust my friends, but I didn't want to burden anyone. Anyway, this isn't easy to talk about and there are no right answers.

I was born in St. Paul, moved to Maplewood not long after I was born, then after my parents divorced, moved with my mother and sister to a townhouse in Maplewood as well; there all through elementary school. It was tough times, but good times as well. I was a pretty happy kid. I was also extremely bright and I feel a pretty nice and decent kid. When the chance to build a house in Roseville came about, it was like a dream come true.

I moved to Roseville before the start of sixth grade, and right away got singled out and made to feel like a POS over nothing that was my fault. That really is just the background to what happened next. A couple years later I ended up getting sexually abused by a peer. Repressed it all. Drugs and alcohol got thrown into the mix, probably as a means of dealing on some subconscious level or maybe that is how I repressed it. However I appeared, I was a mess all through high school. I almost ended up in "boys town" (well, some sort of juvenile facility; I was arrested or at least had legal run-ins about a dozen times in a two year span, and really had no clue what was wrong.) Also, I wasn't really aware of this, but I see that a lot of my behaviors may have served on some level an attempt to "prove" myself. I'm not trying to make any excuses, but it was almost like I was a zombie on auto-pilot at times, one who made some terrible decisions. But that was the problem, often it was as if I wasn't making decisions at all.

Luckily, I went to college. I did well enough in school despite all the other stuff going on that that was still an opportunity. My freshman year was one of the happiest times of my life. But then I remembered everything and I fell apart. I couldn't take it and I was shattered. Skated through college, not happy at all and really just a mess (those there know exactly what I am talking about.) Finally finished college. Felt like a failure. Drank to excess way too much.

Today? I carry around lots of shame and guilt over the past. I do have people in my life now who know my story and have helped me understand why things had gotten to where they ended up. Anyway, that is a synopsis and I'm throwing it out here because I have this need to explain, and I also know I keep triggering a lot of anger and it is coming out in some of the stuff I am saying. I don't want to do that anymore. If I didn't allow myself to say what I am saying here, it would still come out in off-hand comments that didn't make much sense and were probably off-putting. I'd rather wear my heart on my sleeve and allow myself to be the real me, not the me that still listens to those critical messages of worthlessness from way back when. No excuses, but just when things were supposed to get better as a kid they got incredibly worse. If this explains things to just one person then it is worth it.

Not sure what else to say other than I know this is something I had to do. I no longer own the shame and guilt over those things done to me that I never wanted. But yes, I still take ownership of my own bad choices, even if I could argue the context within which many of them happened was crap. So this is not about excuses. Some people will probably think I am crazy putting this out there. What I say is crazy is this world we have created where we dump all sorts of hurt upon each other and we are supposed to somehow be silent, and yet sanely get through it? To me that is crazy. No wonder the world is in the shape it is in. Be well. I'm going to try and get back to being human again.

What I had written a few months earlier.