Essays From The Shadows
Volume One
These are short essays about survival, trauma, recovery, and the ongoing work of making sense of it all. Each piece is first posted within a survivor community, where it is read and discussed, before being shared here.
1. Maybe Aristotle Had A Point
Hi, my name is Steve. I am a survivor. It has been four and a half days since I last whined about my abuse.
I see it now. I know how it came about. As a child, I was beaten, abused, and betrayed. So I had, some might say, an understandable mistrust of humans, in particular men. And I know that there were a couple of decades there where I was pretty cold and unfeeling towards people.
I think I managed to learn how to navigate and find solace and the kind of friends who treated me better and taught me how to love. But when I am treated with indifference, or realise that a relationship is very imbalanced and I am the one making all the effort, I just collapse under the weight of it. And I guess that is when the damage is revealed, the boy left standing in the rain, wondering where everyone went.
The man I am now should maybe be able to comfort the boy I was then, but I can’t always do that, because I am at the same time the man and the boy, and it will always be that way.
For all our talk of growth, understanding and integration and all the language we come up with to describe the indescribable, there are things we know to be true that make it not quite as simple as the pictures we paint.
I will never be complete. I can’t cure everything. There will always be shadows and there will always be things that I carry and deal with. Over time, I will learn which of these things will always stay with me, and how they can at any moment overwhelm me and leave me alone with my pain.
It is futile to spend my time trying to resolve those things. If I am lucky, I will attain a level of coping that will mean I can function, look less of a freak to the outside world, and just about manage to pass off freak as quirky and get away with it. That is my reality.
I am ok with that. But the process of getting there means you have to face it and learn the list of things that won’t change, and that gets exhausting sometimes. There are a lot of survivors who have it worse than I do, but I am the one who has to deal with what I carry, and sometimes it just feels unfair and too much.
Here is an example, not fully formed, just a vague description. I don’t really want to say this. It always feels a little bit twisted to go here. Things are … I suspect … just a hunch really.
When someone says complimentary, admiring, nice things, they are second cousin once removed from sexual abuse. They are the same playbook of seduction and flattery. You are this, you are that, let me tell you all the ways you turn me on, let me show you why I like you.
Maybe it is the same tone or delivery. More likely, it is how I hear them, because I am pretty sure that you have no designs on me and little interest in seducing me. When I lay that fact against the words you are saying, all logic and common sense tell me it is my problem, and I don’t know what to do with it.
I have no way of interpreting it differently, and I think it has been this way for a very long time. Tell me I was wonderful on stage. Whisper in my ear how great I smell. Tell me how I look tanned and that shirt makes my eyes look great. Tell me how I am excellent at this or good at that. Tell me I am special. Tell me how good my skin feels. Tell me how much you like to watch me cum. I think that is my reality.
Imagine if you will a boy who was only ever touched for sexual reasons. Not hugged for comfort or held for safety or hair ruffled in affection. Just sex. Every touch is a starting point to something ending in heavy breathing, sweat and orgasm.
You can teach a boy to count as easily as you can teach a boy to gasp with pleasure. Once skills are learnt they are always there. I can still count to one hundred and twenty-seven.
Trauma noise is not like when someone struggles with anxiety or can’t cope with wide open spaces. It is, amongst other things, internal hijacking of your emotions, sexual responses, memories, dreams, and your ability to handle a relationship with another human. Each survivor has a bespoke set of symptoms and reactions.
There are common themes and general things we do know about. Often, they are things we dread talking about because of how it makes us feel to discuss them, confess them, or even just say them out loud.
There is no simple solution or answer, no one medication that treats us. How do you prescribe for something that entwines your very being and leaves you alone to make sense of what is left?
I think I have days where the emotional haze is all I can feel. I could cry for hours but I know it achieves very little. I stopped expecting people to rescue me from about the age of seven or eight I think. So I am used to this, it is just something I endure. i don’t think it is depression, in fact I am sure it isn’t.
Trauma noise is more complex than that. There is no trite answer or label that chases these blues away.
Just a day when I want to put down the emotional luggage and not be this person for a few hours, but survivors never get to do that.