Therapon said:
It's not your fault for lots of reasons. The times they knew your age (or the avarage age of the people entering the toilet at that particular time of the day), they would know very well that it's illegal, immoral and illogical. You also wouldn't necessarily have known exactly what it was the first time. It might have been the case that you didn't understand what it was the times following it as well.
I had no idea why my body did the things it did until I was over 10 and taught about it in school.
When it comes to sexual things, if you're regularly and persistently presented with the opportunity and invited against your will, sometimes you cave in - all it takes is for you to be feeling down on a particular day or for the persistent invitations to gradually sway you. That might be considered grooming in a way.
Doing it multiple times when you know what it is isn't your fault either because there are psychological reasons for sticking with what you know, such as escapism by repetition and that the nature of sex is that your brain can tell you not to do it again but your hormones can tell you something else.
These sites might help you I'm not sure:
https://www.victimsupport.org.uk/help-victims/ive-been-affected/childhood-abuse
http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/abuse/sexual-abuse/
I think you're being strong and you have the right attitude working through the effects the way you are. You still have decades to achieve your dreams if you work through your problems now. Plenty of people retrain and change careers through education at your age (or even later at 40).
Hey thanks for the reply. They allways knew my age. I am working on a poem about that. It was all they asked, my age, never my name. But in thinking about it I feel I was targeted and groomed. The public toilets where this stuff went on were allways in places shoolkids might go, and I recently remeberd that they ere allways busiest with adult men 'cruising' around 3 - 4.30 pm, chucking out time for school. Also i wasent the only boy to get drawn into this.
I read the police knew about this practise since 1950 - how come at no time did they think '**** schoolboys go in there?'
But yeh, I had a bad and unhappy homelife and after I dropped out of school this depravity became all I had.
I found a site called male survivors trust and that was really painfull to look at, because when it listed the effects of child abuse I seem to have the extremes of all of them, but up until a few months ago I never even knew I was abused. There were these coming of age movies that normalized and romantisized it, like one I saw when I was about 15 called 'for a lost soldier' about a 12 yr old boy who has sex with a soldier. Then I got a penpal who was gay and we had both been doing stuff with adults from a young age and we would discuss anal sex and how it hurt and gave you a stomach ache and stuff. So it was all normalized.
Wasent really till that catholic church stuff people started to think 'blimey - boys get abused too'. By then I was already 30. So understood what had happened until now.
SophiaGrace said:
I've spent a long time reading this thread. I've spent an hour reading it in fact and I can honestly say that few threads on there touch me like yours has.
First, I want to say that it took courage to post this. Am I right by sensing that these experiences have been painful for you? It's often difficult to write about pain and put ourselves up to other people's judgment (at least it is extremely difficult for me). So, yes, you were courageous in posting this.
I can relate so much to your guilt that you've experienced.
It's like no matter what you do, you can't get away from it. It haunts you and that sucks. Then it makes you feel like the dirt on the ground, the dirt under someone's shoe, like a shitbag without any value. Like there is nobody worse than you and you're beyond hope and redemption.
On another bright note, you have a conscience.
A thought: The alcohol may be messing with your bipolar disorder and worsening your moods. Maybe you already know this. This could help lessen some of your psychological pain if you were able to stop drinking.
Hi SpohiaGrace, thanks a lot for the reply. I think I remeber you from when I used to come on here before.
I can't honestly accept that I had courage in making this post. In attepmting to 'deal' with it I have done some very bad things, and accumulated a lot of regret. I really made the post out of desperation because I have this stuff going round in my head all day and there is not really anyone who understands. Only other underage rentboys and I don't know how to find one of those! (and trying to do so would land me on a register).
Your right that it haunts me. I get flashbacks of the blood after the first time. But somehow I got into it and spent the next 10 years actively seeking out painful sex. I don't really understand that. The thought of being caused pain during sex still causes me to become aroused. I allways felt dirty and disgusting about myself and that did not help me to accept being gay, because I thought I was dirty and disgusting and that all gays were dirty and disgusting. So I could not manage to maintain a relationship. Never had a long term partner.
I do know the alcahol worsens the depressive part of my bipolar, but it also dampens the manic part and I get terrified of becoming too manic. I don't take the pills, they are horrific. You are no better than a rotting vegetable when you are on those.
I know what I need to do, I need to stop drinking, start going to the gym again, get back to my university course and start going back into the world (I barely leave my flat these days). But I just cant seem to do any of it. Every day I drink I think to myself 'this is the last day' then when I do it again I think 'I'll just do it this one more time, just to say goodbye to it'. But I can't seem to get out of that pattern.
I think people don't understand what it is like to feel so worthless that you hardly care about yourself or what happens to you. I am well aware of what I should do to change my life for the better, but I don't care about myself and no one else does. So it's like whats the point? Something might make me feel better but I don't care about me so why bother?
