Hey, you don’t have to post this or anything, but I wanted to tell you that I understand what you’re going through, and I nearly envy you. You are so, SO strong and brave for getting help, it’s amazing. Inspirational even.
I also started self-injuring when I was around 14, it may have been 13 I can’t remember too clearly, and I am currently struggling with an eating disorder.
Just remember you’re never alone.. you have amazing support with your family, and not to mention your therapists and everything.
Thank you for sharing with us… it is very impressive
“Hey, you don’t have to post this or anything, but I wanted to tell you that I understand what you’re going through, and I nearly envy you. You are so, SO strong and brave for getting help, it’s amazing. Inspirational even.I also started self-injuring when I was around 14, it may have been 13 I can’t remember too clearly, and I am currently struggling with an eating disorder.Just remember you’re never alone.. you have amazing support with your family, and not to mention your therapists and everything.Thank you for sharing with us… it is very impressive”
A poster to Vale’s tumblr.

Makes our blog have meaning.

A second question

 Last night I dreamed that his father brought him to me and he had a very large chunk of flesh taken out of his wrist.  We concluded it was a suicide attempt so we had to take him to the hospital.  When he walked away I could see three angry red slices on the back of his thigh.  When will I stop having nightmares about my son’s cutting?

Correcting a disservice

I was convicted about a disservice I had done to all our readers.  I talk so much about the anxiety and the strain but so little about the sustaining faith that gets us through it.  That just can’t be.  So over the next few Sundays I’m going to post something about what God is doing in us and through us, even in the midst of all this heart ache.

Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.  He reminds me of the absolute truths of His Word.  These truths are something I cling to like a shipwrecked man hangs onto a rock in the deep.  And honestly, even in the times when my faith is rattled, I know that I can go back to Him, and He’ll grasp my hand and hold it firm.

So many young people read and follow this blog.  Their stories are so difficult, so full of pain and affliction.  I have nothing to offer really, besides the fact that they know that there are others on a similar path, but I wonder in the long run what benefit does that give?  I see in their blogs the number one commonality is loneliness.  Well I want to tell you that there is a God who doesn’t want you to be lonely.  He is a Savior who said, I will never leave you alone, or forget about you.  He says he never slumbers nor sleeps.  He tells us that His arm isn’t so short that He can not reach you, wherever you are.  And most of all, He longs to reason with you.. so that you can be as pure as clean, fallen snow.  Could I take you to Him?  Would you allow me to introduce you?  May I join your weary and heavily burdened hand to His?  It’s a choice you’ll never regret.

Therapy is wonderful.  Medication definitely has it’s place.  But these are all temporal, the only reach so far.  All the therapists and psychologists and therapies and pyschopharmacuticals and alcohol and drugs and sex and cutting and starving and binging and whatever else you do to help with your pain will only reach you on a certain level; whether for good or for not so good.  There is only once source of true help… of true relief.  That’s why we say our God is a very present help in a time of trouble.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.”  

~Jesus Christ, found in Matthew 18:28-29

A Selfish Post (whining, you are warned)

Vale had a stumble.  Now, honestly… I expected that.  Cutting is a vicious demon, and it isn’t easily shaken.  But the one thing about dealing with Vale is that he takes his integrity seriously and he has always been really honest.  Until this week.  

Vale has gone two weeks without cutting, or so I thought.  Today he was off all day.  So tired, only wanting to sleep.  He didn’t have a fever, I couldn’t see if anything was wrong.  I started to worry.  Vale has resorted to punching himself when he couldn’t cut, so I was concerned if he might have internal bleeding (and yes I concede that may be ridiculous of me) or a cut that may be infected.  So I started to push.  And he started to evade.  My stomach flipped and I knew.  He decided to cut on his calf, someplace we didn’t know about, and then lied about it.  Repeatedly.  The cutting wasn’t bad, nothing was infected, but we had a deal.  We wouldn’t search him as long as he was honest.  *sigh*  And I’m sure you can guess… this all lead to problematic eating as well.  He said everything is just happening so quickly, with his healing.  Writing a speech… giving it, sending a letter to the editor.  I guess it was a little too much.  

Now here comes the whining.  First of all, I want a vacation, okay?  I wanna go away and just read deliciously fat library books and eat deliciously fat cookies.  Second of all, why does this stuff always seem to happen on a Saturday night?  See, Sunday is church …. and when serious stuff goes down, you have to have time to decompress before going to bed and then, let me tell ya, I don’t wanna get up for church.  Couldn’t this stuff go down on a Friday, so I can stay up late and sleep in the next day?  And then lastly, do you think I want to search my sexually abused son?  How crummy is that?  I hate it!  I laid it on the line tonight.  If he keeps lying we are going to have to continue to ensure his body is okay, and that will include the groin area.  I just pray it doesn’t come to that.  That would be dreadful.  But what is a parent to do?

Cutting, I hate you!  Leave my son alone!!

A Facebook Page =)

Well to expand our audience, I have sent up a facebook page for FTB~FTM.  I was wondering if you would be willing to like it?  If I can get 25 likes I can have my own page name.  After that we’ll see how it grows all on its own, but I would really appreciate if you would help this blog page reach more folks by liking it on facebook.  You can find the link on the right side of my blog.

I’m really not trying to get a huge audience and all this attention, but I wouldn’t mind being some sort of presence on the net so that I can encourage other families.  There is so little out there about boys working through sexual abuse or eating disorders or self mutilation.  I just want to let other people know they aren’t alone.  So if you could help by liking our page and perhaps passing it along to your other facebook friends, I would appreciate it so much.

I guess you could consider liking our facebook page as one small and simple thing you could do to strike back during Child Abuse Awareness Month. =)



~Vale’s Mom

I kept on hiding in the bathroom for about five minutes, but my mom made me come out. Again, coming out of closets and rooms. Gah. My mom told me it was time to let go of the shame and go in there. She was literally pushing me-like…she actually had to PUSH me out of the kitchen. I was holding onto counters, and grasping at doors, but in the end I got out there.
Vale, on appearing in a t-shirt, exposing his arms, in front of his tutor.

What about the fallout

I want to write a series of posts on fallout.  To my surprise, so few people understand what lies in the aftermath of sexual abuse.  I guess they see it as one and done or something.  ”Boo hoo, have a little cry then back to life has normal” and I can’t think of an idea that is further from the truth.  It still hits me for a loop when we encounter something that is seemingly so innocuous, but due to fall out it becomes a problem.  Going to a restaurant, simple phrases people toss out, being at Chuck E Cheese for crying out loud!  These have all become somewhat of a situation due to the consequences of a traumatic event.

As always, I have other survivors and especially parents of survivors out there in mind when I write my blog entries.  No two circumstances are exactly alike, I realize that.  So there will never be anyone else who visits this blog and experiences all the same things as we do.  But when they read a post about something that seems so random yet impacts so hard perhaps they will feel like, “yeah!  Something like that happened to us too!”  Because outside of trauma real uh… normal.. um, .. regular… *darn*…non traumatized people (?) couldn’t relate.  We have our own weird little sub culture, I guess.  But we aren’t alone, are we.

My Very First Speech (Or at least that I can remember)

My son is soooo awesome!

walkingthroughwithvale:

I’m not much of an orator (or a writer) for that matter. I’m just a fourteen year old boy who was sexually abused. I was badly treated by two older boys for a couple years through the ages 5-7. I’m not sure how many times it happened, I don’t even know one of the boy’s names. I’m sure I never will, but it doesn’t matter, It still happened.

I don’t get why people think that boys shouldn’t show their feelings. Why is it not manly for boys and men to cry? Why does it make a male girly or weak to express their emotion? It’s unfair. Babies cry, so do little boys, and little girls, so do teenage girls, and adult women. Why can’t young men and adult men cry? Why are people teaching their boys it is wrong to deal with their emotions?

I recently read about something on the C.H.I.L.D Facebook page that happened on September 21 to a little girl.  She was sexually abused by a man; a man who was supposed to take care of her, teach her, and be her leader. It went to court, and the following is what the defense attorney offered up to reduce the perpetrator’s prison sentence.   First, the defense attorney stated that he hoped that, “this incident will fade from this little girl’s memory…”

Well, guess what, it still happened. That little girl will still live with that in her head for the rest of her life. And even if she doesn’t remember details, she’ll still know that something happened.   

“Rather than requiring the girl to have to testify in court, he admitted what he did,” said the defense attorney. “He’s accepted responsibility and is remorseful. There were no threats, force or intimidation; the duration of the incident was 2-10 seconds and he stopped it of his own volition.”

It’s great that the man confessed to his disgusting sin, and took ownership in court. Unfortunately that is the opposite with me; I won’t ever have my day in court, never see my civil justice. One of the perpetrators who “offended” me denied even knowing who I was. Now, obviously the man in this case knew the girl, because he admitted to offending her. But my offender said he didn’t even know who I was, let alone to admitting the crime!

How about the perp’s acceptance of his actions and his remorse?  The victim also accepts the actions and the blame as well.  In our society, boys aren’t victims; they are supposed to be the victors.  So I kept my abuse secret for six years. I didn’t tell anybody. Well, guess what? Since I couldn’t tell people I have some serious problems. I have PTSD. I have an eating disorder. I have MDD. I cut.  And even now I struggle telling people closest to me; extended family and friends, because society sees sexual abuse as a ‘girl’s issue’.  Eating disorders are girls’ issues.  Self mutilation is a girls’ issue.  Well I’m testimony that they’re not.

Another thing that the defense attorney ignorantly stated is that “there were no threats, force or intimidation”. Are you kidding me? The victim is a little girl, and he was a grown man! There was a sense of force as soon as that child met that man from the beginning! Children can be scared by adults even if that adult is the nicest person on the planet. This is because of how innocent children are, and their lack of maturity to acknowledge facts.  Now, I don’t think I was verbally threatened when I was raped. Even if they weren’t threatening to me, I was still a little boy. Plus, they were much bigger, stronger, and older.                                               

In my mind the most disturbing thing that the defense attorney said was about the abuse only occurring for a few seconds.  Does it matter if it was only 2-10 seconds long? No, because it still happened! And to say that he stopped on his own volition? Of course it stopped on his own volition. Do you think that the little girl had a choice? Even if she screamed he could still do it!

Another crazy thing this perp stated was that he was “a good man who made some poor choices.” No! My father is a good man who sometimes makes poor choices. I hope I grow up to be a good man, but I know I will make some poor choices. Perpetrators are bad people who make bad choices. These people don’t just wake up thinking; “Hmm, I think I’m going to rape someone today” That is a thought that starts with a seed, and then you feed that seed for a long time. You are not a good man. You are an awful man.

Will this girl turn out like me? That’s what I want to know. Will she hold it all in? Will she hurt herself for something that isn’t her fault? I don’t want that to happen to her, and I’m sure nobody here does either. That’s the whole reason we’re here. To support children who have been abused, sexually or otherwise.

If you’re a boy out there, I want you to know that it is not weak to cry. It is not weak to show your feelings. I hope me raising my voice for this cause will make you want to raise your voices, also. I hope this brief oration makes other people understand and care.  

Robert F. Kennedy once said ‎“Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the life of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” I hope that I have sent a ripple of hope to all survivors out there. 

That’s all I’ve got to say, really. Just be supportive of people, you never know what has happened to them. It is NOT a victim’s fault that they were abused. It is NOT my fault that I have been abused. Thank-you all very much for listening! God Bless You!

 

Last Friday (the bad part)

What a relief… until Vale started shuffling the color communication cards that is.  He put the light blue one back in the stack and then handed nearly every single other card *besides* the ‘I’m feeling great!’ card:

  • Help!  Things are serious!
  • I want to cut
  • I want to purge
  • I’m remembering
  • I don’t know what to say
  • I feel blank
  • I just cut

You just cut?  How is that possible?  You haven’t been home 5 minutes and I’ve seen you every minute…(suck in breath) Did you cut at The ***** home?

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Vale, did you cut when you were at The ***** home!?!?

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Oh Vale, what happened??  And then he told me.  

Our youth pastor was talking about how we all are part of the body of Christ, and how each part of the body has to support an help the other parts.  All doctrinally correct, and I support that.  However, he then used an object lesson, and I didn’t support that.  The pastor said, “No one wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘I’m gunna hurt myself today’ and then goes and gets a hammer and smashes his hand..”  To which the other members of the youth group snickered and laughed. *sigh*  So insensitive, so foolish.  Vale was hurt and upset by that, and I can understand why.  I am not happy with this.  Vale and 3 of his siblings are in youth group, that means 4 people are there who have lives touched by self mutilation, 20% of the youth group.  He should have been more sensitive.  I’m trying to be more forgiving because after all, Pastors are only human too.  But I want to slap him!

Since this family is a hunting family, Vale easily found a hunting knife and cut deeper than I had ever seen before.  His arm was still bleeding when he got home.  I don’t know if it was the still bleeding arm, the depth of the cutting, the fact that he cut in someone else’s home or the humongous swing of the pendulum that set me off, but I freaked.  I got so scared.  So quickly.  I called Vale’s dad and asked him if he thought Vale should go to the hospital.  Fortunately Vale’s dad has a cooler head, and knew that it wasn’t necessary.  Looking at those gashes I thought of only 2 things, “How did we go from the light blue cards to this so quickly?” and “If he had cut with his arm flipped (meaning the underside of the arm instead of the top side) he could have been dead right now.”  It was all just too close..

We had such a good day.  So many positive things occurred, such progress.  And then to have such a huge shift, a wide swing in the opposite direction…  Why did that happen?  The instability… I think that’s the hardest of all to survive.  You can’t enjoy the good parts, savor the joy, because you’re always waiting for that shoe to drop.  That’s exhausting.

Last Friday (the good part)

I didn’t get to post since Friday because the weekend went by pretty quickly.  Vale was able to go to his first equine therapy session and he *loved* it.  We are trying to put in place different therapies that didn’t require talking.  He does have Biblical therapy once every other week (because we have to pay out of pocket for it) which is more of a talking therapy, but besides that he has art therapy twice a week and equine therapy once a week.

From what I gather from Vale, he spent his time with two different horses in an enclosed arena making obstacles and then trying to encourage the horses to go through it.  He worked with two different equine therapists who helped design and build the obstacles and instructed Vale as to what to do.  I believe this all was a trust building exercise.  One of the horses is afraid of water, so they simulated water with a blue tarp and Vale had to encourage the horse to trust him to lead her through the ‘water’.

Whatever went on there left Vale in a terrific and hungry mood.  As we got into our car he said, ‘I’m hungry!’  That’s a first in a long time.  Vale just doesn’t get hungry any more.  We stopped for some fast food and he ate really well.  Kinda twisted when we rejoice over our son eating chicken nuggets, huh?  Shows you where we’re truly at!

But above all of that, Vale really had a ‘break through’ (listen to me borrowing pop psychology).  Vale admitted out loud that he hated himself and blamed himself for his past abuse.  I asked him if he could tell me just one thing that he thought he may have done wrong and he replied that he couldn’t remember telling his abusers, ‘no’.  Of course I reassured him (or tried to) that it didn’t matter.  He was a little boy, and no one has a right for any reason to do to him what they did.  I don’t know how much of my assurance sunk in, but I was so proud of him for being able to admit to himself (and out loud even!) that he blamed himself for the rape.  In the past, Vale would have a very nonchalant attitude about the abuse, like it really didn’t matter to him.  That apathetic attitude will keep him imprisoned.

Vale then went to a youth group meeting with our church and came home very excited about that as well.  He discovered there was someone in the church who is in the profession that he wishes to pursue.  He mentioned how much he enjoyed talking to another one of the adults from the church and even interacted with other young people.  Vale’s brother also reported that Vale had something to eat at the gathering which was great!  Vale also pulled out his communication color cards and laid light blue in my lap which means, “I feel great!”  That was the first time since we started using the cards that he has used that one.

Over all, it really was a terrific, progress making day for Vale.  What a relief!

It’s all about me..

If you would allow me, I’m going to indulge in a little self pity.  Today is exactly one month since we first discovered how much pain Vale is in.   I can’t get over how much I’ve aged this last month, how haggard I look, how drawn.  Now don’t get me wrong, I was no spring chicken to start with.  I’m over 40 and have an adult child.  My hair is rather grey, although I could really care less.  But my face was pretty line free.  I had some slight expression lines around my eyes, but I rather liked those because they reflect how much I smile.  But now I wake with this furrow between my eyebrows.  I can’t rub it away.  It’s because I find myself caring this concerned expression on my face all the time.  I find my forehead wrinkled and feel tense and I have to tell myself to relax it.  And as far as those fine lines around my eyes… I don’t smile as much.

I can’t believe how incredibly tired I feel, how much sleep I lost, how early I wake.  I wake at 4:30 or 5 and tell myself, what’s the point in going back to sleep.  Getting to bed is hard because that’s Vale’s most anxious time of the day.  To get him to deescalate takes time and if I don’t take the time then something is going to happen.  If we could start getting him to start with his deescalateion around 6-7 that would be awesome, but right now it’s not a reality.  The weight of the responsibility and vigilance is so heavy.  I can be worn down by 10:00 AM.

Please know that I express things things because I hope that one day other mothers will read my ramblings and find themselves in like company.  I don’t express them because I’m irritated with Vale or I resent the time or the lack of sleep or the aging process.  I am still very aware of what a privilege I have of caring for Vale and taking this journey with them.  But even if you’re a mom you’re still just a person.  You’re a person who wants to be able to go out for lunch and not worry about fallout from the absence.  You’re just a person who  wants to be able to go to bed early if necessary and not feeling like you’re leaving your children in a dangerous situation.  You’re just a person who wants to have date night with your husband, but know you can’t leave your fragile child in the care of others.  You want to take care of yourself but are so filled with worry and so tired that you can’t seem to do so.  You’re a person who wants to say, ‘hey!  what about me?’ and you feel so guilty for feeling this way.  This is your child, you pour your very self out for them and then willingly volunteer to do so over and again.  But it doesn’t negate the fact that you’re worn thin.  If you think about an airplane crashing, the first thing they tell you is to use the oxygen mask for yourself first before applying it to your child.  Because if you pass out you can’t take care of your little ones.  It’s impulse to care for the child first.  I guess, I’m waiting for my oxygen mask.