Another excerpt from Informally Educated.
I discovered several new friends at a young age. Fear, Guilt and Worry were their names. They would haunt me well into my adult life and were mean and nasty. I learned as I grew that they were just an extension of normal people. Kids and adults alike see the defeat you carry around and use it against you. That is why I spend so much time trying to convince people who share my background that it was not their fault. The world sees what is happening, and in an effort to feel better, they place the blame squarely on your shoulders.
It’s much easier to believe that you are lazy, which caused you to fall asleep in class, than to believe you spent the night on a stealing spree at eight years old. It’s much easier to believe your being from the south makes you stupid enough to fall all the time. To believe that makes you too stupid to understand the lessons of the day. It’s much easier to believe that, than to believe you have missed at least half of the time you were supposed to be in school.
Writing this book has actually made me feel lucky. I now get input from and have become friends with many, who were sexually abused, Thank you God that was not me. I have learned that there are at least two stages of sexual abuse. I was not physically sexually abused, but I was mentally sexually abused. Sex was ingrained so immortally into my mind that it took years to understand its true meanings. It’s much easier to believe those kids were sluts, or homosexuals than to believe that some adult was raping them every night. Doing it in the one place, they should never have had to be afraid. This caused them to retaliate against those younger than themselves in an effort to regain control of their lives. If you do not think that rapists and pedophiles problems aren’t rooted, many times in the sick minds of those who abused them, well you might just be too stupid to read. If you do not like that statement, I do not really care.
Many red blooded American males point out that no one would have ever done things like this to them or their families. I know, somehow you would have overcome an insane grown up at eight years old. I feel sufficient shame for not being as strong as you are. Many women speak of how they would have resisted Jacks charms. I watched as women from all walks of life succumbed to his charms. Family members, friends of my mother, customer’s wives and partner’s wives came to him. I stood watch as he had sex, sometimes in the same building where my mother was with women from all backgrounds.
Until you stand face to face with the devil, you have no clue what you will do. It’s easy to be righteous when you have never walked through the valley. Beware the righteousness, of the wrong who think they are inherently right. They are the ignorant, the prejudice and the people who make war.
Fear, guilt and worry live on. They move around the earth in the hearts and minds of all the thousands of abuse and domestic violence survivors every day. I have long ago gained control of my fear and to the outside world walk this earth like a real boy Dog. However, it still hides just below the surface. It still rides along with me, my being transportation. Guilt is a much harder fellow to dislodge. I say I’m sorry on average twenty times a day. Now as I speak to survivors and work with others who have survived, it’s almost funny. You get a group of well meaning people together, who have overcome their adversity, to do some good for the cause. You have a room full of intelligent, most time well educated people who keep apologizing all over each other for no reason.
The worry never goes away, and with over 40 % of the population being survivors of abuse; it might account for much of our stress, much of our high blood pressure and far too much of our dependence on legal and illegal drugs.
