April 19, 2015:

Went golfing yesterday. It was a great time and I played reasonably well considering it has been a year since I played last. It was good to see Eric and played with a reasonably cool guy the course paired us up with. Saw my club pro from when I was a kid there as well. It was good to see him. Today, I had another insight into myself. This happened on the subway after a beautiful black woman sitting across from me, for little reason, got up and came and sat next to me. I didn’t think anything about this until she actually got off at her stop. But I realized that I am incapable of interpreting things sexually. It made me think back on a lot of instances in which I had opportunity to become intimate. For me, then, I don’t know how exactly I interpreted these actions. All I know is that they scared me a lot. The fears, I know for a fact, come from my my abusers deceptive and extremely abusive advances. For me, it was and probably still remains too painful to allow my mind to open up to the concept of sexual innuendo and advance. I am going to try to calm myself when these things happen, if they happen again. For me, especially during the abuse, it was very much a matter of survival that I developed this defense mechanism. It would have been too painful and traumatic for me to experience these false and extremely hurtful feelings in response to abusive situations. It was a matter of survival that I be able to sense deception. I am still very adept at sensing deception. It’s unfortunate that this skill is not entirely useful to me because the reaction my body and mind have taken to discovering deception and malice toward me is to simply shut down and dissociate. This is a very normal reaction and I have to remind myself that I am not to blame for the way my body responded to the abuse. I am especially not responsible for any of the abuse that happened to me. I am very grateful to God for this new revelation. I am grateful for it because it will give me the chance to calm myself and maybe even change and experience new things. Today, I am grateful for the life I have been given. And even though I was given a rough and broken (in parts) developmental start to this life, I am proud to be alive and to have suffered for God’s glory. I am thankful for everything that I do have in this life. I am thankful for the grace that I have been given and the love that has been given to me. Praise God for the life that I do have and even for the life that I don’t have. Because if I did not have the experiences I have had, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. Again, leaving this post as it is because I have challenged these fears and am moving forward to recovery. Evening: I am thankful for the love of God, all enduring and embracing, able to penetrate the darkest night and the coldest, hardest heart. I am thankful for a priest with whom I spoke in the past, who I saw again after Mass this evening. He is such a kind hearted man and warmly offered me a blessing when I said that I didn’t feel worthy of coming up for a blessing during Eucharist. He so warmly prayed over me and placed his hands on my chest. It felt strangely real. I’ve been praying for Michelle for the past three evenings. I hope that she is being blessed because of them.