Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I talk to my upset sister on the phone

I am sure many would not write such a memoir but in my case my conclusions involved molestation by one of the men I thought my dad was having an affair with in an already stress filled childhood. I see this childhood of trauma as having caused the chronic fatigue symptoms that eventually nearly culminated in my death at 20 and subsequently crippled me. It took until I was 58 years old even to tell the family what I believed about my dad because I knew this would cause them extreme upset.
I still think however that we as a society should steel ourselves to get to the consequences of molestation. I believe my dad to have developed the split in his sexual feelings not through being born that way but through molestation just as I experienced as a child, only more prolonged, more a way of life among boys on certain ranches and in certain towns where this possible problem was not detected and the dangers addressed.
My nurse sister I talked to recently on the phone was cooperating with law enforcement as a public nurse many years ago to try to get a known child molester apprehended in the town where my father went to elementary school. They did not succeed. So she knows how difficult it is to get anyone to testify against child molesters. I believe my father could have encountered molesters such as this man was in that town and on his father's ranch where transients such as the man who molested me were often hired. My dad grew up camping out with the hired men. I think his parents did not protect him enough as he did not protect me enough. My father also drank alcohol when he was very young which is another known way molesters get at the young, by buying them alcohol and offering them sex of another kind at the same time. This was how the molester my sister knew operated. So she knows these crimes exist, but when such matters touch too close to home she is upset.
I am bogged down almost before I begin to write this memoir for publication by upset in the family about certain aspects of this story. The first version is already in my archives which I migrated from AOL. But now I am thinking of publishing it in book form before I die, but opposition and hostility are stymieing my will to rewrite it as I must do before publishing.
I was upset by the hostility I perceived in my sister, but what happened to me she says has also upset her for years, one being my incarceration in a mental ward while she also was attending the University of Utah along with me. She says she took a dangerous job in a mental hospital later just so she could study mental hospitals and try to figure out what could have happened to me in one I claimed was so crippling.
Actually I think my childhood and the damage I sustained was going to culminate in a life threatening illness sooner or later. I am not sorry the psychiatrist thought I needed treatment, but I am sorry the psychiatrists had the right to shock me against my will, requiring only the psychiatrist's incarceration and my parents' permission. What did they know? I told the psychiatrists something was wrong with me and electric shock therapy might kill me. They didn't believe me, but soon found out something was terribly wrong with me which kicked in before they could shock me. This would not have happened had they not had the right to shock me against my will. I would not have been so severely damaged, and they knew it, which was why they hastened to prepare a paper for me to sign saying I volunteered to go into the hospital. That was done obviously to cover their liability in case someone decided to sue.
Who was going to sue them? I was far too ill to sue anyone. I still had months of recovery ahead from the illness caused by the violence of the incarceration and the threat to shock me. Actually, for me incarceration under armed guard was just another assault, another attack that in all its ramifications proved to be life threatening. And I could not talk to my father at all about any of it. He would just scream and shout. I gather he had finally been told about the molestation and feared what all I would say if he did not shut me up.
My father was certainly not blameless in the early molestation just because he was committed to a life of lies and secrets, but I understand why it was so difficult, almost impossible for him to be honest about homosexual feelings in that society. In some places, coming out with gay feelings has been made so difficult nobody does it. Anybody who has these feelings lies. We have not made very much progress in many places with how we handle homosexuality.
Many homosexuals fight their whole lives to be able to say they have gay sexual feelings without being condemned by people who have not walked in their shoes and do not know how they feel.
I have always felt that it was necessary to be fair to my dad if I was going to talk about this, which I fully intend to be. My sisters are at a disadvantage because they had never looked at my dad in this light as I had done for 50 years. They could not come to any conclusion without more years to think about it, but the main thing I don't want to do is to die without having ever addressed these issues that so impacted my life. I don't have forever to write this memoir now, so I feel I have to try to clear away the obstacles from my path if I am going to do it. Hence I talked to my sister, but do not know if anything was gained by it. That remains to be seen.

8 comments:

Cathy said...

WOW. Gerry my friend, speaking from experience I hope you know what you've opened yourself up for. Family will threaten, cajole, push, rant & rave, but if you feel honestly about your revelations here, KEEP THEM. Don't succumb as I did, to pressure because you LOVE them, isn't that what you did already? You kept things from them to spare their hearts any pain. What of YOUR pain? There's a time to sit down and let the reins hang loose. I'm so relieved to see you've done that, dear Gerry. Bless you.

DB said...

I agree with Cathy. Write the book.

Connie said...

I second the motion.

It's for you to get this weight off...unless they walked in your shoes they have no clue.....

Missie said...

Just remember that just because you're ready to accept what might be, doesn't mean your siblings are. I wouldn't push the subject if one isn't ready to hear it yet. In the end, family is all you have and you don't want to push them away.

LaRena said...

I can see where you will probably have difficulty going forth with your book and talking about all of your perceptions as a child. All the reactions will not be pleasant. You seem to feel strongly that you must make your story public, and sometimes even if one is old this could be a relief for you. I remember Mrs Hall talking some about Bill Isabelle. She seemed to think he was a strange man but I'm sure never thought he was a child molester. It must have felt very dark and dangerous to you as a five year old. You had to have been a very precocious thinker to come up with all the conclusions you did. What I have heard of your memoirs leads me to think that it will make an intriguing book. I can surely understand where a five year old child would have great apprehension talking to your mother about what happened to you. Knowing her, I'll bet she was too distracted with her own problems to even think of such a horrendous thing happening to her little girl, Especially when she was in the care of her father so much of the time. She may have just been too trusting, even though she didn't like Clyde much at that point.

vooman's voice said...

Write the book, write the book, write the book.....

kanyonland King 2.blogspot.com said...

I agree with vooman...write the book. write the book!

salemslot9 said...

I know you
believe your father
was gay
are there any
other signs that
he was gay
besides you being molested?


Herrad

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