I am in my paternal family’s doghouse – again.  I’m getting the silent treatment from my siblings, the modern version of ancient ostracism.  My big sin?  I’m a rabble rouser,  troublemaker.  I dare touch topics that shouldn’t be talked about in polite society.  This time, it was The Bristlecone Project.

Middle class morality is not about being or thinking but rather about pretending.  I came from a seemingly perfect family: the successful dad, the committed loving mom, the brilliant siblings, the ever present and nurturing extended family of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, the beautiful dogs.  Yet, among many other flavors of disfunction, sexual abuse was rampant in the family.  Maybe for generations.  Centuries?  Millenia?  Who knows.

We humans exercise horrible sexual misconduct.  Why?  We’ll get into that in later posts, but not today.  The crude reality is that 40% of women and 15% of men are sexually abused at least once in their life, a large proportion by people they know.  It’s such heinous treachery, particularly when it comes from someone close whom you trust.  Maybe there’s something similar in other forms of domestic violence (e.g., “maybe it was my fault he hit me”).  In sexual abuse, what if you actually physically enjoy it?  What if you believe you had a chance to stop it and you didn’t?  What if you were expecting someone to protect you and they didn’t?  It’s not to hard to make the leap from sexual abuse to profound and persistent low self esteem.

I don’t consider myself a survivor.  I don’t like that tricky euphemism. My life was never in danger.  I am a victim.  And I say that not to arouse your pity but rather to use correct terminology.  I was harmed by events in my childhood.  The argument with my siblings is somewhat about whether or not it happened and more profoundly about whether it was “abuse” or mere “child’s play”.  It doesn’t really matter.  What matters is the aftermath and what it means to a life.

For over 30 years, I did not think about it.  Left it totally outside my repertoire.  But then one day it started haunting me and I started putting 2-and-2 together.  Why a successful professional at the pinnacle of my career felt so infinitesimal in the context of my paternal family surroundings?  Why the recurring depression?  Why the difficulty in trusting and believing in others’ good faith?  Why the anxiety to find female motherly love?  Why the sex drive?

I now believe they were all related.  The first time I talked to a therapist about it, her prophetic words were “forget about getting any support from your paternal family; they don’t have a coping mechanism and their reaction will be disbelief; you will be alienated”.  I don’t blame them.  These are very uncomfortable truths.  I know my experience and was also told about many others, which I would have probably preferred not to know.  They each have to chase their own ghosts like I’ve chased mine.

As Eckhart Tolle writes, it’s foolish to want to change our past.  What’s happened will always be part of my reality.  I am also aware that my history resulted in particular emotional and mental wiring that I cannot change.  We are not responsible for what we feel.  It just is and it just comes.  But we are absolutely responsible for what we do and say.  I may not be able to avoid waves of depression but I can avoid the situations that will take me there and I can find the tools to exit unscathed.  I can exercise emotional, mental and attitudinal “muscles” that will counterbalance my destructive tendencies.  Tool no. 1 by far: meditation.

For a while, I expected support from my siblings and apologies from the perpetrators, but neither ever came.  I now know that’s ok.  I cannot define myself by the way others behave or what they believe.  I will only define myself by what I chose, do and say.  The beauty of life is that I get to define myself every day.  More and more often now I chose just not to engage my siblings.  It’s ok to to elect with whom I share my time, my energy, my love.  No relationship is obligatory.

Well, this has been Dirty Little Secret No. 1.  With that out of the way, I can now move on to more interesting, fun, challenging, uplifting, loving topics.  It came out first because without it and without dealing with it, it’s unlikely I would have put myself on a path of self discovery and personal growth.

Here’s to life.