1. Come With Me On My Journey

I am a mother-son incest survivor. I'm in my late 40's and only now am able to say that. I know it will help me to share my experience with you. I hope it helps you too. If you’re a man or boy who has been abused, I hope you might be able to see yourself in another man’s experience. If you’re a woman, I hope something is helpful in hearing a man’s story. Abuse by women is often very different than it is when the abuser is a man. If you’re a man or boy and anything in my story reminds you of your own experience, please talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be rape to be abuse.

My journey toward healing started when I found some articles from psychology journals about mother-son incest. I read that when mothers abuse kids it often happens while they’re taking care of them. Mothers who abuse boys often use their sexuality to allure them. I remember two phrases: "unboundaried caregiving" along with "unconscious or semi-conscious seduction." That's when I finally was able to see that it wasn’t about how bad I was. “She did do something bad to me. Maybe it's not all just me, and how disgusting I am.” Then finally I started heading in the right direction, toward healing. I’ll share more later, but here’s the big picture.

My first memories are of her and our naked naptimes and a body-part-touching game. I was about six. Then as I approached puberty, whatever was broken in her seemed to activate. Then I had frequent rashes, and she used her caregiving as an opportunity. After I hit puberty, it was voyeurism and lots of incidental touching and brushing and giving me erections and making sure I kept them. This was a feature of bedtimes, when I slept naked under a sheet and lay there with my erection and her leering. All of that felt like my fault, because I was so bad, and so perverted. She taught me to tango with her. The last thing I remember her doing was putting her tongue in my mouth, when I was about fifteen. That stayed with me when I just thought I was disgusting and a sex-crazed pervert I was. I remembered that, and there was just no way to talk myself out of what it was. It was wrong. I knew that. She gave me a French kiss. My first one.

When I was a little boy I searched for incest stories at the library. Most of the ones I found were by women, and the perpetrators were all men. The abuse they described was awful, and there seem to be a lot of overt sex acts when the perpetrator is a man. It’s just different when the perpetrator is a woman. I guess Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus when they abuse kids, too. I thought since I always had an erection hadn’t been raped there wasn’t anything really wrong. Except me.

I’m a middle-aged man from cowboy country, and the way I was raised men dealt with pain like this: ignore it, deny it, laugh at it, die from it, then cry, THEN ask for help. I’m asking for help these days, and I hope you will too.

I felt alone and like a monster that had to work overtime to make itself pass as a human.

I remember reading long ago that survivors "often have confusing feelings." That’s absolutely true. But I didn't realize that “confusing feelings” included the fact that my own abuse was the most arousing thing that had ever happened to me. It's no surprise to me now that I was masturbating daily by the time I was eight or so, and that my own abuse was usually the main attraction in my head.

I sometimes wanted it, what my mother did. I often wanted it, really. That is in fact exactly the sort of thing that the writer was talking about. Except my feelings weren’t confusing. To me it was just iron-clad proof I was bad. But really, I wasn’t the one who sexualized me too soon and against my will, and what else was I supposed to masturbate to? Milfs? Oh, wait…

My sense of humor runs dark. I figure yours might too, and you wouldn’t mind. That’s why I gave the blog its name. I hope you take it how I mean it. I figure there’s enough heaviness to go around. If I’m addressing pain and looking for healing, I think it just feels like wearing a muzzle not to joke about it. To me it feels like defeat, not to joke about something. But when I notice that something funny comes to mind about abuse, if I stop and think about it there’s almost always something that hurts. Humor is a good pain-detector. I’ve learned how to handle the pain better than I used to be able to. I’ve struggled my whole life with substance abuse and bulimia, and disordered eating.

Now I know that masturbating about my abuse the way I was is very common, and some of you can directly identify. For a long time I kept that in the bank vault in my head, where I kept everything that proved I was bad. Maybe I haven't even said that to my therapist. I've said that I liked it sometimes, but never that I wanted it. I'm pretty sure you understand me, or at least can accept the fact that my psyche had that reaction, and not shame or judge me for it. I didn’t pick that reaction. Neither did you, if you have any shame like that.

I wanted to share that in the first post. They say you’re only as sick as your secrets.

Wow, did that make me feel sick the first time I heard that phrase. I’m made out of secrets. I don’t want to be, anymore. For me personally that little non-confession is really as shameful a thing as I know of in my own psyche. For someone else it might not be a big deal, but to me that was very hard to acknowledge. I'm telling you it because you might have something like that that's so shameful that you think it can't possibly be ok to feel how you're feeling. It is. Shame is like that. Different for everyone. If someone abused you, whatever feelings you have about it are ok. Please talk to someone you trust.

When I began saying out loud to a few friends that I was an incest survivor and that I need healing and help, everything started to get easier. It finally felt like I knew what the problem was. It was very hard, the first time I said that phrase out loud to another person who didn’t already know.

You know what? It felt good. It felt like the opposite of shame. It felt freeing and clean.

This was a little bit like saying hello and introducing myself. I’ll get a glass of water and share a bit more, if you don’t mind. Thank you!