Best of luck on your quest. Healthy is good. I'm a little uneasy myself about people cruising me, but it's luckily not too intense. It feels good even though my commitment to my partner and his to me means I won't be responding.Originally Posted by tugon
BalllessJeff
I really feel your pain, Tugon. I am considerably older than you, a recovering alcoholic (14 years sober) and have always had pervasive feelings of guilt and shame. I am convinced that a majority of people do, whether male or female, gay or straight, intact or castrated. I've found that forgiving others helps me tremendously, as does consciously, actively loving. I wish you the best, Tugon and hope you are finding contentment.
I really feel your pain, Tugon. I am considerably older than you, a recovering alcoholic (14 years sober) and have always had pervasive feelings of guilt and shame. I am convinced that a majority of people do, whether male or female, gay or straight, intact or castrated. I've found that forgiving others helps me tremendously, as does consciously, actively loving. I wish you the best, Tugon and hope you are finding contentment
Thank you poppop. Congratulations on 14 years of sobriety. I can certainly share the shame and guilt with you. The shame is still a stumbling block for me. I am trying to learn not to play back every negative message I have always heard. The shame can be profound at times and I am surprised I have been able to open up here. Even when I post something for humor my first inclination is to delete it. Hitting the submit button takes a lot of courage sometimes.
I also agree with you in the fact that forgiveness can be a help. Of course I did not have a chance to forgive my father as he wanted nothing to do with me in later years. I of course have forgiven him but was never able to do it face to face. I always wanted to ask him why he wanted to be so mean to a little boy. I am unable to forgive the man that physically and sexually assaulted me for 17 1/2 years. I try to understand what might have caused him to treat me that way and understand why the shame kept me trapped in that situation. I was too ashamed to ask for help. In the five years he continued to call after I was physically free of him he made a comment that he did not understand why I let people do the things to me that I did. I reminded him that when there is a gun to your head you feel there is no choice. There was a time he wanted me to call him daddy and "suck the cock that made me". I thought that his childhood and mine might have been quite similar but I was locked in passivity and he became the abuser. He has never shown remorse so I am unable to forgive him but I do feel sorry for him. Maybe one day I will be a good enough person to forgive him. For now I still live in fear as we are both in the same small town.
Now that I have vented all of that I must say that I am finding contentment. I have some truly excellent friends. I am in a mutual, loving relationship. I am getting to know my true self. I receive positive support from yourself and other members of the EA. Being a part of this community has helped more than words can say.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
We forgive our abusers for our sakes, not for theirs (though we do not begrudge them whatever benefit they may receive from our forgiveness). Our anger and our vengefulness are afflictions on our lives. We can end those afflictions only by forgiving.
And similarly we do not become good enough to forgive. We forgive as a desperate act of self-defense, and then we discover that we have become better because we are no longer so much afflicted.
This philosophy is expounded in great detail on http://smartrecovery.infopop.cc/
.
I have been thinking much about forgiveness lately. As of yet I have not been able to forgive my abuser. Partly due to my struggles to return to a somewhat normal life. He no longer knows where I live or my phone number but I do not know if I am safe. I still spend a lot of energy looking over my shoulders and always watchful of who is next to me in a car or who is behind me when I pull into my apartment complex. The last time he called was in mid 2002 and the theme of the conversation was if I was over my mood and ready to meet with him again. He said we needed to talk. Meeting him for a talk was never a good time.
For years I was told I was going to be killed and I actually stopped living for the most part. Why work to achieve anything if I was going to be dead. I just went through lifes' motions. If I went out with friends I always knew I better be home before he might call. Usually at bar closing time. It was years before I did not wake up at 2:30 AM and stare at the phone in fear it would ring. Since I lived at home and threats toward my family kept me in line I would not go on vacations. He would call at night to say he put a bomb in my car and I would always have mom wait in the house while I started it if we were going somewhere together. I became a prisoner of fear of what he might do if I was not available to him.
I was also becoming something I did not like. Before castration while he still had a hold on me I was fantasizing about how to kill him. I who had always been non violent and prided myself on that goal wanted to kill. When I began to deal with all that happened after I was away from him and after surgery I realized how dissociated I had become. I truly thought I was losing myself. I do not know how I knew this but I was concerned that if I mentally escaped one more time I would not be back. Knowing that being raped again would be disastrous I met with my sisters individually. I told them a little about what had been going on and if he tried to force me again at gunpoint I would take the gun away and shoot him. I wanted them to be able to explain to my mother why I had to kill. This peaceful man was ready to kill and I knew at the time I would feel no remorse.
I have made good progress so far but I have a long way to go. I no longer suffer from post traumatic stress the way I did. I have an exaggerated startle response that causes me to be jumpy. I flinch when the toaster pops or any sudden noise. I flinch if someone reaches out to put a hand on my shoulder. If someone comes up and hugs me too suddenly I panic. I still have memory issues. One day I will remember a peson when a friend asks but the next time I may have no recollection. I have very little memory of life during the times of the worst abuse. My partner will talk about when we first met and some of the nice things I did for him and I have to take his word for it. There is just a lot missing.
After I was away from him for a year or more I had to try to remember the things I enjoyed doing. Where did I used to go for fun. Oh I have not been to a museum for years. I had to rebuild my life and learn to live again. I could travel and see friends. It would be very easy sometimes to be a recluse but I try not to let that happen. I began to take my mother to Quebec. That way I could have a good time and not worry about her safety. I still have a long way to go but I am doing better than I ever thought I would.
I still have a few very dark days where the struggle seems too much and I wonder why he never had the balls to pull the trigger. Maybe when the dark days are over and I have healed some more then maybe I can forgive.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
As a eunuch I am now realizing which parts of my brain/self were feminine and masculine. Feeling neither male nor female but when I had testosterone I thought I would react more like a man. Input from media, peers and education reinforce certain behaviors that made me as a eunuch feel even more confused. Instead of looking within myself to find the truth I believed the messages I was receiving. I think for me and many others that I was never able to follow one role completely.
In an intro to Sociology class the professor taught us the differences between men and women. In this class the genders were generalized to make the lessons less in depth. One of the points had to deal with the differences in how men and women handle criticism. Her research found that when a man is criticised for a job he did poorly he can accept that yes he did it poorly. The criticism would not affect his sense of self. She then said when a woman is criticised she takes it personally and thinks less of herself. This has been a pattern of my life when I have been criticised. I think less of myself and it is bothersome for awhile. One of the things in my life I am working on is to have a stronger sense of self so I am not so deeply affected by criticism.
Another statement I would hear had to do with abuse. Men who are abused are likely to be abusers. Women who are abused will seek out abuse. Knowing I was abused I was fearful of becoming an abuser. Realizing I was in an abusive situation I thought that I was following a feminine path. I now know that male or female if you are abused you can become either an abuser or a victim and gender may play a role but it is not cut and dry like the messages we have been given.
As a eunuch I want to work to get to know my true self. I have a lot of personal inventory to do. I have to discard the things that no longer fit in my life. I am who I am and will not worry about fitting into accepted gender behaviors. I need to look inside myself to know myself instead of relying on feedback from others. Feedback from others is needed but I can not base my sense of self entirely on what others think. I need to think well of me and learn to care about me.
Last edited by tugon; 06-25-2006 at 02:36 PM.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
One more installment in my ongoing therapy. It has been helpful to get it all out, reread it and let some of it go.
One of my ongoing struggles has been with memory. I began thinking more about memory after a thread was started regarding memory. Some memory issues have been attributed to a reduction in testosterone. I do not know how much that has affected my abilities but I feel some of the trauma I have experienced has had a greater effect. To this day I have large gaps in memories.
My impression of my problems stems from repressed memories from childhood, dissociation/compartmentalized memory and false memory. These are the names I have given them and not being trained in pshychology there may be better terminoology. These terms fit how I feel about them.
The first time I was shocked by remebering an event was about 10 days after the first time being raped at gunpoint. I dissociated during the event and the memory went somewhere for awhile. Even though I cared for myself due to the rectal bleeding the cause was not really a concious thought. I was at work and sitting alone with a nurse co-worker when I blurted out I had been raped. She was shocked by this as I was. That was the moment that the event became concious knowledge for me. I know now that the mind has many ways to protect itself from trauma.
During the abuse prior to the rape my mind seperated into two lives for a lack of a better expression. During the day I did not acknowlege that anything was wrong in my life. I would date and have relationships but could not put a finger on why I was depressed. Then at night when he would call and abuse me I was aware of this ongoing problem. I went to a therapist once and said I was depressed but had no reason for being depressed. I never complained to my friends because it was not really concious thought most of the time. After the drop in my testosterone levels my brain was not as good at keeping those events seperate for me.
As I have been healing and remembering the past I am only able to remember small bits at a time. It is like there is a safety valve and I can not remember it all at one time. Not all my memories are available to me at the same time. One morning I woke up and the memory that surfaced was all the times he would put a magazine over my face because I was so ugly. Another time I would remeber how he would make me beg. What is strange is not how the negative memories would surface periodically in small doses but how it affected memories of other events during the abuse times. My memories have linked together in odd ways. They seem to be in seperate compartments and I can not always recall someone or an event I might have talked about two days prior. Friends get frustrated with me when I know someone one day and not the next. I might bring the person up a week later and they will say I thought you could not remember them. There are times information is just gone or at least not accesible. Most of these memory errors are during the 17.5 years of abuse and my current memory is better.
My false memories are from internalizing all the negative things he has said to me. I had heard the put downs so much that I began to repeat them about myself. I would say horrible things about myself that were not true but at the time I believed it. I reached a point where I thought so little of myself that I would stop visiting friends. Oh if they only knew what I was really like they would not want me in their home. I would not stand up for myself because I was convinced I deserved any neagtive thing that happened. I have been with a number of men but he had me convinced I had serviced over a thousand. He used to tell me no male was safe around me. My partner when he met me thought I was the kindest most decent person he had ever met. He could not figure out why I would speak so badly about me.
The work I have been doing for myself is a personal inventory to sort out truth from fiction. Yes some of my behaviors have not been good but no where as bad as I was made to think. I listen for feedback from good people. I am asking friends about events during those years to try and establish a time line for memories. I am hoping once I can reconstruct those years I will be able to remember more clearly all the good things that have happened. With the gaps in memories I have lost the good with the bad and I want to reclaim the good.
Last edited by tugon; 07-16-2006 at 09:15 PM. Reason: add two sentences
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
This is a duplicate post that I also wanted to post in Desperate to be a Eunuch.
Sex Addiction Future
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of my deciding points for castration was based on my sex addiction future. I want to first say I have never been attracted to children. The occasional 17 or 18 year old boy but no children. I was always surprised when I would read of elderly grandfathers and uncles that would molest children at an age when you would think that the sex drive would be over. I looked forward to old age and the loss of drive before I found a way to be castrated. So I was surprised that these men were not only active but abusing children.
I began to look at myself and wonder if my addiction goes unchecked what will I be like in my 70's and 80's. As I have mentioned before when I have talked about addiction the drive to greater thrills and bigger risks was getting out of hand. I began to wonder how I would feed the addiction as I aged. Would I one day turn to children to fuel my desires. At the time I could not imagine it but in the same breath I could not imagine some of the other things I was doing.
I do not know how far I might have gone down that path. I do not know if those elder men were pedophiles all along and lost their self control. Castration was important to me because I did not want to find out where I would end up as a 70 year old addict.
__________________
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
I will have been a eunuch for 9 years this December and I rarely think of the old me. I am very comfortable with my emotions, desires and my new values. I am truly myself. I remember my behaviors but not the feelings and desires that drove me to do the things I did. I am in control.
As time passes I also have trouble sharing with new eunuchs or men planning to be eunuchs. I have a difficult time seperating emotions from abuse with emotions of becoming a eunuch. I was becoming a eunuch as I was escaping from an ugly barely human being. I have not had physical abuse since my surgery so it was a doubly happy time. Also life is better not spending time dwelling on the past.
Of course I have many to thank for helping me to this point. My close friends who watched me struggle with a life that did not fit and over looked a lot of suspect behaviors with compassion and love. A few lovers that were kind. I also must thank my Love, best friend and soul mate. He has ridden my emotional rollercoaster without complaint and offered great insight. We are entering into the straight calm path where we can truly enjoy each other and grow together. Of course all that have shared on the EA have been very important to my new found peace and happiness. Many of you have validated my emotions and made me realize I was on the right path. I have made some excellent friends that are very dear to me. Thanks to those who make the EA a safe place to learn and grow.
Thanks to all who helped me become a eunuch no longer desperate.
Last edited by tugon; 09-01-2006 at 04:13 PM.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
Wow!! Truly from the heart. It sounds like you have achieved inner peace. Congratulations. However, I'm not sure that I understand what you are trying to convey with the following sentence:At some point in the future I hope that we have an opportunity to meet and talk in person. I feel like there are some parallels in our paths, but that you are eight or so years ahead of me.As time passes I also have trouble sharing with new eunuchs or men planning to be eunuchs.
BB
BudleyBare I did not mean I would not share but I was questioning how accurate my memories are now. I remember the physical aspects of surgery and physical changes but the emotional changes are vague. I remember becoming a eunuch was the high point of my life at the time. I was happy to be a eunuch. I had emotional ups and downs but I attributed that to post traumatic stress and the problems people who have been raped and abused must deal. Even now those issues are fastly fading into the past.
Today I am wholly a eunuch. I have found my gender and my place in the world. I have found a wonderful community. I spend little time in the past and still more than I should. I have changed from victim to surviver to living again. I find that men who have become eunuchs in recent years have better memories of the experience and changes than do I. I will certainly answer any questions that I am asked but the further from the experience the less acurate the memories of the changes.
As I have said before I would very much enjoy meeting you and I am very glad you are back and posting again.
Last edited by tugon; 09-01-2006 at 04:48 PM.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
Thanks for the clarification. I was hoping that such would be your response.
Isn't it neat having such a caring extended family (well, almost all of those here at EA)!
Consequences of Testosterone
As I have mentioned before I do not think I would be alive if I still had testosterone in my system. Prior to castration my life was in an uproar. The combination of addiction, emotional pain, physical and sexual abuse caused my mind to snap. Snap may not be a good word but the symptoms were that all that was done to me or I was threatened with began to take on a level of excitement. I began to be excited about thoughts of being murdered during sex. My abuser had threatened me with death for many years now and my mind in order to survive converted it to sexual thoughts. I still hated him and did not want to be with him. These thoughts were coming out in my contact with others. Many things he would do to me I began to request from others. Of course this caused many people to drift apart. They could not understand why I offered them the opportunity to do anything to me they wanted. Kick me, slap me, beat me, verbally abuse me and kill me. I was in such pain death seemed like a relief and also had a unique sexual attraction that I do not understand to this day but I am free of those feelings.
Once again phone sex figured into these fantasies. The fascination I had with being murdered in a sexual way could better be explored with extreme phone sex services. As I have said most people would find ways to distance themselves from me when I would bring this up. I also burdened friends and sex partners with these thoughts. I did not realize at the time that my friends were hurting for me and being hurt by my trying to involve them in this. Through all this when I met someone in a strange situation I would try to find their interest in all of this. I realize now how lucky I am that I did not find the wrong person who back then would have seemed like the right person.
My partner has been with me off and on through all of this ugliness. He will sometimes remind me of how I used to be to show me how far I have come. The other day he reminded me of the things I used to ask him to do to me. I am now embarrassed by all of this and I am glad he had the good sense not to do what I asked. He knew I said I would be castrated but he thought it was more talk until the day I told him it had been done. As the testosterone levels dropped and al the weirdness went with them he was so pleased I would no longer go to the “dark side”. He credits me with teaching him respects. By my example of having no respect for myself he learned to respect me and in turn respect himself. He always said I was the nicest kindest person he had met and I would speak horribly about myself and ask for terrible treatment.
I am glad to be alive. I am happy I no longer feel that way about myself. My desires are now for my partner and not for death. I am glad I no longer have a dark side and the pain it caused the one whom loves me. I thought I would share my hitting bottom so others can no there is always hope. If I could not be castrated I am sure I would have found someone to ease my pain in the more drastic way.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
For Tugon -- Thank you for sharing your inner feelings and thoughts.
BB
In preperation for the future I am continuing my intellectual and emotional housekeeping. I misunderstood something my partner was telling me and I chose that time to fully vent my insecurities and fears. None of which have been caused by him. We have been dealing with distance and sometimes that is tough. By the end of the year he should be living here with me if all goes well. I want to make room in my heart and mind for him so more emotional baggage has to be thrown out. As a eunuch I have an incredible capacity to love him and need to rid myself of the things that have kept me from loving myself. He told me a while ago that if I saw myself through his eyes I would fall in love with myself.
As a eunuch in love with a man I was never interested in cheating. I only want to be with him. It is in my heart and mind that someone else resides. The one person who as an adult has caused so many of my problems. My abuser and rapist still fills those sleepless hours in the middle of the night. I want him gone. I can now easier turn thoughts to a good man and happy thoughts but I do not like that he still haunts me. I also want to lower the walls that I put up during those days. My partner deserves the best of me. My nightmare has already had too much of my life and I do not want to give him anymore.
When I was first escaping from the hold he had on me I wrote a poem. I wrote it to be theraputic. Some of it has changed but was true the first couple of years after castration. I am posting it here because I will then delete it from my computer. B loves me so much that reading about my pain causes him pain. He might find it when using the computer. He certainly knows about all of this and has done more for me than anyone along my healing path. I originally wrote it for a local anti rape and violence campaign but never submitted it. Here it is.
Violence is all I knew for 17 ˝ years
Your threats and weapons worked me
into submission
Too many beatings and degrading acts
I can still feel the gun against my head
when you are haunting my mind
I learned to ask for pain so you would deny
me what you thought I wanted
2:30 am and the phone would ring with the
order to be ready
One night you asked for company and I was
anxious to see some humanity
In five minutes there was a gun against my
head as you tore into and raped my body
You would hold the gun to my head and tell me
tonight was my night to die
My heart and soul had been dying for years
You made me beg for you until I was worthy
I prayed to God while I was begging and each time
you called I knew my prayers were not answered
You would kick me in the crotch if I became erect
You would kick me in the crotch if I were not erect
In all those years it did not matter what I did
I was always wrong and deserving of punishment
Your violence trained me to silence my voice
Your punches and kicks could not cause me to utter a cry
I swallowed my anger and my no’s fell on deaf ears
I learned you would become more violent if I complained
You complained for 17 ˝ years that I was no good
I was so ugly you had to cover my face with porn mags
If you were not in the mood you would call to tell me
there was a bomb in my car
After so much pain I would hope when I turned the key
One night you called and called me by my name
I told you that you had the wrong number
I had become so accustomed to derogatory terms that I
did not recognize my name spoken by your voice
In 17 ˝ years I never heard you speak my name
You called for five more years wanting to know if
I was over my mood
I have not been with a man since and I am now afraid of sex
I internalized my hate for you and hurt myself worse
than you ever did
If you recognize yourself in this I will probably be murdered
Today I am letting these memories go. I have nothing left to learn from thinking about them and the pain is quickly being replaced by love and happiness.
Last edited by tugon; 10-04-2006 at 06:42 PM.
Tugon (two gone)
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
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