My story starts as all of ours does, at prebirth. As such, when my mom was carrying me, she had a cyst growing on an ovary that was "putting on weight" faster than I was. As such, it had to come out before I did. This was uncharted territory relative to performing surgery on a pregnant woman sans triggering a miscarriage. Nonetheless, the surgery was a success, but I'm convinced that it did traumatize me (in utero), and that trauma manifested itself within me (as an infant) as an attachment disorder. Most babies want to be held continually; I wanted to be left alone. In fact, I was far happier when I was left alone with my toys.
I discovered pornography when I was around 10 - 11 years old in the form of periodicals stashed behind my parents' house. The photos were a combination of both enthralling and shameful. Reflexively, I shredded these mags immediately after perusing them, but I later regretted doing so (wanting to indulge further). Throughout my life, the consumption of pornographic images has been a "glancing blow" experience for me. I would occasionally invest my time / attention to it, but would come to find that I was only interested for a short stint. From there, I would lose interest completely and walk away from it. That being said, even today, while I don't habitually seek out porn, I occasionally still hear the Sirens' call.
Throughout my childhood, my family worshipped inside the "Christian Taliban" (a term I heard Nate Larkin use once which I came to love), formally known as the United Pentecostal Church. Since I always chose to be a bit of a religious contrarian, I was often considered suspect within their tribe, and as a result, I found myself nursing an awful lot of church hurt.
I married my wife in 1994 (we had known each other for about seven years previously, sustaining a platonic relationship). She and I were eventually told that we couldn't have biological children. Therefore, in 2007, we adopted a little girl. Sometime after that, I molested our daughter. This act started piling on internal shame. This mountain of shame began to coalescence with the walls of isolation I had started erecting from the aforementioned church hurt.
In 2015 our family set out on a road trip. About halfway through that, our daughter became enraged with us. This eventually served as a catalyst for her to divulge to her therapist as to what had happened between she and I. That resulted in my wife and I getting divorced and criminal charges being filed. Say hello to Eddie, the level two registered sexual offender.
Both the divorce as well as the criminal charges added to my shame and isolation. Interestingly enough, the divorce did not bring about its intended purpose (some semblance of healing), and as a result, we were remarried 3 years later. When we were engaged to be remarried, we went to a church where we had several friends. Too, I had known the pastor during my childhood. His reaction to our story wasn't what I'd hoped for. Essentially, the result of that dialogue was him encouraging me to definitely attend church but not the church he was pastoring.
My reaction was as follows: That was fine by me (hugely disappointed / more shame); I felt that I didn't need church anyway. From there, we moved on to another church. At this point, I felt compelled to put boundaries up to protect myself emotionally. We went there for a year and a half with zero (church) friends successfully coming alongside. From there, I dived into Samson Society. In doing so, I was able to remove the mask of shame whilst beginning to take down the walls of isolation.
One of the men in this church we were now attending had reached out to me a handful of times during those 1.5 years. I now chose to reciprocate. We ended up sharing our stories, and I had my first friend in the church! Since then, I have been part of several men's groups where me sharing my story has allowed other men to open up about theirs. I've been able to develop several friendships as a result. I'm grateful for that.
In October, unbeknownst to me, the Facebook app on my phone started sending direct messages. To this day, I have no idea why or how this glitch occurred. Unfortunately, there were two messages sent to one of the ladies from the church. After realizing this, I sent apologies right away (my wife stood beside me throughout). As a result of this, I was given the "right foot of fellowship" and kicked out. This occurred without me even having the opportunity to explain myself (I'd figured out how it happened, but couldn't decipher how to prevent it). Their grounds for giving me the boot was their accusation that I'd made a (digital) pass at another man's wife.
On the way home from last fall's religious adjudication, I told my wife that I was done with church for good.
Regarding Samson Society, I attend virtual meetings, allowing that to fulfill my present church void.
In closing, holidays pretty well suck because I am estranged from my daughter (who now has a daughter of her own). Therefore, we participate in a dance of celebrating independently with my wife carrying the love for both of us. Obviously, my daughter hasn't forgiven me for what I did. As a result, everybody talking about me being a Grandpa can be a little agitating!
Thanks. I'm Eddie.
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