My world is Upside Down and Backwards

We joke about it now but the night my friend and I met he said that had anyone touched him that night he was sure that I would have ripped them apart because I felt so protective of him. He said for the first time ever that he felt safe and he poured his heart out to me. It was aweful what this young man in his 20's had gone through. He had been sexually abused beaten gang raped I don't know how he survived as this had gone on for 6 years. He was unable to be intimate or develop and maintain friendships, he was so very alone and in so much pain. He had attempted suicide 3 times and thankfully he hadn't succeeded. He had come to this group as a last hail mary and then he met me. He will tell you that meeting me was the best day of his life and one of the hardest. He told me everything that had happened to him that night. God it was hard to hear. He couldn't have sex with anyone and when he tried he felt empty and violated and would curl into a ball afterwards. I knew instinctively that I could help him but I also knew that it was going to come at a big price. I just had no idea how big a price it would be. I spoke to my husband that night and told him that I had met this young man in so much pain. I told him everything. My husband asked me if I thought I could help him and I said I believed that I could. He knew I couldn't walk away so he supported me in helping him. Neither one of us expected what it would cost us both.

I texted my friend and told him that I would help him if he wanted my help. I had explained to him earlier that he needed someone who could show him what love and sex were really like and not the nightmare that he had endured. He had Stockholm syndrome. He really believed that this woman who did all these horrible things to him had been his girlfriend and that she really loved him. I had him text me every detail of his story from the second that they met until it ended. It was horrible. He is an incredibly strong person to have survived what he did. He still was so much in love with her and still referred to her as his girlfriend. He is incredibly close and protective of his younger brother because of what happened to him. I saved all of his text messages and complied them into a letter. Then I sent his whole story back to him but instead of it being his story i told him that it was his brothers story and read it as if it is your brother coming to you for help. He finally saw her for the monster that she was and he finally stopped blaming and punishing himself. It was his first day on his journey to healing. It was so brutal for both of us.

I set a plan in motion for our healing journey together. I set up tasks to empower him and encourage him. I had him abstain from self pleasure for 3 weeks so that when we met again that he would be so on edge that hopefully that would over power his fear. It worked we were intimate and it was a success and by the time we were physically intimate be were beyond emotionally intimate. We were and still are incredibly close and I love him to death and he feels the same about me but we love each other like family. There is absolutely nothing romantic about our relationship but we are incredibly close and always will be. He trusted me with his life at this point so I had read online from many therapists that deal with Male sexual abuse and PTSD that if you could trigger a PTSD moment in someone support them through it and talk to them and get them to tell you everything that they see and hear it can cure them of them. This is not conventional therapy because it has a high level of intimacy and trust. So I triggered one and it started ad it always does and it brought him back to the worst moment of his life. The whispers that he always thought were voices in his head was him hearing his abusers talking and whispering and laughing at his pain.

I can't begin to tell you how awful it was but I kept on telling him how much I loved him and I held him so tight while he cried and relived this nightmare and that he was safe over and over again and that they couldn't hurt him anymore. I got him to tell me everything that he was seeing, smells, tastes, sounds, the roo, the people everything and as he was getting near the end and coming out of it something happened to me and all of the sudden images from my childhood, long ago suppressed memories came back and pictures thousands of pictures. It was like all these fragmented memories and nightmares all came together like a picture book. My sexual abuse from when I was a child to the physical emotional and psychological abuse. It was like a complete picture of my childhood. I guess my mind decided that was the time to dump it all on me. I pushed it all aside and continued on in the moment with my friend and continued to support him through it all until it was finished. He used to have these PTSD moments at least 5 times a week. I am happy to say that that was the very last one that he ever had. He would have moments under stress that he would start to hear the whispering and he would tell himself how much I love him and that he was safe and he would envision me holding him and supporting him and would feel so loved and safe that the moment would pass without having a PTSD moment until they never happened again

However, I was triggered and my part came out full force and I spiraled. I spiraled bad. I was overwhelmed with things from my past that I had suppressed for almost 40 years. Oh and just an fyi my abuser is dead, died of old age and my friend's abuser is in jail. This started my journey of understanding my quirks and irrational reactions to certain things and the breakdown of my marriage. There was an incident that precipitated this. I have been on my own healing journey since. My beautiful friend has graduated college and went on into a specialized program and graduated from that as well. He has been able to successfully have sex with women and has built meaningful friendships and is no longer taking antipsychotics any more. All through his psychiatrist. They changed their diagnosis of schizophrenia to PTSD which had our health system not been broken might have been done alot earlier. He smiles every day. I still remember the day that I gave him one more submissive task to do. We had come so far but there was one large hurtle and that was with a woman his age. I told him for his birthday that he had to ho and get laid so he did. He texted me for support and coaching and I supported and coached him and he and the 2 ladies had a fantastic time. They are all still good friends.

The day that he was able to let his guard down and have a drink or a bit of pot was amazing. He couldn't drink or smoke or anything or fall asleep in front of any one but me for fear of what would happen to him. Now he can with his friends. So this is where I am now. My husband couldn't help me slay my demons. There has always been a part of me the5 i have held back from my husband. I never felt safe to be me. I always felt so judged by him and now that we are separated I see the pattern that created my inability to fully trust him with who I am. I was wild when I met him and full of life but that wildness and energy was sucked right out if me. I lost who I was sexually I became ashamed of my wants and needs and I just stuffed them all away. My husband was very emotionally controlling but subtle. I didn't see how he affected my self esteem and self worth until we separated and had my own room. I can't even explain how he has controlled me as it was so subtle and when you try to explain it you just sound paranoid or crazy. When I started to fully see the control that he had over me my anger hit and the breakdown of our marriage really started to happen. I am trying to get him to see what he has done how he has affected me and all he does is bombard me with logic.

I don't know if he will ever see what he does. He's nor a bad man by any stretch. Hes an amazing father, he has been emotionally and physically supportive. He has picked me up si many times and has been my rock and maybe took care of me too much. Now that I am going on this journey I have become independent of him. More confident of my own decisions. Have my room set up the way I like it. Just doing things my way. We still live together but I am independent of him and when I feel that he is trying to control me I push back. He hates it avs says I have anger issues yes my anger is him. But like I said earlier I met someone and fell in love hard. We both love each other very much we speak the same language if love but I am older than him and long term we won't work. His culture and family will never accept me. So here we are 2 people incredibly in love and would be together if we could but we can't so we are trying to take our relationship from the depths of love transition it to friendship and I have asked hum for 3 weeks away from him and my husband to just think and I'm slowly getting there. I don't know how to be his friend yet I'm not sure that I can when we love each other so much. I trust him fully and am emotionally intimate with him beyond anything I thought possible. I'm stuck. We are both stuck when I left him he hugged me in a death grip and we both cried and shook with emotion and pain. It sucks big time.