I PROMISED MYSELF that things would be different this time. I was prepared to confront my past head on. I would tell those closest to me. I would seek out help. I had something in my corner even stronger than me. I had something to live for, this newfound me.
I prepared to explain to those closest to me all about who I was and what had happened to me. I hoped they would understand. After all, they had seen firsthand the tensions at play within me, my unexplainable behavior. They must have suspected something like this. But not everyone was prepared for what they were about to hear. One of the first I told was stunned.
“I’ve got something I need to tell you, no, something that I want to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I, uh, it’s like this…”
I dove in and described all about what had happened to me and how it had affected me. I made clear that I knew I needed to get help.
First there was shock, then confusion. After an awkward silence, the first words in response were, “That’s a little old to be abused, isn’t it?” Our conversation was effectively over. That response caused even more pain for me, and to this day I don’t believe that the person understands the pain that the response caused. To me it seemed that the person saw me as being broken, defective. Instead of being a first step to recovery, coming forward had just reinforced all of the internal questions and self-doubts I had carried with me for so many years. Coming so soon in my process of coming forward, it was like being immediately slapped back into the past. Maybe I was broken and defective. Maybe I was wrong to try to confront my past.
At the same time as I was coming forward about my past, my marriage was increasingly falling apart. I had let down my wife, and my inability to be all that I had appeared to be had no doubt disappointed her. My failure to address my past had left me as emotionally unavailable and prone to self-destruction as I had been before I had met my wife.
With everything crumbling around me, with me coming forward it not going as well as I had hoped, I worried that I might again be tempted to kill myself. I knew I had to keep moving forward.
I contacted a medical doctor from my past, a friend in Toronto whose old-style family practice meant that he worked virtually around the clock with a packed office. The day I showed up to see him was no different—his waiting room was full of patients. He called me in, we chatted briefly, and he clearly realized that whatever I wanted to talk about was serious. He sent all the other patients home, and we spent the remainder of the day talking.
This time things went far better than I could ever have hoped. Dr. David Greenberg saved my life that day.
Speaking with Dr. Greenberg made subsequent disclosures easier. When I later revealed my sexual abuse to my brother, my sister, and my mother, all were supportive. I was surprised to discover just how much I was loved. Even my mom was there for me, as much as she could be.
As for my wife, our relationship had become increasingly difficult long before I finally got around to telling her my secret.
DR. GAEL MACPHERSON’S OFFICE was on the third floor of a medical building in Oakville. It had a slow-moving elevator that took more time to get to the third floor than it would have taken for me to walk up the stairs, which I could never seem to find. The carpeting in the building was bland, the paint was bland, and the whole place smelled of disinfectant cleaning supplies, typical of a building dedicated to dealing with the diseased. But when I entered the doctor’s office, I stepped into a different world, one of color, warmth, and nurturing.
I sat down in the waiting room Dr. MacPherson shared with another doctor. There were reading materials for patients of all ages, toys to be played with by bored children. My first decision of the day: do I go with adult reading material or children’s toys?
When I called to make my appointment I had not mentioned sexual abuse. I had said that I wanted to become a better partner in my relationship. I wasn’t able to just walk into a therapist’s office and start spilling my innermost secrets. I, a person who trusted nobody, needed to find someone I could trust to help me.
About five minutes in, I sensed that Dr. MacPherson was going to be somebody I could trust, but even then it seemed premature to get into anything of substance. Almost at the end of our hour-long session, almost as if it were a teaser of sorts, I let her in on why I was really there: “But the thing is, if we’re going to get anywhere in figuring me out, we’re probably going to have to talk about the years I was sexually abused when I was a kid.”
After a slight pause, she slowly and clearly responded: “Yes. I think that would be a very good idea.”
I got up, put on my jacket, and asked if I could see her the following week at the same time. Without batting an eye, she said, “Of course.” I knew that she knew that was the real reason I was there.
At the same time, I was also continuing treatment with Dr. Greenberg, who was introducing antidepressants and other medication to bring me into a more engaged and responsive state. To me, accepting medication carried a stigma, even though I was deeply depressed and struggling to recover. Through proper treatment coupled with psychoanalysis, I have become a convert, but I initially struggled very hard to accept medical intervention in addition to psychoanalysis.
And so, not that long after the night on the bridge, I had, just like that, assembled the makings of a team that would work to support me in my recovery. I had my psychologist and my medical doctor. A psychiatrist would be added later.
I could only ask myself why I had waited so long to get the treatment I so badly needed. I had to keep reminding myself, and my doctors had to keep reminding me, that it wasn’t as if I had ever rejected treatment. I had simply been unable to assess and accept that I both needed treatment and, more importantly, deserved treatment and recovery, a better life. For me to see that I deserved a better life, I needed to accept that what had happened to me wasn’t my fault, that I was a victim, and that I was now choosing to be a survivor.
I struggled over the fact that I had voluntarily gone back to him time and time again for something I thought I should have been able to control outright. The grooming didn’t make sense, the abuse didn’t make sense, and my life thereafter didn’t make sense. It was embarrassing for me to admit weakness, to admit that it had all happened, that I had succumbed to him and his advances, and yet somehow had been rendered powerless in the face of his actions. It just didn’t make sense to me. And because it didn’t make sense to me, I had assumed it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else either.
“DO YOU WANT to tell me more about it?”
“Not really, Gael, not yet.”
All I could think about, as I wondered what I could say and when I could say it, were his eyes.
His picture is in the media more than you might think. Whenever I see him in a media report it looks like he’s trying to hide. He turns away from the cameras, sometimes covering his face by pulling a scarf up or a hat down, or by sticking a hand out in front of a camera. But look again. He looks like he’s trying to hide, but he never really succeeds, because a part of him, even now, wants to be a star, a celebrity. He can’t resist being the center of attention. He can’t look away from the cameras, from the limelight, and so we see his eyes one more time. I see his eyes. I see them over and over again. I see them even when I don’t see them.
Take a good look at his eyes. His eyes, those eyes, look right at you through the camera. Or maybe they don’t. Maybe you see his eyes the way he wants you to see them, the eyes of a nice man, a helping man, the eyes of a caring mentor, the eyes of a good man who can be trusted, the eyes of a man who surely through no fault of his own finds himself in a situation he never intended, the eyes of a man who is just a bit misunderstood, the eyes of a man who could contribute so much if only he could put this bit of trouble behind him.
I saw his eyes like that right up until that first night it happened. I saw all of the good in him that he wanted me to believe was there through those eyes. Until then, his eyes had bee
n eyes that would reflect upon me my future dreams for myself, eyes that could see what was best for me, eyes that would search out a path for me that would bring me all of my dreams and everything I had ever wanted. His eyes reflected the best me that I could be while showing a kindness and concern for me that I had never seen before.
But look again at those eyes, just a little more closely this time and imagine them behind closed doors. Now they no longer reflect anything back at you, now they absorb all light coming their way, dead black eyes sucking the light, the life, out of everything before them. Eyes that take whatever they want without discretion. Eyes that grab and bite and suck to feed the hunter within. Imagine those eyes on you, covering you, locking in on you, taking you in. Imagine those eyes on you, getting closer and closer as the hunter hunts its prey, as the shark feeds itself what it needs to live in the frenzy of the kill.
“Maybe next week, OK?”
“OK, Greg, that’s OK. Whenever you’re ready.”
RECOVERY DOESN’T HAPPEN just because you finally decide that you want to recover. There’s no magic wand that can be waved to make everything go away. Instead, in session after session with my therapist, we would discuss what I was doing on a daily basis simply to keep going.
At the outset of therapy I was still married, and I was still working and had a significant amount of responsibility at the company. On top of all that, I was supposed to be rebuilding myself and everything that had gone into shaping who I had been during the past decades. That’s a lot to have on your to-do list.
My wife and I separated within a year of my seeking help. We finalized our divorce as quickly as possible.
Even if Dr. MacPherson and I just talked about nothing, we were talking about something important, because talking to her helped me establish trust with her. Trust, something I had been incapable of ever since the abuse, was the first goal. I had to find a safe place, something, somebody, I could trust.
Some days were better than others. I worked hard every day to follow up on what I had discussed in psychoanalysis that week. I was diligent about taking my medicine. I had done as much as I could within a crumbling marriage, but now I was on my own. I continued to work long hours at the office as we fought through the acquisition of a major competitor and attempted to integrate it successfully into our operation.
I discovered that I was not equipped to deal with all of this at the same time, and the positives to be taken from instigating a formal recovery process were often negated by the stresses of everyday life. This reinforced the doubts I had about myself while confirming everything I had been carrying with me since the abuse. It was not long before I gradually began to shut down under the weight of it all. I binged and purged increasingly at night, my weight fluctuated wildly, and I was digging into my body again, ripping at my toenails.
Yet unlike before, now I had hope. I knew I had to continue to recover, that there was no alternative this time. Even if it was one step forward, two steps back, I had to at least keep moving, because I knew what awaited me if I didn’t. And that was a bridge I never wanted to cross again.
NOT EVERY DOCTOR or every therapist is right for every victim. Much later, after my story had become more widely known, I was referred to a psychiatrist who heads up the psychiatric department at a major downtown Canadian hospital.
She was far more aggressive than my other doctors had been. She questioned every answer I gave to her questions and challenged me on everything I said. This wasn’t therapy, this was a debate, and I found it very difficult to open up to her. She was, to be blunt, very blunt. And while she was extremely off-putting given where I was at in my recovery, and while I thought she thought I was wasting her time, she did show great interest in me and my medical case. Our sessions continued, though I was reluctant to discuss in detail what I needed to discuss, as I was finding it virtually impossible to get out of bed and face the day and had yet to establish a relationship of trust with her. I was clearly frustrating her, and my guess is she was doing what she thought best to rejuvenate me.
She was also aware of the notoriety of my case, and one day she asked me if we could have our next session in front of other doctors and students in her group. They would watch from a room next door through a one-way mirror and could use our session as a learning experience. “Fine by me,” I said.
Our next session was held not in her office but in a larger, nicely appointed room. We sat on plush chairs, with flowers on the table between us and a one-way mirror behind us. And just as the setting had changed, so had she. Gone was the aggressive, almost terrifying psychiatrist I had been dealing with. Here instead was the nicest, most respectful person you could imagine. It was jarring. What happened to the frustrated, almost dismissive psychiatrist who thought that I was wasting her time? Oh wait, I get it. There was an audience. I suspected that she couldn’t approach me in the same manner as she did behind closed doors. She seemed to me to be using me and the notoriety of my situation to attract interest in her teaching methods. But she was treating me very differently from how she had treated me when we were alone in her office.
Like other victims of child sexual assault, I believe I have been used and discarded as somebody else’s garbage, and I never want to be used again. I resent anybody who takes advantage of me, though I often still comply with them. That’s what victims do; that’s our learned behavior. All I could think was that she was using me for her own advantage, and I decided that I would take a stand.
As our session continued, I acted as if I were engaged, but mentally I had checked out. We went back and forth, seemingly making progress, until she asked me what I thought I needed most to move on to the next level of my recovery. That was my chance.
“Supermodel dog walkers,” I answered.
“What?”
“Supermodel dog walkers. Think about it. I am severely depressed and am having trouble finding meaning in life. If I could have a group of supermodel dog walkers show up at my front door several times a day to walk me instead of a dog, I’d be cured. I’d be motivated to wake up and get out of bed, because who doesn’t want to hang around with a group of supermodels? And I’d have great incentive to re-engage in life, because who doesn’t want to impress supermodels? And not being in shape, I’d have to get in shape, because right now I’m clearly not attractive to any supermodels. So, supermodel dog walkers. I think that would help.”
All I could hear was laughter through the one-way mirror from the supposedly soundproof viewing room adjacent to us.
THE MORE I dealt with the abuse, the easier it became for me to explain what was going on behind the scenes. Still, there is a stigma around mental health issues. From the moment I came forward at work about what I was dealing with, things were never really the same, although I was extremely lucky to have an employer I could speak to about it all. I’ll always be thankful to Michael Hirsh (and the rest at Cookie Jar Entertainment, but especially to Michael) for all that he did for me. Although we had many successes together, he deserved better than I was able to offer him at the time, and I know that I’m lucky to have had his presence in my life.
Recovery can often be one step forward, two steps back. But you simply cannot give up. Failure along the way is an essential part of recovery. Sheldon Kennedy describes his own recovery as truly kicking in only after he had failed about seven times in rehab. And Sheldon is no failure.
Initially, I believed that I would be able to make the past evaporate. I believed that my running away from Graham was itself a type of recovery that I had been doing on my own. What I came to see was that pushing the past down while internalizing guilt, responsibility, and shame was only creating a greater problem as I myself became an even worse abuser than Graham had ever been.
TO OPEN UP in therapy is to begin a new life, one that requires trust. You have to trust your therapist or you will be unable to share everything about yourself, and if you can’t share completely, the therapy will be of little use. Therapy requires a completely
honest and open subject. It took me some time, but, unlike with my psychiatrist and the supermodels, I was getting there with my psychologist, and I was able to find out more about myself and how the process of abuse had operated and controlled me.
So, with that understanding, things should have started moving quickly, right?
That is, apparently, what many people think. “Just get over it,” they say. “You need to move on and put it behind you. The sooner you just start living your life, the better things will be for you.”
I desperately wanted to just get over it, to just move on and put it behind me, to just start living a life. It’s the obvious first answer, and something I had been telling myself for decades. So many told me to do just this, thinking they were helping, but it was so hurtful to hear it, as if people thought that I hadn’t been trying to move on, that I didn’t already know that I should be trying to do that. I didn’t need to be told that I needed to move on, I needed to figure out why I couldn’t.
In therapy we used the words victim and survivor, and I use both here. I do not want to pressure anybody who has suffered sexual abuse into thinking they have survived anything if they don’t yet feel ready to think that way while their struggle to recover continues. I do not use victim to stigmatize anybody who has suffered from sexual abuse. I use it to provide comfort to those who do not yet feel—and believe—they are survivors.
THE PAIN THAT goes on inside a “broken” brain can be devastating.
I ache to be understood. I want to be appreciated. I need to be helped. I love to be loved in spite of having done everything in my power to make myself unlovable. I desperately want to live a normal life. But I know I’m letting others down. I know I’m hurting the ones I love most.
I Am Nobody Page 17