Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

Trigger Warnings: priest, rape, catholic, altar boy       click here to go away . I was invited, along with three other altar boys in my grade, to a weekend in the country at a house that my priest had. I didn't want to go but my parents had accepted on my behalf; it was all set up. I was all set up. He had a big car, a Lincoln or a Cadillac. Priests took vows of poverty, but their families could supply them with cars and second homes. I now see it as: there were all sorts of workarounds for their inconvenient constraints. We departed Brooklyn NY with the priest and four altar boys in the car. It was my first time outside of the city, my first time on a trip without my parents, my first time Upstate in the country. Brooklyn was the kind of place where most things were paved. There were parks and highways that had green spaces and some trees, but no really wild nature areas. My mother was a big fan of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens but I was indifferent to...

Trigger warnings: rape, beatings, jail, prisoner, Catholic, priest, family. Scroll down for content.        Or Click here to go away . The adjective catholic (with a lower-case c ) means: universal, comprehensive, widely shared. Something that's catholic is bigger than you might think. I need to set down my own catholic experience. You might not know anybody affected by the Catholic systemic child-rape scandal . Maybe you do know a victim and you aren't aware of it yet. I'm one of them. I was raped by Fr. Arnaud in Brooklyn's St. Theresa of Liseaux, on Avenue D and Troy Avenue. I volunteered to became an altar boy because on school-day funerals, you got out of class and sometimes you got $5. It seemed like a good deal. My dad recommended it. The old GI rubric holds true: Never Volunteer. From September 1965 to June 1968 - Fourth through Sixth grades - I was repeatedly raped by a parish priest. It happened in the rectory on Monday afternoons, an...

I have huge holes in my memory. There's lots of important things I don't remember, or I won't remember. I've been in therapy for four years with multiple focuses going on simultaneously: a gestalt practitioner, an EMDR practitioner, a family systems practitioner, etc. I've remembered more of my youth. I remember violent beatings from my father. I remember a priest raping me for three years. In Fourth, fifth, and six grade the parish priest was in my ass and in my mouth. I was 8, 9, 10 years old. I met a woman and we got married. We had kids. I had one recurring dream for decades about Dan which couldn't be true. But it was true. Now I remember Dan. Now I remember Allan in 7th grade and Ronald in 8th grade. Now I remember a man in Virgina, and a man in Spain. Now I remember David. At the time, I closed them each into an internal box and put them away; they were inconsistent with what I'd been told I should be. Otherwise: bad boy , and I couldn't...

Assignment: describe yourself before and after your Dad and your Priest. Before my Dad and the Priest. I would place this at when I was age 2.5 years, because that’s when the beatings started. I was happy, enthusiastic, and curious. I had a big mop of curly hair like Harpo Marx; I greeted days and people with brio. I was happy in the house and out of the house. After my father started beating me, I was careful and wary. He started calling me Crisco (fat in the can) which I hated. He cut my hair short at home when my mother was out. Decades later, he told a sibling: when [me] was two and a-half, he had beaten me like he beat prisoners in the station house. He was a cop. Being outside was better than inside, being with others was better than being with my parents. I learned my block and my neighborhood. I still had most of the core of myself when I was out. I became a reader because he respected reading. Years later he’d say I had my head in the books too often, and why did I ...

I've been on SSRI anti-depressants for 25 years and continue to take them. I've been on SNRI anti-depressents for 1 year and continue to take them. I've been on a a benzodiazepine for almost 1 year and continuing. I've been on an anti-psycholtic for almost 1 year and continuing. I finally realized that I'm not dealing with a multi-issue phase ; I've been doing this for 25 years. I got rid of my guns in the last year, because I knew when I started hallucinating that it was prudent to not have them. You read newspaper stories and you think, why didn't somebody take the guns? My psychiatrist says I have major depression, anxiety, and mild psychosis (I hallucinate). My psychologist says I have C-PTSD from beatings and priest rape, and sexual orientation confusion. My doctor explains that I have anhedonia which robs pleasure from normal experiences. When we took a marriage angry-problem to our marriage counseling psychologist, he suggested the problem w...

NY Times : Brooklyn Diocese Identifies Eight More Abusing Priests. That's one of five dioceses. The story focuses on James Lara, who was a priest from 1973 to 1992, was de-priested, and then changed his name and pivoted to academia: Over the past 25 years, a university professor named Jaime Lara built an illustrious career in the academic world of sacred art history. He was a professor at Yale University for more than a decade, wrote five books and won more than a dozen prestigious awards and fellowships. Since 2013, he has been a professor of medieval and renaissance studies at Arizona State University. Mr. Lara did not respond to a request for comment. The other priests listed were Joseph P. Byrns, who served from 1969 to 2002; William E. Finger, who served from 1962 to 1980; Stephen Placa, who served from 1995 to 2002; Thomas O. Morrow, who served from 1971 until 1987; Romano J. Ferraro, who served from 1960 to 1988; Charles M. Mangini, who served from 1968 to 1993; and Chr...