Live, Love and Enjoy

I have spent a life time trying to help others who suffer. As a child and well into my adult life I was constantly looking for someone to come along who truly cared and who would save me from the atrocities from which I had suffered. It is somewhat easy to admit that someone abused you as a child but much more difficult to admit that it went on well into the teenage years. Marilyn Vanderber, Miss American in 1958, talks of her father and how he abused her almost nightly well into her late teens. If people have a hard time understanding how one could allow it to continue to such an age try being the one who it happened to. You become such an underdog that you have no idea how to make it end. It has become such a part of your life and you fear the individual so much that you don't know how to make it stop. While on my mission I came to develop a very close relationship with a particular family in Haverhill, Massachusetts. This family had a teenage son who used to beg my companion and I to take him out working with us constantly. We enjoyed having him along so we obliged whenever we could. We thought it odd that a young teenager would want to spend so much time with us. One morning we were at their house introducing a young man we had just baptized to seminary. The mother of this family was the ward seminary teacher. While there a huge fight broke out between this young son of hers and his step father. We were later to find out that the step father had been abusing the kid since he was seven years old. This particular morning he went into the room to wake him and did some inappropriate things to which the kid finally after all these years exploded. Many ask why he allowed it to go on for so many years, almost like they were accusing him of being responsible for the abuse. The stories go on and on but this much I have come to fully understand, The child, whether toddler, youth, or teenager is not to blame. These monsters used me and many like me to fulfill their selfish lustful desires. They used such tactics as death threats not only to myself but to my family members. They used drugs to try and control me, they would sneak them into food and on the back of stickers in the sticker books they gave me. They had so much control that one had no way of escape. Finally the day comes when they no longer have the control. For some it comes from shear age and rebellion. Some hit the breaking point and literally explode. It almost always comes to a stop at some point but for all it leaves scars that last generally last a life time.

I have recently had the blessed opportunity of working with some of the best people I know who were also abused as children. I have come to dearly love these individuals and have come to truly and completely admire them for the courage they have shown in coming forth and dealing with the shit that these abusing monsters inflicted upon them.

One of the similarities I have noticed is as I have mentioned before, people like to blame the Gay thing on the abuse. It just is not true. If abuse were to blame to for sexual orientation there would be so many more gay people. Most people I know who were sexually abused as children are hetro. I think the percentages who are gay are rather small. Anyone who reads this and has a story to share I would love to hear your story.

Go bless all you moho's out there who are suffering for whatever reasons. Know that you are not alone and that happiness is just around the corner if you will but endure. I believe that God meant for us to be happy, Gay Str8 it matters not, we were meant to live, love and enjoy eachother.