|
|
|
|
I was up until 3 a.m. last night trying to talk someone out of committing suicide. I'm quite sure I wasn't successful. It was a person who I'd thought I'd come to know pretty well over the last half year or so, an internet acquaintance.
Most of you know I have found myself involved with teens with troubled backgrounds and who have had suicidal thoughts. This came about because of the stories I've posted and youths emailing me in response to the stories. They usually go on to say that 'I wish life were really the way you portray it in your story and that there were happy endings in real life'. These are vague calls for help and once we can establish some IM contact I try to refer them to resources to help them see that they are aren't flawed and that they have value. Mostly I just listen to their stories and empathize with them. Empathy is what they seem to need most as they feel the world would turn against them if their secrets were exposed.
I was fooled by an adult pretending to be a teen. He was very good at it because I never once questioned in my mind that he wasn't who he was pretending to be. He confessed all to me last night because he was tying up lose ends. He has (had?) a physical and sexual attraction with young teens he told me for as long as he could remember. He managed to take it out of the realm of the internet and fantasy and to have a sexual involvement with a teen, he told me. Long story short, the teen's parents found out and reported him. He was waiting for the knock on the door that meant his arrest. "I'm not going to prison" he said... and he was adamant. No amount of talking I could do would change his mind. He'd written his letters to friends and family, quit his job, cleaned his apartment and packed his belongings. I was the last lose end. He was sorry he fooled me, he said, but he needed someone empathetic to talk to.
If it makes it into his local newspaper, most people will say good riddance - he saved us the cost of trial and incarceration. But I'd become too involved over too long a time span to simply write him off, despite his failure to be honest with me. He was honest to a degree: he was giving me a portrayal of the boy he was when he'd first realized he was different from others. I guess his purpose was to have me tell him that he was an okay kid then, just confused and needing answers and guidance. And he WAS an okay kid, but he was afraid to reach out for that help that could have put him on the road to becoming a normal, homosexual male. Over the years he allowed his life to spiral out of control to where he wasn't able to say "no" to a nephew that wanted a 'hands on' learning experience. Last night he payed the ultimate price. And now that nephew has this to carry on his conscience as well.
Please, if you are an adult with a sexual attraction towards children, there is most definitely help available. Use it before you destroy your life and the lives of the people around you. Make that call to the local mental health clinic. The people there will not judge you - it's their utmost desire to help you keep your thoughts, feelings and desires under control. It will make you feel good about yourself, perhaps for the first time in your adult life.
I'll probably retire from the internet for awhile. This has affected me too deeply. I need to decide if I truly have it in me to continue to talk with these kids or whether it's too heavy a burden on my own heart and soul. I'm afraid I'm going to have the same IM chat one day with a teen who's going to end the chat as this fellow did last night - "goodbye. And thanks for being my friend."
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oh! Paul I am sorry. First I think "There go I or very nearly" (as I don't believe in the grace of god).
Second I think I'd do a lot to help if I could. Third I think that even the parents of the boy wouldn't want suicide and the boy could no doubt save him from the worst of it by admitting his complicity and refusing to testify against him.
And if only these elements could be brought together in time!
And are you sure he did kill himself?
Why is it that a doctor saving a life (or trying to) gets society's full approval but people like you who save lives (or try to) AND help people to learn how to avoid doing harm to others don't get a mention?
I should be very sorry to see you go.
Please stay here at least.
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
 |
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
|
|
|
You know, unpleasant as this experience has been for you, this man might have been a teen and might have been truly in need of your help.
We can not save them all, and we have to expect that some folk will not be as they seem. All we can do is to take people at face value and expect no thanks in return.
Do not vanish from the net, but continue to do what you do best. The person you fail to befriend may be the one you ought to have befriended.
I've been surprised a number of times by people who turned out to be different. Just remember that we can not save them all.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paul, even if the guy went through with the suicide, your effort was worthwhile and motivated by love.
Your primary obligation is to take care of yourself. If you need to withdraw for a time, please know that your many friends here hope for your eventual return. I count myself among those friends, both because of what you have posted here, and in gratitude for your stories.
Be well.
Peter
"Tu non altro che il canto avrai del figlio, o materna mia terra..."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
acam wrote:
> ... Third I think that even the parents of the boy wouldn't want suicide and the boy could no doubt save him from the worst of it by admitting his complicity and refusing to testify against him.
Obviously, I cannot speak for the parents, but it doesn't seem likely that they would want to do this man any favors. More to the point, the boy's complicity or lack thereof in no way diminishes the man's responsibility for his actions. To suggest that the boy could avert a tragedy by refusing to testify would be cruel in the extreme.
By personal experience, I have learned that when I try to help someone avoid the consequences of his actions, I do no one a favor and end up hurting myself.
Peter
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.
"Tu non altro che il canto avrai del figlio, o materna mia terra..."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
|
|
|
This Moral Majority, the people who will declare this man "A piece of trash" and condemn him, fails to understand that he is no longer even relevant.
I don't say this to defend him. We all have it in us to say "yes" or "no" when presented with a child who asks for a hands on experience. He chose "yes". I'm hoping that the child had a pleasant experience, though it may well have been the reverse. By choosing to indulge the boy's wishes and his own he placed himself and his fate in the hands of the law. That is what society demands, so I have no intellectual or emotional issues with that.
But The Moral Majority, in which I include anyone who has emailed you to condemn the man and to call your own actions into question, forgets the child in its glee at the demise of "yet another goddammed pedo" and makes that child a victim.
You said, rightly, that the child will have this on his conscience. It's more than that. The child will have had his body invaded by men in white coats, been tested for this and that, received mandatory sympathetic counselling, been made to speak in detail of something that appears to have been at his own instigation (though I do not rule out that he was groomed to ask for the experience), and been made to feel very peculiar about whatever his own sexuality happens to be.
Yes, it is wrong to abuse the trust of a child and to say "yes". Of course it is wrong. It's wrong intellectually even were it to be lawful.
Yet the vengeance of society is wrong, too. The lynch law mentality is wholly intolerable.
I'm sorry your online friend took every last one of the actions he took. Perhaps suicide was his own best way out. He has saved the kid from needing to testify, or being bullied into testifying. And that is true even if he hurt the boy.
But it is the boy that my heart goes out to. The man, one way or another, is in the past. I hope the boy has good parents who truly love him and show him all the affection and quiet support he needs right now, and who leave vengeance on the top shelf, out of the way of younger eyes. That boy must not be made to feel dirty or soiled or damaged.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paul, we have not spoken much but I know your heart is in the right place. If you give up trying to help those who ask, then who is going to take your place. There are so few who will even take the time to talk to them and give them advice. If your not there who will they turn to?
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
|
|
|
I stand shoulder to shoulder with you on that Roger.
When we meet folk online we take them at face value. As time passes they sometimes reveal that they are a little different from their first incarnation. Even if the difference is great that is usually fine. Some folk have changed age, others gender, some age and gender! But they talk to us in their first state for a reason.
It is very rare that the eventual person is revealed as being in some way unacceptable. And, whatever the truth of this incident, this was just one incident. And the boy who turned out to be a man needed and wanted help. It is just that he asked too late.
So, Paul, gird up your loins, and help people again. Take them at face value again. Trust them again. And know that doing this also helps you with your own issues, whatever they are (for I do not recall that you have ever revealed them here!)
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fingolfin
|
 |
Likes it here |
Location: Slovakia
Registered: August 2008
Messages: 265
|
|
|
Paul, head up,
you did very much that night. The only person you are truly responsible for is you, yourself. He made his choice whichever way it finally turned out. Remember, that when anybody asks you what is the most precious you have, the response is plain and simple: yourself. You did as much as you could, do not go blame yourself. And those who codemned him? Well, they have pretty long way ahead, as the right attitude would be trying to understand and maybe forgive if possible.
Do not leave this forum, there is no reason for that. These are the people who like you and you can lean on if needed. You are an honourable man and I am glad that we met (albeit only virtually).
Marek
It is better to switch on a small light than to curse the darkness.
- Vincent Šikula, Slovak writer
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
james
|
 |
Getting started |
Location: England
Registered: September 2008
Messages: 24
|
|
|
Hi Paul,
We as people can only offer support for people in trouble, some are so confused that they just wont be helped for what ever reason.
you held out a hand to help , some take it some dont, but you did try , dont beat yourself up over it.more are saved than lost!.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I want to thank my friends here on 'A Place Of Safety' forum who have replied. I also thank the many who took the time to email me with advice or simply with support. Our internet family is a family indeed.
I didn't retire from the internet as I'd thought I would. The internet is one of the few places that I turn to for sanity, comfort and a sense of belonging. And knowing that there are others who have experienced what I went through was a tremendous help.
The pretender did not take his life that night. We have PM'ed a few more times. He has put his world into turmoil over his thoughtless actions and will likely have to pay a high price over it. Still, I believe every life can be salvaged and, if the desire is strong enough, we can learn from our past experience and become better people as a result. That is where counseling becomes important - not that it can change ingrained desires, but that it can help to put it into perspective and give strength to not act out on them.
I've gone back to writing and will soon be sending Timmy another chapter.
My hugs and gratitude to you all.
Paul
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Excellent news, Paul, I am very glad to hear you are writing again. And, reading between the lines there is other good news in your message too.
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
|
|
|
It is a generalisation, but those who make announcements and proclaim their imminent acts of suicide tend not to be those who achieve death. Instead they scare those around them shitless. They become the centre of attention and enjoy the moment in a perverse way.
I hope very much that the child is not harmed emotionally by either the acts (and we have no idea if they actually happened) or the fury surrounding the acts. I have no interest in the welfare of the man because he moved from looking and imagining into touching (presumably), and touching is simply not acceptable, even if it was welcomed at the time.
A question is raised though, and raised very well by this incident. I'm going to start a new thread for it.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
A Sleepless Night 
