Welcome to a Very Special Episode of my blog! I’ve been having an internal debate for a while about whether or not I should post this, because it’s an issue that’s very difficult for me to discuss, but I’ve decided to post it here because it was a formative experience and it happens to be highly relevant to the issues I’m trying to deal with now. Something terrible happened to me when I was 11.
Well ok, let me unpack that a little before I go on. The psychological impact of what happened was absolutely devastating to me. From an adult perspective, I can look at the incident now as something that was very unfortunate, especially having it happen at that age, but not really the end of the world either. I wish a sympathetic adult would have been there to talk me through it back then. With proper guidance it seems like I could have come through ok. Unfortunately, even though my parents provided me with a stable environment, the emotional connection was lacking and I never felt like I could talk to them about anything beyond routine surface level stuff. So as it was, I kept this incident to myself and I went through my teenage years with the underlying belief that nothing I did mattered because my life was already ruined, and that I should kill myself.
Enough preamble. What happened on the playground when I was 11 is that I caught an elbow to the groin while playing a particularly rough game of "touch" football. I passed out and when I eventually came to, I was sweating a lot and I was nauseous for the next hour or so, and my memory isn’t entirely clear on this but I seem to recall that the next time I pissed it came out strangely thick (I didn’t even know what semen was at the time) and a little bloody. That was about it though. By the time I got home I probably felt a little sick still but I could manage, and anyway I didn’t want to talk about it. At school the next day the incident seemed to be forgotten, and that was fine with me.
But later I noticed that my left testicle looked weird and misshapen, and it would ache periodically in a way that it never did before. This turned out to be permanent. Much later, when I finally went to a doctor to have it looked at when I was in my early 20s, I was told that what I had was a varicose vein and that I could have surgery for it if I wanted, but it was nothing particularly serious. I elected to have the surgery (mostly for cosmetic reasons though it still looks weird to me) and at that point had to tell my parents something about what had happened, so I told them as little as possible and I don't think they really wanted to know about it anyway. Unpleasant stuff, move along, nothing to see here.
So medically this was all pretty mundane, but psychologically it was another story entirely. I kept everything to myself during my teenage years and I assumed the worst. I was convinced that no woman would ever want to sleep with me, at least not if she knew what had happened, ie that I was completely ruined as a man. Maybe I could try dating, but what was the point? It could never go anywhere. So I didn't date. A few girls showed some interest and I would ignore them.
Fast forward to now and it's probably obvious if you've been reading the blog, but I still have significant unresolved issues from this. I've had sex exactly once in my life, with a prostitute in Amsterdam maybe 15 years ago. It was not a pleasant experience, and I was so nervous I didn't even come. But technically I'm not this guy:
That would be a seriously dark movie if they wanted to delve into the psyche of any guy who might find himself in that situation though. I don't think anyone reaches that point in life without serious trauma of some kind.
Medically apart from the cosmetic issue I'm basically ok. I'd want to explain my situation to any woman I was going to sleep with, but there's no physical reason I couldn't have sex. Psychologically I'm a mess, of course. The only way I could see things ever working out for me, would be if I was in a relationship with someone I could trust enough to open up to fully. That's going to be extremely difficult. I might as well at least try, though.
I think I can promise that this is as heavy as this blog is ever going to get. Maybe the next entry will be funny or clever or entertaining.