How Brokeback affected me

[andy]

Paul, I cant believe how things have progressed since you first shared with us. Aren't you just so excited? I think I can speak for those of us who have been following your posts by saying go for it man.

[mountain boy]

I've written to see if he would be willing to share his perspective with me, of what he saw and knew of those days, especially concerning Billy and me.  Wouldn't it be interesting to hear how one of the straight guys of the 1950s dealt with the taboos of his day?  I hope he chooses to respond.

Paul  -  meJack

Wow - that would be fascinating.

[valkyrie]

Here is my story of how and why BBM affected me so deep. Do forgive me if the English grammar fails once in a while.

It is 4 1/2 week since I saw the movie first time. I was stunned afterwards, and could barely talk. Images and scenes flashed through my mind the whole night and I could hardly sleep. And then it started: waves of pleasure rolled over me, sometimes like lightening flashes sizzling through my body, again and again and again. The whole day and night and well into the week. It did not stop, just abated somewhat. I kept seeing the love scenes repeatedly for my inner eyes. And I started being aroused most of the time. Sometimes I cried of grief and pain, but then the waves started again.

With a help of a good friend, I was able to sort out what was happening to me. I realized that the part of my body which had been frozen, no longer was. Deep inside me as well as the whole area around my hips had been frozen ever since I was very small. A legacy given to me by violators doing things to me as a child no children should ever experience. And yet it happened, from I was very small until mid teenage years. Those around inclined to trespass the boundaries of children can sniff a broken child like hounds, and they also went for me. There were many of them. Luckily for me the main offender died, and that saved my life. Those that did not trespass, turned their blind eye. I never knew love, tenderness, being held, being cheered for whom I was. I could not protect my body, but I protected my Self/Soul, hiding it deep within my own body. They took my body, but I could not let them take Me. So I froze my body to lessen the impact of the tearing agony inflicted upon me. Thus my body remained frozen, for many years.

Filled with self-loathing, shame and self hate I started on my life without abuse, but I had swore to myself to do "revenge", and the best "revenge" was to learn to love. I would not succumb to dealing with life the way my trespassers did. A long journey it has been, through life’s many ups and downs, through therapy, educations, having a child, friends and therapeutic massage. I have gone from abysmal loneliness to being where I am today. I have learned to love myself, being able to give and receive love from friends and family, loving my child endlessly.

What BBM brought forth was that I got all my body back. I am not frozen anymore. It is open and free flowing. A new experience unsurpassed by anything I have ever known. It is like the whole hara area has been awaken. My life force, my aggression and my sexuality. With aggression I mean the force in me that can stand up and protect, that pushes forth and up/ and will attack if threatened, something I haven’t been able to before. I have so much energy I run up and down stairs, joy is welling in me, and I am sexually ignited for the littles thing. I find I love to drive big cars with big engines, actually I dream of racing, I play music so loud my teenage daughter complain. I see all these good looking guys out there. Not bearing in mind all men are potential rapist, as I did before. I’m free to love men, now. And I love women. Wonderful. I feel so alive my whole body tingles. The love and sex in BBM was the trigger and I feel like a bottle of champagne, where the cork slammed into the ceiling and now the champagne is flowing. The fluidity of love and sex appeals to me, where it is the person that mattes most and the gender of the person is the added bonus of a beloved.

I experience midlife (not midlife crisis, only midlife), adolescence and young adult-stages in one shot, and I wouldn't have had it otherwise. Better late than never. I do believe it t is never to late to reclaim your own life.

Do I long for the love of my life? oh yes, yes yes: to be rocked in the arms of a beloved, to be able to trace the bodylines of a beloved with my hands, I dream of it. And I hold the song of the Swedish rock group Kent dear where they sing: I know for sure that love is coming……

And maybe it does for me, one day….

[Rob.]

  Wow...just WOW!

  No one should ever have to face such trauma! That you did, and still managed to live and be alive is a testament to you!  I realise it's just small talk coming from people who have never faced such things...but YOU GO GIRL!

  I'm so very sorry that bad things like this happen to good people (you), but I'm happy to hear that you're alive and willing to be alive!

  Kudos!
  Rob

[andy]

Oh Valkyrie
How the hell does one respond to such a tale as yours? After reading many of your posts I must say this revelation came like a blow to the head. I'm sooo happy for you to have allowed BBM to work it's healing powers in you. You can now join that illustrious line of people who are making themselves known to us thru' this site and I sincerely hope that your story will be as liberating to future readers as BBM was to you.
Oh how I wish that Jake, Heath and the rest could be in on these moments, to share and to feel their heart swell as I'm sure we all do. Shit, I don't know how much more of this I can take.

[valkyrie]

 You be damn sure I'm gonna live life to the fullest! So many years lost in frozen agony, yet a part of me always wanted to live and I did the best I could. Now I don't just do the best I can I DO!!!

Thanks for your kind words RobL. It warms. And yes, it happens again and again to children, to adult. Trespassing another person's integrity/ trying to demolishing the self, both the body self as well as the sensory/emotional and mental self. Sexual abuse is perhaps the most severe, however, I find trespassing, silencing, ignoring, neglecting, abusing -whatever form discrimination takes, makes me so mad, whether is because of race, gender, age, how you choose to love, culture…. I will do what I can to open up for the kaleidoscope of human living and expression as I can, based on the principles of human right carter.

I realise I can feel whole as a person, and yet I well never feel completely whole until we are all free to love. Which off cause is a dream shot into the starry night, yet, that’s how it is.

[mcnell1120]

Hello Valkyrie,

What an amazing post !!  I celebrate with you this amazing feeling. You are an incredible person and a strong one at that. You're healing process is something that can just take you by surprise. Isn't it amazing how such a movie can change so many lives in all sorts of tragedies ? How horrible to have gone through so much at such a young age.

I am so glad that you shared your story and only wish you all the best this world can offer you.

Take care,

Nellie

[Redbrit]

Valkyrie - I am amazed and moved by your story. I am so happy for you for the change that is happening as a result of Brokeback Mountain. I wrote some time ago that I thought this film would have as much to offer in changing the lives of straight people as for gay men and lesbians, but that it could have the effect it has had on you never even crossed my mind. I have known a number of victims of child abuse - I cannot begin to appreciate the pain and chaos it causes you, but the fact that you have had the strength to go on (many do, to their infinite credit) and, more than that, that you have been able to achieve such perspective that you can put so much of your life and feelings into some semblance of order is a tribute to your human spirit. I wish you the best of luck in your unfolding adventure of emotional discovery.

Would you agree with me that one of the things the film does best is to show another side of men: their feeling, vulnerability, care, gentleness and an emotional strength and commitment having nothing to do with agression or domination; and that this is one of the chief reasons why the film is so affecting and revalatory?

And Valkyrie - a female warrior spirit saving fallen men from the field of battle - an interesting image.

[Basqueboy]

Here is my story of how and why BBM affected me so deep. Do forgive me if the English grammar fails once in a while.

It is 4 1/2 week since I saw the movie first time. I was stunned afterwards, and could barely talk. Images and scenes flashed through my mind the whole night and I could hardly sleep. And then it started: waves of pleasure rolled over me, sometimes like lightening flashes sizzling through my body, again and again and again. The whole day and night and well into the week. It did not stop, just abated somewhat. I kept seeing the love scenes repeatedly for my inner eyes. And I started being aroused most of the time. Sometimes I cried of grief and pain, but then the waves started again.

With a help of a good friend, I was able to sort out what was happening to me. I realized that the part of my body which had been frozen, no longer was. Deep inside me as well as the whole area around my hips had been frozen ever since I was very small. A legacy given to me by violators doing things to me as a child no children should ever experience. And yet it happened, from I was very small until mid teenage years. Those around inclined to trespass the boundaries of children can sniff a broken child like hounds, and they also went for me. There were many of them. Luckily for me the main offender died, and that saved my life. Those that did not trespass, turned their blind eye. I never knew love, tenderness, being held, being cheered for whom I was. I could not protect my body, but I protected my Self/Soul, hiding it deep within my own body. They took my body, but I could not let them take Me. So I froze my body to lessen the impact of the tearing agony inflicted upon me. Thus my body remained frozen, for many years.

Filled with self-loathing, shame and self hate I started on my life without abuse, but I had swore to myself to do "revenge", and the best "revenge" was to learn to love. I would not succumb to dealing with life the way my trespassers did. A long journey it has been, through life’s many ups and downs, through therapy, educations, having a child, friends and therapeutic massage. I have gone from abysmal loneliness to being where I am today. I have learned to love myself, being able to give and receive love from friends and family, loving my child endlessly.

What BBM brought forth was that I got all my body back. I am not frozen anymore. It is open and free flowing. A new experience unsurpassed by anything I have ever known. It is like the whole hara area has been awaken. My life force, my aggression and my sexuality. With aggression I mean the force in me that can stand up and protect, that pushes forth and up/ and will attack if threatened, something I haven’t been able to before. I have so much energy I run up and down stairs, joy is welling in me, and I am sexually ignited for the littles thing. I find I love to drive big cars with big engines, actually I dream of racing, I play music so loud my teenage daughter complain. I see all these good looking guys out there. Not bearing in mind all men are potential rapist, as I did before. I’m free to love men, now. And I love women. Wonderful. I feel so alive my whole body tingles. The love and sex in BBM was the trigger and I feel like a bottle of champagne, where the cork slammed into the ceiling and now the champagne is flowing. The fluidity of love and sex appeals to me, where it is the person that mattes most and the gender of the person is the added bonus of a beloved.

I experience midlife (not midlife crisis, only midlife), adolescence and young adult-stages in one shot, and I wouldn't have had it otherwise. Better late than never. I do believe it t is never to late to reclaim your own life.

Do I long for the love of my life? oh yes, yes yes: to be rocked in the arms of a beloved, to be able to trace the bodylines of a beloved with my hands, I dream of it. And I hold the song of the Swedish rock group Kent dear where they sing: I know for sure that love is coming……

And maybe it does for me, one day….

Dear Valkyrie:

Thanks a lot for being so forthcoming and open. It's so painful to read your story and try to figure out what you have been through! But people like you who share their feelings with us help us behave the same way you do. You know that the experience of "flowing" as you put that is something very familiar for many of us, Brokeaholics. There are some, like you, whose inner dams went down after having the BBM experience. There are some others, like me, whose dams were broken down long ago, but who feel the helping touch of BBM in making us "flow". Let's keep it!

"It could be just like this always, just like this"

[valkyrie]

Your words Andy and Nell is a warm liquid glow surrounding my heart.

You know, the strange thing is that being here at Dave's BM forum feels so right. I'll tell you why. It seems like I am basically a "straight" woman, yet I shall never close the door on the possibility that love will come through a woman. Many years ago I studied in USA and the last year was in Minneapolis. I used to go to Amazon Bookstore which featured lesbian and gay litterateur and also to another bookstore for gay men (don't remember the name of the store). I would go there very often browsing and buy books. I remember very well how the guys in the bookstore would look at me, this straight looking well dressed professional foreigner (they could hear my accent), buying books of gay men. Sure must have wonder who the hell is this woman. I was looking for something I still today cannot articulate what it was. It was something in the love between the same-sex couples.

Then I where lucky enough to find a few lesbian friends and a very good gay colleague and best friend (for a while, until  I blew our friendship by falling in love with him. He closed the door on me then and I lost my good friend). I were fortunate to attend a blessing service in a Lutheran church for gay and lesbian Stuarts of the church, under the organization Wingspan. I shall never forget how moving it was to see them receive the blessing before going out into the often hostile world.

And a couple of times I also attendend a danceplace for lesbians held in the basement of a church (I think). I felt safe there, feeling totally lost in the meatmarked place I found the straight disco dance places to be. I didn't have any other to go with, so I went alone to this lesbian place. There I saw one time the most beautiful and erotic dance between 2 people I have ever seen. 2 well grown women, barely touching, yet waves of electricity and love and lust passed between them ad the undulated and wove their dance together. I can still see them for me, even so many years ago.

Love and sex, it is so strange. I realize I can be understood as a closeted lesbian reading what I write. However, it is men that is on my mind and has been most of my life.

It feels I am in the right place anyhow. It is only when I feel I have the love & sex of both same-sex and opposite -sex hues I feel whole.

[reborn_god13]

There are no words to explain what I feel every time I think about this love story between Ennis & Jack. It brings me to tears everytime I think of what was and could have been.  I try to think of it as only a fictional story but there is so much truth behind it.  I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one feeling like this. I haven't had a love like that of Ennis & Jack in my life, but because of this, I know that when I do, I won't let anything keep me from expressing what I truly feel. There is so much to learn about life in this wonderful movie. I wish everybody who sees the movie comes out a different person other than when they went in to see it.

[DaveinPhilly]

There are no words to explain what I feel every time I think about this love story between Ennis & Jack. It brings me to tears everytime I think of what was and could have been.  I try to think of it as only a fictional story but there is so much truth behind it.  I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one feeling like this. I haven't had a love like that of Ennis & Jack in my life, but because of this, I know that when I do, I won't let anything keep me from expressing what I truly feel. There is so much to learn about life in this wonderful movie. I wish everybody who sees the movie comes out a different person other than when they went in to see it.

Yeah, you've figured out the "wisdom of BBM"!

[sagha/Mo]

Matt Shepard

Heathcliff Ledger

[NickInIdaho]

Here is my story of how and why BBM affected me so deep. Do forgive me if the English grammar fails once in a while.

Val,

I was moved by your post. You know, reading your posts made me think ...  this movie is like a hot oven. Many can feel the heat - and are affected by it. Some have chosen to get closer - and are a little more changed than those can just feel the heat. And there are those, like you I feel, who is right next to the fire, allowing the extreme heat melt away years of pain, self torture, and mental prisons. The process is painful, as is the fire, but when you emerge, you will emerge as one who has been changed forever - not at all looking like the person before.

To you, I say congratulations, and I hope and pray this is only the beginning!

Nick

[bradINblue]

Dear Valkyrie:

Welcome. Ain't it great to finally break through!

Brad