Touched
I'm funny when it comes to touching and being touched. I can easily be around another person's body, and see it for it's anatomical parts, but don't ask me to get personal, because I will have to let my mind out so it can stray. My professional goal, as assigned by my adoptive parents, was to become a R.N. As a nurse, it was my job to take care of what was hurting or causing infection in another person. Picture for a moment, what that job implies... 
Working in that sort of role requires a certain type of confidence that commands compliance by a stranger, asking him/her to expose something very sensitive and serious that will soon be looked at and touched by a female who will then investigate other non-related body-parts, as well. How would I get a person to reveal things most would rather keep hidden? I 'd respect that sense of vulnerability, and treat that person with kindness, truth, and quite a bit of humor. I treated my patients like I would have wanted to be treated. In that sense, certain things in the nursing profession became very naturally easy for me... Detachment being key in all aspects of practice.
I would always make sure I talked my way through all that I was doing, preparing the person for each next step, and I would always make sure the person watching my face during a proceedure did not see disgust or repulsion grow in my eyes. If something did distrub me, I'd tell them it was the infection or the wound or a piece of equipment that needed to be changed that concerned me, not the person being touched and treated. If someone would ask, "Does it look bad?" I would be honest: and say, "Oh, it looks nasty alright, but I see it's improving... so that's really good."
I loved doing wound-care because I could get down and dirty and disgusting... and talk about it as I was doing something "difficult", but I always make it a positive experience... one that left the once-feeling vulnerable person feel fixed and finished afterwards. I loved the look of a patient feeling comfy, clean and cozy.
That's very different from a sexual experience that would leave me feeling messy, sloppy and disgusting. There's a very warped logic that tells me I WANT to see the nasty things in a person, but I don't want it to hurt... and I will fake it if I have to just so the other person doesn't feel bad. Sex in my mind always meant "mess", a word that would never make me clean.
Does any of this sound familiar to anyone else?
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How it affected me
I always knew I was different, but the main thing that struck me, as a child, was "how do I know these things?" Kerry, yours was "messy" and mine was a huge penis standing in front of every pastor I ever knew... WHY? I later started remembering the abuse was my being forced to masturbate my dad; my uncle, and there's got to be a pastor in there somewhere. So down through the years, every guy I was ever with or married to, I lay awake at night thinking I heard him masturbating. It haunted me, and therefore being sexual had its limits. Touching, for me, ANYONE but my children, is almost impossible, now. My marriage broke up because of the ingrained loathing of masturbation that was thrust upon me when I was 2-4 years old by someone who was supposed to love me. And then, my husband of 30 years, forced my daughter to masturbate him for several years; until she got enough courage to get out of here. I called the police and he is in prison for a LONG time. Is this her and my vindication? I admire every one of you here. I hope to not be hated... Please know I back you in everything you all are saying about adoption. I'm the one in a million adoptive mother that loves her children and wanted her children but was duped by the same man who duped the adoption workers. I see, first hand, the destruction adoption does to a child placed in a supposedly good home and then abused! I KNOW!
I'm here to support and help you all in your quest to not let this happen again to another child. We were in no way prepared for our adoptions; most of us thought love would conquer all... Two years ago I found out my husband never loved my children or me, and we are all suffering for his evil. He fooled us all. I do not want this to happen to anyone else. There needs to be new laws for screening prospective adoptive parents. I'm the first to say: I failed. My children are loved, but very damaged for the loss of what we all thought was our family. God help us.
IN A WORLD OF WHY Teddy