For as long as I can remember, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse has been a part of my life. My mother's father had abused my mother and uncle as children while growing up along with my grandmother through out their marriage. My grandfather had never done these things to me, but it was all around me as a child. At the age of 4 or 5, I witnessed my grandfather hit and throw down my grandmother, resulting in many bruises and a broken arm. This one only one in many times that I had seen them fight, but I remember this one the clearest for some reason. He had always verbally and emotionally abused her too. I had heard it so much that although scared, I was under the impression at a very young age that this was normal in a marriage.
This too was the why my mother treated me as a child and my father whom was rarely around, was not this way with me, but was verbally, emotionally, and physically this way with my mother. At the age of 9, I witnessed my father kick my mother directly in her very pregnant stomach. They soon divorced and my mother quickly remarried the police chief of our small little southern town in Eastern Tennessee. Some may think that a Police Chief Officer would put a stop to the abuse and violence around me, but it was not long after they married that I became the main target by both of my mother and step-father for years of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse.
My stepfather had decided to move us from Tennessee to Oregon during the middle of Christmas night during my fifth grade year. At the time my stepfather had lost his job as City Police Chief and we were living at my grandparents' house. In the middle of the night on Christmas night, a very bad argument broke out between my grandfather and stepfather. My baby brother and I were yanked out of bed and packed into a car along with what belongings that could be crammed in too. A week later, we were living in a tiny filthy apartment in Eugene, Oregon. I will never forget how painful it was to be taken away from all of my family without even getting to say goodbye. The only other cherished thing in my 10 year old world besides my family and friends, where my 2 boxes of Barbie Dolls that I pleaded to take with us the night of leaving.
Somewhere in Arizona, in a motel parking lot, one of those boxes was thrown out and left because my stepfather got angry that they were taking up so much room in the trunk and he could not get everything to fit back in to close the trunk. So since they were in the way toys to him, he through them out to be left. That week had to be one of the most painful times of my childhood. I knew nothing would ever be the same again.
Through the years growing up, I was the one expected to keep the house clean and take care of my baby brothers. Yes by now there were two and as they grew, they could do no wrong while I paid through years of mental, physical and emotional abuse for many different reasons and occasions by both mother and stepfather. By 13 I was already stealing alcohol and cigarettes from my stepfather and smoking weed along with speed pills.
By 15 or 16 I was physically beat up so bad at one point that I could not hide all the bruises and whiplash and the school councilor noticed. Quickly taken down to police department and parents contacted, a deal was made between the Eugene District Attorney and my again Police Chief stepfather. There would be no charges if it was to never happen again and I had a choice to return to Tennessee and live with my biological father or go back to the abusive home. I chose the home because of my little brothers. I could not bear never seeing them again. At least that is what my mother and stepfather told me at the time of the choice being made.
By the time I was 17, I was finally kicked out and thanked God, promising myself never to get into a situation like that again. But all the scares and blows had already destroyed me without even realizing it until years later. In fact I had become the abusive one on my first partner of ten years and we both had various drug and alcohol issues. At the age of 28, I found myself alone with two young little babies and quickly found someone older and seemingly charming and loving. I am 38 now and know that I have been living with a man who is just or even more emotionally abusive and mentally abusive as my family while growing up. Physically there have been fewer confrontations, but the mental and emotional abuse is deeper. I too share almost eleven years with this man and a child.
I am University educated but still trapped in my mind and soul. Every time I leave this man, I eventually become weak and let him back in. Just as every abuser, he has his moments of being nice and knows how and when to be kind. But I am right back there as a scared and confused young child hoping and praying that every morning that today is the day of change for the better. Although I never carried this abuse on down to my children directly, the seed of abuse has been sown indirectly through what they have witnessed through these years.
They too have paid by my alcoholism indirectly and directly. I find my self-waking up not wanting to move from the deepest depressions at times, but for my children, I pray for this to be the morning of change. Even if it is only a few steps forward toward change, it is change for the better, because this has been like a slow painful death that I am living all over again.
My kids and I are in individual and group counseling now and I am trying so hard to be there for the kids and bring in money for us to survive without having to deal with the abusive man of my last child. The hardest thing though is the emotional tie to him. This is a point that many whom have never lived in abuse truly cannot understand. It is easy to put into one sentence. I have known nothing else since the day I was born.
It took years to program me this way and will take years to reprogram my mind and ways of dealing with these types of people and pain.
