Dammit. I apologize that actually made me laugh.
Those of you who were seriously abused: was there a moment when you realized it wasn’t normal? I mean, did you start out thinking that was how all families worked?
The only good thing my mother ever did for me was never once pretended that she even liked me. I knew she hated me from the beginning. She denied I had any abilities at all, keeping me out of kindergarten for a year, then denying I should be in first grade. When I scored 148 on a standard I.Q. test, she said “She must have guessed lucky.”
IMHO, those who get away with it the longest are good at keeping their kids from learning what they’re doing is not normal. For example, they’ll forbid their kids from watching the news or movies which might touch on abouse.
My source is my SO, who endured some 15 years of abuse by the time she was removed by CPS.
It is an interesting question. I knew that other families were normal from when I was very young. I knew that all the other families I was exposed to loved each other and seemed happy and there wasn’t this constant blackness. But for some reason it was my fate to have to live in my family.
The denial dissolved gradually for me over the course of decades. In fact, in just the past year I have been reading about the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and would go down the list… check… check… check… "Hmmm. Felt that your life or the lives around you were in danger. Well, no, I don’t have THAT one… "
Uh, hello? You believed your sister was going to kill you when you were 17!! IOW, my thinking was, “I know what life threatening means. It means combat, a car wreck, living through a tornado. But that’s a different, valid, kind of ‘life threatening’.”
In fact, for many years I also didn’t believe I was abused because “I know what abuse is and what happened to me wasn’t abuse. It’s just that my mother and my siblings didn’t love me.”
When I had been married a year. I remember I dropped a glass in front of my husband. I looked him in terror realizing that I was expecting him to start screaming. He said to me very softly, “You really are expecting me to yell at you, aren’t you?” He then held me very close while I sobbed in his arms. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not grateful that he let me finally begin the healing process.
I have a lot of stories. Most of them are subtle, but only in the way my mother was subtle. A brick wrapped in a towel. I couldn’t compare with someone who’d been severely beaten or told outright they weren’t loved, but none of you would miss the significance of the stories I have to tell.
But I’m not telling any of them today. Instead, I’m telling a story that saved my life.
I was about twelve years old. Pretty smart, and I thought I was mature for my age (I never was - I was just a good person). I had some understanding of what the word “righteous” meant, and it sounded like a pretty darn good thing, to me, to be.
So when I heard the term “self-righteous”, it was clearly meant to be even better. It meant being able to figure out how to be good and do good all on your own, without needing to listen to instructions or find a role model on how to be good.
So, when my mother, with a very angry tone that I’ve only seen mothers and drill sergeants be able to muster, called me a “self-righteous bastard”, I took a moment to consider her words.
And, after a beat, I responded, “Well, that hardly reflects poorly on me”.
I didn’t understand the look on her face at the time, but in subsequent years I cherish it. I didn’t understand the strangled noise my father made, but subsequently I understand he probably had more respect for me in that moment than in any other (which is his problem, not mine).
But I did understand in that moment that I had shut my mother up. I had stopped her from spewing forth her shit, for a good several hours. And being able to hang on that that rare, lucky, win has meant a great deal to me over the years.
More thoughts:
People often say something to the effect that children accept whatever happens to them as “normal”, because what happens to them is all they know, and they have no reason to believe it’s not “normal”.
Which makes sense to me, except that I began to notice something in my later teens, something that I definitely had an inkling of (but only an inkling) going back to my earliest memories.
There was a difference between my family, and the families of my cohorts which were somehow… beneficial.
I mean, most of my friends had struggles with their parents, and some of them had parents who were clearly fucked up (often in very obvious way, and otherwise in “subtle” ways, like my parents).
But then there were always those friends, many of whom eventually shunned me out of fear, whose parents were actually… nice. Helpful. Friendly. Concerned. Reasonable. Fair… parents who somehow managed not to make everything they touched worse because of their involvement.
As an adult, I can see clearly what was going on. My parents were vastly different in some very key ways from those parents who were actually attempting to do a good job of parenting. What I don’t understand, what I completely fail to grasp on any level, is why.
No worries - and though I put up a smilie face, we actually WERE a bit perplexed.
Yes. I remember when I was around two, my mom stuck my sister and I in front of the doors out of wherever we lived so my dad couldn’t go to the bar without physically removing us, making it obvious drinking was more important than we were. Obviously at two I couldn’t have had much of an idea what was going on, but I retained the memory intact so I later knew that was exactly what she did.
When I was sixteen, he was supposed to be on call at the hospital. She put me in the car and drove me past his woman’s apartment so I could see the Caddy parked out front, bold as could be. She then drove home, called him at her house and said “Don, your daughter is very upset …” Like - you know. Her knowing wasn’t enough.
Sick games. And the games were just the tip of the iceberg compared to all the other abuses on every level that were occurring.
Not much trust here. And I have a full set of armor.
Doesn’t everybody?
The authority figure bit - thank you. Will have to relay to my sister, who never picked up on that particular piece of the puzzle as it applies to her job history.
Yup. I recognize that. My mother claimed my grades weren’t good enough for college. But they were, and she just didn’t want to help me get there. They sent my older sister, they sent the youngest. The one below me was removed from the home at 14, and that left me, apparently too stupid to move on.
Bless you both. 
That is AWESOME. Thank you.
Being beaten and left as a bruised and bloody pile of pulp in the driveway all night until a neighbor sneaks into your yard and takes you home for the night tends to get your attention.
Being told that you are stupid, ugly, and won’t amount to anything leaves an impression.
Catching on that you’re a product of a long line of abuse which you have the ability to stop? The line stops with me. No more.
I remember a high school friend telling me it was okay to go home ‘the day after.’ I had no idea people sobered up.
That same night … I remember we three were safe at the neighbors, but my other younger sister woke up and ran out onto the front porch, making like an air raid siren. One of us older girls ran over and ran her back to the neighbors. Covert operation - we were all terrified we’d be grabbed once we hit the front porch.
… my mom el kabonged him with a cast iron skillet, but it didn’t take him down. She did it because his drunken ass was threatening to take my little sister to my grandma’s, up in Cloquet. This is the same sister who just died from chronic alcoholism, and was usually busted driving drunk with her young son in the vehicle.
… and him sticking his blood covered face in her little six year-old face, saying “See what mommy did to me? Mommy is bad. We need to get out of here.”
… him pulling my mom’s right arm so far up behind her back, I could see her right hand over her left shoulder.
The three of us being forced to stand with our hands in the air for I don’t know how long until somebody admitted to eating the Ritz crackers.
Watching my sister to ‘make sure she inhaled’ because my mom was going to go buy another six-pack. I didn’t make sure she inhaled. And that was the first time my sister drank. It was wonderful, she loved it. Oh, sure - now she has 30+ years sobriety, but that probably just means she didn’t have a problem to begin with. That night, my mother tried to force S to put out a cigarette, barefoot. This is how that conversation went.
S: You got me drunk!
Mom: I did NOT get you drunk.
S: You tried to get me to put out a cigarette with my bare foot!!!
Mom: How would you know? You were drunk!
I have memories I have never told a living soul. These are just the ones that I feel relatively comfortable sharing.
Did you have any contact with them in adulthood?
My mother would constantly tell me I hadn’t been worth the trouble of having and that she wished I’d never been born. Thinking back, I’m sure she should have been made to seek treatment for mental illness, as there was all kinds of shit she used to make my father endure. But he was Old School in that such problems should be ignored and buried, then maybe they’ll go away. Her crazy-lady bullshit is what finally killed him, I’m convinced. I always wondered why he didn’t just leave her if he wasn’t going to get her help, she clearly made his life hell most of the time and was an embarrassment. Later on, even her mother made a comment about the state of her mind. Looking back, I think it may have been some weird sense of honor, because I found circumstantial evidence that indicated my father may have gotten my mother pregnant and had to marry her. I was not the product of that, it turns out she’d had at least a couple of miscarriages, but I think once the deed was done, my father probably was determined to live up to some promise of always taking care of her. If so, too bad that didn’t extend to making her get treatment. There’s a lot of shit I could go on about, but this is enough.
After my father died, I checked into forcing her into treatment and was told that as long as she was capable of functioning day to day, taking care of herself and everything, then I couldn’t make her do anything. In fact, the authorities I spoke with seemed to hint that they thought maybe I just wanted to put her away so I could grab the estate for myself. Then she told me to go to hell and moved away on her own. Don’t know whatever happened to her and don’t much care. Could still be out there somewhere, as she’d turn 81 this month. The only memories I have of her are with her mouth wide open, screeching like a banshee.
I think I was six. My mother had sent my younger brother and me to buy her a coke. When we brought back the bottle she went ballistic, screaming and cussing because we were so stupid. This was about the eleventyith time we had moved and apparently the bottle opener didn’t make it. She went into a frenzy, trying to open it on an exposed nail on one of the doors…finally she sent us back to get it opened. My brother was inconsolable, crying openly on the street. I told him, “Don’t worry, it’s not us—she’s crazy!”
A few years before that I already didn’t like her but that’s the first time I remember talking about it.
There’s physical, sexual, verbal, and emotional abuse, and neglect. We scored 'em all.
Emotional abuse lasts the longest. A therapist told me it’s not unusual for people in their 30s and 40s to find themselves grappling with what they’ve been pushing away. I guess we spend our 20s all “I’m grown!” proving that everything’s alright, or that at least we can do better…until we can’t. And then we need help and should take it. And it’s kind of an ongoing need, like diabetes…
I can’t even click on the current thread Parents something something favorite lullaby you sing to your children.
For the survivors who are still reading along - did religion play a part in your family? Because first there was crazy, and then it was compounded by fundamental christianity.