I don’t know how to post a video here, but this is my survivor rage song.
“I was raised in the Church.” That right there should tell you where I’m coming from. 
Tuesday night, Training Union. Wednesday night, church. Sunday morning was Sunday school, church sometimes followed by Fellowship (pot luck dinner,) then Sunday night service. Choir practice during the week, Vacation Bible School in summer, and those Revivals! But it was never talked about. My mother couldn’t have cared less what we got out of it, it was just something we did. (Step father didn’t attend.) Time spent away from the brooding tension in our home. It did not end well but I can’t claim it was detrimental while we were still allowed to go.
My mom found Jesus when I was 14 and just like a bunch of baby ducks, we all got ‘saved.’ Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, summer camp and revivals, etc. In my estimation it was pretty much “God’s perfectly fine with me making you lose your will to live by whatever means necessary.”
I’ve never unraveled that. But my spiritual belief system is not reflective of her God.
Good song. I didn’t understand all the lyrics but I get the message. I take it your family was in a fundamentalist/charismatic church? (Yes, I see.)
…the journey into adulthood was a painful one.
The bitter competitiveness towards any partners I had as they were never good enough, the constant manipulativeness & guilt trips endowed upon me etc etc. And of course the irreconcilable childhood memories of beatings for my so called “bad behaviour & embarrassment to the family”, which is funny as I’m the only family member to ever go to university.
I became a lone parent at 30, which my father & step mother begrudged, asking me to give them my daughter so that I could get on with my own life all because they were too old to have children of their own. They once married, put themselves forward as foster carers & were turned down. When that failed my father then along with his best mate from work proceeded to put one of my best friends in hospital with threats to kill them if they continued to support me being a lone parent. It was years before I was even fully aware of this, at the time I had moved for work to London & found it hard coping with losing friends that I had had for over 10 years, all of a sudden I was no longer welcome with one excuse or another.
I’m now 43, my daughter is 16, very messed up & confused about her grand father & step grand mother. We have both been excluded from their lives (thankfully) for the last 7 years. Up until my daughter was born they had the ambition of marrying me off to my step mothers daughter, if thinking the situation couldn’t get any more weird I was wrong. My step sister married a man with exactly the same date of birth as me , she already having 4 children by 2 fathers & 2 previous marriages could do no wrong in their eyes. My father fully embraced this other man as his perfect son, whom is a very bitter individual as his own father committed suicide when he was 12. My father repeatedly humiliated me & my daughter at every family event possible, even demanding publicly that (myself at the age of 32) had no business being part of HIS family if I continued to have a (wholesome & normal) relationship with my own birth mother & step father, demanding that I choose between them. My mother left him when I was 15 but I stayed with him, nursing him & his broken ego. For years as a young adult I had issues with my mother, I didn’t understand why she left & it’s only a an adult, parent & many therapies later that now I can look back at my childhood as being far from normal, my mother being a victim of his abuse as much as I was.
The point is, you don’t have to suffer the abuse of a hostile or messed up parent. If they won’t accept you & your choices in life as an adult then break away, a few months or years will allow you to heal & them to reflect (positively I hope).
In total contrast my mother & step father have been mine & my daughters strongest allies, although they are retired & live across Europe they have always been exemplary towards myself & their grand daughter.
Again, all I can say is you don’t have to put up with hostility or abuse from anyone, not even family, it’s not fair on you, your partner or any children you may have. If you have to involve the Police, Social Services or Doctors under the mental health act then do so to protect your family unit, very often the abuse won’t stop until their are other authorities involved. It is not selfish to want what’s best for yourself & your family. The abusers have to be stopped if they won’t volunteer change upon themselves. As a victim you bare no shame & should not allow the poisonous pride of others who are out of control to damage you or your loved ones.
Best of luck to you & yours…
During one Revival (Six straight nights, folks. Count 'em—six!) I was so gripped by the message I wished I hadn’t already been saved so I could walk down and throw myself onto the alter. If I’d known about stigmata I bet I would have splotched my palms with red nail polish.
Looks like we kind of did the same thing but see it differently. Did the abuse start after your mother joined? Or did it somehow justify it?
Yup. Assembly of God. Just like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart.
Justified it. I tried talking to the pastor … yeah. He was under the mistaken impression that it was past-tense. You know: Like THAT would make a difference. I said no, it’s ongoing. I said “What if I was shaking your handd and thanking you for the sermon, and I just slapped you upside the head. Wouldn’t you flinch every time I came up to you? What if it happened a couple of times a year, and then once a month, and then every week. What if I stopped. You’d still be flinching, because that’s what I trained you to do. What if after three months, I shook your hand and then slapped your wife? That’s what it’s like living with a crazy person. As long as she lives, I won’t be able to trust her.”
Neither of my parents expressed any religious beliefs when I was growing up; just one more thing they never talked about. My mom became a member of a Lutheran church about 15 years before she died, but it kinda seemed to be more of an academic/social thing than a fervent belief (of maybe that’s just Lutheranism).
Holy crap, this sounds as if I could have written it myself, except not as eloquently, of course.
What’s really crazy is when these type of parents put on a show of being self-sacrificial, when in fact it’s all one big power trip.
Case in point: recently there was a tragedy in my family, something that possibly could have been avoided. And while I’m mostly outside of it all, it’s really crazy to watch both parents practically stumble over each other feigning concern for the sake of ego and control – to the extent of hijacking sympathy away from the person who actually could use it. And like any good child from that kind of abusive upbringing, I can’t help but think to myself: (A) Thank God they can’t blame ME for what happened, and (B) at least this time, those energy vampires are picking on someone else instead of me.
And the corollary to that is, growing up in that situation makes things that are considered “normal” in other families actually seem abnormal. Things like giving and exchanging gifts, accepting compliments and granting encouragement, following through on promises, etc. Perhaps there’s a reason why people enjoy that kind of stuff, but right now, it feels as mysterious and elusive as the answer to the Drake Equation.
What little my SO talked about her parents’ religious beliefs sounds like she was raised JW.
I think this is wonderful. I think there are many people who don’t grow up in traditionally “abusive” homes who have this kind of experience but have no really good outlet to explore it. For me, I was never abused, my parents did care, but they had very little empathy, hated each other to the core of their beings, and were singularly focused on the distant future for me and my sister.
I didn’t really develop social skills, and I was so out of touch with my emotions that I had no understanding of people caring about each other in the sense that what hurts you hurts me or what makes you happy makes me happy. Despite that, I developed this obsession with meeting someone who would care about me unconditionally. That made life kind of difficult for me as I got older. I knew something wasn’t right and it took about 12 or 13 years as an adult to figure many things out , but that sort of meant I went down a different path than someone like my sister. In my opinion we are both very limited people - but it is hard for others to understand; it is something we don’t fully understand.
My sister thought she could go to 3 years of therapy and have a nice house and a few kids and her status as a doctor and everything would be a-ok; and I thought that would work fine for her too. It is starting to seem like that will not be the case though, certain things just can’t be held down or glossed aver forever.
I had a few wtf situations with my parents too, who were most certainly at the very least, emotionally abusive.
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Dad used to get mad at me because I always had a runny nose. He’d give me cold medicine and then act like it was my fault I kept getting colds. When I grew up and went to the doctor for a particularly bad “cold,” I learned that I had terrible allergies and I NEVER HAD THAT MANY COLDS AS A KID. Those were allergy attacks. Apparently, it never occurred to my parents that kids sometimes are allergic and what you do is take your kid to a doctor, find out what she’s allergic to and then treat those allergies or figure out how to avoid the triggers. Nope. I got punished for getting a “cold.”
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I was dancing once in the basement, which had painted concrete floors. I was wearing socks, so when I dropped into a split, I went too fast and twisted a bit on the way down, which ripped up something in my hip. I was never taken to a proper orthopedic specialist or even a general pediatrician. I was taken to a chiro-quack-ter, who obviously couldn’t prescribe meds (because they aren’t goddamned doctors), so he gave me some herbal crap for pain that was completely useless and did nothing and nothing was ever done. I still have pain and finally saw an orthopedic surgeon, who diagnosed my femoral impingement and told me the only corrective option, now, is surgery. Thanks stepmom and dad! Shall I send you the bill?
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Dentist referred me to an orthodontist several times. Every time I’d go in, she’d ask what dad said about it. My parents didn’t think they needed to pay for braces, so I’ve spent a lifetime being sneered at and called “snaggletooth” and avoiding smiling in photographs (and no, I do not do selfies) because my parents just didn’t think my teeth were that bad. “Oh, you don’t need braces, your teeth are fine.” And you got your dental degree where?
Nevermind the abuse, I’m still pissed off at what I consider to be a grave dereliction of duty on my parents’ part. Not getting actual medical attention when warranted is, IMO just as abusive as being hit with a wooden paddle. To be sure, as an adult, I still find myself paying for my parents’ mistakes. (Yes, I’m looking into braces, but I have a choice: new HVAC units or braces. AC, braces. This is Florida. I’m going to have to live with horrible teeth for a few more years.)
My dad was emotionally absent if not physically, but he treated me with respect. My mom on the other hand, has REAL ISSUES with men. In some ways she was emotionally abusive in using me as a whipping boy for all those issues. But mainly what she did was infect me (and my sister) with her problems. She pretty much knows that this is why she’s never getting grandchildren. So I get a bit of schadenfreude out of that. But I doubt she knows the depth of the problem in my case.
Double Post
Thanks to my network of extended family, I think I always knew my mother was fucked up and not normal. The numerous relatives that put a stop to her more ridiculous and dangerous behavior and protected me and my siblings is probably the thing I am most grateful for about my childhood.
My grades were good enough for college, I was class valedictorian, but why would I ever go? College was only for very pretty girls looking for husbands who don’t like hard work, and I’ve never been as pretty as I think I am.
How do you know that it’s not the norm? By the time you get to school, it’s all you know so you don’t know any better. I also grew up in a different era. When my mother took us into the hospital for treatment, they wouldn’t say anything. My mother said that when asked once, she said it was because my father had kicked whichever of the children it was that time, and the doctor simply turned away.
I always knew I was in a great deal of emotional pain, but I had no idea that this wasn’t normal.
When I was in college, I went to the student counseling center where people who are training to become therapists can get practice. One of the therapists asked me if I was angry with my father. I wasn’t particularly, because I didn’t really understand not every father makes his wife get down on her hands and knees and lick his shoes.
I had a crush on one girl, who could have been one of my first girlfriends had I been aware that she was interested in me, but I never suspected that someone may like me, I just didn’t have the concept. I was talking about something about my family and she started to cry, which confused me. She said she really loved her father and it seemed so sad, but again, I just couldn’t relate.
Intellectually, I started to understand more and more as I get older and began to realize that our family was up there on the scale of fucked up families.
However, it wasn’t until really recently that it started to register with me on an emotional level. Now my oldest is five and is the same age as where most of my memories begin, the difference between her experiences and mine are so stark, it’s hard to imagine that we are both homo sapiens.
She just doesn’t have the terror response. By five, I knew that anytime my father was angry or even a little tense, running for cover if he hadn’t seen you yet was the best option. If he had noticed you, you were fucked, but that was just part of life.
My children are allowed to feel emotions and express them. They can be sad or happy, have fun or be angry. They aren’t beat up for simply being in the same room as an angry adult, let alone worry if they are going to die that day.
They are children and have the bad days as well as good ones. They have to be corrected at times, but it’s all within normal ranges appropriate to their age and levels of understanding. Typing this out, it reminds me again that there will be some people who will get this and others who will say “well of course.” But it wasn’t “of course.”
I guess that one of the largest differences is that they just seem so secure. They know they’re loved and they love back. While this may seem mundane to everyone, I had never seen that before.
There’s been a thousand times I’ve started to write an OP along those lines, how amazing it must be for little children to grow up with the most powerful figure they know actually caring for them and about them. Someone who loves and watches out for them.
When my daughter was a few months old, I used to cry myself to sleep at night, shaking with enormous sobs about the pain she would face in life, wondering what the fuck I had done to bring someone else into this world.
But it’s just starting to hit me that they won’t have that. They’ll have their own challenges, and unfortunately I’m not going to be able to provide everything that a normal parent would be able to, but they don’t have the same indications of emotional disorders which my siblings and I had even at their young age.
We had the lunch meat or something like that. We were standing in front of the window in the living room and my father would come in, scream for a while then go back into the dining room. He’d beat one or another one up for a while. Finally my sister admitted it and got the shit beaten out of it. I suspect now that they took the fall because my older brother probably did it but wouldn’t say so.
Oh yeah. I grew up Mormon and my father was the “priesthood holder” for the family. We were to obey.
A lot of people write about their struggles on getting out of Mormonism, and it very much compounded the abuse which was going on.
Right? I mean seriously, what’s the worst your mom or dad ever did to you, Kambuckta?
None whatsoever. We moved from church to church, denomination to denomination, until one day we just stopped going. I always hated being dragged to church and was just grateful I had my Sunday mornings to myself then, so I never questioned it for fear they’d think I wanted to go and send me on by myself. That was when I was maybe 12 years old. It was like my father finally gave up looking for whatever he was looking for. I’d never considered it odd that we switched churches so much, I was too young to know that wasn’t particularly normal. I think my mother may have played a part, antagonizing the other members wherever we went. But religion was never a big part in our household even during our churchgoing days. Never prayed before meals and such, unlike my father’s siblings, my uncles. We’d do Christmas and Easter, but these were treated more as secular celebrations, just gift-giving and chocolate eggs and such, which again was fine by me.
After my father died and I was going through his papers, I found a weird religious screed from somewhere unknown and to the effect that all organized religion was evil, the work of the devil. Just the one. Dunno why he kept that, because it certainly did not reflect his demeanor. But I’ve wondered if since then it was part of the reason for us axing church.