Same here my dad was an abusive drunk who physically abused me when I was awake or asleep ! I didn’t feel safe even sleeping .
I think I was around 3 or 4. My favorite toy was a stuffed white bunny that I think I got as a gift when I was born. I loved Bunny and slept with her every night. One day Bunny was gone and I couldn’t find her anywhere. I looked all over and started to panic and went to my mother and asked if she saw Bunny and she said Bunny was gone. I went to look in the garbage can but she wouldn’t let me and sent me to my room. I remember screaming and crying and being heartbroken. Years later I asked my mother about it and she said she threw it out because it was dirty.
One day when I first started reading the SDMB I came across a story about a daughter’s pink blankie being lovingly put away with her consent by her Dad. It had me in tears.
This probably says a lot about me, but damn, that made me laugh!
:smack:
I always understood that the world could be ugly. I only knew my father through stories my mother would tell. He died in an industrial accident when I was just a few weeks old.
Also, I lost three of my grandparents (and quite a number of great uncles) before I was ten. Two classmates died during this time, as well – one by cancer, the other by car accident. Yup, I always knew that there were no guarantees in life…
When I was four or five, sitting on the arm of my dad’s favorite chair, and asking him what the number tattooed on his arm was.
When I was in third grade, my family moved and to get to my new school, I passed by a parochial school. Somehow the kids figured out I was Jewish and they would attack me, call me a dirty Jew and steal my lunch money. I soon figured out another way to go to school. I never told my parents.
I grew up during the Vietnam war. Watching the evening news just once was more than enough to understand just how ugly the world was, and to also understand the the US was a big part of that ugliness. 
My father beat me with a 2 X 4 because he thought I had stepped on some fresh concrete. When told I didn’t do it, my brother did, he just said I should have stopped him. I was 6 years old at the time.
By the standards of the OP’s story? Um…never?
Similar experience, only it was one of my aunties. I had never seen a tattoo on a woman before and thought there must be some really fascinating (to a toddler) story behind hers. I had nightmares for weeks.
Our family was very close to the family next door. The parents did things together and I was inseparable from their set of triplet daughters. The neighbor dad was a wonderful guy. He was chief of engineering for a toy company and endeared himself to the neighborhood by bringing home toys they had in development for our little group of hellions to test. The summer I was 7, he fell from some scaffolding at work, struck his head on the concrete floor, and was killed immediately.
I knew what death was, having lost my grandfather the year before after a long battle with lung cancer, but grandpa had been ‘old’ (to my 6 yr old mind), and sick for a long time. Death, when it came, was no surprise. But this was different. To have someone who was so vital and alive just be gone with no warning shocked me to the core.
10 years old; my friend and I saw a bad car accident on the road we were riding our bikes next to, just a few hundred yards ahead of us. A truck blew a front tire, crossed the center line, and went head-on into a car. Turned out we had briefly seen the young woman driving the car, at the convenience store where we had bought fishing bait, just a few minutes before.
As I was giving what I soon found out was a witness statement to one of the police officers on the scene, I saw the EMTs start putting sheets over what was left of the windows & windshield of the car. I asked the PO “What does that mean?” He turned to the car for a few seconds, then turned back to me and said “It means she’s gone.” I will never forget the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, and the feeling in my gut when I realized what his answer truly meant.
When I realized that, according to my mother, I was responsible for everything that went wrong in the house. Even if I didn’t do it. I could have prevented it.
Yeah.
My father was quite possibly psychotic as well. We would have fun episodes where he would come into your room, waking you up to beat the living hell out of you for whatever reason.
One night, it was because he thought (dreamed?) someone had been in his room so he picked me as the suspect, woke me up and beat me up until not only had I confessed and pleaded for mercy, but also could come up with a reason for the intrusion which could satisfy him.
I was maybe six at that time, but I can never remember anytime feeling that the world was a nice place.
It was always random stuff. He would suddenly change rules and then beat you for doing something wrong, all the while insisting he had told you. Years later my mother said that he would just have vividly imagined (hallucinated?) that he had said something and then acted on it.
A four-year-old simply doesn’t have the presence of mind to understand they are dealing with a sick parent so they believe themselves to be the sick one.
The first time I realised that bad things happened to good people: The young Sunday School teacher who taught us little ones and who we all adored was knocked off her bike and died. Someone opened a van door without looking as she came past. She hit her head on the pavement and was killed instantly.
Her much older sister taught at the Sunday school as well, she had a hunch back was pretty stern and always seemed miserable. (I don’t know if this was only after her sister died). I remember looking at her and thinking that God didn’t do anything to protect her family even though they were so religious. Yes, I did get the memo on why this wasn’t supposed to be so.
I don’t remember having that realization. As far back as I can remember, I was aware of how awful people could be to each other.
Mom was a paranoid nutter in some ways. As early as I can remember she taught us kids a “danger” word. Not sure what we were supposed to do other than freak out, but if she used it we were supposed to … freak out? Don’t even remember. Maybe if there was a gang of kidnappers or something we were supposed to run? She beat us so much it might as well have applied to her. Mommie’s going to line you all up and take you into the bathroom and make you scream and you have to listen to me beating your older sister, then listen to your older brother scream because mommy can’t handle things.
Yeah, mom taught me the world isn’t safe. From her.
This. My father would explode in anger for the most inconsequential reason, and take it out, physically or emotionally, on us kids. When he came home from work, it was understood that there was something that would ignite his anger, and we had to prepare for it. Safe place? That was for the movies or TV.
I don’t believe I ever thought the world was all peaches and cream.
But I always grew up thinking cops were the good guys. Even as a teenager, I always thought as long as you treat then with respect, they’ll treat you with respect in return. Boy did I ever have that world view shattered when I turned 16 and got my driver’s license.
Don’t get me wrong, I respect what LEOs do. But yikes! Some of those guys need some sensitivity training when it comes to dealing with young adults and teens.
I remember seeing frightening newspaper headlines during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and realizing that grownups—the people I thought were calm, responsible, and intelligent—might blow up the world in a petty dispute over whose political system was better.