Just recently I helped in some subtle signs of abuse for UAADV, and in doing so, finally got into gear on getting this blog going. Something I have been thinking for some time in doing, and now just "Doing It".
It's hard to step out and admit my weaknesses, share with the world that I was an abuser. It's hard, but I see it as a necessary evil for me to do so now. Too many Victims are blaming themselves for the abuse. Too many women and children are suffering because of the abuse that is being dished out to them, too many are dying. Meanwhile, the Abusers don't have a clue, and continue to torment their Victims, and this is something that needs to change. That change starts with me, with you........
As for me, I guess I better start at the beginning......don't worry, not going to write a novel here (not yet anyway), but want to touch on the beginnings of why I've been both a victim and an abuser, a prodigy of my upbringing.
My father was an X-Marine and alcoholic, as I've shared before. He was hardly ever home, being that he worked on a boat and would be gone for weeks at a time, then home for a week. While he was gone it was peaceful at our homes, but my family was already dysfunctional. When he was home, it was like walking on egg shells, never knowing what would happen next.
He would drink during the day and go out at night and come home late. Would wake everyone up and beat them for no reason, molest my brothers and sisters (I don't know if he ever molested me, don't have that memory, was too young. Sometimes think that's better then knowing). He would beat my Mother in front of us, would threaten myself and my brothers and sisters that if we told, he would do the same to us, which he usually did anyway. We paid a high price for our silence......
This is something that none of my family has talked outside the family about. This is our skeleton in the closet, one that needs to come out and return to dust. One that I know my Mother, Father, and most of my brothers and sisters are going to be mad at me for doing, but it NEEDS to be aired. My elder brother, who got out and got a job and moved away from the family at the age of 17, is the only one now that is doing well, the only one I'm still talking too, and has less affects of the abuse then the rest of us. He got out, he was the lucky one, yet, he too knows what Hell was going on in our home, and we've talked many times about writing a book and letting the truth be known, this is the start.....
The cops knew what was going on in our home, but they were afraid of my father, and would do nothing but bring him home when he was too drunk to bring himself home. Our family knew, the schools knew, the whole town knew.
We were kicked out, literally kicked out of NJ because of his alcohol and abuse problems and the fact that they were going to take us kids away from the family because of the abuse. At one point, we were taken and put with family, but after my parents moved to another state, we were given back.
It got worse, and continued without help. Back in those days, it isn't like it is now. Back then it was definitely seen as a "Family Issue", and things were kept behind closed doors. It was seen as "Discipline" and something that the Father had the right to control. We were his belongings, and he was allowed to do whatever he wanted too. Like he always said, "I brought you in this world, I can take you out".
My Father would bring other women home, even with my Mother still in the home. He saw it as his right, his decision, and everyone was too afraid to say anything about it.
He would hide matchsticks throughout the home, and would always make my sisters hunt for every single match stick while cleaning before they were allowed out to do anything. He would usually save this for when they had special plans with friends. This sometimes could take days to find all the matchsticks, days he would sit back, laugh, yell and beat them for not cleaning correctly.
I remember all too well one day when us children came in, he was drunk on his chair. We asked where our Mother was, and he told us upstairs soaking in the bath tub. Of course, we went up, and after knocking on the door without an answer, the bathroom door was open to a horror. There, in the bath tub, was blood and chunks of meat was soaking in the bath tub. All of us cowered in fear, our Father downstairs, laughing, drunk. We came down crying, asking what happened, where our Mother was. He stated that he was tired of the Bitch, and he killed her. It wasn't until hours later when our Mother walked in the door that we knew that he hadn't. Those were the worse hours of our lives..........
My father would play mind games with us. He would mark an X on the floor, make us sit on that X, and told us we weren't allowed to move for any reason until he told us too. He would then come up to us, kick us, beat us, burn us, piss on us, and we knew that we couldn't move or it would be worse. There was no escaping him, we had no-where to go.
We lived in a home that was at that time about 100 years old. It was in horrible shape, without running water after the water pipes had busted and were never fix. We were afraid to sit on the toilet, afraid that we would fall through the floor into the kitchen below. It didn't help matters that after my Father got drunk one day, he started tearing out the walls and insulation, determined to fix the home up. Well, we lived for years with holes in the walls, no insulation, and sometimes more snow on our sheets then there was outside.
Still, no one could help us..........
I was inconsiderate to others, always getting in trouble, searching for the love and attention that I wasn't getting at home, but doing the wrong things for the wrong type of attention. My self esteem was down to 0, but I didn't know what to do. I would steal, lie, do drugs (after my brothers and sisters introduced them to me as a way of escape), and burn fields, houses, warehouses and buildings. I had so much anger built up inside me, that I couldn't express it, no one would listen, so I did things to bring attention to me to try and get out. Figuring, that if no one would listen to how bad our life was, maybe they will do something if I did wrong. Unfortunately, they did....
I was sent to boot camps. I later went to jail, a total of over 24 years that I spent behind bars off and on, and the sad thing is, that I saw jail as a safe place, a home. I knew what was going to go on there day to day, knew that I would have 3 hots and a cot. Knew that every morning I would wake up behind those bars, safe. I had protection while in jail, those that I grew up with, those that knew that I wasn't a bad person, but was just lost, needing the right direction to go.
I had a few Angels looking over me during my life, although at the time I never knew it. My Uncle Gerald & Aunt Jane, Uncle Deedee and Aunt Vicki who switched me back and forth between their homes between the ages 10-12, trying to help steer me in the right direction. I wasn't ready to listen. A lot of my school teachers, counselors, and principles would reach out to me, but couldn't give me what I needed. Again, I wasn't ready. Uncle Zeak, who worked with my Father, who would take me out of town for the weekends and get me away from my family when he could. A lot of the neighbors would do what they could, but through it all, I had to go back home, had to go back to the abuse. I would be taken out of the frying pan for a time, then dropped right back into the fire.
Later, my PO's and Judges would try to guide me, try to get me going the way I should, I just didn't know how! I wanted too, I wanted a life without the drama, without having to worry day to day what would happen next. But my life had always been so chaotic, I didn't know how to stop it.
This, to me, was what life was. This, to me, was what I thought it was to be. I knew that others had different lives, but I didn't know how to obtain it, and no-one seemed to know how to help me figure it out.
I see now that it wasn't up to them to figure it out for me, I had to get to a point in my life that I was ready to give it all up, and to change. To take time to figure out what was going wrong in my life, and little by little taking that scalpel and cutting the bad out of my life.
