My early memories of my childhood were waiting up with my mother who was crying for my father who stayed up all night whoring. Eventually my mother could take no more of this and his lack of being a provider so she left him and we lived with my grandparents until she could get a job. My father drove us to daycare and one day he just drove past the daycare and never stopped. I was four years old when me and my younger sibling were abducted and driven across the border to Canada were my father paid different parents to watch us until the deal inevitably fell through and we moved on. That lasted over a year as we re-entered the United States somewhere in the Mid-West and moved on to California where my father had relatives. They soon realized something was amiss as his wife was missing and they sent him packing where after some thought of giving us to another family, he drove back home from California to New Jersey. All we had to keep us amused was the car radio with its AM 70s format and what we could see out the window when we did not stop for breaks.
I met my mother at my Aunt's house where she insisted to my livid Mother she knew nothing of our whereabouts, which was a flat out lie. I was 5 years old and when I hugged my Mother I could feel her body shaking and her heart beating fast. When I returned to my Grandparent's apartment, I realized my Mother had a new man in her life. He was very cold in affect and I hoped this was just me reading him wrong. Turns out that this was soon to be my stepfather and I was not reading him wrong. My grandparents hated him and he in turn, hated my grandparents who I loved.
When he first came home drunk, beat my Mother, and trashed our apartment I thought he was going to kill us all. I hid a knife under my bed and wrote my last will which I hid under my dresser. Each time he came home drunk, beat my Mother and trashed our apartment, I thought we were going to be murdered until I realized we most likely were not going to be killed. A few times, my stepfather apologized to my mother for coming home drunk, beating her, and wrecking the house, but after a week or two, he would do the same thing and his apologies lost all credibility and he stopped apologizing altogether. After that, I just hoped he would stop coming home drunk, beating my mother and wrecking our apartment for a week, but over time I just came to expect this drunk motherfucker to come home every Friday and Saturday to beat my mother and trash our apartment and he did so on the regular. It became part of my life for 12 years and I tried everything I could think of to get out of that toxic culture of abuse.
When my stepfather was laid off from his job, I thought my mother would divorce him, but she unequivocally told me that she had no intention of doing so. It was then I realized I was doomed to this situation. I then had nothing but hatred for my mother and stepfather and I said so to them the next time the fighting began and cursed out my step father who to my surprise just walked away. and out the door. I became so enraged I ran after him and jumped off a three stair landing onto his back where I was promptly smashed into a glass door where I cut my finger to the bone and severed a tendon. The worst part was having to lie about the whole thing to cover everyone. That just gave my stepfather more power and the onslaught of drunkenness, violence and destruction continued.
While I was healing, I began preparing for the next time I would confront my stepfather. I would punch cardboard boxes to strengthen my hand and when I was ready I cursed my stepfather again and as he always bragged about his martial arts skills, he prepared for a fight with a karate stance. He swept my legs, but I had my foot behind his leg and he fell and I landed on top of him. He mocked me as I pinned him to the ground and began punching him in the face. My mother screamed and shouted she would call the police. I never thought she would and planned to give my stepfather an extended beating, but she actually called the police. She never called the police on my step father even though he beat her and trashed our apartment all those years. After everything, I was taken to a hospital for having a mental illness even though I dealt with all that bullshit over the years. When I returned home my stepfather was apologizing and stuttering like a circus geek and thereafter there were no more beatings while I lived at home. That night, I trashed the house just for good measure.
I could go on, but the moral of the story was my Mother was not the victim I saw her as, but complicit in the whole toxic way of life. One time I asked her why she called the cops on me when she never called the cops on my Stepfather, she said she thought I was going to kill my stepfather. Otherwise, she would not talk about the past or my feelings about it.
My life has been one of secrets, shame, denial and trying to forget the past. My Mother and other sibling would NEVER discuss the traumatic events of the past. My Mother even said before she died that my Stepfather was the love of her life, which was a final kick in the balls for me. To top it off, My stepfather called me about eight times this Mother's Day to come over for dinner. Some people have no fucking shame.
I would beat his ass today, but two old men kung fu fighting just doesn't cut it and would prove nothing. My stepfather has never apologized to me for the damage done nor did my Mother before she died. I carry the scars to this day of living in a toxic family and there is not a day that goes by that I do not think of the past and how it has affected me over the years.
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