Maybe, sometimes, instead of asking “why did you stay?” the
question should be “Why did it start?” When
I started writing this blog post, it was with the intention of explaining why I
stayed for so long with my abuser.
However, as I was writing, I began to realize that this was another
survivor story…a story of Domestic Violence that was not physical in nature,
rather, a story of emotional child abuse.
Both the preparation, and actual writing of the post has been very
painful, but at the same time, very therapeutic.
I have come a long way in my Domestic Violence journey. I am no longer embarrassed about discussing
the abuse I suffered. I still encounter
people who find it necessary to ridicule me when I admit that I was
abused. Those kind of comments no longer
bother me. But the question I have
difficulty with is “Why did you stay with her?” More often than not, my answer is simply “I
don’t know.” However, such an answer
dodges the issue, and does nothing to help those who are being abused, and need
to escape....and isn’t that why we advocate against Domestic Violence?
Being a truck driver, I have lots and lots of time to
think. I drive for an average of 8 to 10
hours a day, and most of the driving is down relatively quiet freeways, and I
am able to think about a lot of things, and still keep my attention on the
road. So lately I have focused my
attention to this particular question:
Why DID I stay? And I’ve found
that there is no simple answer, and I apologize in advance, the answer is quite
long and complicated. And it starts with
my mother in 1945...
Whenever the topic of my mother comes up, I always preface
what I say about her by saying “I loved my Mother, but I didn’t like a lot of
things about her.” Near the end of World
War II, at the age of eighteen, my mother left home to attend training to
become a Navy Auxiliary Nurse in Bremerton,
Washington. A year and a half into training, she met a
man, and in 1947 she became pregnant.
After she told him of the pregnancy, he made a hasty retreat, basically
telling her, “you’re on your own, I’m out of here!” She had to drop out of training. Then she met my father who was in the United
States Navy. He felt sorry for the cute
girl who was “in trouble.” Within two
weeks after they met, they were married.
(Not exactly the recipe for a successful marriage.) Seven months later, my oldest brother was
born (I was not made aware that he was actually my “half” brother until I was
28 years old.) Ten months after that, my
second oldest brother was born, and 16 months after that, my sister came into
the world. Six years later, in 1955, I
made my entrance into the world in Twin
Falls, Idaho.
My father used to joke “you came into the world backwards,
and you have been going that way ever since!”
I was what was called an “impacted breech” baby. I came into the world “butt” first. I had to be pushed back into the birth canal
to bring down my legs, then, when I was half born, the doctor realized my arms
were over my head, and had to push me back again to bring them down. Because of the difficulties of my birth, my
mother was convinced that I must have had some kind of birth defect. For a time she considered having me committed
to the State School for the Mentally Retarded. However, I developed fairly normally…and at
the age of 3 I learned my letters, and was reading at the age of four. My mother often told me she was glad I was
“kinda slow” because I caused her little trouble while she was dealing with my
older siblings. I asked her once what
she meant by “kinda slow?” She said “you
were quiet, never cried, and liked to be by yourself, and you could entertain
yourself without toys or anything, and when you started to read, you kept your
nose close to the book, like the ‘retarded kids’ do.” When I started kindergarten, the teacher
noticed I couldn’t read the blackboard, even from the front row. It was discovered that I was severely near
sighted, and I started wearing glasses.
At around the same time I was getting glasses, my youngest
brother came along. My mother was fond of
telling people that my youngest brother was the only one that was “planned…and
planned right down to his blond hair and blue eyes!” (I’m not sure how she accomplished
that?) She often told others (when I was
present) that when my youngest brother came along, that she had decided “to be
a good mother to this one, since the other four were ‘write offs’!” So, in short, she was letting me know that
she wrote me off when I was four and a half years old!
I became the proverbial “middle child.” Although I was not chronologically in the
middle, my parents were dealing with three children entering adolescence and
the teen years, and a brand new baby. I
was the quiet kid who always had his nose in a book. Easy to ignore.
I struggled in school.
The only subjects I excelled at were reading and history, and history
was primarily reading. I had great
difficulty with mathematics and spelling (and still do, thank goodness for
calculators and spell-check). Many years
later, when I was in college, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, which explained a
lot of my difficulties. The professor
who diagnosed me explained that I must have found a way to compensate for my
dyslexia with reading, because books had become my refuge.
I was bullied at school because of my glasses, I was the
“four eyed” kid. I had a pointy head, and was kind of goofy looking, and I had
developed a profound stutter.
Furthermore, as the cliché goes, I “couldn’t walk and chew gum” at the
same time. I was clumsy and very
non-athletic. To give my mother some
credit, she tried to help me. She sent
me to speech therapy to help overcome my stutter. To overcome my clumsiness, she sent me to
dance classes (which only served to give bullies another reason to pick on me),
and made me play little league baseball, but I just didn’t have the skills, and
many of the bullies who picked on me happened to be on the team.
 |
| Second Grade |
My memory of my father was that he just wasn’t there. He was always working; he was a carpenter and
general contractor building houses. Often he would work out of town, and for
nearly three years he worked over 400 miles away from home because the housing
market was slow in my home town, and he would come home “to visit” a couple times
a month on weekends. He had grown up on
a farm, and never was involved with athletics.
So he wasn’t the “dad” who played catch or hoops with his kids. What memories I have of him, was that he
wasn’t very happy, and my mother was very critical of him. She made fun of him because he couldn’t throw
a ball properly, and he ran “stiff legged.”
She also made fun of his intellect.
I remember a couple times when I would ask him a question about homework
my mother would tell me (in his presence) not to bother him because, “it
embarrasses him that he is dumb because he never finished school.” She told us that my father had “flunked” out
of school in 7th grade. (In
fact, he joined the Navy to support the war effort at the age of seventeen; he
was a senior in high school. After 9/11, the state of Illinois honored him, and other WWII
veterans who had left school early to volunteer for military service, by
awarding him his high school diploma. He
was so proud when it happened.) I
realize now that my father was just as much a victim of emotional abuse as I
was. However, he stoically endured the
abuse, because he was determined to raise his children (including the one that
wasn’t his biological son) the best he could.
And he stayed with my mother through thick and thin until all of us were
adults before he made his own escape and divorced her after 33 years of a
miserable marriage.
I’ll never know if she did so deliberately or if I was just
invisible to her, but she would often disparage me in front of other
adults. I recall one time she was
telling a friend how “wonderful” my younger brother was. She described him as having a combination of
the best of my two older brothers’ best attributes….according to my mother my
oldest brother was the intellectual, but was a complete klutz, and my next
oldest brother was a gifted athlete, but “dumb as a rock.” “And on top of it all”, she explained
referencing my younger brother, “he’s the best looking one of the bunch!” Her friend ask if he had any attributes of
Gus…my mother laughed and said “poor Gus, he’s dumb as a rock, a total klutz,
and homely as hell!” I was, as usual, in
the corner of the room, reading a book.
In another instance: I had been
home sick for a week with strep throat.
My teacher showed up on our doorstep and asked to speak to me. My mother came to get me, and asked me what I
had done wrong for my teacher to show up?
I told her I didn’t know. My
teacher told me that she just wanted to bring me something….I had won first
prize for an essay I wrote for the American Legion on why I love America, and
she had brought me the certificate. My
mother asked my teacher if this was some kind of joke because “that kid can
barely write his name, let alone an essay!”
My teacher was appalled, and gave me the certificate, and told me how
proud she was of me. She looked at my
mother and stated firmly “Gus is very bright, and you should be proud of
him.” Then she left. My mother asked me who wrote the essay. I told her that I did. And she said “liars go to hell, either
someone else wrote the essay, or you are faking being dumb, and you are just
not trying to get good grades.” She sent
me back to my room in tears, I never saw the certificate again, and she never
mentioned it again.
Two greatly significant events
occurred in my youth which affected the way I interacted socially. I went to public school through 5th
grade. I always had difficulty making
friends, but by the time I was in 5th grade, I had started to do
so. Plus, I was getting to the “top of
the pyramid” in school, 6th grade was the highest grade in the
school. But, then my mother decided that
simply going to catechism classes after Mass on Sunday was not sufficient. So she transferred me to the Catholic Parochial school in our town. So in 6th grade, I became the “new
kid.” For the next three years I
struggled to fit in. I became an Altar
Boy, I tried, and failed, to make the basketball team. I joined the Boy Scout troop sponsored by the
Church. But I was still the outsider kid
who wore glasses, who wasn’t very bright (I still struggled academically), and
who was a nerd who spent half his time in the library. However, I did make two friends…one being my
best friend, who, like me, was somewhat of a misfit. He was the “fat kid.” My other friend was also a “misfit,” she was
a “tomboy” and almost “one of the guys.”
She was good at sports, tough, and didn’t like girly things. So she was ostracized by the girls, and the
boys thought she was weird. (We kissed
one time when I was twelve, just to find out what it was like...I liked it, she
thought it was gross.) I also discovered a passion for History. Two trips with my family, one to Illinois, where I saw a lot of sites associated with
Abraham Lincoln, and to Washington.
D.C. increased my interest in history. I also discovered a passion for
music. I loved the music of the
sixties….The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul, and Mary
were amongst my favorites. But at the
same time I discovered Beethoven, Mozart, Grieg, Tchaikovsky and other
classical composers. I joined the
choir, and found a wonderful teacher who
encouraged both my passions. Sister Mary
Myles was the choir mistress, and she took me under her wing. She discovered that I had a deep singing
voice (I finished puberty by the time I was twelve) and pushed me to achieve in
the choir by giving me several solos.
She also loved history, and would take the time to discuss the books I
was reading. (After I left the school we
corresponded, until she was tragically killed in an automobile accident a year
later.) By the time I reached 8th
grade (the final grade at the parochial school), I had begun to find my own
niche. But then my parents (I have heard
conflicting stories as to the why from both my mother and father) decided to
move to Boise, Idaho.
 |
| Just before moving to Boise, Idaho, 1969 |
I thought, since I had finally
found a niche in a Catholic Elementary School, that maybe it would continue in a Catholic High School. But I was the “new kid” again. The school was very clique-ish. The kids from the different parochial schools
hung out with each other, and I didn’t attend any of those schools, so I was
left out. At the end of my freshman
year, I was miserable, and I asked my mother if I could go to a public school…she
said “by god we moved to Boise
for you to go to that school, and you will damn well go to that school.” I was 14…my mother just told me the whole
family had been uprooted for me to attend a special school; I had no idea that
she could be lying to me. So I spent the
next three years in misery.
I did what I could to fit in. I played football my sophomore year. I wasn’t very good, but I was the biggest kid
in class, 5’ 10” tall and 170 lbs. When
I finally made the starting team (as it was a small private school, the team
only had a total of 22 players), I rushed home to tell my family. My mom, Aunt, and my younger brother were
working out plays and strategy for his little league Football game the next
day…I excitedly told them that I was starting that night, my mom said “can’t
you see we are busy here?” No one from
my family attended that game, or any game I played in. At the end of that season I developed a
hernia, and my playing days were over.
Since I couldn’t play, I became the equipment manager for the football,
basketball, and track teams. When I was
awarded a Letter for my work with all the teams, my mother commented, “they
gave you a letter for being the ‘water boy’…how humiliating, at least your
little brother is the star of the team, and will win ‘real’ letters!”
I was miserable in school, and I
was miserable at home. My mother
constantly criticized me for everything; how I dressed, how I wore my hair, the
music I listened to, the books I read.
Furthermore, she used me as an example of what NOT to be for my younger
brother. I asked her once why she was so
hard on me. She told me: “it’s a hard world out there honey, and you
might as well hear the truth from me, I don’t want you to get you hopes up for
any kind of happiness. You got dealt a
bad hand, I’m just helping you realize it!
Your youngest brother is the only one with any talent, smarts, and
looks; just face it, you are a loser and you’re gonna be miserable for the rest
of your life, just like your mother…I mean, your father!” At the time, I took
her at her word that she had misspoken, but years later I realized she was a
bitter and angry woman her whole life.
She felt trapped by her children.
The oldest reminded her of her indiscretion in her youth, the next three
represented the burden of being a woman in the post WWII era, expected to have
babies and stay at home. She resented
being married to a man so (in her mind) beneath her intellectually. She idolized her father as the perfect man…a
big strong, red headed, blue eyed Swede. My oldest (half) brother was tall and
skinny, dark eyed and dark haired. The next three were also dark haired and
dark eyed, but squat in stature. Only my
youngest brother met her ideal of the perfect child, fair haired, blue eyed,
big and tall…the perfect “Scandinavian Viking.”
She lived vicariously through his achievements, his athletic prowess,
his popularity with girls, his being the “cool dude” in school.
She truly believed that being
cruel and critical of the rest of us, she was helping to prepare us to
“survive” in the cold cruel world!
I was afraid of girls. I didn’t date much in high school, actually
that is not true, I didn’t date at all in high school until my senior year, and
then only with the girl who would become my first wife, who was my abuser. I only asked two girls out for dates before
my senior year. The first I asked if she
wanted to go to a movie….she laughed in my face. The second I called and asked if she wanted
to go to a concert (my mother was a student at Boise State College, and had
picked up two free tickets and gave them to me) , the girl asked me who was
playing, I told her, she said “never heard of him, it would have to be someone
famous for me to go with you!” And she
hung up the phone. (It happened to be a
fella named John Denver, and at the concert he introduced s new song he had
written called Rocky Mountain High…within
a few weeks he was a mega star). I
didn’t ask another girl out until my final year in high school.
After I was rejected by the girl I
asked to the John Denver concert, I went to my mother to ask her how to talk to
girls, and why girls didn’t seem to like me.
My mother told me I was a homely clumsy nerd, and that I may as well
resolve myself to the fact that I would never have a girlfriend because I was a
loser. My mother had me convinced that I
was an undesirable troll, and that any attempt to even talk to a girl would
only get me rejection and pain. Whenever
a girl would talk to me, or flirt with me, I convinced myself that she either
just felt sorry for me, or was setting me up for humiliation. I seriously considered going to a seminary to
become a Catholic Priest, or even better, a cloistered monk. I figured I might as well live a life of
celibacy, since women were never going to be part of my future anyway! I began to hate my mother, but I felt
extremely guilty for doing so.
Then I met Ric. Just before my senior year began, the
football team started pre season practices, and I remained the equipment
manager for the team. Several players
from Boise State College were working out with our team because of NCAA
restrictions on organized practices at the college level. I assumed Ric was one of those players. He looked older, he had a full red beard, and
carried himself with the confidence of a college student. On the first day of school, I was surprised
to find that he had the locker right next to mine. He was a “new guy,” and for some reason we
hit it off. He became the best friend I
ever had…and remained so until his untimely death in 2007. He made it a project to get me involved with
a girl. We both worked in the school
cafeteria (to pay for our lunches) as dishwashers. There was also a pretty redheaded girl from the junior class working with us…he
constantly flirted with her (he flirted with all the girls), and he nicknamed
her Curly. When the homecoming dance
came along, he told me I had to go….that I had to attend at least ONE dance
while I was in high school. I told him
that no girl would agree to go with me…he said “I bet Curly would, ask
her!” A few days later, after a short
football practice was over, I went to my locker. Ric was waiting for me (he had quit the team,
because he didn’t like the coach). He
told me he had just got out of detention, and guess what, Curly was also in
detention, and there she is at her locker (about 60 feet away from mine)….”now
go ask her.” My knees were literally shaking when I
approached her, suddenly my stutter returned in earnest. But somehow I managed to ask her to the
homecoming dance…when she said yes, I thought I was going to pass out, so I
said, “see ya tomorrow in the cafeteria,” and beat a hasty retreat. I didn’t realize until years later that Ric
had set it all up, and made sure that she would say yes before I ever
asked.
When I told my mother I was going
to the Homecoming dance, she asked me “what kind of girl would go to a dance
with YOU?” I told her she was a Junior,
and mentioned her name, which was Hispanic (her father was from Spain). My mother made the comment, “what, is she a wetback trying to hook up with an
American?” I said “she is an American,
and why don’t you just leave me alone, you are not going to ruin this for
me!” She started to say something else,
but I walked out the door. It was going
to be my very first “date” in my life, and I wasn’t letting my mother make a
farce out of it. Being around Ric had
helped me to have more confidence. I
began to stand up more to my mother’s insults and put downs. I was going to prove her wrong, that I was
not a pathetic loser…I could find a girlfriend, and this was my first, halting
step. As it turned out, it was also the
first step towards my worst nightmare.
She was pretty, she was nicely
shaped, she had long red hair….and I was in love! After the dance, I asked her if she would
like to go to a movie or something some time, and she said yes. We started dating on a regular basis. She warned me that she had a terrible temper,
and that she could be very jealous, and she hated “cheap” guys. I didn’t care, she was a girl, she paid
attention to me, Mom was wrong! She
kissed me on our second date. This was
only the second time I had kissed a girl:
the first time when I was twelve with my “tomboy” friend. The relationship moved fairly fast. By Christmas we were “going steady,” she was
wearing my class ring. By February we were “engaged.” The funny thing is, I never proposed. As our relationship grew, our “kissing”
turned into “necking,”…and soon the “necking” turned into “heavy petting!” One day she told me I had to buy her a
diamond ring since we were getting married.
I was somewhat surprised and showed it, she reacted by saying “no man is
gonna touch my tits without an engagement ring!” I wasn’t objecting…I was elated, I never
thought it could happen. I was blinded
by love, and I was desperate, I just didn’t realize it. I also didn’t realize I was trading one
abusive relationship for another.
My mother absolutely hated
her. Mother said she was “poor wetback trash
pretending to be white.” One day I came
home, and my mother asked me who I was taking to the upcoming Senior Prom. Before I could answer she said “you better be
taking a ‘fat’ girl! I was the ‘fat’
girl in high school, and I never got to go to a prom, and, BY GOD, my sons will
take ‘fat’ girls to their proms!” I
responded “not THIS son, I’m taking my fiancée!” She said “no, you’re breaking up with that
little slut.” I came back with “F***
YOU!” (The first time I ever used that
word in front of either parent.) My
mother slapped me across the face, and when she went to hit me again, I blocked
her hand away, and accidentally grazed her face…she got a cruel smile on her
face, and calmly said “you will pay for that!” When my father got home, he took me out to the
back yard. I expected to receive a
beating, in fact, I was afraid he might kill me, because, according to my
mother, I had broken his cardinal rule….you never hit a woman for ANY
reason. He asked me what happened. I told him the story, he got a sad look on his
face and said “well son, you were in the right” and turned to go back in the
house, then he turned and pointed at me and said “DON’T let it happen
again!” He knew my mother was trying to
get a rise out of me, he understood her abuse.
It was then that I realized that my Dad was just as abused as I was.
I began to spend as much time as I
could away from home. I was either with
my fiancée or on the ski slopes. I
learned to ski at the age of 10, I was on the ski team, and Ric was an avid
skier. And each year for Christmas, my
father bought me a season pass to the local ski resort. I had a job so I could pay for nice things
for my fiancée, and take her on nice dates.
My schoolwork suffered…I was barely passing, but I didn’t care. I would soon be 18, and my number was
up. The Vietnam War was still going, and
my draft number was 11, I was certain to be drafted. I decided to join the United States Navy to
avoid going into the Army (Ironically, 3 days after I joined the Navy, when I
was still 17, President Richard Nixon suspended the draft!). As far as I was concerned, my future was set,
I was going to marry my fiancée and make a career out of the Navy….and escape
from my mother. What I didn’t realize
was that I was trading one abusive relationship for another.
I graduated with the barest
minimum grade point average. My Graduation
Day was an experience, to say the least.
We received our diplomas from the Bishop of the Diocese. First you dropped to a knee, kissed his ring,
then he handed you the folder containing your diploma, then he blessed
you. As I walked off the stage, I opened
the folder…..no diploma…just a note saying “see the school secretary.” Wow, I must have failed something. After graduation (no one from my family
attended except my Aunt, and she was there to see my cousin, who was a
freshman, sing in the choir) there was a reception in the cafeteria. I approached the school secretary and showed
her the note, asking her if I had graduated.
She said yes, but there was an issue with tuition, and to see her in the
morning (graduation was on a Sunday).
The next day I was informed that my parents had neglected to pay the
tuition for the last three years, and my mother refused to pay it, stating to
the secretary “he wanted to attend that school, so get it out of him!” $1,500.00 was owed. The secretary graciously gave me a photocopy
of my diploma to show the U.S. Navy as proof of graduation. (I kept that copy in my graduation folder for
5 years, until I was able to pay off the debt.)
After graduation I attended the
“official” graduation party….graduates ONLY, thus my fiancée could not
attend. She was very tight lipped about
not being able to go with me. The next
day, I experienced the “temper” that she had warned me about. The party was a “controlled” kegger. When you arrived, you had to have a sleeping
bag, and turn in your car keys. The
parents hosting the party kept a constant vigil, after the festivities
(including beer) the boys slept in the back yard, and the girls slept in the
front yard…and the parents (the father being a state patrolman) stayed up all
night patrolling the grounds. The next
morning my fiancée started screaming at me for staying all night (even though
attendance at the party required staying overnight) and wanted to know what
girl I “f***ed” at the party. It took
flowers, and a gift, and my best friend Ric, to convince her that nothing had
happened. She let me know that I was not
allowed to ever attend a party (or anything else, for that matter) without her
again. She also reminded me that I
better not “f*** up” what I had, because “you’re damn lucky to have me!”
 |
| Graduation Picture (1973) |
That summer I was caught between
the proverbial “immovable object and unstoppable force.” My fiancée pushed me to stand up to “your
bitch mother,” and my mother was doing everything to sabotage my relationship,
and my life. Both my younger brother and
I were working for my father. Up until
that summer, I was doing carpentry work with my Dad…foundations, framing,
roofing, siding, drywall, and such. He
had started to teach me cabinet making and finish work. Suddenly it stopped. Now he had me prepping houses for
flooring. I cleaned the houses, and
burned the scrap materials, for $4.00 per hour.
My younger brother was doing cabinets and finish work…AND at the age of
twelve, was being paid $5.00 per
hour. (Years later my Dad told me he did
it because my mother insisted that he do so.)
I was angry, but it was the best job I could have at the age of 17, and
in a temporary status, I was leaving for Navy boot camp in September. Plus, I could work whenever I wanted to…the
houses all had electricity, so I could clean them at night if I felt like
it. One Saturday morning, after a late
night date with my fiancée (I had a 2 a.m. curfew on Fridays and Saturdays,
midnight the rest of the week), my Dad came into my room at 6 a.m., and asked
me if I was going to work, I said “yeah, later,” he said “don’t bother, you’re
fired!” (again, he did so at the insistence of my mother). I managed to find a job pumping gas for the
rest of the summer.
My birthday happened to be on a
Saturday that year, my fiancée and I stayed out until 4 a.m., when I got home,
my father met me at the door. “Your
curfew is 2 a.m.” he said. I said “not
anymore, I’m 18 now, I’m an adult, I can do what I want!” He said “what’s on top of this house?” I said “a roof.” He said, “who pays for it?” I said “you do.” He said “and as long as you are under it, you
follow MY rules….or get the hell out!”
(again, he did this at the insistence of my mother.) So I got out, I moved into my fiancées parents
house, and less than a month later, I began my military service. On December 21st, 1973 I was
married…..and my long nightmare continued…..I stayed for six years because I
was desperate for someone, anyone, to love me…even if she beat the hell out of
me.
 |
| Navy Boot Camp 1973 |
My mother passed away in
2003. A couple of months before she
died, I asked her why she never liked me.
She responded by saying “does it really matter? You turned out ok, so I must have done
something right!” I told her, “yeah mom,
it does matter….and I didn’t turn out ok, for a good portion of my life I have
been depressed and miserable.” She said,
“Ok, if it means that much to you, I hated you because you are just like your
GOD DAMNED FATHER, you look like him, you sound like him, and you are a just as
much a weakling as he was!” I told my
Mom that I had spent my whole life trying to gain her approval, trying to make
her proud of me, tying to get her to love me.
She said, “sorry honey, you were doomed from the start!” When she was on her death bed, and in an out
of a coma, I sat at her bedside. She
came out of her comatose state one time, saw me, and lunged to hug me around
the neck…to this very day, I’m not sure if she saw me, or if she saw my
father…but from the look of surprise on her face, I’m fairly certain she thought
I was my father. She passed away 6 hours
later. Never once in her life, did she
tell me she was proud of me. To this
very day, I am still trying to deal with the whys of how I was raised. I guess I will never know, but thanks to some
special people, I am dealing with the questions…
I started this essay with the
intention of explaining why I stayed in an abusive marriage. I now realize that my marriage was merely a
continuation of much of the abuse I had already suffered, but with the added
element of physical violence. Sigmund
Freud would have said I married my mother….and in many ways, he would have been
correct.
My second oldest brother, Dave,
and I are now very close…he is my best friend.
(I don’t speak to my other siblings for various reasons, mostly in
connection to our relationship with our Mother.) Dave and I have spoken often about the
relationship we had with our mother, both as children and as adults. And I spoke to him about this essay. He told me simply this: “Mom was not a nice person!” I can speculate on why she was so bitter and
angry her entire life, but I will never really know. All I do know is, it doesn’t matter why,
people just should not treat their children like that!
There are many reason why victims
of abuse stay. Sometimes it is
financial, sometimes it is fear, sometimes it has to do with self esteem….there
are many, many, reasons. In my case, I
stayed because I had been raised as an abused person, I truly believed that,
not only was being abused normal, but, that I deserved every bit of abuse that
I experienced.
No one is worthless, no one is
ordinary, no one deserves abuse.
Everyone has worth, everyone is special, everyone deserves love. And Love should always be kind!
