Happy birthday to one of the two men who inspired 90% of the posts on this blog. One of the two men whose face fills me with self loathing and fear every time I look at them.
Happy birthday to the man who called me a threat to his new life. I’m a threat to your life the way the FBI is a threat to serial killers: you just don’t want to be caught.
Because we can’t have the most reliable witness to your 30 years of abuse talking to your new wife. Because you aren’t THAT confident in the idea that you have changed. Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse: the idea that someone else is now experiencing what it’s like to be “loved” by him or the idea that he had control over how he treated us the entire time and he just chose not to.
But that is the reality of abuse. It is not something uncontrollable that the person has no choice but to follow their urges to manipulate, intimidate, coerce and control. They do have a choice. Every moment of abuse there is a choice to not start or to stop. As survivors we have trouble wrapping our head around the idea that someone could choose to hurt us in this way when society has told us and them that our families are precious and must be protected.
I remember learning what abuse was in first grade. I went home and told my mom that when she yelled at me it hurt me and my teacher said it wasn’t ok. Then she explained how it was different because she had a reason to yell at me. Besides, they didn’t spank me for no reason. There was a good reason for that too.
But they did. They chose to control us using fear or threats or the threat of neglect. That was my mom and dad’s favorite. The idea that if I displeased them to enough of a degree I would just be out of their lives. “Parenting hours end at 7 PM!” Rejection after rejection of their responsibilities as the people who brought us into existence. I was just a thing to them.
Turns out actually nothing I could do would stop them from cutting me out of their lives. Just like if somebody wants you to be in their life nothing will stop them from trying except your denial of them.
I’m 37 and my parents waited until I was out of their life for so long that people probably don’t even know I exist. I literally don’t think my father mentions the fact that he has three kids from his first marriage. I have no way of knowing just like I have no way of knowing where my mother and sister are.
Every day I hope it hurts less and less. I hope that someday I wake up rested and when things quiet down I hope I think of something besides the fact that my mom still calls me demanding accountability “walking away” from her. I hope I think about something besides the fact that one of my siblings worships my mom and the other one won’t discuss anything to do with our parents with me.
It is an insane feeling to know that you experienced so much of your life with people who are essentially gone now. To realize they were never the people you thought they were. To grieve a life that is still happening and the years you will never get to experience as intended. They can’t give me those years back but I can keep them from making the ones I have left a living hell.
The mission is still the same. Fill the years I have left with such goodness there is no room or time for that awful past.
They get to just walk away from everything they did to me. So I’m gonna do that too. I’m trying and working on it so hard.
Queer Pandemic 