Her Life - Part 1 - The Younger Years
2003-06-15 at 11:19 p.m.
The first 14 years of my life were pretty normal really. I was a happy kid, naive and innocent and looking forward to learning and developing through life. My real dad left when I was born and so it was just me and mum for a few years. She married my step-dad (I call him dad because he's been there for me more than my real dad has.) when I was about 4 or 5 and we all moved to the house I'm still in now. I guess I was a spoilt kid, I got everything I wanted and had the sole attention of both parents but then another child came on the scene and things changed. I had to share my things and I didn't like that one bit, I mean what kid would? My sister didn't sleep much for 2 years straight and I think that's what caused my mum's depression. It didn't surface severely for a few years though.
Soon there were 3 of us brats and mam's depression came out, kicking and screaming. She had a nervous breakdown when I was 13 or 14 and was hospitalised a few times from suicide attempts. We all saw some pretty horrible things in that house over the years, things I wish I could forget. Basically, it was hell living in that house.
I saw my mam screaming constantly, every minute of every day. I saw my dad turn to drink and become a monster when he'd had too much. I saw my mother with slit wrists, saw her float deleriously through the house after taking an overdose. I saw my mother hit my dad with a broom across the head, I saw her punch him in the face. I saw him punch her back. I saw him hold her over the side of the bannister and tell her that he could kill her there and then after she'd taken the overdose.
My 2 younger sisters saw that too. That's the one that scared me most. I screamed and ran up the stairs, begging him to let her go. He just laughed and pushed her back into her room. It felt like someone had ripped out my heart when I saw her stumble into the room, I can't describe the look on her face. It was a mixture of pure fear and shock. He later appologised for laughing at my panicked screams, he said he would never have let her go, he was doing it to show her how much she didn't really want to die. To scare her enough so that she wouldn't try and kill herself again. I suppose it worked because she never tried again.
I'm not trying to make my dad out to be some kind of wife beater, because he's not. He took so much from her, looked the other way when she punched him, kicked him and screamed in his face. He hit her back once or twice, but why not? Why should he have to stand there and be abused? We tell so many women to stand up and fight back, so why do the rules have to be different if a man is being hit by a woman?
When my mam was first ill with depression, she had a really bad temper because she suffered really badly with PMS. I remember she would always be screaming at me, or lashing out at me if I answered back. We were constantly fighting, and later on in life I learnt to fight back. Once, she was about to smack me or something so I ran up the stairs and she grabbed me by the hair and dragged me back down. We laugh about it now but at the time it wasn't funny at all. Another time she grabbed my head and hit it off the computer table, I can't remember what I'd said or done but that's not really important.
[part 1 the younger years] [part 2 Violated] [part 3 Starving for Perfection]