Abused as children and to therapy we go…
I have met a lot of people in my life. Yet, there are only a handful that have looked me in the eye and said they had a great childhood. I have watched children grow up and thought they had a fantastic childhood, but they have complaints as well. What causes a parent to fuck up their kids? The main excuse I give is that they are only working with the information they have. There are two main themes. First—that is how they were raised, so that is how they raised you. Second—they missed _____ when they were kids, so that is the priority when they raise you. Then there are the real assholes that do not see children as people. When you add that to either of the above the results can be horrific. You guessed it; I had a set of those.
‘This is how I was raised’ and how ‘I’m going to raise you.’ Yah, not good! Technology and society have changed drastically over the generations. What was once acceptable behavior is not now, nor should it have ever been. This is why parent jokes are so wrong and funny. My mind is going through a spectrum of bad advice and bad morals that get passed down from one generation to another.
After one of my altercations with my dad, my mom took time to explain to me: “He was raised when children and women weren’t people, and you’re a girl.” I am pretty sure women and children were always people. That belief system has been passed down through generations. It is just in my life that those beliefs have been challenged.
Life is ______, probably the worst advice I have ever been given. In my half century on this earth, I have learned that life changes. What was once normal, is now known to be unjust. At one time some things seemed hard, now that I have studied and practiced, difficult things are easy. What I thought was important, I know now is not. Things I was taught to value, I now know are not important at all. Life is like water each second a single drop.
My childhood:
I was raised a carny kid—not circus, there is a big distinction. Circus people tended to travel together; they often became a close-knit family and watched out for each other. Carneys, on the other hand, are more like gypsies and scavengers. They often compete against each other in business, so it is every man for himself. It is a much different upbringing.
As a Carney’s my mom was a clown – a real clown, with bad jokes, red nose and big shoes. Her costume was a baby doll style. This allowed her to be pregnant without needing a new outfit. She spent a lot of time being pregnant. If she was not pregnant, she was nursing. She told me most of us were weaned because she was pregnant again. There are ten of us total. Seven boys and three girls. I have one older brother Mark, we are eighteen months apart. There is a bit of a gap between myself and the next brother, then a small gap after him. My mom said she had miscarriages in those years. Two more boys then a decade after me my first sister arrived, followed by another sister, then three more boys.
My dad’s role at carnivals was puppet and magic shows. He tried being a clown for a moment, but he did not have the right temperament. I was always amazed at how charming he could be in public. He cracked jokes and seemed very playful with strangers.
As a family we had a helium balloon stand made out of PVC pipe; this made it easy to disassemble and reassemble for transporting. It was mainly set up in an octagon shape each section would be stalked with different types of balloons. We made flying octopus, flying boys and girls, decorated with different balloons and faces drawn on all of them. We did balloons inside of balloons and sold mylar balloons when they first came out. Now they are sold in $1 stores and come with pictures on them.
Our parents would help fill the stand with helium balloons before wondering off. They left Mark and me to tend to the balloons and whoever was little at the time. Looking back, what the fuck were my parents thinking? Leaving two small kids with tanks that could explode, cash that could be stolen, and crying babies. Mark and I did the best we could, but I have been told stories of my siblings crawling around unattended at fairs and thinking it was normal. I am sure we checked on the toddlers when we were not busy with balloons, but we were only kids ourselves.
I still love carnivals, fairs and circuses. I am extremely comfortable in crowds and large gatherings. As a kid one of my jobs was to find mom and bring her whatever baby needed feeding. It gave me the opportunity to catch moments of the shows that would be performed on the various stages. Now when I go to these types of events, I get the schedule right away so I can plan my day around the performances.
This type of lifestyle creates limited stability. Food and housing are often delt with on a day-to-day basis. I remember my tummy grumbling all the time. At night, if we were far from home, we would just be crowded into the back of the decrepitated van with all of the equipment. For education, home school happened here and there, but it was more of a “Here’s a book you should do.” I do not remember either parent sitting with us for lessons. Medical and dental needs also ignored, since there was no money or even a way of keeping any medical appointments. Carney life is also seasonal. Early Spring to Late Fall normally. When fall came the transient life of the summer would end. There was a home, but it was no treat.
I was told at some point that my grandfather gave my parents the Brazee house. It was not so much a thank you statement as my mom explaining to me why dad did not feel like he had to pay rent. The house started out a tri-plex. Originally, it had one upstairs and two downstairs apartments. I do not remember which area we took over first, but the apartment downstairs to the right was the last one we destroyed. When we moved in, there were only a few of us, so we took over more space as the babies came. The upstairs had the largest living room, and for most of our stay there, it was the primary residence. The rooms continued from one to the next, so you had to go through one bedroom to get to another bedroom. My parents did not believe girls and boys should be kept in the same room, and since my next sister did not arrive for a decade, I almost always had my own room. In this house, it was the far back right. It was the only room with an outside entrance. Eventually, the staircase deteriorated and was unsafe even for a child, but for most of the time, it gave me an escape from the house.
The best part of this house was the trees! A cherry tree was next to the garage, and a plum tree was to the left of that. On the other side of the yard, there was a large walnut tree and behind it, I believe, there was an apple tree—the kind of apples that you did not want to eat but that fell and rotted on the ground. There were other trees that did not make food but were fun to climb anyway. There was also, a huge growth of blackberry vines at the back right corner. We built a fort in it. The yard would be considered very large by today’s standards. The house sat just a little way from the street with a long steep driveway up the side to a garage. We spent quite a bit of time on the roof of the garage; you could reach the cherry tree branches from there.
The trees were very important. My dad was an extremely angry and violent man. There was no way of knowing who was going to get it or how bad it would be. Those of us that could, would take to the trees. We would climb so high that the branches could not support the weight of a grown man. He would stand at the bottom, yelling at us to come down. We would just stay there. I remember trying to sleep in them and even wetting myself knowing that coming down could be deadly. Dad instructed mom to forbid us from climbing, but she refused; she knew it was a safe place for us to hide.
As a child I thought the house was in a great location. We could walk to school, the shopping center, the Hostess factory, and parks. It turns out these things were actually miles from us. As an adult, I have driven to the places we used to walk, and even the library and pool were miles away. There was no adult supervision; we would just take off and maybe or maybe not find mom and tell her where we were going. There were certain days that were predictable. Tuesdays were wonderful. See’s candies had $0.05 bags of cut ends and pieces they could not sell for retail. My brother Mark and I would scrap up pennies and take the 3-mile walk to get a bag; it was so awesome. Eventually, they stopped, but in the seventies, companies had slacker rules.
Thinking back, I had a lot of happy memories in that house. Over the years, an awesome family moved into the left of us. Their oldest daughter and I became good friends. They kept bees. It was really cool. When the bee keeper came, we would get a piece of fresh honeycomb full of honey. It was incredible. To the right, a family moved in that also had a bunch of kids, and we would go over sometimes after school and have sandwiches. It was wonderful—full sandwiches, peanut butter, and sometimes honey or jelly. I would stalk the calendar for those days too. I do not really remember the people though, just sitting at the table eating sandwiches. 😊
I would love to write about all the fun we had and how wonderful childhood was. Unfortunately, eventually we had to go home. I do remember running away. I went to the park and hid under a tree until well past dark. I was so angry; “I’ll teach them” was my attitude. I just will not go home and then we will see how they feel without me. I was probably 5 or 6, so my concept of time may not have been accurate. I did think I had been gone long enough and regaled myself on the way home of what a warm welcome I would receive and how much they must have missed me. When I opened the door, my arm was grabbed and pulled as my ass received one blow after another from a crying and screaming mom, where had I been, and the dishes needed done as she pulled me into the kitchen. I just cried as I washed in cold water, both from not being missed, and my ass was throbbing.
My mom cried most of my childhood. If you asked her why, she would say she was praying. Just praying. She was a very religious person. We went to church Sunday mornings, Sunday night, Tuesday morning, Wednesday night, occasionally Thursdays and often on Saturdays. If there was a revival in town, that put us in church every night. Church was also our primary source of education. Mom would hook up with different people that started and closed different church schools. Most of our education came from magazine type lesson plans that could be mailed into whatever program mom had us signed up for. In between schools and traveling we did get to attend public school occasionally, but education was not a priority for either of our parents.
The house started out in fair condition but over the years, things broke. The upstairs kitchen went first, although it seems like dad pulled that one out to make another bedroom. He had torn open some of the walls too, I am not sure why, but they were never sealed and created a horrible draft. There was no heater and no insulation. The house was both extremely cold and drafty. Eventually, the pipes broke, and since there was no money to get them fixed, someone hooked garden hoses to the end of where they did work – with cut offs. The only one that worked was the hot water. When we could not afford electricity or the tank was empty of hot, we only had cold water. It was probably the pipes that closed the upstairs and far back bathrooms off. We could only reach what then became the kitchen area and one bath with the hose. Having either hot or cold water is a very strong memory for me. Some days, we only had cold, so dishes and baths were only in cold water. I do remember my mom trying to heat water occasionally for baths as we sat freezing in a tub, waiting for that small splash of warmth to hit us. We did dishes in water so cold that your fingers would turn numb, and you would need to stop every few minutes to dethaw them or so hot your fingers would burn. Toilets are not designed to hold hot water, since that’s what we had sometimes eventually the toilet casing cracked braking the only bathroom in the house.
I remember my dad manhandling me to the sink and forcing my hands in the burning water. The dishes needed done. He was yelling that I wanted hot water, now I have hot water. I cried and begged him to let the water cool, but He pinned me to sick and kept forcing my tiny hands and arms back into the burning water.
My father was a very large man. Over 6ft and with the girth of a small bear. I remember the pressure of his body pinning me to sink where the ledge hit me in the chest. His fingers overlapped my arms as he plunged them into the burning water over and over to extent that my chest caught the splash back. There is a real feeling of helplessness when the abuser is a parent. In my day it was called “parenting”, spare the rod – spoil the child.
There was no heating system in the house and the walls were questionable. Eventually, a wood burning stove was put in the basement. My parents moved down there so they could stay warm. Us kids were warehoused on the third floor, no heat, no running water, and power only when we could afford it. Mom complained at some point. Dad cut a hole and put a vent in the second level floor, then another in the third floor so heat could maybe float up if the fire was hot enough. It still did not reach the bedrooms. The only time we were allowed in the basement was to feed the fire, if we had something to put in it.
I have an aunt who has told me the story of us spending the night. She said we were filthy and wearing multiple layers of clothes; she tried to get us to take them off for bed, but we would not. We told her we would be cold if we took off any layers. She said she just cried; she didn’t know what to do.
My aunts were my saving grace all of my life. My happiest memories were going to their homes. There was always food, so much food. Even better, they would tell us that we could eat as much as we wanted. Even seconds. I do remember being in trouble multiple times for the rats in my hair. My aunts would try to get me bathed and put me in clean clothes, when possible. They spent hours combing all the tangles out of my hair. My mom used hairbrushes to hit us with. If we had one, it was broken. It is possible that it was us kids that hid the brushes, hoping it would take a while to get a new one. I am not a religious person, but I can relate to that saying: “But for the grace of God, there go I.” My aunts are probably the only reason I’m writing this book and not dead or a crack whore someplace.
When you are a child, even if you live in terror, your everyday life is your normal life. When you are exposed to other things, it is recognized as for them, not for you. My mom probably emphasized this by constantly repeating the phrase “In this house.” It was a regular response to “I want” statements. I want____. My mom would say back that “You can want, BUT, in this house, ____.” My parents also bought into about every muti-level and money-making scheme they heard of. We were constantly told that we did not have money today, but one day we would have lots of money; then we would have food, heat, running water, and electricity all the time.
I have sprinkled a few stories in the book, but there are a few lessons that I reserved for this section. Please keep in mind that my mom has sincerely apologized to me several times over the years. She has been to therapy with me and has admitted she did not know what she was doing when she raised us. She has also acknowledged that she was much harder on me than the other kids. She explained that a lot of her strictness on me, was because I was the oldest female, and that, as she puts it, I was born a grown up. She has called me Mary Poppins most of my life: “Practically perfect in every way.” I am not shy, mostly good with people, and resourceful. I was my mom’s crutch during my childhood, but damage was done. Here is a story I wish were fiction.
I was going to public school and heard of birthday parties. These parties had invitations, games, prizes, snacks, and decorations; they sounded wonderful. I had been to family birthday parties where you eat, sing, play, and go home. I wanted a birthday party like other kids at school. I thought if I had a party like that, other kids would come, and maybe I could get invited to other parties like that too. I had a goal. I went door knocking. I asked anyone that answered the door if they had work so I could earn money. I could clean their yard, do dishes, take out the trash, stack firewood. I was a hard worker, and they should hire me. I must have been about six, maybe a bit older, but I was going to work and make the money so I could have a birthday party. I found work, enough anyway. I remember doing odd things and going shopping. I got chalk to make a hopscotch board, a jump rope, and jacks. I was going to have a party. I bought whatever prizes a 6-year-old found cool.
The day came, and my brother Mark decided he was going to have some fun with me. He tied the jump rope up in knots, threw the Jacks all over, and scribbled the hopscotch; I was mad. I probably attacked him, and for once my mom intervened. She beat the shit out of me! The hairbrush was broken or missing again, so she grabbed a metal extension for a vacuum. She just kept swinging, blow after blow. I was crying and trying to explain that “He made me mad.” That really pissed her off. She said ‘he’ did not make you anything. That, I was choosing to be mad, and if this is how I was going to behave on my birthday, I would not be allowed any more birthdays! Mom bandaged me up the next day and put my arm in a makeshift sling. I was kept out of school until the bruises healed. Mad mom talking to a 6-year-old. She was joking, right? Nope. Next year there was no card, no cake, and no happy birthday even mentioned. The year after, it was the same. Birthdays became another day to remember how worthless I was. They ended with me, crying myself to sleep, wishing I was like ‘normal’ kids.
I still have Birthday issues to this day. I go through a cycle of trying to plan them so they don’t suck, or ignoring them so they don’t hurt. Interestingly enough it was my 53th birthday that I once again found myself homeless and destitute. I guess I still haven’t broken the birthday curse.
My mom always said how she hated girl babies; their cry always bothered her. At some point, she got in the habit of locking me up. I fell about 14 ft out of a tree one day; it knocked me unconscious, and when I woke up, the earth was spinning. It was the first migraine I can remember. (I have had them ever since.) I went to mom crying (probably screeching) that I thought my head was going to explode, and she said she just couldn’t take it. She locked me in a room. There was no food, water, or bathroom. She turned the lights out and left me there to cry. I remember banging on the door, screaming for help, and pulling on the doorknob trying to get out. I do not know what my age was when the lockdowns started but the doorknob was chest height. That became the norm. If I cried, if I fussed, she would just lock me up until I could be still, until I would be quiet, until I would behave. You add beatings and that I was often so hungry or cold I would cry, well… I got locked up a lot.
I have realized that this is why my self-defense is to hide. I stop eating, I stop bathing, and I lock myself back up as I was conditioned to do as a child. As I grew sicker, I started drinking and would stay drunk if I could, so that I would stay still or pass out; if I was lucky. It was not a conscious decision. Occasionally, I would pull myself out long enough to explain why I was hurting, but if I felt threatened, I would go back to hiding and/or drinking. Subconsciously, I believed that if I were not around anyone, I would not upset anyone; therefore, I was a good girl. This defense mechanism seems extreme but to my untrained mind it seemed to be effective. When I was small, I would be locked up until I could be still and quiet long enough for others to be nice to me.
The lockdowns in childhood were extreme discipline but they also separated me from other abuses. I did not have access to food, water, heat, or the bathroom, but no one had access to me either. In my ‘discipline’ I was also kept safe. Think of it as picking your poison. Which horrible experience would I prefer? As an adult I resorted back to this because it had been an acceptable form of protection.
Growing up does not always help with abuse taken on as a child. As I got older, my mom would talk to me about things that only compounded the hurt. My mom has admitted she is the primary reason we were starved as children. She did not want to be one of “those people.” Every once in a while, we would have food stamps, but she didn’t allow it all the time. Vanity before children. We had free lunches at school for a while, but I do not think we were signed up for them. In the 70s, if you went to school without a lunch, they would feed you. I found out they provided free breakfast too—so the race was on. I would get up and ready as early as I could to make it in to eat before school started. You want to talk about a happy kid. They even gave us chocolate milk sometimes—it was awesome. Then mom found out. We were not allowed to go to school early anymore, and the lunches stopped. I remember crying to mom that I was hungry. She shoved a bag in my hands and said that there is my lunch. Halfway to school, I opened the bag it was a restaurant saltine package. Just one, two little squares of saltine crackers. That was breakfast, lunch, and most likely dinner. I sat down on the curb and cried. I put my feet in a puddle of water.
This was the first memory I have of getting the “Fuck its.” What difference does it make anyway? I sat there crying, flipping my feet up and down splashing the water until I pulled it together enough to go to school. That day I found out that if you showed up at school with sopping wet feet, they would let you go sit in the office! With your feet on the radiator until your shoes dried. I hit the jack pot! My walk to school after that, included hitting every puddle on the way. I would sit in the office nice and warm; it was cozy. They would give me juice. It was great for a while. Before I knew it, plastic bags were put over my feet so my shoes would be dry when I got to school. It did not work, and it was embarrassing. I would show up at school with whatever plastic my mom could find rubber banded or tied on my shoes. Getting laughed at became normal.
Where was my father when all of this was going on?
My dad—he would go looking for something to hit.
Attention from my father, was basically different forms of violence. Group discipline included rounding everyone up. We were gathered as he screamed that “We were making him do this”. These beating were usually accompanied with the statement that “You know what you did”. I have talked to my siblings as adults and no, we still have no clue what our offenses were on any of these occasions. Boys and girls alike, no discrimination for this activity. We would be lined up, then one by one snatched into the air. He would grab, then hold us by our wrists high with one hand and beat us like a pinata. As we dangled by our limb, swaying with each blow his hits would leave marks on whatever body part he connected with. Then he would make us sit, with strict guidance that if we were not still and quiet he would really give us something to cry about. It hurt, but if we did not sit there quietly, the beatings would only get worse. I have multiple memories of multiple locations with my hands under my butt softly bouncing, trying to alleviate the pain, holding my breath, trying my damnedest not to cry.
The three worst assaults I got from my father were definitely uncalled for. I had to have been around the 5ish range. It was when the upstairs plumbing still worked. I was using the bathroom on the third floor, and I am not sure what the offense was, but the lower panel of the door came flying at me. Dad was on the other side; he had kicked the lower panel completely out and sent it soaring towards my head as I sat on the toilet. I still do not know what I did to upset him; I just remember waking up later. Doors were not a deterrent for my father, although getting them out of the way may have made him angrier.
I described my room as on the third floor in the back right corner and that my parents stayed in the basement where there was heat. I do not know what I was doing. I was little and in my room. My door came crashing down flat. He had completely knocked it off its hinges, breaking the door away from the frame. Then a baby came flying at me. He threw the baby at least six feet across the room at me. I caught him somehow, but it scared the tar out of me. Dad did not hit me that time, but he was furious! He yelled that I knew if mom was not home, I was to take care of the babies. I held back the sobs until he left. I sat there rocking. The baby and I both crying. ‘I didn’t know mom was gone’. I kept repeating to myself as quietly as I could, ‘she did not tell me’, and ‘I did not know’, I repeated over and over, crying as silently as I could. Just in case he came back. The tears drenched my face as I kept looking at my door flat on the ground. That was the strength he would hit us with, the power it takes to break a door free from its frame.
There are more stories that I am not going to tell, but this next one is what justifies my belief that my parents are not always reasonable. Across the street lived a nice family with girls. They had dolls. I went over to play, and I had not been there very long before someone came pounding on the door. The standard rule was that we should go out to play but that we had to be home when the streetlights came on. We lived in the Northwest; it can get pretty gloomy at any time of the day. This particular day, it had gotten dark very early, only I was indoors and didn’t realize it. The banging was from my father. My dad was always really good at saving face in front of others. He held it together until the door shut behind me. He hit me all the way home, and when we were indoors, that is when he really went at it. My mom tried defending me, yelling “It is only 4 pm; how should she have known to be home?” He would not listen; he insisted that I knew better, and the blows continued. This was another beating I had to wake up from later.
Over the years, I got bigger and mouthier, and “fuck him” became my attitude. It did not matter what I did or did not do; if he wanted to hit; he would. My mom tried getting him to stop to some degree, but she also believed in “spare the rod, spoil the child.” My father’s parental role did not hold very long in my life. I caught him peeping on me in the shower when I was 13 and told mom. She did confront him; his response was that he would just not look at any of the kids anymore. It was shortly after this that my opportunity to move out occurred.
Dad found beer in the shed and blamed me (it was not mine), so I was grounded for life AGAIN. I packed and had my stuff on the front porch. I went to tell mom I was leaving. She told me no, that I was grounded. I said, “Damn it!” Dad hopped up out of his chair and with full force came across my face—smack! I smiled and asked if he felt like a real man now. Then came the back hand just as hard. I grabbed my stuff and left. They sent the police after me, but when they arrived at my friend’s house, I had large male handprints on my face. I showed them both sides and asked if I had to go back. They said no—they could not force me back into an abusive house. I told them I would visit when I was ready, and the police left me alone after that. I stayed with friends off and on and eventually ended up sleeping on a park bench. It seems like it was my mom that found me and told me my aunt and uncle said I could live with them. My uncle has now passed, but I am still very close to the aunt that remains.