originally posted to substack may 11, 2025
I was never supposed to form an opinion about the abuses I endured. The expectation was to follow the pattern. Start having kids before the age of 25, let multiple pregnancies alter my brain before it develops fully. And then my children will see a softer side of their grandparents that I could have only imagined in my wildest dreams. My solitude and loneliness are of my own doing, if I had only kept quiet about it I could attend mother’s day church service with the family and hear a sermon about a god I don’t believe in and watch the performance of what everyone projects mothers to be. Then brunch at a buffet with smelly carpets and free food for kids under 7, with women who hit and berate their children behind closed doors but wear beautiful gowns and accouterments to seal the aesthetic. Beneath the plastic smile is a scowl, and anger only fit for unsuspecting dependents.
I live in constant dysregulation, fear of being beaten for making mistakes, fear of having an opinion I formed without their permission. I dream about my mother the most when my anxiety is at its highest. The dreams are just memories I’ve already lived. Like being made to lie on my stomach as my mother sat on me backwards to beat me so that I couldn’t cover my butt during the assault. Those sensory experiences are seared into my nervous system, to be re-lived over and over again. The flinching pain of being hit over the head, shoulder, back unexpectedly. The memories of her bursting into my bedroom to lash me with “the bat”, a hollow platics toy bought specifically for keeping my siblings and I in line. She bragged about it to her mother and sisters. Before that it was the detached leg of my life-sized barbie doll. We could expect to be hit over anything that set her off, especially when the bathroom wasn’t clean or there were dishes left in the sink. She’d wait until the wee hours of morning, when we were sleeping soundly. The door would swing open as she wielded her weapon of choice, her shadowy figure in the doorway looming with the familiar tone of disappointment and disgust at our audacity and filth. Have you ever woken up to a beating and being yelled at? It is horrifying and makes slumber perpetually anxiety inducing.
My parents will say I was a child who deserved it, that my behaviors warranted bodily harm. That there was no other way for me to learn and conform to the standards of the society around me. I was defiant, mischievous, sassy, inquisitive and outspoken. Some call it a pervasive drive for autonomy, but what is so bad about wanting to live life on your own terms? Children are a reflection of their caretakers and I needed that reflection to be beaten out of me. It didn’t work though, unfortunately, if I had the capacity to conform, I would have done it by now. It is not an ideal lifestyle, living on the margins. Doing and paying for everything alone, knowing that others find my lack of familial ties and loyalty to be off-putting and untrustworthy. I remember being beaten for being too talkative at school, for not making good enough grades, for talking back to teachers. Having to perform in those ways only made me robotic in nature, a perfect candidate for exploitation at a corporation that doesn’t pay living wages and would drop me in a heartbeat as soon as I have a human need.
My heart breaks for the child version of me, who would I have become if I’d had the freedom to be my truest self at every stage of development? Without the threat of harm at every corner? Abuse at home primed me for living a double life. After nursing my wounds and bruises alone in my room I’d go to school pretending nothing was amiss. I was discouraged from having friends all together and they damn sure weren’t allowed to come over to our home. Control kept me isolated from ever forming strong bonds in and outside of the home. My parents would paint the picture that we didn’t keep the house clean enough for company. My older sister viewed me as a nuisance, I was groomed to snitch on anything she did and then she had to pick up the slack on my chores until I was old enough to know better. To my younger siblings I was merely a caretaker, more present than parental figures with no authority or autonomy to socialize with my peers. Nobody liked me at school, “I thought I was better”, it was a shield to appear normal. The nice clothes my mother got on layaway at Marshalls helped me have something to hide behind. I didn’t quite have the self awareness then to realize I didn’t have the correct social skills. And how poor social cues might be as off-putting as admitting I was being treated poorly at home. My mother made sure I stayed silent. She’d threaten us about calling the authorities while beating or berating us, so I knew that wasn’t a good idea either. Not that it was ever on my mind to do anyway. The stories I came to hear from most adult foster children are just as horrifying or worse than my own. That fact displays that there is no real recourse for children being harmed. That being put into child protective services could yield a worse position or make it so that you never see biological family members again. A lose-lose.
I can admit that my older sister faced much more harm than I did but I seem to have taken it much harder emotionally. Somehow she has grace for them and maintains her relationship with them until this day. Me? I walked away in December of 2016, before the term “no contact” became widely spread. When asked about family back then when getting to know people I would say I was estranged from my family and a deadbeat aunt to my niece and nephew. Despite attending public performing arts schools for 6 years of primary school I am really bad at pretending. I would check in with my siblings periodically to understand their experience of our parents and we seemed to all agree that we were abused. I thought by now we would have been able to confront them together but a couple of my siblings still mask around them to get their economic needs met.
I hope you don’t mistake my vulnerability as a “victim mindset” or needing your sympathy. I am deeply hurting from the harm that was done to me and this is the best way I know how to express myself about it. I put myself through college and have been self-sufficiently stumbling through life on my own since 18. I’ve built a career I”m proud of and have taken risks despite being scared. I struggle with other humans though and prefer to keep to myself. I’m optimistic about finding a chosen family and experiencing the intimacy of repair in relationships. Until then I’ll continue to write and mother myself from the inside out.
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