My childhood was like crossing a river. Thrown into it, and swimming by instinct. Not able to see the other side, swept along by the current. Every once in a while, finding a rock to cling to for just a bit, to rest and gather strength. Having to give up those sanctuaries because there was so far to go and I could not stay. 

I made it through the water and out the other side thanks to a mixture of strength, stubbornness, and the sure knowledge that there were other ways to live. 

Between home and school, I really, really wanted to be invisible. I tried to accomplish that by finding safe places. At home, I was either in my room or out in a corner of the backyard. At school, I spent every spare minute in the library or the music room. Being visible, except for to a chosen safe few, was dangerous.

But with those chosen few, I could be my own crazy, happy self. Even now, I remember them with gratitude, and it’s like sunshine in my heart.

Conversations with E could not always be avoided. When I was fifteen, he sat me down for a brief conversation about dating.

“You’re almost old enough to start dating now,” he said, “and I want you to know that you’re not allowed to date…” and here he launched into a list of offensive racial slurs which included the n-word. The least offensive word he used was “tontos” - by which he meant Native Americans.

I stared at him. The only thing I could think of to say was “I’m not like that, Dad.” By which I meant that I wasn’t a racist like him. Later, I figured out that he thought I meant I wasn’t interested in dating “those people”.

Every time I think about it, I’m grateful that I rejected his racism.

After the beating, I did everything I could to avoid E. If he was home, I stayed in my room or over at a friend’s house. I’d come out long enough to eat dinner and then go back to the safety of my room. I wouldn’t ask him for anything, not even driving practice time. If I wanted something, I asked my mother. 

School remained a source of conflict, though. I’d get in trouble at school, or another bad report card would follow me home, giving E fodder for another round of emotional abuse. I’d answer back (I was always either too stubborn or not smart enough to shut my mouth and take the abuse), things would escalate, and sometimes there would be a slap across my face or I’d be shoved around, or grabbed by the arms and shaken.

One morning, I missed the school bus. It was one of those mornings when I couldn’t decide which I hated more, home or school. Consequently, I’d dragged my feet. I asked Mom for a ride to school. For some reason, she couldn’t, and E stepped in.

We weren’t around the corner from home when E tore into me verbally. I can’t remember what the fight was about, but I stood my ground and hoped that the drive went fast. It did that all right. About three or four miles from the school, E abruptly pulled the car over and told me to get out. I refused. There was snow on the ground and we were on a county highway, at least three miles from home. There were no buses, either. He leaned over and unbuckled my seatbelt. He told me to get out or he would drag me out and beat the shit out of me. I got out.

He took off, pulling an illegal u-turn, and headed back towards town. I started walking. Three or four miles through the snow on the shoulder of a county highway with nothing but farms on either side for miles. Trucks barreling by. By the time I got to school, first class was almost over.

The secretary normally would have given me some flack about strolling in so late, but she just shrugged and gave me a pass. I muttered something about the car breaking down. I was cold, wet, tired, my feet hurt like hell, and explaining the truth was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment. I was too ashamed to admit that I’d been dumped out of the car like an unwanted puppy.

There were a number of beatings over the course of my childhood. This one made everything that came before it (or after) look minor league.

It was a winter’s evening. I was fifteen. I had just gotten out of the bathtub, dried off, and put on my bathrobe without bothering to put on anything underneath on it. E was shouting at me about something. I can’t remember what it was about, but I was standing my ground.

The fight escalated. E lost his temper, big time, and started towards me, I turned and ran into my room. I locked my door just as he thudded into it. He began pounding on the door, screaming at me to open it or else.

He was completely out of control, and I knew it.

I jumped up on my bed, trying to get the window open. I fully intended to jump out of my window, into the darkness and the thick drifts of snow, wearing nothing but my bathrobe.

E kicked the door open.

He grabbed me by the hair, threw me on the bed, and pinned me down. My bathrobe came open. He flailed at me with his fists, both of them, great swinging roundhouse blows, like a gorilla. I tried to simultaneously protect my head and face and to hide my naked breasts.

It was only a minute but it felt like forever before my mother actually dragged E off of me and out of the room.

I can’t remember the aftermath. I’d guess that I got completely dressed, even putting on a bra, and wearing a hoodie over my pyjamas. My sense of vulnerability and humiliation were extreme. I probably lay in the darkness, silently hating E more than I had ever or would ever hate another human being. And I’m sure that I never wore that bathrobe again.

We all need approval. It’s kind of a basic human need: approval from our families, our peers, our friends, etc. If we don’t get it from our family growing up, we go looking for it elsewhere.

Between the abuse I got at home and the bullying I got at school, approval was scarce. As a result, any approval I received created a big impact. At the same time, I was enough of a rebel to not go out of my way to gain approval, which probably protected me from all kinds of bad decisions. I was stubborn enough to like what I liked, who I liked, and damn the consequences.

As an adult, I still feel that human need for approval, especially because I never got it as a kid, and I’m still just as stubbornly determined to be my own person, because that stubbornness is what helped me survive my childhood. It’s hard sometimes, though. I can’t not be who I am, but I do hide parts of my life from other parts.

I wish I could figure out how to be a whole person - to be bravely myself, all the time, and not hide. I’m torn between not caring about approval and fearing disapproval. This is not good middle ground, and it is a consequence of surviving emotional abuse.

I was thinking about the grades I got in elementary school, middle school, high school. After a certain point, they went downhill. I was completely capable of getting good grades, or I would have been if things had been ok at home. I just chose not to apply myself. Or do homework. Or pay attention in class, unless I wanted to.

Of course, my parents were a huge part of the problem. Whenever I brought home a report card, they ignored good grades and positive comments, and threw a fit about bad grades and negative comments. It didn’t matter if I had four Bs and one C, it was the C they focused on, exclusively.  If I pointed out the Bs, they would say that they should have been As.

After a while, the Cs became Ds, the Bs became Cs, and worse. I didn’t receive encouragement to get good grades or recognition of good grades, I received threats, punishment and emotional abuse over bad grades.

Actually, that was pretty much typical for everything.

This says much of what I’ve struggled to say about forgiveness:

“If I have wronged you, if I have done you harm, then I did so through the use of power over you. The case of an oppressor or an abuser makes this especially clear, but it’s always true. To do another wrong is to exercise power against them, and the more power we have in relation to another, the greater the capacity we have to do them wrong by using that power for harm.

Forgiveness works by reversing that power dynamic. If I have exercised power over you, abusing that power to do you harm, then I require your forgiveness. It becomes something I need from you, but which I cannot compel you to give me. Forgiveness cannot be coerced or extracted by force. It can only be granted.

…

The counterfeit of coerced or compulsory forgiveness cannot do this. There can be no leveling if the powerless are required or demanded or expected to surrender their forgiveness before the powerful are brought low. Any talk of forgiveness for one who has misused or exploited power over others that does not grant power — all the power — to those others becomes, itself, a second misuse and exploitation of power. It’s a sham and a scam that has nothing to do with real forgiveness at all.

Read the whole thing. It’s amazing.

By the time, I was fifteen, I’d learned to distrust E. It’s hard to trust someone when you can’t predict how they will react, especially when that reaction might include physical violence. Still, that distrust wasn’t complete.

We were out in the car. I was having a driving lesson. E was complaining about my mother, and since she and I had just had a fight about something, I was sympathizing with his complaints. He was generally an expert in playing Mom and I off against each other, I’m ashamed to admit.

And then, he told me that he had considered having her committed to an insane asylum after she had “her breakdown.” He didn’t mention the fact that her “breakdown” had been brought on by his infidelity.

I thought that was going a bit far, so I made a noncommittal noise and kept driving.

After a moment, he asked me what I thought of high school, and were the kids wilder than middle school.

I said that it was ok, and that a lot of the kids seemed to be pretty wild. In a moment of complete insanity, I confessed that sometimes I wanted to get drunk and be a little wild. He nodded sagely and calmly said that was pretty typical of kids my age. It was a moment in which I felt like it was safe to say anything. God, I was SO wrong. 

Mind you, at this point, I hadn’t ever been on real date, or to a party, let alone had a drink of anything more than an inch of wine mixed with kool-aid when my parents weren’t home. I was still a pretty innocent kid, and my confession was more about a daydream than reality.

I didn’t even know any of the party kids at school. The prospects of me actually getting drunk and getting wild were, at that time, about as likely as me being able to fly. 

After we got home, I asked if I could go to my friend’s house to hang out for a while. E said no. I asked why.

E said, in front of my mom, that since I had said that I wanted to go out and get drunk or something, I absolutely could not be trusted to leave the house. Mom’s jaw dropped and she asked what I’d said. He told her. Then he grounded me until further notice.

I was absolutely gobsmacked. I thought about telling mom what he’d said about her, but decided that all it would do would be to hurt her and start a fight. Besides, I had a sense of honor.

I never told him anything even vaguely private ever again. If something could be used against me in any way, I either kept my mouth shut or I lied.

During my sophomore year, one of the “tough” girls took to punching me in the arm whenever she passed me in the hall. Hard. Every single time. And, like the abuse I was taking at home, there didn’t seem to be anything I could really do about it. Previous experiences had taught me that going to a teacher wouldn’t change anything.

One day, something in me snapped. As I passed her in the hall, she hit me as usual. Without any kind of forethought, and in the same purely reflexive way that I’d slapped my mother back, I hit that girl in the arm, absolutely as hard as I could, rocking her back.

Her jaw dropped and she gaped at me like a goldfish out of water. As if the wall had suddenly hit her. She was obviously completely surprised. I kept walking. 

That ended the random punching for a couple of weeks. She avoided me almost completely. Then she decided she wanted to challenge me to a fight. I had no idea how to fight, but I was pretty game at that point. There was a scuffle in the hall, in which I came off the worst, but she never bothered me again.

I had stood up to her, as best I could. Bullies don’t like it when easy targets suddenly become work.