Author Topic: Darren's story - Emotional Abuse  (Read 8402 times)

darren

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Darren's story - Emotional Abuse
« on: September 08, 2007, 10:55:47 PM »
I grew up here in Texas, with an older brother and an older sister.  I don’t really have a clear memory of how my childhood played out; I just remember the bits and pieces.  I’d wake up, and my brother and sister had gone off to school, and my father had headed off to work.  I had two or three friends down the block and they were much older, and had headed off to school.

   If I was lucky when I woke up, my mother wouldn’t be there.  I could watch the TV, break out the toys, and play in my fantasy land.  I remember have a pile of stuffed animals, staging elaborate plots where there a giant forest fire and I saved all the animals, sacrificing my own life and they all loved me for it.  I enjoyed my time alone.  I guess it wasn’t all fun and games, because I’d remember hearing a car pull up in the driveway, or hear a car door slam, and fear would well up in me.  I’d drop everything I was doing and run to the living room and peek out the blinds with dread.  Sometimes it was my imagination, sometimes it was just the neighbors, and I’d be checking those blinds several times a day.  But every day, eventually, at some point, she’d come home… and I always dreaded it.

   I didn’t run to greet my mother when she came home, I would run and hide.  Perhaps I’d pretend to be in the bathroom, or I’d jump in the bed and pretend to be asleep.  I was afraid of her.  Sometimes it would start as soon as she walked through the door, sometimes she was all nice and happy but that was never a guarantee.   At some point something was going to set her off.

   My mother would yell at me, at the top of her lungs, nearly every single day.  Her face would turn red and her eyes would go crazy, and she would scream at me… spit flying out her mouth and all.  She was always mad, and if she wasn’t, it was only a matter of time… and when she went off, she never stopped.  It could go on for hours, or even the whole day if she was home.  I’d sometimes lock myself in the bathroom, and she’d yell through the door.  I’d hide in my room and shut the door, and shed yell through it.  Then she’d go to her room and slam the door.  Sometimes, that would be the end, but usually, she’d come flying back out and yell some more.  She’d stomp around the house slamming doors, slamming cabinets, and slamming more doors, then back into her room.  I never knew when it was safe or over, she might go in her room and never come back out.   Or she might come flying back in.

   Eventually, after the tirade was over she’d call me into her room.  She’d give some lecture in a calm voice (I can’t even remember) and then I’d get a hug and bawl my little brains out.  Then I’d go and hide some more… waiting to hear a car pull up or car door slam… to let me know my day was home and I’d be safe and didn’t have to worry.  All the door slamming and yelling would soon be commencing, but it wouldn’t be directed at me anymore. 
« Last Edit: September 09, 2007, 12:41:49 AM by darren »

darren

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Re: Darren's story - Emotional Abuse- Violence
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2007, 12:27:05 PM »
    I don’t remember a lot about my brother, just the big events that occurred around him.  I think during my younger years he went off to school, and tended to skip a lot and sneak out at night to hang out with his friends.  He started with marijuana and has done other things, and I know in his adult life he had eventually moved on to crack.  My parents like to blame everything that happened in our family on the behavior of my brother, and like to blame the drugs.  But somehow even to this day, I think the drugs were a symptom and something a lot worse was going on.

    I can understand why my brother turned to drugs and seeked to escape the household, looking for ways to make life bearable.  I can understand how it was hard because I probably harbor many of the same feelings, but my brother and I expressed it in different way. 

    When my brother was around, he got the brunt of my mother’s rage.  It would often start in the morning because she felt my brother was sleeping too late.  Then, her rage would begin.  Perhaps my brother deserved some discipline, but discipline isn’t what my mother provided.  She’d begin to yell, stomp around, slam doors, and provoke.  I hated when she provoked my brother, she just wouldn’t stop.  Even at the young age, I already knew how it was going to happen.  My mother was going to hound my brother until his rage was unleashed.

    When my brother lost it, he would become violent.  It started simply with punching and kicking holes in the walls and doors.  He’d throw breakables across the room, he’d throw telephones, and he’d start throwing everything.  Once or twice, he tried to choke my mother.  Once he slammed me against a fridge and choked me.   Once, he left the house in a rage and came back with a few friends and began throwing bricks through the windows.  There were a lot of bricks.  I can remember my brother raging out of his room, screaming and flailing his arms, walking down the hallway and slamming his body back and forth from wall to wall, falling on the ground kicking and screaming and flailing.
The police were often called, my brother would be taken to jail, and eventually they’d bail him out and drop the charges and cycle would begin again.  I understand my brother’s pain to an extent, but not his actions.  He had the habit of getting himself in trouble, totaling 8 cars with alcohol abuse, pawning the family possessions to purchase drugs, skipping lots of school…

    I remember the worst event by far.   It was morning and I woke up early to get ready for school.  The first thing I did was start doing my laundry.  My brothers cat was standing by the door to his room, meowing.  My mother opened the door and let the cat in, and apparently left it open.   Seconds later, a door slammed.  Then yelling ensued, and more doors slammed.  I knew it was only a matter of time before things started getting broken and holes in the wall started appearing, but I guess I was an odd kid.  I didn’t cry, or run and hide in fear; I simply weaved in and out and between yelling parents and siblings and prepared my laundry like nothing was going on.   
  
    This day was different though; my brother knocked my dad onto the bed and started to strangle him, and then went to break things in the living room.   My dad kept a loaded revolver under the bed and took ii out and went into the living room.  I think I remember my dead telling my brother to go take a walk, but it didn’t turn out well because the fell onto the coffee table and flattened it.  My father shot my brother in the abdomen.

    I remember seeing my brother sitting on the couch exclaiming, “You shot me!”   My father was on the other side of the couch calling for an ambulance.  My mother was screaming.  I, quite strangely, didn’t think much of it.  It was time to put my clothes in the dryer and that’s where I was headed.  My mother grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the street screaming to a friend’s house.  I thought she was overreacting, plus I wanted to see how it all ended.   I guess I was quite used to it all.

    My brother survived, and throughout the time afterwards he’d always end up back living at home.  The violence never really stopped.  I couldn’t tell you where he is today, because I never had much to do with him.  If I ever I do mention to somebody around me, they are usually quite shocked.  “You have a brother?”  I guess I don’t talk about my family much.   

darren

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Re: Darren's story - Emotional Abuse
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2007, 11:39:46 PM »
Life with my father is hard to describe.  I didn’t find a name for it until I grew older, but he had some form of OCD I’ve heard referred to as hording.  It started with broken washers and dryers beside the house, and broken TV’s in the kitchen.  He kept the back of his truck full of junk, and filled the yard with it too.  Towards the end of his life, there was a room full of boxes, a hallway full of boxes stacked to the ceiling, so that you could barely get around the house.  He always seemed to be protecting his horde from us.

My dad mostly watched TV… I think his VCR was his most prized possession.  Life with him is hard to describe, except that he filled me with horrible emotions.  He didn’t yell at us, and he didn’t beat us.  But there was something about the way he treated us that just made us feel bad.  We were burdens, unworthy, and incapable of doing anything without him. 
I think he was annoyed when we were around because he couldn’t watch his porn.  He went out nearly every night to spend time with prostitutes, and he spent a fortune on them.  He drank, he drank a lot, buying Whiskey by the case load and drank himself to death at 55.

I only recognized this kind of abuse as I grew older.  It’s hard to know when you’re being treated badly when its subtle and they make you feel it’s justified and deserved. 
Maybe it sounds cold, but I was not sad when my father died.  I wasn’t happy and jumping for joy, but I literally felt a gigantic relief in my life and a new freedom from the stress he caused in my life.  After he was gone I would have dreams that he was still alive and I’d feel disappointed and all stressed up inside, and I’d wake up and realize it was all a dream… and be relieved.  I felt like a bad person for feeling that way.  But apparently… my father didn’t want us to be happy.   He made everything difficult, always out to punish us and make us pay for something… only he did it by manipulating us. 

As I grow older and recognize my brother had serious mental problems, and my mother did, I can only start to assume there was something not right about my father’s behavior  too.  It’s strange that I’m now 35 years old and just realizing and recognizing that absolutely craziness of my family life.  They were odd, out of control, and always thinking of themselves.  Understanding, forgiveness, and compassion weren’t things taught as I was growing up, and I’m learning them late.  I can't even explain why, but the guy had a way of driving me crazy and to my wits end.



darren

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Re: Darren's story - Emotional Abuse
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2007, 10:25:24 AM »
After my father’s death, I ended up with this girl.  I made a horrible mistake of jumping into the relationship and moving in with her. 
I noticed something wrong with her right from the start,  but something in me made me want to help her rather than run away.  She told me she loved me, and she told me she wanted to be with me forever, but every time she said it was obvious she didn’t mean it.  It started with lies, a lot of lies.  She lied to hide things, lied to keep me, and often lied just because she knew it hurt me.  She’d often try to cheat on me, but the strange thing was she made sure I found out about it.  I never quite understood why somebody who lies so much would be so bad at it.

She’d tell me everything that I wanted to hear, but it was meaningless.  She’d turn around and tell her friends privately what an awful guy I was.  If I asked her why she said those things, she’d deny it… and turn around and tell her friends I didn’t trust her and that I was paranoid.  She’d tell everybody but me, that she didn’t want to be with me.  On days when I had enough, I’d pack my things to leave and she’d physically block the door… run around screaming… lay in front of my car or jump on the hood so I couldn’t go.       

I eventually helped get a job where I work.  She repaid me by flirting with coworkers, and spreading lies that I abused her.  People almost started to believe her, up until they realized her stories were getting more and more outrageous, and her obvious problem with the truth.  She was always getting caught in her lies.   

I spent a good five years trying to turn the other cheek, and hoped to get her into therapy so that maybe she could come to grips with her mental illness, but it never happened.  She began to try and ruin my career with rumors, making me late for work… preventing me from doing my job, making sure I was always hurting and upset. 

I eventually had enough, and we decided to let her go and I decided to break up with her.  She completely lost it, and quickly grabbed onto a new guy and tried to throw it in my face.  Our relationship pretty much ended when she walked off the job.  She began lifting her shirt off at work and showing everybody the multitudes of deep razor marks down her back, freaking everybody out.  I felt guilty, but I had to walk away and start using a “no contact” philosophy.  All I ever wanted to do was help her get better.  My hardest lesson was learning there was absolutely never anything I’d be able to do for her. 

I’ve got five years worth of stories and emotional abuse related to this girl, but they are all the same.  Severely disturbed, antisocial type behaviors.  Lies.  Gaslighting.  Self Harm.  Obsessions.  You name it, and she had it bad. 
 
Sometimes I feel like I grew up on planet psychopath. 
   

darren

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Re: Darren's story - Emotional Abuse
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2008, 08:07:25 PM »
After writing so much of my story I had to take a break, and never really got around to finishing it.  After the ordeal of my last relationship I took myself to a psychiatrist.  On the first visit he told me I was suffering from major depression.  I have a severe anhedonia and I find little if any pleasure in doing much of anything.  I also didn't know you could be depressed without knowing it.  I don't have ups, and I don't really have downs, I've just always felt like did have an meaning or purpose.  I went on to explain my difficulties with society and generally, and it was suggested that I have a Schizoid Personality Disorder.  Imagine that!  After five years in a hellish relationship with a disordered person and it turns out I have one of my own.  I'm practically a mute, and a complete loner, and I have issues.

I've gained insight and introspection, but I don't know what to do.  I'm never happy and never enjoy myself.  I don't know how to change, and its my personality thats working against me.  Can you change who you are?  I feel voiceless, and I feel I have no people around to validate my thoughts and feelings and ideas.  I get lonely, but when I fight it I get overwhelmed.  In the end, I always tend to withdraw completely from everything and everybody.  I'm not ashamed to have a disorder.  In fact, I'm thankful that I didn't end up a narcissist or a borderline.  But how do you get support when you're like me?  How do you let people into your life and keep them there when a certain part of your personality wants to keep you safe and away from it all?  I'm either lonely or crowded... too distant, or too close. 

If I share my feelings, I feel like I'm whining or feel as though I'm a burden.  I keep them all holed up inside that when it becomes to much and I do decide to let it out, its a bit too much for people.  How do you make meaningful friendships and healthy attachments when you're so emotionally detached?  The more and harder people try to help, the stronger my defenses become and the harder I push them away.  I wont let them.  I'd like to be like everybody else sometimes. 

 

darren

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Re: Darren's story - Emotional Abuse
« Reply #5 on: February 28, 2008, 07:02:11 PM »
I hit rock bottom pretty hard and pretty fast.  I spent all my life doing some of the more innocent drugs, but eventually the depression got me and I moved into some very bad, hard, drugs for all the wrong reasons.  I really let myself go and stopped caring.  I was killing myself with the stuff and situations I had put myself in.  I think I really just gave up on people and life.

Thats not really the end of my story, though.  I left out the part where I started getting better.  Hitting the bottom taught me that I wasn't taking care of myself, and that real problem with my life was that I didn't love myself.  Thats when I started changing and started fighting back.  I flushed all my drugs down the toilet and never looked back.  Its been several years and it hasn't really been a struggle at all.  I also got rid of the bad influences in my life, and stopped having unhealthy relationships and working on healthy ones.  I also forgave those who did bad things to me and that released me from a lot of personal torment.  I consider those some pretty big accomplishments.  So as far as my story goes, I'm determined to have a happy ending.  I don't have all the answers, but I do know I'm going in the right direction... if a little late in life.