• Hey Guest,

    If you want to donate, we have a thread with updated donation options here at this link: About Donations

X

Xiaomi

Taking a break: October 24, 2023 and onwards
Aug 8, 2020
461
I just want to know if it is normal for a parent to beat their own helpless kids. When I was in 6th grade, I remember telling my classmates about how my dad beat me over trivial things and all of them looked disgusted and said "that's abuse" and that's when I really began to think something wasn't right. I guess it turned me into the shitty person I am right now. Every time I do something wrong, I just think of hurting myself or ending this stupid life. I'm so fucking tired.
 
Life_and_Death

Life_and_Death

šŸš«Safety is a figment of the imaginationšŸš«
Jul 1, 2020
6,360
Yeah.... No... I understand what you mean though. Realizing something wasn't "normal" was kind of the straw that broke the camels back and got me kicked out of school. (long story pm me if you're curious I'm cool with sharing).
I also understand the look people give when something isn't normal. Whenever I was at someone else's house I refused to move from where I sat because I was accused of stealing food in my own home by my parents. I don't want to "steal" from people so I don't move. Even after visiting my friends house FOR YEARS is still wait until my stomach was yelling at me and then whisper in her ear that I'm hungry like it's a crime to eat.

So yeah I understand where you come from and no.. It's not normal. I'm sorry you went through that I understand how hurtful it can be. If you ever need someone to talk to feel free to pm me :hug::heart:
 
G

Ghost2211

Archangel
Jan 20, 2020
6,024
That's one of the sadder aspects of abusing children. They don't even realize it's abnormal and wrong until it's gone on for several years or even all of their childhood. I'm sorry your dad was a monster. No child deserves that.
 
MindFrog

MindFrog

:Professional Hypocrite:
Nov 19, 2020
721
You never really know if you're suffering until you compare yourselves with other people. It's much worse when you're a clueless child. I came to "that" point in my life too, and the thing that hurt me the most was how my parents betrayed my trust.

It wasnt really the lashing or the shouting, because i genuinely thought they did it for my own good. I dont think they even remember hurting me at all.
 
X

Xiaomi

Taking a break: October 24, 2023 and onwards
Aug 8, 2020
461
Yeah.... No... I understand what you mean though. Realizing something wasn't "normal" was kind of the straw that broke the camels back and got me kicked out of school. (long story pm me if you're curious I'm cool with sharing).
I also understand the look people give when something isn't normal. Whenever I was at someone else's house I refused to move from where I sat because I was accused of stealing food in my own home by my parents. I don't want to "steal" from people so I don't move. Even after visiting my friends house FOR YEARS is still wait until my stomach was yelling at me and then whisper in her ear that I'm hungry like it's a crime to eat.

So yeah I understand where you come from and no.. It's not normal. I'm sorry you went through that I understand how hurtful it can be. If you ever need someone to talk to feel free to pm me :hug::heart:
Yes please do share it. I want to hear your story. Abuse is something that shall never be tolerated.
 
NodusTollens

NodusTollens

ā˜¾
Nov 17, 2020
989
I just want to know if it is normal for a parent to beat their own helpless kids. When I was in 6th grade, I remember telling my classmates about how my dad beat me over trivial things and all of them looked disgusted and said "that's abuse" and that's when I really began to think something wasn't right. I guess it turned me into the shitty person I am right now. Every time I do something wrong, I just think of hurting myself or ending this stupid life. I'm so fucking tired.

Yeah... sorry you've also experienced this too OP; it's a hard bridge to cross.

Similarly, in elementary school, I remember wearing shorts under my pants because it was going to be hot, so after recess I took off my pants bc it had gotten hot outside. But when I did, I noticed I had welts on my legs from having been beaten with a belt, the night before. The shame I felt after a classmate noticed & asked about it.

I put my pants back on.
 
stygal

stygal

low-wage worker
Oct 29, 2020
1,732
Im so sorry you had to go through this, OP.
I remember playing down the abuse in my mind as well and starting to make excuses whenever someone would notice something wrong with me.
I never talked about to anyone either,
it still feels like it was all my mistake.

I really hope you find a way to separate yourself from your shitty past. I heard emdr therapy helps against past trauma.
 
Life_and_Death

Life_and_Death

šŸš«Safety is a figment of the imaginationšŸš«
Jul 1, 2020
6,360
Yes please do share it. I want to hear your story. Abuse is something that shall never be tolerated.
(going back a few months prior to getting kicked out)

so i was already depressed and suicidal at this point. (16). i had just gotten a "job" where i had to work nights, which i was fine with. except my mother took my NON HOOKED UP PHONE and refused to give it back. yeah i couldnt do shit with it outside of using the alarm and notepad, she was a spiteful cunt. anyway i said fine but you have to wake me up at 11 so i can get ready to go. i didnt trust her, i stayed awake. she "woke me up" at 1130. this was not the time i asked for. (honestly either do it right or get of your fucking bitch horse and give me my phone, i cant even use it). anyway i worked every second day. so id stay up 1 day stay up that night then stay up that day. and this went on for about a week so im fucking exhausted. i get home after work one day and shes all like "go out and cut wood" "after i take a nap" "no" "then a friend is coming over to help" "no" (might i add that at this point we knew i had a back problem and got a doctors note to be exempted from gym class because i could become paralyzed from the waist down and she had me out doing this shit) she has a history of physical abuse and im done with the bullshit at this point and i refuse to get treated like shit, so i turn around and walk back out the front door. if im not getting my nap im not putting up with this. so there was more fighting and arguing as she chased me trying to get me to come home and then my "dad" got home from work and he started chasing me through the woods. finally they got me to come home and on the drive home (just my stepdad and i) he said "if you do this again your getting kicked out or you can just move out now" "well i didnt fucking start it so i cant ensure it wont happen again so i might as well just fucking move out". however before they started chasing me i had called my bf and he was on the way to meet me (1 of the reason id refuse to go considering they were suppose to be meeting me in the middle of the woods that theyve never been in. that would be a dick move) so we went to pick them up and i got into the back with a friend (he later went on to threaten to rape me in the middle of all this but thats a different story) and my bf got up front. my dad then suggested i take them for a walk in the woods. (I WAS FUCKING 16 AND YOU SEND ME OUT IN THE FUCKING WOODS WITH 2 GUYS BIGGER AND OLDER THEN ME ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME!!!) anyway i did, our friend hung back but i was talking to my bf. "dont move out, dont move out, dont move out" finally i got pissed off turned around and said "they abuse me im not fucking staying" "oh.....i didnt know that" and his attitude changed from dont to do, he even asked him mom if i could move in there (she said no but not the point, btw bf was cool nothing like that other fucking asshole that was with us that day, again though different story, just thought id clarify considering i mentioned moving in). my father tried to fucking get my bf against. that clearly fell through. so i went back packed up my shit (99% of it still there to this day, i literally had to start a new life, no friends, no family, very little of my stuff). and this is when it gets interesting. i moved in with the guy that i was working for (he's now my husband so no concerns for you guys to worry about there). and i find out that my father has people spying on me in school. he also tried to buy me back. "you can come work for me". hes supervisor of the gaurds for veterans, people with addictions and long term mentally unstable people. im 5ft4, 115lbs at the time and youre going to have little me guard......them.....ummmm, yeah thatll go over just fucking fine im sure. i didnt take the job nor did i even want the job. another buy back "you can have your moms car". the only reason i wanted a car in the first place was so i could get out of that shithole when i pleased so i could visit my friends (that my mother ALWAYS found an excuse to not let me do) well i live in the city now so i dont need a car, everything is in walking distance....nope. so once their lying, and sneaking and buy backs didnt work and i was gone for a month or so (the whole time telling the guy i moved in with "oh shell be back") these 2 people get fucking down right conniving. the next thing i know theres 2 cops at my door with the guy i moved in with in cuffs,(he was originally in the house with me and went outside to see who it was) the cops refuse to tell me "the victim" anything so i have no idea what hes even being arrested for. he drives off after saying he'll be back and the cops dont even tell me he wont be so im panicking and pacing the fucking place, then a cop comes back for me "your dads coming to pick you up" "no no no no you cant do this they abuse me dont send me back" "do you have anywheres else to go" "no" ok bye then" and just watches me get in the truck and drive away, serve and protect my fucking ass, i told several cops i was abused there, i told them i was suicidal. jack fucking shit. my husband (not at the time but its easier so you know who im talking about) told them about it all too and nothing was done. anyway turned out the charge they put against him was the worse of the worse (a sex charge). i disappeared and the case got thrown out and i moved back in. however it was in the middle of all this that i get kicked out of school. because of the whole court thing i stopped doing my school work. i went from As and Bs to 0. anyway i had put everything together and.......

hang on this part is difficult for me even to this day.

i had realized that my "father" had basically molested me (once for sure the rest is just really fucked up, wrong way to handle shit (like father like son i guess but again different story)) so i went to the bathroom bawling, the bell rang to switch class so i went to grab my book bag and bring it to my next class. i ask if i can go to the bathroom (so i can finish crying) and the teacher says no, ive already been out too much (i was late to his class a few times because of the court thing i just couldnt bother) so now im sitting at my desk crying my ex walks in (hes cool) and says whats wrong, i give him the general story and not why i need to use the bathroom so bad. and he tells me to just go but that wasnt who i was (looking back now this was definitely a snapping point). anyway the teacher sends me to the vice principles office and i slam the door on my way out. the vice principle is all like grades and bullshit. then says "youre kicked out but if you come back with your parents then you can come back" "well i dont have parents so i guess im not coming back" so i basically wondered the halls until school was over (this was the last class anyway) my ex (my bf at the beginning of this) finds me in the hall getting hotheaded with a teacher (i mean fuck it at this point right) says he'll take care of me and brings me back to his class until school is over. this was a friday, monday came i never said a word to anyone just got into a cab Monday morning after my bus came and left without me and disappeared.

and thats the story of how i got kicked out of home and school.

oh i did forget one part. the day i got kicked out of the house my father had left me with no phone no money and only the clothes on my back in front of walmart at 16 at 6am and never gave a flying fuck about where i was or what i was doing while my husband was searching the streets for me. fucking prick, you dont even give a shit and you try to buy me back and when that fails you press FAKE CHARGES.

oh i also forgot the part where when i first took the job (havent had the argument with my mother yet) theyre telling me hes going to fire me and theyre telling him that im going to quit. talk about fucking sabotage.

anyway i think thats that story...i dont think im missing anything.
 
x~Sophia~x

x~Sophia~x

Always give 100% - unless youā€™re donating blood.
Sep 10, 2020
1,361
We were belted and slippered as kids as well. The thing I can't get my head around is that our dad didn't even witness what we did wrong, he was usually at work and our mam would tell him we'd been naughty, when he got home, and he'd come upstairs (where we were all hiding) and use a belt on us, one by one. It was bad enough when he belted us impulsively when he could see us being naughty, but to be able to do that after my mam told him we were naughty, I just can't understand how any parent could do that. Oh, and he denies ever hitting us... can't remember doing that, he says! :heh:
 
GoodPersonEffed

GoodPersonEffed

Brevity is my middle name, but my name was TL
Jan 11, 2020
6,728
TW for physical abuse. Not graphic, but potentially upsetting.

I just want to know if it is normal for a parent to beat their own helpless kids. When I was in 6th grade, I remember telling my classmates about how my dad beat me over trivial things and all of them looked disgusted and said "that's abuse" and that's when I really began to think something wasn't right.

It's not normal to beat kids but it's common. I told other kids I was beaten, and they didn't have the shocked responses that children's peers would now, but this was in the seventies and eighties. I even told a school district psychologist about the abuse when I was sixteen and told him I was considering running away. He agreed that it was domestic violence and if I had somewhere to go, then running away was the best solution. He didn't intervene with my parents, and there was no mandated reporting back then. I did run away, and a friend's mother who was a nurse asked me what was going on, and gently asked to see my butt. I had never thought before to look, as the beatings had been over my clothes since I was around five. It was covered in bruises. I told school counselors in junior high, I told a psychiatrist when I was fourteen, no interventions. After I ran away, my parents joined Tough Love, a support group for parents of "incorrigible" teens. The group suggested I be picked up by the police, and to not answer the phone and left to sit in juvie overnight to teach me a lesson (running away was not a crime, I didn't belong there). I was taken to the police station and I told the officer what was going on at home. I knew him, if met him when I was a kid, he used to be one of my dad's friends. My dad was a cop. Then I stayed with the leaders of the group for a couple of weeks and told them about the abuse, and they learned it was far from being all on me, so they did mediation with me and my parents, and I was given the power to call time outs when fights escalated so I wouldn't be beaten. As soon as I returned home, my parents quit the group. Within a week or two, I was blamed for the beatings resuming because I broke a rule of the agreement, I lied about something, so, conveniently, all of the rules we'd ironed out in the mediation were out the window (though I was still expected to keep my half). Then they took me to a child psychologist, which I wanted. In the first session, I told him about the abuse. I really liked him, I felt supported. He suggested family counseling and I was so excited. He said he needed to talk to my parents alone, and when they came out of his office my mother was livid. She said I wasn't going back to him, and "We're not going to change, you are." The last physical assault was when I was eighteen. I told my father it was the first time I almost hit her back. He said, "Don't you ever hit your mother back. She has every right to hit you. You have no right to hit her back."

I inherently knew in grade school that it wasn't right. I think the first time I heard the word abuse I knew exactly what the deal was. A neighbor even recommended a beating method to my mother, but somewhere around 1980 was when police started getting involved, and my mother said she'd kill me if I ever dared call the police, and I never even threatened to do so, it was a preemptive threat. She used to threaten to kill me a lot, and she didn't mean actual death, but there was an underlying threat that I could be beaten a lot worse.

I can't ever remember not being beaten, of there never not being an object to beat me with. In my earliest years, it was a paddle that was embossed with a picture of a girl with a glowing bare butt and the words "Heat for the Seat." A few years ago when I was traveling through the Midwest, I saw very similar paddles being sold at a truck stop convenience store. When it broke around the age of four or five, she used paint stirrer sticks, and they would brake and my big butt was to blame. Then around the age of seven, the neighbor suggested a wooden spoon as well as how to make me to submit to the beatings rather than wiggle around and/or block with my hands. This went on until I was seventeen. I worked up my courage to ask her to stop, and the look on her face was the threat that she would kill me. She did it one more time after that, then stopped, then a final full physical assault when I was eighteen. There were occasional face slaps all those years, and twice my mouth was washed out with soap.

I really don't know why I love my parents. There was some good, but this shit is so fucked up. I still hate them, still at times have the impotent rage. After every beating, I was allowed to go to my room and cry for about ten minutes, then my mother would come in and gently say, "Now, we friends?" like I was being welcomed back, like she was making some kind of loving concession. The one time I hadn't yet worked through enough of my rage and the reason for the beating had been exceptionally irrational, I said no, and there was that threatening look. I'm surprised i wasn't beaten again. My dad almost never intervened in any of her shit, and maybe that fucked me up more because it gave me false hope that he was my protector, when he actually emotionally abandoned me, and sometimes threw me under the bus on the rare occasions when someone with authority or influence was involved. He himself is so impotent, and now hates me for not giving in to her domination and entitled interference in my life, even as an adult. I feel deflated and disempowered by my pity for his incompetence. She was verbally abusive to him, too, and he had no savvy to stand up to it and put a stop to it. I'd fantasize they'd divorce so that I could live with him and actually do things, he was more permissive until she blocked, and I just wanted to get out of the damn house and socialize with other people.

Maybe mandated reporting has somewhat curbed physical child abuse, kept some people in check. But it's scary when a parent threatens a child if they dare to report the parent, and often CPS won't do anything until it's too late, and if they do anything, the child often ends up in an even worse situation. There just is no win, except for the small proportion of parents who are kept in check by the threat of LE involvement, so at least child abuse isn't the norm that it used to be.

I am so burned out on this world.
 
Last edited:
X

Xiaomi

Taking a break: October 24, 2023 and onwards
Aug 8, 2020
461
Yeah... sorry you've also experienced this too OP; it's a hard bridge to cross.

Similarly, in elementary school, I remember wearing shorts under my pants because it was going to be hot, so after recess I took off my pants bc it had gotten hot outside. But when I did, I noticed I had welts on my legs from having been beaten with a belt, the night before. The shame I felt after a classmate noticed & asked about it.

I put my pants back on.
That is horrible. You reminded me of a similar situation, but mine were swollen eyes.
 
X

Xiaomi

Taking a break: October 24, 2023 and onwards
Aug 8, 2020
461
Im so sorry you had to go through this, OP.
I remember playing down the abuse in my mind as well and starting to make excuses whenever someone would notice something wrong with me.
I never talked about to anyone either,
it still feels like it was all my mistake.

I really hope you find a way to separate yourself from your shitty past. I heard emdr therapy helps against past trauma.
Its like defending your own abuser, I know that feeling
(going back a few months prior to getting kicked out)

so i was already depressed and suicidal at this point. (16). i had just gotten a "job" where i had to work nights, which i was fine with. except my mother took my NON HOOKED UP PHONE and refused to give it back. yeah i couldnt do shit with it outside of using the alarm and notepad, she was a spiteful cunt. anyway i said fine but you have to wake me up at 11 so i can get ready to go. i didnt trust her, i stayed awake. she "woke me up" at 1130. this was not the time i asked for. (honestly either do it right or get of your fucking bitch horse and give me my phone, i cant even use it). anyway i worked every second day. so id stay up 1 day stay up that night then stay up that day. and this went on for about a week so im fucking exhausted. i get home after work one day and shes all like "go out and cut wood" "after i take a nap" "no" "then a friend is coming over to help" "no" (might i add that at this point we knew i had a back problem and got a doctors note to be exempted from gym class because i could become paralyzed from the waist down and she had me out doing this shit) she has a history of physical abuse and im done with the bullshit at this point and i refuse to get treated like shit, so i turn around and walk back out the front door. if im not getting my nap im not putting up with this. so there was more fighting and arguing as she chased me trying to get me to come home and then my "dad" got home from work and he started chasing me through the woods. finally they got me to come home and on the drive home (just my stepdad and i) he said "if you do this again your getting kicked out or you can just move out now" "well i didnt fucking start it so i cant ensure it wont happen again so i might as well just fucking move out". however before they started chasing me i had called my bf and he was on the way to meet me (1 of the reason id refuse to go considering they were suppose to be meeting me in the middle of the woods that theyve never been in. that would be a dick move) so we went to pick them up and i got into the back with a friend (he later went on to threaten to rape me in the middle of all this but thats a different story) and my bf got up front. my dad then suggested i take them for a walk in the woods. (I WAS FUCKING 16 AND YOU SEND ME OUT IN THE FUCKING WOODS WITH 2 GUYS BIGGER AND OLDER THEN ME ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME!!!) anyway i did, our friend hung back but i was talking to my bf. "dont move out, dont move out, dont move out" finally i got pissed off turned around and said "they abuse me im not fucking staying" "oh.....i didnt know that" and his attitude changed from dont to do, he even asked him mom if i could move in there (she said no but not the point, btw bf was cool nothing like that other fucking asshole that was with us that day, again though different story, just thought id clarify considering i mentioned moving in). my father tried to fucking get my bf against. that clearly fell through. so i went back packed up my shit (99% of it still there to this day, i literally had to start a new life, no friends, no family, very little of my stuff). and this is when it gets interesting. i moved in with the guy that i was working for (he's now my husband so no concerns for you guys to worry about there). and i find out that my father has people spying on me in school. he also tried to buy me back. "you can come work for me". hes supervisor of the gaurds for veterans, people with addictions and long term mentally unstable people. im 5ft4, 115lbs at the time and youre going to have little me guard......them.....ummmm, yeah thatll go over just fucking fine im sure. i didnt take the job nor did i even want the job. another buy back "you can have your moms car". the only reason i wanted a car in the first place was so i could get out of that shithole when i pleased so i could visit my friends (that my mother ALWAYS found an excuse to not let me do) well i live in the city now so i dont need a car, everything is in walking distance....nope. so once their lying, and sneaking and buy backs didnt work and i was gone for a month or so (the whole time telling the guy i moved in with "oh shell be back") these 2 people get fucking down right conniving. the next thing i know theres 2 cops at my door with the guy i moved in with in cuffs,(he was originally in the house with me and went outside to see who it was) the cops refuse to tell me "the victim" anything so i have no idea what hes even being arrested for. he drives off after saying he'll be back and the cops dont even tell me he wont be so im panicking and pacing the fucking place, then a cop comes back for me "your dads coming to pick you up" "no no no no you cant do this they abuse me dont send me back" "do you have anywheres else to go" "no" ok bye then" and just watches me get in the truck and drive away, serve and protect my fucking ass, i told several cops i was abused there, i told them i was suicidal. jack fucking shit. my husband (not at the time but its easier so you know who im talking about) told them about it all too and nothing was done. anyway turned out the charge they put against him was the worse of the worse (a sex charge). i disappeared and the case got thrown out and i moved back in. however it was in the middle of all this that i get kicked out of school. because of the whole court thing i stopped doing my school work. i went from As and Bs to 0. anyway i had put everything together and.......

hang on this part is difficult for me even to this day.

i had realized that my "father" had basically molested me (once for sure the rest is just really fucked up, wrong way to handle shit (like father like son i guess but again different story)) so i went to the bathroom bawling, the bell rang to switch class so i went to grab my book bag and bring it to my next class. i ask if i can go to the bathroom (so i can finish crying) and the teacher says no, ive already been out too much (i was late to his class a few times because of the court thing i just couldnt bother) so now im sitting at my desk crying my ex walks in (hes cool) and says whats wrong, i give him the general story and not why i need to use the bathroom so bad. and he tells me to just go but that wasnt who i was (looking back now this was definitely a snapping point). anyway the teacher sends me to the vice principles office and i slam the door on my way out. the vice principle is all like grades and bullshit. then says "youre kicked out but if you come back with your parents then you can come back" "well i dont have parents so i guess im not coming back" so i basically wondered the halls until school was over (this was the last class anyway) my ex (my bf at the beginning of this) finds me in the hall getting hotheaded with a teacher (i mean fuck it at this point right) says he'll take care of me and brings me back to his class until school is over. this was a friday, monday came i never said a word to anyone just got into a cab Monday morning after my bus came and left without me and disappeared.

and thats the story of how i got kicked out of home and school.

oh i did forget one part. the day i got kicked out of the house my father had left me with no phone no money and only the clothes on my back in front of walmart at 16 at 6am and never gave a flying fuck about where i was or what i was doing while my husband was searching the streets for me. fucking prick, you dont even give a shit and you try to buy me back and when that fails you press FAKE CHARGES.

oh i also forgot the part where when i first took the job (havent had the argument with my mother yet) theyre telling me hes going to fire me and theyre telling him that im going to quit. talk about fucking sabotage.

anyway i think thats that story...i dont think im missing anything.
That is just horrible. They're not parents they're demons.
TW for physical abuse. Not graphic, but potentially upsetting.



It's not normal to beat kids but it's common. I told other kids I was beaten, and they didn't have the shocked responses that children's peers would now, but this was in the seventies and eighties. I even told a school district psychologist about the abuse when I was sixteen and told him I was considering running away. He agreed that it was domestic violence and if I had somewhere to go, then running away was the best solution. He didn't intervene with my parents, and there was no mandated reporting back then. I did run away, and a friend's mother who was a nurse asked me what was going on, and gently asked to see my butt. I had never thought before to look, as the beatings had been over my clothes since I was around five. It was covered in bruises. I told school counselors in junior high, I told a psychiatrist when I was fourteen, no interventions. After I ran away, my parents joined Tough Love, a support group for parents of "incorrigible" teens. The group suggested I be picked up by the police, and to not answer the phone and left to sit in juvie overnight to teach me a lesson (running away was not a crime, I didn't belong there). I was taken to the police station and I told the officer what was going on at home. I knew him, if met him when I was a kid, he used to be one of my dad's friends. My dad was a cop. Then I stayed with the leaders of the group for a couple of weeks and told them about the abuse, and they learned it was far from being all on me, so they did mediation with me and my parents, and I was given the power to call time outs when fights escalated so I wouldn't be beaten. As soon as I returned home, my parents quit the group. Within a week or two, I was blamed for the beatings resuming because I broke a rule of the agreement, I lied about something, so, conveniently, all of the rules we'd ironed out in the mediation were out the window (though I was still expected to keep my half). Then they took me to a child psychologist, which I wanted. In the first session, I told him about the abuse. I really liked him, I felt supported. He suggested family counseling and I was so excited. He said he needed to talk to my parents alone, and when they came out of his office my mother was livid. She said I wasn't going back to him, and "We're not going to change, you are." The last physical assault was when I was eighteen. I told my father it was the first time I almost hit her back. He said, "Don't you ever hit your mother back. She has every right to hit you. You have no right to hit her back."

I inherently knew in grade school that it wasn't right. I think the first time I heard the word abuse I knew exactly what the deal was. A neighbor even recommended a beating method to my mother, but somewhere around 1980 was when police started getting involved, and my mother said she'd kill me if I ever dared call the police, and I never even threatened to do so, it was a preemptive threat. She used to threaten to kill me a lot, and she didn't mean actual death, but there was an underlying threat that I could be beaten a lot worse.

I can't ever remember not being beaten, of there never not being an object to beat me with. In my earliest years, it was a paddle that was embossed with a picture of a girl with a glowing bare butt and the words "Heat for the Seat." A few years ago when I was traveling through the Midwest, I saw very similar paddles being sold at a truck stop convenience store. When it broke around the age of four or five, she used paint stirrer sticks, and they would brake and my big butt was to blame. Then around the age of seven, the neighbor suggested a wooden spoon as well as how to make me to submit to the beatings rather than wiggle around and/or block with my hands. This went on until I was seventeen. I worked up my courage to ask her to stop, and the look on her face was the threat that she would kill me. She did it one more time after that, then stopped, then a final full physical assault when I was eighteen. There were occasional face slaps all those years, and twice my mouth was washed out with soap.

I really don't know why I love my parents. There was some good, but this shit is so fucked up. I still hate them, still at times have the impotent rage. After every beating, I was allowed to go to my room and cry for about ten minutes, then my mother would come in and gently say, "Now, we friends?" like I was being welcomed back, like she was making some kind of loving concession. The one time I hadn't yet worked through enough of my rage and the reason for the beating had been exceptionally irrational, I said no, and there was that threatening look. I'm surprised i wasn't beaten again. My dad almost never intervened in any of her shit, and maybe that fucked me up more because it gave me false hope that he was my protector, when he actually emotionally abandoned me, and sometimes threw me under the bus on the rare occasions when someone with authority or influence was involved. He himself is so impotent, and now hates me for not giving in to her domination and entitled interference in my life, even as an adult. I feel deflated and disempowered by my pity for his incompetence. She was verbally abusive to him, too, and he had no savvy to stand up to it and put a stop to it. I'd fantasize they'd divorce so that I could live with him and actually do things, he was more permissive until she blocked, and I just wanted to get out of the damn house and socialize with other people.

Maybe mandated reporting has somewhat curbed physical child abuse, kept some people in check. But it's scary when a parent threatens a child if they dare to report the parent, and often CPS won't do anything until it's too late, and if they do anything, the child often ends up in an even worse situation. There just is no win, except for the small proportion of parents who are kept in check by the threat of LE involvement, so at least child abuse isn't the norm that it used to be.

I am so burned out on this world.
Death threats were also common during our arguments. I was a kid back then and I never understood why my mother and father would try to hurt me over simple things.
Oh no, I'm really sorry to hear that. Childhood memories best forgotten. :/
The only good memory I have was when my grandmother was alive.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads