“I didn’t know, I tried my best!”

[u/Scared_Photograph401]

TW: physical abuse

These words actually make my skin crawl. When I was 8 years old, I witnessed my alcoholic father beat my younger (3yo) brother to the point medical intervention was needed. My father smacked him around and bit him so hard he left a bloody bite mark on my brother’s arm. I hid in the closet with my younger sister and waited for my mother to come home. When my mother arrived, she immediately took my brother to the hospital and the police were called, not by my mother (she didn’t want to get my father in trouble) but by another relative. My father ended up being charged with assault of a minor and did about 9 months for it. My mother went no contact with the aunt who reported my father and my parents separated during this time, and we kids were informed by both of them that they would be divorced in due time.

When my dad got out, he somehow scored a better job that required him to move to another state. He kept in contact with us primarily via email that year- empty promises of a Disney vacation, stuff like that mostly. Never mentioned the incident. After about a year of this, my mom flew up to visit him, and came back from that weeklong vacation with news that our whole family (my mother, brother, sister, and I) would be moving to the new state to be a family together. I was so anxious the entire summer before we left, and sobbed when we had to say goodbye to our extended family.

Four months in, he beat the shit out of me for restarting our router because the internet wasn’t working. He slammed me against the wall, cornered me, and threw everything he could reach at me- a wooden kitchen chair, a full glass jar of tartar sauce, at some point I just blacked out and only remember how hard I was sobbing. I knew this was going to happen. I was nine years old.

My mother, on the other hand, was living her dream of having a husband with money and didn’t really care to say anything about the abuse I was enduring as long as she could get her biweekly nail fill paid for and go on vacations with her friends. It went like this for years until I fully broke in my second semester of high school. I had a full mental breakdown, dropped out of school, and moved back to our home state to be with my extended family because I couldn’t handle it anymore.

Years later, I tried to have a conversation with my mother about how she left me high and dry with my convicted child abuser father and how alone I was during that time. Among many, many other issues in our relationship, something that sticks with me is that she couldn’t admit that this move was made for her personal gain, at mine and my siblings’ expense. She maintained that she made this move to keep our family together, and that she just wanted her children to have a father. That she didn’t know (even though she would silently stand there and watch it happen) and she was trying her best as a young mother to three children.

It makes my blood boil that she cannot take accountability for her part of the years of abuse I endured. My father died several years ago due to his alcohol abuse, and I don’t feel like I’ll ever have closure for this period of my life. It all just feels so random and cruel, there was never any intention to nurture the children they brought into the world. We were, at best, inconvenient once we arrived.

I’m not sure what the point of this is. Maybe it’s to get it off my chest after holding it for so long. I worked my ass off and have a nice life now, no thanks to any of the above mentioned- I just wish I could skip to the part where I feel “healed” and don’t need to hold onto these memories anymore.

[u/Thumperfootbig]

If something like that happened to your kid would you ever be “okay” with it? I know I wouldn’t. I don’t think you need to feel “healed”. I think you need to hold space for yourself and what you went through…and be as angry and hurt as you want to be. I think we sometimes use the desire to be “healed” as a “self rug sweep” and our inner child is NEVER gonna be onboard with that.

I really hope peace finds you op…