Are You Wearing Purple?
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Home and family are supposed to be everything:
The soft place you land when the world is too rough.
Protection and warmth from the cold.
Your safe haven.
Something to hold you together when you’re falling apart.
Someone always cheering you on from the stands.
THE LAST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO WOULD EVER HURT YOU.
But that hasn’t been my experience, because my father is a perpetrator of domestic violence.
He always has been, and he will continue this behavior until he draws his last breath. And my mom will let him. And, that’s not her fault. She was young and terrified. I get that. Some would say it isn’t his fault, either…they would say he was a product of his environment, or they would say it was ‘Nam. Seeing all that death changes a person. If she would just not provoke him. She’s always sticking up for the kids; he feels like we’re ganging up on him. It’s FEAR that makes him strike us. It’s a weakness. Or maybe it’s the booze. When he drinks, he can’t be held accountable for what he might do, whether it’s shoving mom through the shower door, or burning all of my clothes in the fireplace for being 5 minutes late for curfew, or forcing me to chew up and swallow an entire bar of yellow Dial soap because he thought he read my lips as he drove away, drunk, and decided they formed a swear word.
(FYI, don’t ever do this. I had blisters for weeks. It was the one time Children’s Services was ever contacted about my brother or me, and my mother was horrified because they came to see her at work. Pretty sure she was mad at me for blistering.)
My ex-husband was violent, too. Different than my dad; he wasn’t overtly physical with me. He was a rageaholic who screamed obscenities in my face when things didn’t go his way. He put holes in walls, ruined countless remote controls during tantrums, and made sure I always knew he had one foot out the door on the ready in case I didn’t behave accordingly. But, it wasn’t his fault. He was sexually abused by a neighbor boy as a child. His parents were vapid narcissists who slathered him with love one minute and ripped it away the next. He’d been on the short list of nationally ranked competitive bikers — he raced Lance Armstrong in high school — before coming down with an autoimmune disorder that derailed his life goals. I mean, of course he was pissed. Right?
There may be a million scientifically sound journal articles with strong data supporting any one of these excuses, but I don’t give a shit. Abusers are bullies, plain and simple. I don’t care why. The fact is they hurt people weaker and smaller than them in order to feel good about themselves, or to feel better, or to relieve the pressure that is building up inside of them, or because they are so angry they just boil over into rage. No excuse is good enough.
And men aren’t the only abusers out there. Women can be violent, too. But this is my story, and the abusers in my story are men.
Physical or verbal; it doesn’t really matter. Actually, I think the words were worse. They were worse because when I mess up, I still hear them in my head, all these years later. Awful words. Words that propelled my 2 year-old son onto a chair in the kitchen pointing at his daddy yelling, “Daddy! We don’t TALK to people that way!”
Obviously, intimate partner violence is only one part of the whole picture. Domestic violence affects anyone in the home. Children, in particular, suffer direct damage from the abuser, as well as the consequences of witnessing violence against a parent or other loved family member. By a parent or loved family member.
WHICH WILL MESS A PERSON UP.
The saddest part of my story is its lack of uniqueness.
I survived, though, like many who experience violence in the home as children, I developed a dependence on alcohol and drugs at an early age, and I suffer from complex PTSD. Obviously, I went on to marry an abuser. I suffered long-term psychological effects of trauma. I struggled with failure to achieve to my potential. Failed relationship after failed relationship, because I had no idea how to relate.
And I’m no special case. I wasn’t even sure how relevant discussing this topic would be, because I couldn’t really think of anyone I knew who hadn’t experienced domestic violence at some point in their life. I figured I’d be preaching to the choir and almost didn’t bother. But there have to be some people out there who had happy childhoods and great marriages who have no frame of reference when they hear about someone else injured or killed at the hands of a loved one.
Maybe they want to know how it could have been prevented, and I can’t offer much there; I only know how to survive it. But I can tell you what it was like.
THE DAMAGE FROM THE VIOLENCE IS NOT REALLY ABOUT THE ACTUAL VIOLENCE
The thing about abusers is that most of them are mostly normal most of the time. They aren’t hurting people in the home 24/7. If they did, the abuse would lose its power. No. What makes their form of discipline so effective is the use of intermittent reinforcement tactics. The damage isn’t caused by the hour or two the abuser spent actively harming people. The damage is caused by the anticipation of when that abuse will happen next. It’s called walking on eggshells, and that is exactly what it’s like.
I never knew what was going to upset my father. It wasn’t like we had these boundaries, and if I overstepped one, I could expect to be punished. It was more like he chose different rules every day, and he didn’t tell us what they were. But we were absolutely held to his internal rules and if we stepped out of line, he made sure we regretted it. And it could be anything. On Monday, we might be expected to do something that on Tuesday, if we repeated the same action, would earn us the belt buckle.
ABUSERS DON’T WEAR A SCARLET “A” ON THEIR CLOTHING
In my case, my father was able to maintain a very personable public persona; people LOVED him. And because it was beat into me early and often, I also placed the utmost importance on public perception, and so in public with my dad, I appeared to be a dutiful and adoring daughter — I can’t tell you how many people just had to tell me all the wonderful things my dad said about me when I wasn’t there. Did I know how PROUD he was of me and my accomplishments?
Well, actually, NO.
Because I played the game so well, the handful of times I gathered the courage to tell someone what my dad was really like, I was met with disbelief and written off as an ungrateful, but perfectly normal, teenager. I mean, after all he had sacrificed for me, to go and make up lies about him just because I didn’t get something I wanted!
I find this true for many of my friends from similar backgrounds. This nation doesn’t take children seriously. And we seriously need to start. Not every abused kid is going to show up to school with bruises and dirty clothes and ratted out hair. Many abusers put tremendous time and effort into “not leaving marks”. This makes abuse hard to spot if no one is looking beyond the surface.
ABUSED PARTNERS OFTEN FEEL TRAPPED, EVEN IF THEY DON’T *LOOK* TRAPPED.
So, I’m over the, “Well, if it’s so bad, why does she stay?” attitude. My mother tried to leave many times during my childhood and beyond, and fear always drove her back. My father was volatile as Hell, and he made sure (quietly, of course) that she knew that if she left him, he would find her and he would kill her. Which would leave us defenseless. She was terrified. For herself and for us. The monster she knew was not as scary as the monster he might become if she made him REALLY mad, you know?
My ex-husband was sneakier than that. He built up, over years, a file of falsehoods about me that was convincing enough that I believed him when he told me that if I left him, he would keep our children and I’d never see them again. He broke me down psychologically until I had to spend time in a facility for those with psychiatric problems, twice.
So, because I felt powerless to escape him, I escaped with alcohol and later, medication. Since we split, I haven’t had to return to that state of avoidance.
VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ARE DAMAGED, BUT NOT WEAK. THEY SOMETIMES REACT IN WAYS THAT FURTHER HARM THEMSELVES.
They need understanding from you, not judgment.
I have done many stupid things throughout my lifetime.
Some things I did, I’m sure I did because of my own defects of character. I have accepted responsibility for my actions and been held accountable. And I’m at peace with my past mistakes.
But every, single part of who I am was somehow shaped by domestic violence. It made me damaged goods, and it made me incredibly strong. I did not grow up to be an abuser, but I am always going to be the abused. I hope the cycle of violence can end with me.
- **EDIT*** The phrase “I am always going to be the abused” was not meant to convey me resigning myself to a life at the hands of abuser after abuser but rather that I have been abused and that is not something that can be erased or disappeared; it is a part of who I became and I can’t go back and have a do-over minus dad and husband. Hopefully, the experience has taught me to NEVER allow myself to enter into another abusive relationship. Sorry for the confusion. :)
SOMEONE OUT IN THE WORLD NEEDS HELP RIGHT NOW
Maybe it’s someone you know. Maybe you’re not sure. Maybe it’s you. If you have questions about what to do if you’re being abused, or how to help someone who you suspect is being abused, the National Domestic Abuse Hotline has a ton of great information, and people waiting to take calls 24/7.
