Where Was My Mother While I Was Being Abused?

Blog Post 12

Where Was my Mother?

If you look at pictures of my mother holding me when I was a baby, she looks stiff and awkward, as if I’m some kind of dangerous animal that she was being forced to pose with. I suppose, to some extent, that may be true. She was trying to fulfill my father’s vision of what his family should look like.

I’d once made an offhand comment to a psychologist that my parents were unable to have children because they never had sex. He asked me to elaborate. I explained that I’d never seen my parents exhibit affection for each other. My father had said things to my mother, or grabbed her, but she always rebuffed him. She was very clear that she wanted him to leave her alone. They slept in separate bedrooms for as long as I can remember.

The psychologist pointed out to me that I was likely right, that my mother had seen what kind of a man my father was and she knew that he would be a terrible parent, and that he should not be allowed to reproduce. She worked within the framework that she had to make sure that he didn’t have any offspring, and it worked.

Adoption, on the other hand, was a different kind of machine, one that he could operate and bully her into participating in. She could underhandedly fail to reproduce, but she couldn’t overtly prevent the adoption.

I’m certain that my father deliberately chose my mother. He wanted someone who he could push around and wouldn’t stand up to him. My mother had been divorced, so in the midcentury, she was already damaged goods, so to speak. She had been married to a practicing alcoholic and divorced him after only a few years of marriage and, I assume, moved back in with her parents. When my father married her, he counted on her being unable or unwilling to get a second divorce.

My mother waited on my father hand and foot. If they were both sitting in the family room watching TV, and my father wanted a cup of coffee, my mother would get up and get it for him. She was more like his servant than his wife. As such, I didn’t have any respect for her, for never standing up for herself, for never having an opinion as to what mattered to her, and for letting him treat her like that. I actually felt sorry for her.

My mother grew up as an only child. Her older sister had died of pneumonia as a toddler before my mother was born. As far as I know, her parents loved her and doted on her. Unfortunately, they may have spoiled her to the point that she never learned to take care of herself. My mother did not even know how to balance a checkbook or pay bills.

I remember that she seemed angry much of the time, slamming the cupboard doors in the kitchen yet never telling anyone why. I asked her more than once if she was angry, or what she was angry about, and she always replied that she wasn’t angry. But it was apparent from the look on her face and her behavior that she was. I can only imagine how frustrated she was with her life.

My mother was wound like a tight spring. If I spilled my glass of milk at the table, which children do, she’d jump up to catch it and in doing so, spill everything else on the table. If I talked back to her she’d haul off and slap my face.

One time my brother and I were playing hide and seek outdoors after dark with some of our friends. In my attempt to get away from my brother, I turned around and accidentally ran right into him. My mouth connected with his head and my tooth fell out into the dirt in our front yard.

I had just seen a movie in school about how a dentist could replace a lost tooth, and if this happens, you should retrieve the tooth and go to the dentist as soon as possible. I ran screaming into the house, blood running down my face, in a panic. I needed someone to help me find my tooth in the dirt in the dark. I wanted it put back in my mouth.

My mother’s reaction? To my horror, she screamed at me. She screamed that they weren’t going to look for my tooth and that I was going to have to get a “flipper” with a tooth on it. I remember sitting on the couch with my grandfather, my mother’s father. He hugged me and tried to comfort me and we went outside to find my tooth, which we did. I went to the dentist that night and he put my tooth in. It stayed there for twelve years, which is much longer than usual.

I don’t remember my mother ever hugging me, being affectionate. She didn’t seem to enjoy me at all. She was always, just, distant.

Her notes in my baby book remark that I cried all the time, that I wouldn’t eat, that when I did eat, I would vomit. I could not be comforted. I’m not surprised as I had been taken away from my biological mother, then three weeks later taken away from my foster mother, and I was then given to this pair of strangers who would be my adoptive parents.

I used to tell my mother, right to her face, that I wasn’t going to grow up to be like her. That I’d have a job. That I’d be able to take care of myself. I was told that I had a horrible mouth, and I’d never amount to anything. I was told that I should go to college to find a husband to take care of me because I was unable to take care of myself. I was told that nobody would love me because I was too mouthy. I was constantly told I would fail. When I said I wanted to run a company, I was laughed at. I internalized these messages. That spirited child turned into someone who felt unable to accomplish certain things, and so, for years, I didn’t even try.

When my mother came down with Alzheimer’s disease, my father would badger her to remember who he was. His incessant questioning was cruel. That poor woman didn’t even remember where the kitchen was, and yet he’d send her there to fetch him ice cream. When she was done with the ice cream, she might put it away in the freezer, but more likely the refrigerator, or the cupboard, or not at all. Then my father would lecture her on where it was supposed to go.

One time I was at my parents’ house cleaning and making them food. My father asked my mother of me, “Do you know who this is?” She replied, “I don’t remember her name but that’s the nice lady who cleans and makes food.” I smiled at her and told her, “That’s right.” My father had wanted to cajole her into remembering me, or make her feel bad about not remembering me, but I knew she couldn’t help it.

One of the reasons that I believe that she had a happy childhood was that she went back to it in her Alzheimer’s disease and she was actually happy there. She was also so passive that she was fairly easy to take care of. I could tell her, “It’s time for your shower,” and she’d cooperate even though she didn’t like it. She would go to bed or get dressed or go to the car or whatever was asked of her. Her compliant, dependent personality became exaggerated in her disease.

Inevitably, one day I got a call from my father that my mother had fallen and broken her hip. She would be having surgery to repair it that morning. I went to the hospital to wait with my father while my mother had her hip repaired.

As we waited, my father told me the story of what happened. The night before, my mother had fallen in the kitchen. He had tried to help her up, even bringing a chair next to her to try to get up into. When she was unable to get up, he put a blanket over her and left her there until morning. He doesn’t get up until late, so she was probably there until afternoon. I don’t know exactly how long she was there, but he admitted that she was there all night while he went to bed. He called the ambulance the next day. He saw nothing wrong with this.

I was shocked and horrified at the level of cruelty it would take to leave her like that all night on the hard kitchen floor. All because calling the ambulance at night would be inconvenient to his TV watching or sleeping. A broken hip is excruciating and sleeping on the hard kitchen floor would be awful for my mother without a broken hip. I hate to think of how she suffered there. And yet, my father thought nothing of it.

All the years of her waiting on him and this is how he treats her. I was so stunned at his casual cruelty that I didn’t even know what to say. In a way, I wasn’t surprised. My father treats women horribly as if they aren’t human. I already knew that, but this was next level.

My mother never walked again. She lived another two years in a fairly nice nursing home that specialized in memory care. My father visited her there three to five times a week and was his usual asshole self. It made it difficult for me to visit her because he was so horrible to be around. The staff was kind and accommodating and my father took advantage of that. I have to admit, though, that my mother probably got better treatment at the nursing home because my father was such a consistent visitor.

My mother died on Christmas morning, 2014.

Since her death, I found I had less and less reason to spend any time with my father. The way that he’d treated me, the way that he’d treated my mother . . . I couldn’t stand to be around him.

I finally cut off contact just before Christmas of 2018.

In spite of the fact that my parents own burial plots, my mother’s ashes still sit on a table in the living room at my father’s house and I can’t visit her.

He controls her even in death.

The Toxic Wedding Guest

Blog post 11

The Toxic Wedding Guest

I’ve been planning, for the past two years, to get married. We want a small wedding, with only close family and a few friends, less than fifteen people including us. The problem was, if we talk about immediate family, my father would surely be included in that list.

I didn’t want him there, and I agonized over that for a good year and a half. Having him there would give me so much anxiety about what he would do, how he would offend other guests there, or make the wedding about himself.

At first I considered having a destination wedding. Having a wedding out of state would provide a plausible explanation for why my dad couldn’t be there, both to other guests and to him. He’s too old to really travel like that anymore. It would give me an easy way out, in that he wouldn’t be able to come and I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of not inviting him and all the repercussions that came with that. In other words, it would really let me off of the hook. I looked at multiple bed and breakfasts in several different states, looked up local marriage laws, even considered Vegas. While all of these were doable, the problem was that a couple guests, who were very important to us, would not be able to travel to be there. It wasn’t really a fair exchange.

So after a lot of thought, a year an a half’s worth, I relented and offered to get married in town. And then my anxiety over it really began to escalate. I was still not estranged from my father at this point, and I was really worried about how he’d behave at the wedding. I was afraid he’d say horrible, sexist, insulting things to the women there. I was afraid he’d be inappropriate with me. You never know what he’s going to say. He really is a creepy old man.

And then one time when I was pondering this and discussing it, I blurted out, “Well if (twelve-year-old female family member) comes, we’ll have to really watch him, because twelve is his favorite age for little girls.”

And then I thought, Oh my God, what the fuck just came out of my mouth? And I knew it was the truth. I am sure that I am not the one that my father has molested. He’s so blatant about it that nobody figures out what he’s doing. I’m sure he’s grabbed a girl and held her too long and groped her breast in the guise of a hug, right in front of other people. He’s forced kisses on unwilling victims as they squirm away. He’s even charmed them to sit on his lap, then there is the hug, and before she knows it, there is an old man’s hand brushing across her breast. He’s a genuinely creepy old man and he’s not going to ruin my wedding with his presence.

But the problem is not as simple as not inviting him. I’d have to tell my kids why. And not some bland story, they’d really have to know. I may have to answer the question of other guests as to why he’s not there. I’ve already decided that they will get a bland yet final, “He can’t come.”

So this all came to a head just before Christmas. We made the decision to get married here, in town, and to not invite my father. I was ready to let the chips fall where they may.

Except for the fact that this stressed me out so badly that I woke up on Christmas morning with shingles. I recognized what it was and was at the urgent care at 6am on Christmas morning to get antivirals, which worked. But I should point out that risk factors for shingles at my age are being immunocompromised, which I am not, or stress. So, this decision caused me extreme stress, but I was determined to go forward.

I told my kids, and they were both tremendously supportive. I went through Christmas and winter birthdays with no contact with my father. He wrote sad letters to me protesting my rejection, but I finally told him to stop contacting me. So far, he hasn’t since then.

The wedding is about a month away and my father is not invited. I’m enjoying planning it and I expect it to be a good time. I’m free from the anxiety and worry as to what he’d do or say if he were to come. We’re planning on celebrating our marriage surrounded by people we love and who really care about us. I am looking forward to it.

The Dream

Blog post 7

The Dream

Last night I dreamt that I saw my parents and a long dead uncle and aunt. We must have been at a family reunion or something. We were at some sort of resort. I saw my, long dead, aunt and uncle and was so happy to see them. I hugged them both, with joy. I was both happy and surprised to see them. I don’t know if this matters, but this uncle in my dream is my father’s brother.

My father, mother and I were sitting in a room. It kind of looked like a big living room. I think at times it resembled the living room at a house that we had lived in years ago. Other times it was more rustic, and resembled a place that we had had a family reunion at once. We were each sitting in straight chairs a several feet apart from each other.

Anyway, my father was asking me why I had cut him out of my life, and he wouldn’t let up. My mother was parroting him, telling me to tell him.

My mother has been dead for over two years. This dream was full of ghosts.

I said to my mother, “But I told you already. You know!”

I was desperate and very upset. I just wanted this interrogation to stop.

My mother was, in life, not in a position of power to deal with my father. She was dominated by him, also, as she was dependent upon him. She was a homemaker, but more than that, she didn’t know how to manage money or pay a bill. I’m sure my father had her right where he wanted her in many ways.

In the dream, she backed up my father, demanding that I “tell him.” She said that I owed him an explanation for my behavior.

My father continued to badger me for an explanation and I finally had had enough. I blurted out, “You molested me.”

He laughed.

I went on to describe what he had done to me, to him. I said it with conviction.

He countered with, “We were just playing. You are making a big deal out of nothing.”

He said some more things along those lines, but the dream is fading. But basically, he denied and blamed me for “misinterpreting.”

When the laughing and denial didn’t work, he cried. I didn’t love him. I was ungrateful. He hoped I’d get some help with my problem. (Meaning that I was imagining things.)

I told him that his was exactly why I hadn’t talked to him about it.

And this is why I haven’t talked to him about it. I really think that he believes he’s done nothing wrong, that he’s the victim. I think he’s actually that deluded. He thinks he’s entitled to do whatever he wants to women and girls, that they are just there to serve him, and other men. I think he truly believes that women don’t matter, that we’re not fully human. It’s probably how he lives with himself.

Pushback

Blog post 6

Pushback

In quick succession after not seeing my father for Christmas, I ignored his invitation to attend church with him, where the church would be honoring him for his ninetieth birthday, and then I didn’t go to his birthday party at his house that he threw for himself, and I threw away the card that he sent me to celebrate the day that I was adopted as an infant without even opening it. I’ve never wanted to celebrate that day.

The problem was, he kept calling me, even though his numbers were blocked on my phone. Unfortunately, even though he was blocked, his messages would show up in my messages anyway. The phone just didn’t ring. And since I wasn’t responding to his phone calls and I had him blocked on all social media, he resorted to a method that couldn’t be ignored: The United States Postal Service.

I’m sure by this time he knew I was shunning him. By avoiding all of these occasions that were important to him, I’d made it obvious. So he ramped it up with a weekly phone call that I would see transcribed in my messages and cards and letters. He sent a card for Christmas a bit after Christmas. Then he sent a birthday card. The only reason that I opened them was because if they contained any money, I planned to donate it to the Rape Crisis Center. The Christmas card was just a card, but the birthday card contained a letter. I read it once and threw it away. He whined about me shunning him, portrayed himself as loving, and basically accused me of being hateful. I went into a bit of an emotional tailspin, not from the things he said, but him contacting me when I didn’t want him to, brought up the old feelings of him touching me when I didn’t want him to. It’s like he was forcing his unwanted presence upon me.

I threw the “Happy Adoption” card away unopened and was proud of myself for doing that.

Then a week or so later, I got a thick #10 envelope in the mail from him and my curiosity got the best of me.

Keep in mind, that this was, ironically, far more contact than I would have had with my father when I was “in contact” with him. I would only see him a few times a year and now he’s pestering me weekly or so. So much for “no contact.” But up to this point, I’d really just frozen him out.

The thick envelope contained a letter explaining that he was going to see a psychologist and he wanted me to come. He wanted to work out “our problem.” And he sent several pages of computer print outs about the psychologist. I was like, what the Hell?

But I also wasn’t going to bite on his bullshit.

I’d been to counseling with him and it was him lecturing me and focusing on how disappointing I was and ungrateful and rotten. I was not the kid he ordered from the adoption agency. I’d seen this movie before and I know how it plays out.

It’s not my job to persuade my father that he abused me. I’ve told him before and he had the chance to take responsibility and he blamed me. I’m done with that.

It’s not my job to help my father heal. He can do that without me. Or not. It’s up to him.

In the letter, he also talked about how upset he was at me shunning him at his birthday. He has no idea that the gift I gave him for his birthday was not calling the church and letting them know the sort of man they were honoring. Such irony. I had gone so far as to look up the church’s phone number, but didn’t call. It just felt too vindictive.

So it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop contacting me and I was going to have to tell him to stop contacting me. I had been chewing on this for a while and finally realized that it had to be done. That I had to do it.

The last line of the birthday card he sent me said, “Practice love, not hate.” Inspired by that, I sent this note:

The most loving thing you can do for me is leave me alone. Please stop contacting me.

I don’t need to give him any other explanation. I’m done telling him how I feel. I don’t want to open myself to being vulnerable to him. There is a wall between us and I put it there and I want it there.

I hated my childhood and that feeling of powerlessness. I remember that I couldn’t wait to become an adult so that I could get out of my house and have some control over myself and what happened to me. This is me taking control of myself and taking my power back.

It’s not easy.

I knew how long it would take for a mailed letter to get to my dad’s house and I started checking my phone for messages, although none have come yet. Nor any mail. But I’m not convinced that none will.

There is another outcome that I fear. I’m afraid that he’ll kill himself. A close family member of his killed themselves out of anger and mental illness, and I wouldn’t put it past him. I fear the phone ringing and a message from my brother saying that dad’s dead. It just wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t want that to happen but it’s not my responsibility to prevent it, either.

I just want him to leave me alone, undisturbed, to live my life in peace.

It’s Easier to Just Keep the Secret

Blog post 5

It’s easier to just keep the secret

So I watched Leaving Neverland over the past two days, and I’d have to say that it was unexpectedly reassuring. First, let me say, that I’m so sorry that those men went through what they went through when they were boys. But I am grateful that they told their stories, because I could identify with how they felt and how hard it was to finally tell someone that they had been abused. It’s easier to just keep the secret; it’s less frightening and it’s less disruptive. I totally understood why it took them so long to tell. It’s taken me decades. And it’s not that I have new memories, it’s just that it’s taken me this long to really realize that I was abused, because my father acted like it was NORMAL behavior. It made me feel like I was the one that was wrong.

My father was powerful to me, just as Michael Jackson was powerful to those boys. My very life depended on my father. He owned the house, brought home the money. The families of the boys in Leaving Neverland had been sucked in to the Michael Jackson machine to the point that their families depended on him.

Even after I could no longer deny to myself that I had been abused, I was terrified to tell. It was easier and less risky to just maintain the status quo. If I told, there would be disruption, and perhaps judgement. But at what cost? The secret was eating away at my soul.

So I continued, for years, to pretend that everything was fine. I had my father over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’d call him on his birthday. But my skin crawled at his touch. A hug left me nauseated. I’d have a migraine for days afterwards. The people around me wondered why I acted so stressed. The fact that he was obviously irritating to be around didn’t account for the level of stress I exhibited.

But telling. The truth. It seems so obvious. But it would be disruptive. He wouldn’t be coming over for Christmas or Thanksgiving, and he’d likely complain to other relatives about that. Same old story that he’d used against me when I was being abused as a child, “You don’t love me. My ungrateful daughter doesn’t love me.” He’d brainwashed me well. I didn’t want to suffer the repercussions of him whining to others about how awful I was.

For years I’d politely answered the question from relatives that I would see about my dad. “How is your dad doing?” Me, “Oh, I just saw him at Thanksgiving and he seemed well.” So, if I’m not in touch with him, if I’ve cut him out of my life, if I’ve decided to live in the new reality in which I admit to myself, and some others, that he’d abused me, how do I answer that question? I don’t want to tell everyone that I’ve been abused. It’s not their business. So, my answer has evolved to, “I’m sure he’d love to hear from you and then you can ask him yourself.” It’s bland, and vague, and nobody follows up on it anyway. With someone else, I gave a little bit of an explanation, “Your relationship with my father was not the same as mine. Mine wasn’t good and it’s become distant. The best way for you to connect with my father is directly rather than through me.” They also don’t follow through, but it’s an answer I can live with.

And there you have it. I was worried about hurting other people. Some of the male members of my family, they really looked up to my dad. Because my dad treated men and boys with respect, unlike his treatment of me, and my mother, and girls. The girls were objects while the men and boys were fully fledged human beings. I really didn’t want to shatter that image of him because it would hurt others that had fond memories of him.

Even if those memories were based on a lie.

And what if nobody believed me?

My own father didn’t believe me.

He told me it didn’t hurt when I told him it hurt. He didn’t stop when I asked, no, demanded him to. He’d tell me, “everybody likes this,” which made me feel like there was something wrong with me.

But I finally reached the point where I cared enough about myself that I told. I didn’t care if everyone in the family was mad at me or never spoke to me again. I didn’t care if I was cast out of the family.

I told. And much to my surprise, I was supported. The support I received was overwhelming in that it was so unexpected. I was believed.

During the end credits of Leaving Neverland, they show video of one of the survivors burning his Michael Jackson memorabilia, gifts from the singer himself. I got it, because I had gotten to a place where I had to get rid of any gift that my father had given me. Each gift only reminded me of him, and those reminders were painful. I’d been hanging on to these things out of moral obligation, but just having them was painful. It was like my father was intruding in my home with the presence of these gifts. I didn’t burn mine. A few I tossed in the trash can unceremoniously and the rest I donated to Goodwill. Let them do some good for someone else.

It feels freeing to purge these things from my home. Telling the truth is bringing me inner peace, and getting rid of the gifts is making my home a more serene haven.

The Difficult Patient

Blog Post 4

The Difficult Patient

I work in healthcare, and from time to time we get some difficult patients. I’m talking about the truly offensive ones that make inappropriate sexual comments to the female staff and even try to touch their breasts, or butts, or crotches.

We had one recently who was like this. We traded out most of our staff that was caring for him so that most everyone was male. It’s an easy, non-confrontational way to get them to stop. There was still one female nurse that still had to take care of this patient. The patient kept trying to grab at her crotch, and the nurse was very upset over being violated like that.

Another coworker once remarked about a patient who had come in for a procedure and had nobody with him, and nobody to take him home afterwards. He said, “Sometimes I wonder what these people have done that they have nobody left in their lives that cares about them.” I think I know.

My father was in the hospital for about a week a couple years ago, being treated for a blood clot. I was visiting him (another one of those things I did out of moral obligation) when he began to abuse a nurse in a similar manner.

My brother and I were just sitting there in my father’s hospital room, making small talk, like you try to do when you are visiting someone in the hospital. A nurse came in to do a check on him. She tried to take his blood pressure and ask him a few questions about how he was doing, but my father had other things on his mind.

He asked her to give him a bath.

She politely told him no and tried to go on with her duties.

But my father insisted. He needed a bath and he needed her to do it. He really needed one. Told her to go get a washcloth and give him a good rubdown. He tried to grope her.

I was horrified, and he didn’t stop. My brother told him to “Stop it. You can’t talk to her like that.”

But he continued.

I got up and walked out of the room. And left. I was embarrassed that he was my father. I was embarrassed that I even knew or associated with him. I felt terrible for that nurse.

I had to go to the park and take a vigorous hike just to calm down.

When I saw the fallout at work in how upset my coworker was at having to deal with a man very much like my father, it just reinforced my decision to not have any contact with him. She only had to deal with him for a few minutes at work. I grew up with it.

Telling Others

Blog post 3

Once I realized what my father had done to me, and that I couldn’t be around him anymore, I was going to have to tell some people, and I dreaded that. I was so used to not being believed, to not being taken seriously, and to being blamed, that I thought nobody would believe me. I thought they would think I was crazy. I thought they would think I was mean.

My daughter was one of the first people that I told. She was home for Christmas and so she’d certainly notice that I was upset and also that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas.

The first thing I told her was that I had decided that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas. Her reaction: “Thank God. Seeing him is never pleasant.”

Over the years, she’d grown to just see him out of obligation. I’d never left her alone with him, and he creeped her out with his comments about her being “pretty” and always asking her if she had a boyfriend. She was worth more than that and she knew it.

Then I told her that it was because he’d molested me when I was a child and I just couldn’t see him anymore.

“Well now it all makes sense,” she said.

I asked her to explain.

“Remember that time you came home and found me in the bathtub and Grandpa was there and I had knocked my tooth out and you weren’t upset that I had knocked my tooth out but you were very upset. I could never figure out why. Now it all makes sense.”

Oh my God, yes.

When my daughter was about four years old, she had jumped down the stairs and knocked one tooth loose and the other out. The dentist had said that the other one would probably not last. About a week later, I had left my daughter with both of my parents, not thinking that anything like this could happen, as she didn’t need a bath and my father always left that to my mom anyway. I came home to find my naked daughter crying in the tub, and my father with her, having knocked her other tooth out the rest of the way. It was true, I was very upset, but not about the tooth. I was upset at finding my naked daughter with my father. Even I was surprised at my reaction. I don’t think I really understood why I was reacting like that. I hid things even from myself.

I was surprised at how vividly my daughter remembered this, and accurately.

Next, I needed to tell my son.

This caused me a great deal of anxiety. My father had spoiled my son and they had been close through the years. My son, obviously, is a boy, and my father showered him with attention and encouragement. In other words, he treated him completely differently from my daughter, and from me. I didn’t want to break his heart. He’d looked up to his grandfather over the years and had had a special relationship with him.

Due to some complicated scheduling circumstances, I ended up telling him over the phone. I had wanted to talk to him in person but it wasn’t going to happen.

So, I told him that I understood that he and his grandfather were close, and I didn’t want to interfere with that relationship. I wasn’t going to ask him to not see him or to change anything, but I wasn’t going to see him anymore, and I told him why. His reply was that he was surprised that he wasn’t more surprised. That as he had gotten older, he said, he’d come to realize that his grandfather was a horrible person who also does good things. And he told me that he was surprised that I’d put up with my father for as long as I had.

I’d say that was an accurate description. That’s one of the things that makes this so confusing. He’s done good things. It would be easy if he were obviously evil all the time. But then he’d never get what he wanted. It was very confusing to me.

I had so little confidence, I’d been manipulated so thoroughly, that I’d expected no one to believe me. Instead they believed me without question. They knew me, and they knew my father, and my story made sense. I told a couple other family members and they also believed me right away. This was a revelation.

I made it through the initial admission to myself that I had been molested, something that I had buried for years. (I didn’t have any new memories, I just realized that the things that my father had done to me were wrong. His assurances that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and his denial had shaken my confidence in my gut feeling.) I’d told some people and found assurance and support. And I’d cut off contact with my father, at least on my end. I felt better and more peaceful than I had in years. It was a start.

A Moment of Clarity

Blog Post 2

It was as if something within me just snapped. I’d reached some sort of tipping point where I had just had enough of my dad. I was just done. I didn’t want to see him anymore. I didn’t care if that meant that every other member of the family would be angry with me, or not believe me. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I felt more peaceful and serene than I had felt in years. And I felt relieved. I would never have to see my father again.

I had been putting up with him and suffering through heavy discomfort for years, fearful of what people would think. Fearful that people, family members, would be angry with me. Fearful that nobody would believe me. That I’d be deemed “crazy” and blamed for hurting my father.

But I didn’t care anymore. At lease not enough to continue putting up with him. The emotional price that I paid for tolerating him became higher than the imagined cost I might pay from estrangement.

It seems that public opinion judges harshly those that choose to estrange themselves from their family. Such people are seen as cruel and selfish. I’m here to tell you that people that separate themselves from a family member likely have a very good reason for doing it. But the person from whom they estrange themselves sure isn’t going to tell you that part of the story.

As I said before, my father molested me.

I just hadn’t realized it. I didn’t have a word for what he had done, and because of all the gaslighting, I doubted my perceptions.

When I was probably five or six years old, my father used to take me in the shower with him on Saturday mornings. I remember only a few details, but I can tell you this: no adult man should be taking his elementary age daughter with him into the close quarters of a shower stall. I didn’t understand the significance of it at the time, but I’ve come to understand that this was his way of exposing himself to me. And it wasn’t normal.

Then there was the tickling. He loved to tickle me. I hated it and I said so. He did it hard and it hurt. When he would start, I would curl myself into a ball and try to protect my private areas, because he always went there. He’d reach around my ribs for my breasts, or the area where breasts would be if I had any, since I was so young. He’d poke me in the inside of my thighs, my butt, and the front of my pelvis. It wasn’t tickling so much as him groping me disguised as tickling. I hated this. And I said so. I’d tell him to stop. That I didn’t like it. Of course, he wouldn’t. Because he liked it. And he would tell me that I liked it. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t listen to me and stop. I didn’t understand why he didn’t believe that I didn’t like it. But now I understand that he did this for his own satisfaction.

He was blatant about it, too. He’d do this right in the living room in front of anyone. It was sexual abuse disguised as tickling. It was so confusing to me because with him telling me that I liked it, I thought that there was something wrong with me that I didn’t. That fact that he wouldn’t stop taught me that I had no voice, and I didn’t matter. That fact that he’d do this right in front of anyone let me to believe that it must be okay for him to do this, because nobody stopped him, in spite of my protests.

To this day I’m not ticklish.

As I got older, I would sit in front of him and he would rub my back, which, looking back, that alone is a little weird. But it was never just a back rub. Especially as I approached my teenage years, he would reach around my ribs or over my shoulders for my breasts. I would tell him to stop, and of course he’d say that he wasn’t doing anything. I’d say I didn’t like that, and he’d tell me that I did. Same old story. And this happened right in the living room. My father groping and copping a feel on his daughter. On me.

It didn’t end there. My father was overtly sexual with me and made no effort to hide it. He’d call me “sexy” if I had a nice outfit on. He’d smack my butt if I had on tight jeans. He’d pinch my butt and laugh. I’d tell him to stop and he’d laugh some more, saying he was just “goosing” me and it was okay.

He behaved as if he had a right to my body.

He’d try to catch glimpses of my naked body, too. He used to come into my room and wake me up in the morning and try to rip the covers off of me, knowing full well that I wasn’t fully clothed underneath.

These things didn’t stop until I was probably sixteen years old and was able to physically stand up to him and make him stop.

I had had a hard time understanding what he had been doing to me, due to his gaslighting and his willingness to touch me right in front of other people. But the body knows what the mind won’t admit. That explains the visceral revulsion I felt toward him touching me at all as an adult. That’s what led me to ask the internet, just before Christmas, if I had been sexually abused. I learned that, even though he hadn’t actually raped or penetrated my vagina, that I had been molested by my father. It was a moment of clarity that helped me to understand the disgust I felt whenever I was in his presence. It made everything make sense.

I called a couple friends for support and told them what my father had done to me, and that I didn’t want to see him anymore. Since they hadn’t been gaslighted by him as I had been, they were immediately disgusted by his behavior. One called him an evil monster. They told me, “You never have to see him again.” And that was it. I was just done with him. I wanted to be free.

Christmas

I’ve always hated the Holidays. Well, maybe not always, but I have a long history of hating them. And it’s because the Holidays have a long history of bringing me misery rather than joy.

I remember when I was quite young and the Sears Holiday Wish Book would arrive in the mail months before Christmas. I’d spend hour upon hour perusing that magical catalog, dreaming about the magic of Christmas morning and getting glittering new toys that I had put on my Christmas List after discovering them in the catalog.

After much anticipation, Christmas morning would finally arrive and I would open my gifts. One year I got a Six Million Dollar Man. Another year, a microscope and premade slides. But after all the gifts were open, the excitement would start to wane. I’d get a little tired and cranky. Or I’d abandon my toys and build a fort out of the boxes. And inevitably, my father would call me “ungrateful.”

After a few years of this, I would expect that this reaction would be coming from him, and I began to anticipate it. I made sure to act grateful, whatever that was. But it was impossible. Because he’d catch me at some point without a smile on my face, and it would all be over. I was ungrateful.

In addition to my lack of gratitude, I didn’t love my father enough. I knew this because he told me so. He’d get weepy and say, “I can’t be happy because my kids don’t love me.” I told him over and over that I loved him, and he said that I didn’t show it. That I was a selfish brat that didn’t care about him. I was crushed. I wondered what I had done wrong, or if I was broken and incapable of showing love.

On more than one occasion, I asked him what he wanted for Christmas, or his birthday, and his answer was, “I want a happy family, but I can’t have one because my kids are awful and they don’t love me.” As I got older and he said to me, I realized that that was an awful lot for a grown man to put on a child.

At one time when I was quite young, I remember reading that each family can have their own birthday traditions, and you can even make up new ones. A creative and artistic kid, I decided to make up a birthday tradition for our family. I had a toy sewing machine that sewed with glue instead of thread. I was too young to sew with a machine that actually had a needle in it. Nevertheless, this glue sewing machine actually worked and I had made little stuffed animals with it and a purse. For our new birthday tradition that I made up, I made a hat. I think I modeled the hat after my rabbit fur Davey Crockett hat. I had made it out of my favorite scrap material that someone had given me. It was yellow and had cats on it. The new tradition was to be that on someone’s birthday, they would be given this special hat to wear for their birthday dinner, because they were the birthday person and deserved a special hat. Then they would keep the hat until the next birthday, when they would present the hat to the new birthday person. Kind of like when last year’s Miss America presents the crown to the new Miss America. The very first person to wear this hat would be my dad, as his was the first birthday after I made the hat and the new tradition.

I really thought this would be a very special and unique thing for our family. Our very own birthday tradition. But of course, that wasn’t how it went.

My dad’s birthday came along and we had our usual birthday dinner in our dining room, which we only used for special occasions. When it came time for the cake, the real celebration, I brought out my special hat for my dad to wear. He was loathe to wear it. I explained that it was a new, special tradition for our family that we were starting right then and he would be the first to wear the hat. It was his job to watch over the hat until the next birthday, at which time he would present it to that person. My birthday would be next.

My creative, childish, and yet fun idea of a hand made birthday hat was not met with the enthusiasm that I expected. My father would barely wear the hat for a moment. And when my birthday came only three weeks later, no hat for me. I asked where it was and was only told that it was gone. I was gutted. I was looking forward to getting the birthday hat and then passing it on to my brother, who had the next birthday. And the disappointment showed on my face. And there I was again. Ungrateful. To him. To my mother for all her hard work in making dinner. Nothing was ever good enough for me.

In adulthood I’d come a long way to distance myself from such unhappy childhood memories and to find parts of the holidays that I enjoy. I’d put my father on “low contact” without telling him and managed to see him only on the required holidays a few times a year. He would still find a way to ruin them, and as such, I dreaded the holiday season as it approached. I hated to see my father. I’m a relatively well functioning human being but being around him puts me into a tailspin. I can’t stand to have him touch me. At all. Forget a hug. His touch literally makes my skin crawl. If he touches me at all, I go wash. Spending any time with him at all makes me physically ill and will trigger a migraine that will last for days afterward.

Nevertheless, this Christmas I managed to buy him a Christmas gift fairly early in my seasonal shopping and intended to have him over for some sort of dinner. I called my brother and invited him to come to our celebration and he told me that he wouldn’t be able to make it as he’d be working that day. But he’d let Dad know when Christmas dinner was so that he could come without him.

He thought he was doing me a favor, but the mere thought of my dad at my house without my brother there to dilute the situation was more than I could handle. My mood turned dark for the rest of the day and for days afterwards. Even I was puzzled at the sudden and strong reaction that I had. My dad is an awful person to be around but my reaction was visceral.

I did a little searching of my memory, and asked Google what those memories might mean. For the first time, I finally found some clarity regarding my father and his treatment of me. I looked up some things that he had done to me when I was a child, and the Internet was unequivocal: my father had molested me. Everything suddenly made sense.