Life on Life’s Terms

I can remember how my parents espoused the “what will people think” philosophy, in public we really did pull off the “perfect Family” image, we were all very gracious to each other, at home mom and dad changed from smiling, chatting and joking to dad completely withdrawing with his beers and mom yelling for attention. Its like I always had a feeling of “preparing for” or getting ready for something and my brother who was just under me felt the same way, we both thought a lot alike, all we had at that time was each other and we always knew what one or the other was thinking. I had a role, always a flurry of household chores to get right and my smaller brother and sisters to take care of but I felt happiest in the midst of my chores, I learned early on how to bottle up my feelings because they didn’t matter anyways so why even try to express them. I consciously worked at not needing anything from anyone again to hopefully cut down on some of the stress, if they even cared. That’s how I felt, my words didn’t matter at that time and keeping my mouth shut was the best thing I could do for all of us to avoid an argument or getting hit and being told that what I said didn’t matter or was stupid. So I learned to bottle up tensions by anticipating what needed to be done next to make it at least easier for mom and the kids, wasn’t there fault the life we were in at that time sucked. But then again they had no idea of the abuse that was going on in that house and I was at fault also to hide it from them every time I had a chance, I felt they didn’t need to know what was going on or have to live in any kind of fear, that was my job and mine only, even though Pat always wanted to be a part of and seemed like he just had to protect me I felt he just wasn’t old enough to know everything, so I let him go with only what he saw and heard, the rest I kept to myself, it was bad enough I didn’t need to share it with anyone. Being raised in child abuse, physical, sexual or mental is very common in the world I lived in, doesn’t mean it was ok but we didn’t have places to reach out back then like we have today. Child abuse is common in all sorts of troubled families. While severe physical abuse and over sexual abuse are clearly recognizable as traumatic to infants and children, other forms of child abuse may be more difficult to recognize as being abusive, meaning getting into the adults, your scared for life and the only one that can help you is YOU, in having the will to overcome the trauma.