After being in an abusive relationship for a year in a half with my ex, five years later I finally realized what could have led me into that relationship in the first place. In my blog, I wrote that I was never abused and that I didn’t understand why I whine up in an abusive relationship. I had an epiphany after the birth of my first child when my parents started to intrude in how my husband and I should be raising our son. How we should be raising him like they raised me. How they would compare their marriage to ours like they have the perfect marriage. Growing up, I saw their marriage as less than perfect and not the ideal marriage that I wanted. I did not want to be abused emotionally and mentally like my mother was and still is; not like I was as a child.
I notice the pattern of abusive behavior growing up but I
didn’t recognize it as abusive but only that the way my parents treated my
sister and I wasn’t normal. I was running away from that type of controlling relationship
when I moved out when I was twenty-two years old and when I found myself back in that
type of abusive relationship with my ex when I was twenty-six, it boggled my mind. I see my parents relationship as a
dictatorship where my father was the dominate figure and my mother was a
subordinate. In other words, he was controlling and narcissistic and she was
the co-dependent. In my parent’s house, what my father says goes not matter if
he’s wrong. If he doesn’t get his way,
he would yell, guilt, and threaten and would invade your space by get in a persons face or pointing his finger in a persons face to get what he
wanted. My father is a tall, big built man so
he comes off as intimating to a lot of people and hardly anyone would challenge
him.
Then there’s my mother.
She is a small framed woman, quiet and reserved. When my father wouldn’t get his way, he would
yell at my mother. He would sometimes
guilt her to get her to do what he wanted and while my father was raising his
voice and making idle threats, my mother would just sit there and let him yell
at her like a child. My mother once in a while would speak up about something
my father said or did that she didn’t like or if she wanted to pursue something
that she wanted to try, my father would turn and twisted the situation to make
it about him like he was the victim and she’s hurting him on purpose. I could
not understand why my mother would let my father talk and treat her like a
child and that would anger me. “Why
doesn’t mom speak up for herself?” I would ask my sister. My baby sister would be dumbfounded like I
was. I should tell you a little history of my parents in order
for you to get an idea of where I’m coming from.
My father was raised by a very religious and dominating mother. According to my father, she would send her children to church everyday. She would make them call her everywhere they went, she was abusive mentally, physically, and emotionally to her sons. When there wasn’t enough food to eat, she would feed the girls and not the boys, except for her favorite son. My father claimed that my grandmother was so mad at him one day that she threw a knife at him and tried to kill him but he moved and the knife avertedly hit his baby sister. She would force him to pay rent which is a way to control him financially while she didn’t work. The way my father describes his mother was that she was very controlling and if he didn’t obey the rules he would get abused one way or the other.
My mother was born to a teenage mother but had a strong
grandmother as the head of the household.
My maternal grandmother married and it went down hill from
there. My maternal grandmother became an
alcoholic and my mother helped raise her 8 brothers and sisters so she became a
mother to her siblings. My mother was
also molested by her stepfather for years and didn’t tell anyone until she was
in her late thirties when she seen her molester at her mothers house for a
visit. I remembered that day because I
thought it was weird that my mother didn’t hug this man and she stood there with this forced
smile on her face with her arms crossed.
My mother didn’t say a word to him.
So my mother was abused sexually, emotionally, and mentally by having an
alcoholic mother and a molester as a stepfather.
Getting back to how their abusive experience led to me and
my sister being abused emotionally and mentally when my parents especially my
father tried to control every move we made as far as making decisions for
ourselves and being our own person. I
don’t know how my sister felt but I felt that I wasn’t allowed to be myself
when I was with my parents. My sister
and I were very sheltered in a sense that we never played outside, never went
to camp, we didn’t have friends come over the house and the only friends we had
been in school. If we had interested in
school or outside of school that didn’t coincide in what they or should I say
my father wanted us to do it wouldn’t happen.
Even if we tired to convince him we wanted to try an activity he would
guilty us and make us feel bad about our choices and we wined up giving in to
what he wanted. We had to call everywhere we went to even if we where in the same shopping area or complex, we would call at every store we went to. If we were home and didn’t answer the phone
in 3 rings we, especially me, would get yelled at and thought that we were ‘up
to something’. I remember times when the
phone was downstairs and I was upstairs in the bathroom and the phone rang, I
would have to get off the toilet and run down the stairs to make sure that I
would get the phone at 3 rings. I also
remember that I had to take the phone upstairs with the long phone cord if I
was going be in the bathroom to pick up if my parents called. I remember times
when my mother would run to the phone when my dad would call so she wouldn’t
miss the rings. He started to tell us how to think and feel. If we expressed an
emotion, then he will tell you that you don’t feel that way. If we thought a certain way that didn’t
coincide in his thinking his response would be ‘Who put that in your
head?’ We weren’t allowed to think for
ourselves.
As I got older, I started to stand up to my father and
express what I wanted in my life and my own thoughts. But still he tried to control my movements
even though I was of age to make decision for myself. One example is when I
wanted to join a bowling league at my university. We would have to travel to different cities to
compete. He didn’t like that. His justification was that didn’t like the
idea of me being around “white people” and traveling to different cities. He treated me like a child and yell at me
until I coward down. That’s when I decided
to save up money and moved out at the age of 22 to get out of the controlling
grips of my father. My mother was controlling too but more subtle like working in the background. I remember my mother still wanted me to call
her when I got to work, when I'm getting off of work, and when I got home when I moved out of their
house. I told her “no, I’m not doing
that because I’m living on my own.” I remember the last time my father yelled
at me when I was 26 years old. It was about my ex living with me and how he
didn’t like that he was living with me.
I had enough of them telling me what to do and interfering in my life so
I hung up on him. My father didn’t like it and told me I was dead to him. I didn’t speak to my parents for 2
weeks. That was the last time that my
father ever yelled at me. So in a sense,
I ran from one abusive family into the arms of another abusive relationship and
it took me until I had my child to finally realize and admit that growing up, I
was in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship with my family.
I was what you would call a scapegoat in a narcissist
family. I was the one who spoke up when
I thought that my father was wrong while my mother and sister said nothing
because they didn’t want to enrage my father.
My mother or sister didn’t defend me even when they knew I was right. I would tell my sister the arguments that I
would have with my father and her response was “Why argue with him? He’s going
to think what he wants to think anyway.” I helped my family out financially when my
father didn’t have a job for almost two years. I helped get them their first
computer on a credit line, I’ve even lent them some money for a roof that they
never got fixed and lent them money to put my sister through a prep class for
art to enter into an art program in college.
My family paid some of it back but never offered to pay all and I had to finish the payments myself. I remember when I was 16 years old and had my
first job. I couldn’t open a bank account by myself until I was 18. I didn’t
trust my parents to open an account for me because I didn’t want them to
have access to my money and for good reason. I’ve gave my father some money
that I would hide in the tin can if he need help. This was the time when my
father was out of work for 2 years. My father would go in my room where I hid my
money in a tin can and would ‘help himself’ to take some money to buy
weed. Then my mother would have to pay
me back. I was the rock in the family and my parents knew that. The stronger I became, the more they tired to
control me. I knew I had to get away and
when I was with my ex, I thought I did.
I thought I broke away for the control of my family and landed in the
controlling hands of my ex. When I was
with my ex, I felt like I was losing myself again. With the yelling and guilt
tripping my ex used to give me; I realized that I was losing myself again, I
had to get out.
My parents still try to gain control over my life when it
comes to my marriage and my son. Figure that they will try to impose their
views of their marriage and how they raised me and my sister on us. But I realize that you can’t be controlled
unless you allow yourself to be controlled.
I don’t discuss my married life with them or my son as far as intimate
deals of our lives. As long as they know
that everything is fine, that’s all they need to know and nothing more. Also, I
realized that they can try to impose their views on my family but the bottom
line is this is my family, not theirs so they have no say so in how my life is
and how we raise our son.
I don’t know who my mother was before she met my father but
I don't think it’s the woman that she is now.
Sometimes I see the aggressiveness in my mother, the fire and passion that
she has for life when she’s with me and my sister. But when my father's around, she’s turns into his shallow and follow him
whatever he goes. I remember my mother telling me that she could have gotten a
job working with computers or learning computer programs. I’d asked her why she didn’t go for it; she
responded ‘I don’t remember’ but I think I know the reason why. I guess after years of being with a
controlling and narcissistic person, you tend not to fight anymore and to succumb
to the person they want you to be. I refuse to be that person. I
wonder sometimes if my mother will get fed up with my father and the true
personality of my mother will come out. I remember my father telling me that my
mother said to him that she wasn’t happy for over 25 years of marriage on her
birthday 10 years ago, but why did she still stay? My sister and I was grown and moved out of
the house but she still stayed.
I decided not to marry a person like my father because if I
have to lose myself in order to be loved, then I don’t want that man’s
love. After almost 35 years of life, I’m trying to
build my self esteem up more and to find the person that was met to be but still I
second guess myself. I got to a point where I know I deserve more in life but a
part of me has this voice in my head that says I shouldn’t, I can't, and then guilt comes
in for wanting more. My husband tries to help me through this and say that I
need to ‘believe in my own convictions’ no matter what people think. It’s hard not to care about what people think
when you’re condition to having thoughts implanted in you or to feel that you
need approval in order to do something. It’s a hard process but I refuse to
live in someone else’s shallow, it’s time to find the real me.
I shared my story to say this: when we find ourselves in an
abusive relationship and we can’t decipher how and why we end up in an abusive
relationship, take a step back in your early years and see if there is a
pattern of abuse. Physical abusive can
easily be identified where the origin originated, but emotionally, mentally,
and financial abuse you have to look deeper because it’s harder to point out. A
person may think this type of interaction with people is normal but they sense something’s
not right but can’t put their finger on it.
Abuse is a cycle and unless a person realize what it is, then they have
the ability to stop it or continue it. I
refuse to be apart of it. I refuse to continue it.
