My Story: A Life of Hell
Trigger Warning... So here goes; my first post. I’ve never publically acknowledged what happened to me, which in turn led me to this place. As I tell you my story, I want no pity. So what leads me here today? I seek to find answers, to ask why, to discover if my life was of value to someone; to know if I was loved, to know if I mattered. To ask how others healed, and if there is such a thing. So here is my story: I have never known a day in my life that I was not beat or deprived of food or to use the bathroom. There was never a day that I did not cry. I can recall sitting in a high chair and being hit on the head with the mop handle by my mother. I’ve never known a hug or a kiss from my parents. I recall images of my brothers being beat with chairs, fists, or whatever was around. WE were called bastards, c_cksuckers etc. We had nick names that were dirty. I come from a family of 7 children, all boys born of my mom and dad. Mom and dad were married 15 years. When I was three, for some reason there was a divorce. I learned later my mom was cheating on my dad with another man. I recalled for some reason we moved from my parents’ home to a smaller home; there were no light bulbs and I was scared at night. We had visitation with dad, for about six months as I was about 3 years old. That came to an end. I would never see my dad again until I was 15. After the divorce, one by one, my brothers would run away or be made to feel that they did not belong with my mother. On one occasion, my mom made my older brother sleep under the mobile home in freezing weather. I watched as my mom purposefully broke my older brother’s arm. We heard it snap. I watched as my older brother’s head was slammed into the toilet, and his face was so swollen, it appeared his eye popped out other the socket. I knew my turn to be abused was coming. It did. My older brothers ran away to be with my dad. Life for me was way worse than could be imagined. I try to spare the details except for those that my life consist of most of the time. I was whipped naked in a shower stall—after mother turned the scalding hot water on, to soften up my skin. I was kept in a cellar, which had nothing more than cement walls and floors, and no furniture, except a sump pump and a water pump, with a spicket, which gave me water. They’d keep me locked up for 4 to five days. I’d pee in the sump pump, but if you don’t eat, you don’t defecate. I was made to take baths with ether Lysol, Bleach or Pine oil in the bath water, up to the age of 14. I had no privacy even into puberty. From time to time when locked up, mother would come down to beat me, or tie me to a support post and whip me if she had the urge. When I was let loose, my job was to clean. Mother was OCD, therefore I had to have the house looking like a Sears Roebuck catalog every day. When my mother came in the rooms, she’d inspect by using toothpicks and Q-tips to check cracks and corners of the toilet or baseboards etc. If she’d find dirt, she’d ram it in my mouth to teach me a lesson. She’d chain the refrigerator and cabinets of food shut and locked. I’d sneak sugar from the canister to ward off hunger pains. At night I was made to sleep on the cold tile floor by the side of her bed, in my underwear or naked. There was no blanket. I felt like I was the dog. When she left the house, I’d use a screw driver to open the locked cabinets or even pick the lock so I could eat. Little did I know, she measured and counted the food. When she returned, she found two pieces of bologna and two pieced of bread missing. She claimed that I needed my hands cut off like the Arabs did in Muslim countries. She tied me to a post and whacked at me with a butcher knife. I went to school maybe 5 weeks out of a 9 week cycle. I was not allowed to ride the bus. My punishment was to walk. I heard of hitchhiking, and so I did. I was 7 and 8 years old. School was 20 miles from home. It was so cold when walking. When I got to school, the principal put me in the boiler room to warm me up and gave me food. Look I was forbidden to eat at home, so my only food was free lunches in school 5 days out of the week when I went to school. On that day, I came with deep slashes in my arms. They called the social worker, but no one helped me. They all looked at my arms and hands which were bleeding profusely on my wooden desk. Some of my classmates made fun of me. When I got home, I was whipped naked because the social worker came to the school. I was 8 years old. I was forbidden to defecate as this. I was not allowed to defecate in the toilet at home. She said I had to do that at school. Sometimes we’d sneak, but God forbid if she heard the toilet flush. We would be beaten. We learned to hold it until sleeping, then climb out of the bedroom window and defecate in the neighbor’s yard and wipe using grass or leaves. We did not want her to hear the toilet flush, we’d be beat. There was never a day I wasn’t beaten. I was not uncommon to be choked, until we passed out. It was not uncommon to go to school with massive bruises. No one helped us. I was not uncommon to have a bar of soap shoved in our throat if we rolled our eyes. I’ve had Dove, Ivory, and Lava soap. Lava is the better than Dove. Dove is too creamy and the cream gets in your teeth, you taste the residue for days. I prayed to this painting on the wall of Jesus, asking him not to let mom beat me. He never helped me. My mom would cut my hair in retribution for something. She often took a hack saw or sharp scissors. I’d often go to school with bald spots or chunks of hair missing. On one occasion, my mom threw a candy dish at me on the 4th of July. The dish broke and shards of glass were stuck in my legs. Then mom jumped on me to choke me and to slam my head in the floor. I passed out. When I came to, it was eerily calm, and I was in a bed. I learned many years later that my older brother had jumped on my mom to get her off me because he told her she would kill me. So my 13 year old brother went to call the police. While I was blacked out. Mom put me in the bed like I was sleeping, and heated up the iron. She burned herself on her belly with the hot iron. When the cops came, she told the cops my brother burned her. My 13 year old brother was arrested and placed in a foster home. The beatings only got worse after my brother left. Now, it was down to me and two younger brothers left. Many times, my friend Mike would come over to help me when my mom was gone after I was beat. He’d nurse my bruised back to try to say someone cared, but truly I wanted to die. I was made to work in the home around my step father who was often naked. He was abused by mom also, but in a different way. I don’t recall getting a birthday or Christmas present ever. I was not authorized to join the family to have Christmas or Easter dinner with the family. I did have to clean their dishes, and gingerly ate the meat off the remaining chicken bones if there was any left. Sometimes I’d look in the garbage in the house to have Christmas dinner of the remaining scraps. The only thing that no one could control was my mind, and this kept me alive all my life. They could do what they wanted to my body, but I had my mind. This was my life. I ran away at 15, and my step father dumped my in a corn field and I found where my dad and brother lived. Finally at 16, I was able to get a small studio apartment. I graduated from high school, and joined the military. Badly enough I recall screaming at night in basic. I was having night mares of being beat. I’d shake if I had to defecate because I was still afraid. I had no social skills as I related to other males. I kept to myself, and tried to heal myself. Ten years went by. I thought I was healed. I met a woman overseas. Life was grand until we married. The day after the wedding, all hell broke loose. Without going into details, I learned I married a person just like my mom, just without the OCD… rather just the opposite. Never after the wedding, did she hold my hand, kiss me, or hug me. She had bipolar, mixed bipolar. If you don’t know about bipolar, well you’d want to die than live. I stayed in that marriage for 18 years. I divorced her and received my kids, home, and assets. However, I am not healed. I find it hard to trust anyone or anything, any motive, or any action. I keep thinking why, why me. Did anyone love me, why didn’t anyone care? I ask, did my mom ever love me? A man told me the opposite of hate is indifference. There is nothing there. I don’t even trust posting this because I can’t trust that anyone might tell me what to do to heal, to try to forgive that woman, to try to have a normal life, because after all of these years, it still hurts. Any one can say, this didn’t happen. Call me a liar, but my younger brother was already told by his psychologist that there is no way possible that this happened, in essence he was called a liar. My brother sought counseling because he learned that mom tried to abort him with a coat hanger. I am here to tell you there are cruel people in this world. This happened, and I never told you about the sexual stuff yet. More pain… As I write this, I cry, the pain is real. This happened in the latter 1970s and 1980s. No one helped me.
