I really didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than I did while writing my previous post, but I do. I’m so sad that it’s nearly unbearable. What I can’t understand is why is this happening NOW? Why has the Universe decided that NOW is the time for me to face this ‘thing’ that I’ve been running from my entire adult life and most of my childhood? It’s as if I’m at a crossroads and the only two options at this point are to either fight or give up altogether. I’m inclined to give up. As I said in Part One, I’m so weary. I desperately want to sleep but I can’t. Every time I attempt to, my brain decides to ‘take a walk down memory lane’. I wouldn’t mind if they were joyful memories, but they never are. Lately, I keep replaying scenes which involve my stepfather, and try as I might, I can genuinely say that I rarely, if ever, experienced ‘joy’ whenever he was part of the equation. However, as far as shame and guilt were concerned, there was always plenty to go around.
I’m not a ‘silver lining’ type of person, but if ever there was one, it was the fact that there was never any physical or sexual abuse. Not ever. Having said that, my stepfather did seem to have a monopoly on emotional and mental abuse. Before he was in the picture, I truly was a happy, carefree child. I looked forward to each day and what it may bring. But that ended abruptly at age eight, when my mom decided to give marriage another shot. I cannot say I necessarily blame her. I’ve thought about the pressure she was under, trying to raise nine children without any support whatsoever. After divorcing my father and being excommunicated by the Catholic church, she ‘survived’ six long years completely on her own. There were no grandparents around to lend a hand. My maternal grandparents lived several states away and my paternal grandparents wrote us off as soon as the ink dried on the divorce decree. But even if there had been grandparents willing to help, I doubt that would have mattered because my mom didn’t like to ask for or accept help from anyone.
Needless to say, even though I was initially ecstatic to welcome ‘Father Number Two’ into our family because times were exceptionally hard with a single parent running the show, the honeymoon didn’t last long. He didn’t waste any time putting together a very concise set of rules and regulations that seemed designed to trip us up. And after devoting all that energy into creating strict guidelines by which everyone was ‘encouraged’ to conform, he still had plenty of energy afterwards to ‘discourage’ anyone who didn’t. Fortunately, the first 4 of the 9 of us had already left home (although not necessarily under the best of circumstances), so they weren’t required to ‘toe the line’. That left the five of us at the bottom. It didn’t take long to weed out numbers 5 & 6; they both embraced the idea of juvenile delinquency and were ‘shown the door’ in short order. If I remember correctly, it took less than two years to eliminate the troublemakers. And then there were three, the three of us at the bottom.
I think my stepfather got some kind of sick high whenever he got a chance to put us in our place(s), because he did it often…and usually with a smug look on his face. Part of the rules and regulations he implemented centered around that f-ing chore chart, and we never could catch a break. If we didn’t do things when he thought they should be done or how he thought they should be done, a lecture was guaranteed. At least, that’s how it started. If we did anything he found unacceptable, within a matter of minutes or hours, a ‘family meeting’ would be called. The first memory I have of one of those family meetings/lectures was when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I was on kitchen duty, and when I was handed the blender to place onto a shelf in the pantry, apparently I didn’t push it far back enough so when someone opened the pantry door afterwards, the blender fell off the shelf and broke. You’d have thought I murdered someone.
We were advised to assemble in the master bedroom, and when he was done with me and my brothers, I can tell you that I felt utterly destroyed. That lecture was nearly two hours long, and I don’t even know how it’s possible, but he was not only able to reduce me to tears, he made me feel like one incredibly useless, careless, thoughtless piece of shit. I’ll never forget that day. And I wish I could say that’s the only time it happened, an isolated incident, but it was only the beginning. My stepfather seemed to relish having us all gather ’round while he berated us for yet another infraction. ‘Home’, which should be a sacred space, felt like being in the pit of hell. I did everything to avoid it. The air was always thick with tension and I felt like I had to always walk on eggshells. If I had been out playing and noticed that things were too quiet as I approached the house, I’d peek in the front window before proceeding to the door. If I spotted my two brothers seated on the couch with wounded looks on their faces, as my mother and stepfather faced them from across the room, I’d turn tail and not come back until I knew the coast was finally clear.
With all that said, I had hoped that I could tell you everything in two parts but I still have several more years of ‘fun’ to discuss with you, and don’t feel good about leaving all of that out, so I’m going to have to make this a three-parter. Hopefully, I can express everything in my next post and move onto something new, but if I can’t, please don’t hold it against me.
