They weren’t parents. They were captors. They were abusers. He hated her, she hated him, and together they made me. I was the glue that held it all together. Their proxy war.
“You’re just like your father!”
“You’re just like your mother!”
These were never good comparisons.
If one half was bad, and the other half was bad, did that mean I was just bad?
I remember being pulled from bed at night, after the usual yelling, and taken with my mother to her friends house. “Are you going to get a divorce?” I don’t know how old I was, but I knew what it meant.
“No sweetie, it was just a bad fight.” I felt such disappointment.
“I wish you would.”
Then she was away, detailing all the drama to her friend. I could hear them talking, light coming in from the hall. Her friend collected porcelain clowns. There were shelves lining the walls. Dozens of creepy clowns, a strange bed, more fighting but no hope for an end. It was the bright moon that comforted me.
Ten older siblings. Three from his prior marriage, and seven from hers. His were regularly beaten, hers were neglected or used for her emotional support. Most were already adults and scattered to the wind. There are none that I trust.
I remember being alone in the woods. Him and a truck, his usual scowl. We picked up my brother from a camp. They fought about me. There were only two seatbelts, so that meant I was loved better. I don’t blame my brother. He was a kid.
When he ran, he was chased down and beaten, then dragged back to the truck where he asked “What about my bloody nose?”
“Use your sock.”
These are my very first memories. My introduction to the world.
Of my siblings, the seven on her side were the oldest, then the three on his, and then me, between the two of them. My previously mentioned brother was the closest in age. He spent some time with us, and some with his mother. I was somehow the youngest, and yet also an only child, with siblings who felt more like aunts and uncles.
He couldn’t beat me like he could his prior kids, but he did beat them in front of me. I’m sure they felt resentment. With her kids it was the fact that we had money and they had been poor. Either way I was the lucky “golden” child, left alone to watch it all fall apart, to be clung to by one and despised by the other, to be a nephew or brother whenever it was convenient, to be treated like a child and held accountable like a man, to nurture her wounds while enduring his since the time I could talk.
He was drunk and angry. They would yell and slam doors. There would always be disagreements about me. Then she would come and cry and tell me all the mean things he would have said and bask in the glory of protecting me from him. All while I was comforting her.
And I never even saw it. How could I? It was all I’d ever known.
(This is true but very difficult to write. I would appreciate feedback if you think I should try to keep going. Thanks!)
Autobiography
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