she used to beat us

she used to beat us with anything she could get her hands on. she was angry, my god she was angry. with each blow, you could feel the anger piercing your heart, your mind, and your soul.

grabbing my hair was her signature move. her strength was amazing. she would literally pick you up by your hair and slam you into a cabinet, a door, whatever was close.

her suppressed anger and rage from being physically and sexually abused as a child would be unleashed upon her children. why did she hate me so much? i must have been an awful child to cause this reaction in her. i was bad. very, very bad.

she did it to all of us. belts, spatulas, her hand, anything she could grab at the time. her rage, much like an alcohol induced blackout blinded her.

one particularly bad memory stems from her nervous breakdown. i was about 12 or 13 at the time and had no idea. by no fault of anyone else’s i took responsibility for this. it’s just what i did.

she threw a rocking chair at me, shortly after she told me she wished she’d had an abortion. (i was the product of my biological father raping her while they were separated, who would have blamed her for having an abortion?)

as an adult, i confronted her. she went into a rage and denied involvement. confronting her was not anything i wanted to do. with some therapy under my belt, it came to be that i should discuss it with her. not to rub her nose in it, but in order to help both of us heal. even as an adult i was afraid of hurting her. and, to bring up such a thing would surely hurt her.

about two years ago i was doing some internal work and i had a vision. a vision of myself carrying around hot burning coals in my bare hands. i knew the coals represented her baggage. in the vision, i spoke out loud to tell her that i could no longer carry her coals anymore. i put them down by a tree and walked away.

that felt good, but i wasn’t completely sure what it meant until my mind had time to process the information. this after 14 years of trying to make sense out of things. i was breaking the tie in which i felt responsible for her happiness.

i’ve had headaches for all of my life. i’ve seen all kinds of doctors and specialists but no end of the headaches. it dawned on me recently to mention this to my doctor that as a child, i received many blows to the head. he began treating me armed with that information, and my headaches are now few and far between.

i write to clarify my history, not to hang her out to dry. it isn’t an act of rebellion to “make her pay”. in all honesty, i already went through that stage. this one is different, in that it has everything to do with me and nothing at all to do with her.

Posted by moonflower on August 22nd, 2007
» Feed to this thread
» Trackback

1 Comment a “she used to beat us”

  1. leahpeah says:

    reclaiming our histories is a very important step. as you pointed out, it’s different than trying to get back at people by spilling the beans on everything they ever did to you. it’s more about dissecting experiences to make sense of them. xo

Leave a Reply