When I became a teenager my mothers aggression came to a head. The violence grew worse, the senseless yelling grew worse. If I got sick or hurt I took care of myself. I didn't count on any trips to the hospital or any sympathy in the chores. I learned to not show weakness. I let her beat me to hell and back and never fought back or did anything all that rebellious. Some kids in the same position started doing drugs or sneaking out. But by that time I had my brother and little sister to think about. If I started pulling shit like that who would feed them? Who would make sure my sister got her bath and her hair braided? If she had a nightmare she always came straight to me and slept in my bed with me. It never entered into my head that drugs or running around were even an option. Then at 17 I fell in love with this guy and we started dating. My mother tried EVERYTHING to stop the relationship. But beating me and yelling at me didn't even dent me anymore. She could do what she wanted but I'd found a winner. Then one freezing night after my boyfreind left and she was getting ready for bed the fight got worse than usual. I told her that she couldn't control me forever and that one day I WOULD leave, and she flew into a frenzy. I was beaten into a doorframe jarring my shoulder and my back, thrown to the floor, my hair being grabbed and yanked around. She demanded that I fight her and I refused. She told me that if I wanted to leave so bad I could just get the hell out. I got away from her and tried to get my phone to call for my boyfriend to come back and she snatched it from me. Telling me if I wanted out I couldn't use one of HER phones. Then she chased my from my bedroom to the living room then out of the house into the snow. Barefoot, in nothing but a thin dress and a decorative blanket I'd managed to grab off the chair by the door.
I was so scared of her that I ran three blocks and then trudged for the next hour and a half to my dads house. It was horrible. Puddles on the road felt warm so I would sometimes stop to "warm my feet" in them even though I KNEW it was probably stupid. The blanket I'd grabbed was pretty warm but it was small. Not nearly big enough to cover my whole body. I got lost at least twice, the mixture of darkness and the snow (we get snow maybe three times a year) threw me off badly. I saw three people on my long walk and all three ignored me as I ran up begging for help and walked into buildings to avoid me.
At one point on a particularly dark road I had to stop and curl up in my blanket the best I could on the side of the road. My feet were turning blue and felt raw. My back and shoulder ached, the soft snow felt good. I just wanted to sleep. My blanket wasn't helping me anymore. I felt like I was walking on knives with every step. I didn't know where I was or if anyone was looking for me. And I realized that if I did fall asleep there in the snow I would probably die. All alone, frozen in a ditch. I got the fuck back up and kept going. Eventually I actually found my way to my dads house. I wish I could say he took me to a hospital and let me move in with him right then and there. Instead, my mother had called him before I'd arrived saying we had had an argument about her threatening to not let me go on a graduation trip that was coming up. And that I had "thrown a fit and stormed out."
I told him what happened but he didn't believe me. Maybe he didn't want to. He was cold to me. Barely said a word. He had a plane to catch in the morning and he couldn't keep me there past the night. I thawed my feet in slightly warm water in his bathtub. The initial pain was so bad I screamed. Keeping my feet in the water made me sob uncontrollably. It hurt. It hurt ALOT. And when the pain finally subsided I was told that my boyfriend had showed up at the door just a few minutes ago but had been sent away. Apparently my mother called him as well asking if he had picked me up. Since the call he had been out frantically searching the streets for me he visited every friend we had in the area and tracked the snow looking for footprints. When he finally figured out I was at my dads he demanded to at least talk to me over the phone. I talked to him over my dads phone and he was so glad I was safe he cried. That next morning my dad caught his plane and my mother came to pick me up. When she saw my feet she called me an idiot and laughed at me.
I continued to live with my mother for my little sisters sake until I was 19. I tried to convince my dad to let me finally move in with him. But he brushed me off. When I insisted he outright told me no.
My freind Jess and my boyfriend more or less forced me to move out when I was 19. While my mom was out and my sister was with her father my friends came and just moved me out in a matter of a few hours. The entire episode was even more trauma. My mother started sending me threatening messages and called my dad to tell him I had run away from home and that I was a deviant and he had to drag me back.
And he did storm into my boyfriends house the next day demanding to see me telling me I was making a huge mistake and that If things were REALLY that bad I could move in with him. I told him he'd had a billion chances to get me out of there the last year, reminded him that I had practically begged him to let me move in and that it was way too late now. After that point he became very depressed. He stopped cleaning his house, stopped seeing his girlfriend, stopped going out. Eventually he got over it and saw that I was much happier living with my boyfriend and that I wasn't doing drugs or binge drinking or having unprotected sex. And I eventually talked to him about the things that were really going on with mom over the years and told him he can either believe me or not but that I wasn't going to lie about anything anymore. I think nowadays he believes that I'm over exaggerating. His new wife doesn't know what to think but she can see it's clearly a sore subject for him so she tries not to bring it up. Thinking about it from his position I understand why he's so hesitant to believe me. Here's a woman you've entrusted with your children, abusing them viciously and you've been SENDING your children back to live with her when your visitation is done never realizing anything was wrong. How are you supposed to feel about that?
My relationship with my father is still a good one. But I realize now that he isn't perfect and really doesn't know how to handle subjects like abuse and loss.
My relationship with my mother nowadays... I laid down the law with her, told her if she ever touched me again I would press charges and never visit her again. That if she EVER touched a hair on my sisters head I'd kill her myself, and that if she wants to have a relationship with me at ALL in the future or with my children that she had to own up to what she had done to me and my brother and never EVER hurt anyone under her care again. It's been a few years. She found a stable boyfriend who doesn't treat her like shit, she apologized and my sister says she's never hurt her.
I still hate her very deeply. I feel like she betrayed me in so many really horrible ways. I feel like she never even saw me as a human being. As a baby and a small child I was probably more of a doll to her. She once told me "I love you. I don't have to like you." But if She did love me so much it could have only been the same way her parents and boyfriends had loved her. And in that sense I feel sorry for her and try to understand from her point of view WHY she did the things she did.
But I feel like I the end there will always be that part of her that's simply evil and no amount of love and compassion will EVER stomp it out of her. If It weren't for my sister I would never see that witch again. I honestly don't think it would bother me if she died. The mother I used to love so much is already buried in my heart. And that's the worst thing. There are still those bittersweet memories of my mother and I having a snowball fight when I was four. Of Christmas mornings, of a few birthdays. those are the only times in my life I felt completely safe and loved. And that's all I'm ever going to get. A few half dreamed memories.
TLDR: I hate my mother. I love my father.