My father told me a few days ago that he thought I was overreacting as a child when I told people at our church that his hitting me was a problem. He also said no one knew that head injuries were a problem until recently, so ofcourse he would try to give me a knot or worse when he thought I did something wrong. Here I am in my 30’s and my head still has bumps. From the time I was throwing catch with another boy, he lied for attention and claimed the ball hit him in the chest(“I’m going to hurt you worse because you’re a liar” was my father’s rationale,). From the time my parents were fighting and I tried to get him to stop hitting my mother. From the time I was going off to JROTC camp for a week and he was angry I was issuing their list of what to bring. That time he was angry that I expected to wear more than one pair of socks a day, even though I had plenty. By packing two a day I wasn’t “minding him”. The cops came for that one, but didn’t do anything.
When I was 8 I used to sit with his revolver and pray about whether or not God would let me kill myself. Eventually my Southern Baptist upbringing convinced me that I was going to hell for even considering it. Then my depression got worse. I didn’t know that word though, until my father was hitting me once screaming that I had nothing to be depressed about.
I later learned that it all came from an alcoholic father of his own, and his family only being able to afford to send one kid of three to college. They sent him to Baylor where he got a degree in education and earned the least of the bunch. At 23 he got a girlfriend pregnant and had to marry her, because of the era and culture. They ended up having a terrible and anger fueled marriage that ended in divorce five days short of thirty years. He ended up destroying his health by using a fork the way his father used a bottle, even being obese long after his eventual gastric bypass.
To this day he is convinced he was a kind and loving parent. I keep thinking about how I was bullied and called a “fag” for being smaller than other kids in my grade(younger too, but no correlation there) and him asking if I was one. When I was eleven my older brother explained to me that God didn’t like “fags” and that they went to hell. That they also weren’t allowed in the family. Apparently they got the idea that I cried in my room so much and didn’t bring home friends because I was gay(Again, Southern Baptist, which is much more conservative than Baptists in the South).
My father recently told me that my older brother’s children are getting spoiled just the way he thinks I was. It seems he doesn’t acknowledge any of what I went through. He remembers it as me needing to be “disciplined” and it would have all stopped if I straightened up sooner. He also once told me that he would have still loved me if I had been gay, which is almost funny because I remember the hit in the face I got when my mother miss-stated that I was playing with G I Joes and said that I was playing with dolls. I thought my nose would never stop bleeding,
The stories could go on, and I have deleted a few here, it got worse for awhile there, but you don’t need to carry those around. I eventually got a few business degrees and now have an okay career. No kids and no church, but a wife who can relate.
I still sometimes think back to that time in my life. Asking permission to die at 8. A few days ago when I was sitting at work and trying to decide what I wanted out of a career and why I never feel like I deserve anything. The other people in our church knew what was going on some of it the witnesses, and other parts they saw the aftermath of. I kept having to explain away black eyes and bumps somewhere near my hairline. I sometimes wonder of those childhood head injuries or emotional trauma are why I feel depressed and anxious for no apparent reason. It is a little after three in the morning. I’m wide awake and couldn’t get my heart to stop speeding away from me until I hid in my closet, just like I did when I heard him yelling and didn’t want to get beaten.