Born to misfortune in Raised by a monster.(1)

I was 4 years old before I would really get a taste for what life had in store for me.
I have two very distinct early memories. One is in 1995, I remember my brother being born, I held him in the hospital, I was a whole 2 ‘n a half! I remember my baby brother very fondly, and for such an early memory, it’s quite vivid; I cherish this memory and am very grateful to be able to place it before the next.
In 1997 I was 4 years old, after my brother was born my mother started traveling for work a lot, that would last until she left us in 2001, but between 1995 and 2000 she was taking monthly trips at least. My father was a stay-at-home dad and a heavy drinker. I was only ever told stories of how this impacted me before I was 4, my mother used to come home to broken furniture and holes punched through the walls (and yet she kept leaving on her trips).
I don’t remember the outbursts from back then, but I do remember one very early, very rude awakening. It’s spotty, and for a long time I thought I had had such a real nightmare that it left me in physical pain, and to an extent I was right.
I remember light flooding my room from the hallway, I was very light sensitive as a kid and would wake up to even a nightlight, so this put me in a state of groggy confusion and discomfort. I then remember a chill shift around me as I was being picked up out of bed, this annoyed me significantly less than the light, which I distinctly remember being impossible to escape (even with my eyes closed and my head turned I could still see the reddish glow through my eye lids and it was very bothersome for some reason).
I don’t remember having my clothes removed, but they must have been at some point.
I then remember a pressure that distracted me from my light issue, it made me sickly uncomfortable and I started to squirm against the thing putting pressure on my private area.
That’s when it really turned to nightmares for me. The pain that followed was incredible, my insides were being torn apart, some monster was trying to eat me from the inside, I was sure of it. I tried to scream but I was so scared and shocked all I could do was make a soft whimper. That attempt to scream would play a huge role in real nightmares from then on out. I remember shaking with frustration as I tried and tried to struggle free of the vice like grip that connected me to this pain, repeatedly trying to get my vocal cords to cooperate, it was no use, even if I could scream who would hear me?
We lived in this farm house with acres of land, no one would have done anything.
I cant remember a conclusion to this, and I pin point it as the start of a serious dissociative disorder that I work tirelessly to hide today.

This same thing would happen from time to time when my mother was gone. I started receiving gifts for being “brave” and “Mature” for not telling her about my nightmares. I was also given gifts to not tell any adults at school on my first day of kindergarten.
When the gifts stopped, the threats started. My father would make it clear that I couldn’t tell anyone, I was made to believe that only he cared about my bad dreams and everyone else would make fun of them. My mother had a nasty habit of over correcting me as a young child, she has a PhD in chemistry and would often over explain things when I was incorrect about them…and I was pretty much always incorrect about how the world around me worked, so I was pretty much always corrected.
In reality I don’t see this as -her- problem, it forced me to be more careful and selective about how I see the world, and she really did teach me a lot at an early age, unfortunately when coupled with my fathers grooming, it caused a rift between my mother and I that would inevitably cause the relationship to crumble in my adult years.
That’s just always who she was and it’s never what I needed her to be. Some may argue that it’s her responsibility to have seen that rift and to have made an effort to bridge the gap, but there is no guide book on how to handle situations like this, and while I do place some blame on her, I forgave her for my childhood long ago…I don’t think she ever forgave herself, and because of that, she was no longer able to face me in my adult years.

This was the beginning to something truly awful, years of grooming and then downright torture until I was 13.

Thank you for reading this, and possibly my future ramblings on the subject.

Last updated August 23, 2018