[How]

The last time I was in therapy, or, well, any other time I was in therapy, the therapist would go down their usual list of tropes. My favorite one is “Well, you didn’t turn out like them.” It wasn’t until I was laying in my bed on one of those usual sleepless nights thinking about it that I realized something. How come I didn’t end up like them or worse?

Statistics show that “roughly 30% of child abuse victims will continue the cycle of abuse with their own children”. I’m not kicking my kids outside in 24-degree weather to sleep outside. I’m not snatching their plates away because they’re not eating fast enough or just taking it out of spite like how that was done to me. But, for a grip of time, I was popping my kids. But, like all reasonable people, I realized that it just makes things worse, and they will have grown up to resent me, it was wrong, and harmful. I was seeing myself turning a corner I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to turn around from.

I was exposed to guns, drugs, alcohol, sex, sex offenders, drug addicts, prostitutes, et cetera as a child. A lot of it was from family members. I didn’t have a positive role model in my life growing up. The teachers didn’t believe in me nor gave a shit. Why would they? I had severe behavioral issues back then. They couldn’t tell me shit, but I rather be there than at home. I looked forward to leaving the house to go to school. I got bullied all the way there, while I was there, and on the way back home. But there were those brief moments in the day where I was okay. As fleeting as those moments were, I enjoyed them. I was able to laugh without abandon. I was able to eat without looking over my shoulder. Sure, certain sounds and things people said to me reminded me of home and I’d lash out but outside of that I felt better at school. The closer to the end of the day though, the more my behavior worsened.

I had a lot of pent-up anger, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand why I was so mad all the time. Apparently, it was from all the abuse during those important years of my childhood. I remember being angry all the time as a kid. I stole a lot, too. I don’t know why I was doing that either until my therapist broke it down to me. She told me that when a child is empty, they’ll instinctively try to fill that void with anything. Attention, good or bad, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t a good thief either, I got caught every time. I didn’t care.

My grandmother was trying to sell me. I remember the guy from New Orleans like it was yesterday. At least that’s what the license plate on his truck said. Now that I think about it, it could have been a rental. I remember him giving her money. I remember him driving me to some restaurant on the westside. I ended up in this foreign guy’s restaurant. I remember him walking up to I guess the owner and him telling me to turn around. I remember asking him why and the groomer telling me that good girls know when to speak and when to shut the fuck up. I remember the owner giving me a once over and then him asking me for my cellphone. I remember leaving and getting back into his truck and him driving back to the eastside. We drove in a direction I was familiar with as it was in the same direction me and my aunt would go to pick up my other aunt. My aunt didn’t like driving alone so she’d have me go with her. I remember him going down a side street, he parked and told me to get out. I remember the little yellow house we parked in front of. I remember asking why I was there. I remember him telling me “Remember what I told you about that pretty little mouth of yours.” He pushed me towards the house. I remember the smell. I remember how small it was. It looked like some old lady’s house. The outside didn’t match the inside. The inside was neat and clean, the outside was dilapidated and run down. I remember him pushing me towards a bedroom. I remember the light blue sheer curtains hung up where a door would have been. I remember the bedding. It had pink and yellow flowers with yellow trim. I remember him telling me to take my pants off. I remember telling him no and him raising his hand to indicate that he’d smack the life out of me if I don’t. I did as I was told. He pushed me down on the bed. I remember how the bed smelled. I remember him entering me. I remember how much it hurt. I remember how rough he was. I remember him telling me to shut up or he’d give me something to whimper about. I remember him finishing on my back. I remember him telling me to clean up and go get in the truck. I remember the phone call he made on my way out the door. I remember him saying “Yea, Cherry wasn’t lyin’. She’s prime. We can discuss the details later. I’m about to drop her ass back off.” I remember the ride home being really quiet. I remember when we finally made it back to my house how I relieved I felt. I wanted to run to my room and hide. I remember him telling me to not get out the truck. He got out and went inside. I remember sitting there wondering why I was listening to him and why I didn’t get out. I remember working up the nerve to get out the truck when he came stomping out the house and down the steps all the while yelling at me to get the fuck out of his truck. I got out, he got in and sped off. I remember standing there until I heard my grandmother calling me, telling me to get my scrawny ass in the house.

I was 16.

I never saw him again. My grandmother nor my mother never spoke of it again. I got my ass whooped if I bought it up. So, I left it alone. I deduced that it was just something that happens. I remember feeling like something was just stolen from me but at the time I couldn’t figure out what it was. Hell, I still don’t know what it was. My brother had just stopped molesting me 3 years prior, so I know it wasn’t my “innocence”, whatever the fuck that is.

How? How did I look at what was going on around me and give it the middle finger. How did I go so hard in the paint to get the fuck away from them? The older I got the more I fought back. Whether it was it was with my words or my ineffectual fists. I wanted to pull my hair out most days because they’d do things to me that would push me so close to the edge. 12 years old with suicidal ideation. How did I decide that I didn’t want to become them? I didn’t have any good examples to pull from so how? Why am I getting caught up on the how now?

I spent a long time blaming myself for how they treated me. For a long time, I went along with it. I’d believe her when my mother told me she loved me, the few times she was sober; totally different story when she was drunk. Even though they had treated me wrong I’d still go back and help them. I was stuck believing that I had to because they were family. I don’t know how I broke free from that belief but I’m glad I did.

Now that I have the only 3 family members – my kids- I’ll ever have. Where do I go from here? I may not have adopted their traumatic bad habits as my own, but I sure as fuck developed some on my own. The cycle wasn’t completely broken. But the difference in what I believed at the start of my motherhood and what I know as fact now is that I’m starting to know who I am now.

I know when I’m triggered, and I yell at them, I know it’s because I’m tired and need to sleep. I know other times I yell at them for mistakes and accidents it’s because it was done to me. I’m apologizing to them. I’m not yelling at them nowhere near as much as I was. I’m still navigating this autism diagnosis and I’m trying to help them understand because I know sometimes that’s where the yelling comes from as well. I’m overstimulated or they touched me, or I felt a sensation that upset me, or they ran up behind me and hugged me or they moved something and didn’t put it back. I’m trying not to let it build up though because I can’t hold all my emotions in. I’m turning inwards and trying to look myself through their eyes and when I’m that way. Through their eyes I see that I’m a monster in a sense. I picture myself how I pictured my “guardians” when I was a kid. That perspective alone has made me a better parent. Some days are much easier than others, of course.

I still have depression, anxiety, panic attacks, c-ptsd, high blood pressure, ABCDEFG to stay on top of. Music has helped a lot in keeping me grounded. I listen to music when I can’t sleep or if I’m getting upset, depressed, etc.

All the things that have been done to me, I had little to no reasonable reaction to it. It is catching up to me now and making me angry all over again.

Because now, I know better.