My Rather Immense Story (Triggering Material)
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:59 pm
Unsurprisingly, this doesn't cover everything by a long shot. I really tried to make this as quick and easy-to-read as possible so I skipped a lot of the smaller details and things I've done. I don't expect anybody to really read this, and I certainly don't expect any sympathy or pity. It just felt good to write this out, I guess.
As a kid, my grandmother was my caretaker from 6 to 6 every weekday until I was 11. She is an irrational, emotional and legitimately crazy woman with her own terrifying set of emotional scars that she has never been afraid to take out on those around her. Growing up I became familiar with a fair few forms of abuse.
I've been beaten. She was calling me fat before I even made it to kindergarten, and every grade below an A was a quick road to punishment. I was to be perfect. Perfectly behaved, perfectly intelligent, perfectly athletic, perfectly beautiful and perfectly popular. If I wasn't, she would scream and hit me, and remind me that if I had loved her I would have done exactly what she wanted. On a few occasions that come to mind, there wasn't even a reason for the beatings. She was just in a bad mood.
Some of her behaviors were just strange, as opposed to cruel. She would use her fingernails to pick the lock to the bathroom so that she could come inside and harass you. My brother was almost a teenager by the time she let him go into the men's bathroom by himself in a public place, warning us that "everyone" was out there and wanted to hurt/kidnap us. Particularly old men. I actually have a phobia of old men these days.
But the worst part was my brother.
She may have been fond of the emotional abuse for me, but for my brother it was almost all physical. I'd watch her, and be able to listen to the screams. Sometimes she'd beat him right in front of me. I remember I used to plug my ears and sing to try and shut it out. I remember crying and trying to ignore the screams, wishing there was anything I could do to help. When we were young, my brother got the worst of what we both had to deal with, and to this day I feel guilty of how useless I was at the time. I've always been the stronger one, the more resilient one. I could have taken the beatings better, and I wish I had.
At 11 my dad quit his job to stay home and take care of us. It was hard re-adjusting to such a radically different life, but nice. At this point I had gone from a relatively popular kid to one of the weirdos, and eventually I embraced it. Probably too far, really, in retrospect. Nevertheless, it didn't matter how weird I had become. I moved at age 14 from the suburbs of a large city out to the middle of nowhere. A proper middle of nowhere, too.
Culture shock was bad enough, but in the small town I was an outsider. My brother adjusted well enough, but no matter how I tried everybody avoided me. I wish I were joking, or exaggerating. I had absolutely no friends and spent a lot of my school time being harassed. People would reach up my skirt in the middle of class - and when it was reported, the principal refused to do anything about it. They would tell me to go kill myself. They would scream insults from their cars when I walked home alone.
Eventually I withdrew so much that even my family wouldn't talk to me. (For the longest time I thought I was exaggerating that in my head. They still don't let me live it down though. They said I was 'scary' and 'volatile,' so they didn't want to have to put up with what I may have done if they had tried to speak to me.) I started self harming. I began having horribly violent fantasies I stopped eating, and when I did eat I would self-harm myself as a punishment. I screamed at my walls at night. My dogs were the closest thing to conversation I had, until finally I picked up reading. For over half a year I kept a book in front of my face constantly. Reading was the only thing that kept me from murdering someone. There is no doubt in my mind of that.
I finally made a friend after a while. My best friend. We both saved each other from our own insanity, and have grown up together ever since. It eased things somewhat, but it didn't stop my depression or dissatisfied feelings. Harassment in school got even worse over time. People threatened to rape me and kill me, and one even tried. The principal began to call me into his office every week and tell me, order me, what I was going to do next.
I began to shoplift excessively. Anything I could get my hands on, even if I didn't need it. I stole almost every week from every store in town, and I began to sell nude pictures of myself to a man for spare cash simply because I felt like it. I began to deliberately pick fights, and deliberately try and ruin peoples' lives because it made me feel better about how miserable I was. I totaled my first car, which was actually my great-grandfather's that was passed onto me when he died, in an accident. I became engaged to a man who moved out-of-state to be with me. He took thousands of dollars from me, remained emotionally distant and sexually assaulted me. After a year face-to-face he moved back home and didn't contact me for months. By the time he called, I had already mourned and moved on.
I dropped out in my Junior year and moved in with my grandmother so that I could go to college. We fought almost every week. My throat became hoarse with screaming. I went to 12 hours of college every tuesday and thursday, and worked a full time job every other day of the week. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, and I was sick all the time. I wound up dropping out of my 2nd semester of college, and shortly after quit my job.Two weeks after I quit my job I was $600 in debt, had a $150 ticket, was kicked out of my home and had my second car (which was a lemon) break down. But I also found my husband.
We worked together and, after paying off all my debts and gaining a new car, I moved back in with my grandma to re-try my 2nd semester of college. She kicked me out again, and my now-husband then-boyfriend (who was having his own troubles and was homeless) and I both moved in with his friend's father, who offered us a place to stay. At this point I had given up on college, at least for the time being.
The friend's father was addicted to pills, of course, and was emotionally unstable. He would accuse us of stealing his medicine, of re-starting his DVDs, of poisoning his dog. He would warn my husband that I was "a sneaky snake" who was going to "manipulate" him and "put [him] on a leash." He threatened to slash my tires, break my laptop and have me beaten up. Within 3 weeks of moving in we moved out, leaving to live with his mom.
After a long while of living with his mom (which was rough, being in the slums and sleeping on the living room floor, but at the same time nice) my car broke down near my husband's place of work. Long story short, we wound up living with my grandma again. Yes, I do realize I'm an idiot for going back 3 times.
For the next two years we lived with her. My husband was fired from his job due to a scheduling error, and I bounced between minimum wage jobs while he fought to get any sort of employment. She would threaten to kick us out regularly. My husband and I are of different races, and on more than one occasion she would call him by various racial slurs and lumped him into offending stereotypes. She would threaten to call the cops on him for taking a shower and threaten him because he let me sleep in for an extra hour. I would fight her, he would fight her, and eventually she got me a job at a charity she and my 2nd cousin run.
It was a living nightmare. I'd drive home and think about how much I wanted someone to kill me. I'd have mental breakdowns throughout the day. I don't want to get into the details of everything that happened in that place, but it was not easy. It wasn't right. After working for the charity for 10 months I quit, and left my grandma's house.
And here I am.
Unemployed. Living back with my parents in the town I swore never to go back to. My husband and I scrabbling for jobs so we can get a place of our own finally.
Things will get better eventually, though. I won't let it go any other way.
As a kid, my grandmother was my caretaker from 6 to 6 every weekday until I was 11. She is an irrational, emotional and legitimately crazy woman with her own terrifying set of emotional scars that she has never been afraid to take out on those around her. Growing up I became familiar with a fair few forms of abuse.
I've been beaten. She was calling me fat before I even made it to kindergarten, and every grade below an A was a quick road to punishment. I was to be perfect. Perfectly behaved, perfectly intelligent, perfectly athletic, perfectly beautiful and perfectly popular. If I wasn't, she would scream and hit me, and remind me that if I had loved her I would have done exactly what she wanted. On a few occasions that come to mind, there wasn't even a reason for the beatings. She was just in a bad mood.
Some of her behaviors were just strange, as opposed to cruel. She would use her fingernails to pick the lock to the bathroom so that she could come inside and harass you. My brother was almost a teenager by the time she let him go into the men's bathroom by himself in a public place, warning us that "everyone" was out there and wanted to hurt/kidnap us. Particularly old men. I actually have a phobia of old men these days.
But the worst part was my brother.
She may have been fond of the emotional abuse for me, but for my brother it was almost all physical. I'd watch her, and be able to listen to the screams. Sometimes she'd beat him right in front of me. I remember I used to plug my ears and sing to try and shut it out. I remember crying and trying to ignore the screams, wishing there was anything I could do to help. When we were young, my brother got the worst of what we both had to deal with, and to this day I feel guilty of how useless I was at the time. I've always been the stronger one, the more resilient one. I could have taken the beatings better, and I wish I had.
At 11 my dad quit his job to stay home and take care of us. It was hard re-adjusting to such a radically different life, but nice. At this point I had gone from a relatively popular kid to one of the weirdos, and eventually I embraced it. Probably too far, really, in retrospect. Nevertheless, it didn't matter how weird I had become. I moved at age 14 from the suburbs of a large city out to the middle of nowhere. A proper middle of nowhere, too.
Culture shock was bad enough, but in the small town I was an outsider. My brother adjusted well enough, but no matter how I tried everybody avoided me. I wish I were joking, or exaggerating. I had absolutely no friends and spent a lot of my school time being harassed. People would reach up my skirt in the middle of class - and when it was reported, the principal refused to do anything about it. They would tell me to go kill myself. They would scream insults from their cars when I walked home alone.
Eventually I withdrew so much that even my family wouldn't talk to me. (For the longest time I thought I was exaggerating that in my head. They still don't let me live it down though. They said I was 'scary' and 'volatile,' so they didn't want to have to put up with what I may have done if they had tried to speak to me.) I started self harming. I began having horribly violent fantasies I stopped eating, and when I did eat I would self-harm myself as a punishment. I screamed at my walls at night. My dogs were the closest thing to conversation I had, until finally I picked up reading. For over half a year I kept a book in front of my face constantly. Reading was the only thing that kept me from murdering someone. There is no doubt in my mind of that.
I finally made a friend after a while. My best friend. We both saved each other from our own insanity, and have grown up together ever since. It eased things somewhat, but it didn't stop my depression or dissatisfied feelings. Harassment in school got even worse over time. People threatened to rape me and kill me, and one even tried. The principal began to call me into his office every week and tell me, order me, what I was going to do next.
I began to shoplift excessively. Anything I could get my hands on, even if I didn't need it. I stole almost every week from every store in town, and I began to sell nude pictures of myself to a man for spare cash simply because I felt like it. I began to deliberately pick fights, and deliberately try and ruin peoples' lives because it made me feel better about how miserable I was. I totaled my first car, which was actually my great-grandfather's that was passed onto me when he died, in an accident. I became engaged to a man who moved out-of-state to be with me. He took thousands of dollars from me, remained emotionally distant and sexually assaulted me. After a year face-to-face he moved back home and didn't contact me for months. By the time he called, I had already mourned and moved on.
I dropped out in my Junior year and moved in with my grandmother so that I could go to college. We fought almost every week. My throat became hoarse with screaming. I went to 12 hours of college every tuesday and thursday, and worked a full time job every other day of the week. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, and I was sick all the time. I wound up dropping out of my 2nd semester of college, and shortly after quit my job.Two weeks after I quit my job I was $600 in debt, had a $150 ticket, was kicked out of my home and had my second car (which was a lemon) break down. But I also found my husband.
We worked together and, after paying off all my debts and gaining a new car, I moved back in with my grandma to re-try my 2nd semester of college. She kicked me out again, and my now-husband then-boyfriend (who was having his own troubles and was homeless) and I both moved in with his friend's father, who offered us a place to stay. At this point I had given up on college, at least for the time being.
The friend's father was addicted to pills, of course, and was emotionally unstable. He would accuse us of stealing his medicine, of re-starting his DVDs, of poisoning his dog. He would warn my husband that I was "a sneaky snake" who was going to "manipulate" him and "put [him] on a leash." He threatened to slash my tires, break my laptop and have me beaten up. Within 3 weeks of moving in we moved out, leaving to live with his mom.
After a long while of living with his mom (which was rough, being in the slums and sleeping on the living room floor, but at the same time nice) my car broke down near my husband's place of work. Long story short, we wound up living with my grandma again. Yes, I do realize I'm an idiot for going back 3 times.
For the next two years we lived with her. My husband was fired from his job due to a scheduling error, and I bounced between minimum wage jobs while he fought to get any sort of employment. She would threaten to kick us out regularly. My husband and I are of different races, and on more than one occasion she would call him by various racial slurs and lumped him into offending stereotypes. She would threaten to call the cops on him for taking a shower and threaten him because he let me sleep in for an extra hour. I would fight her, he would fight her, and eventually she got me a job at a charity she and my 2nd cousin run.
It was a living nightmare. I'd drive home and think about how much I wanted someone to kill me. I'd have mental breakdowns throughout the day. I don't want to get into the details of everything that happened in that place, but it was not easy. It wasn't right. After working for the charity for 10 months I quit, and left my grandma's house.
And here I am.
Unemployed. Living back with my parents in the town I swore never to go back to. My husband and I scrabbling for jobs so we can get a place of our own finally.
Things will get better eventually, though. I won't let it go any other way.