My Story

isn't the most shocking thing you're ever going to hear. Actually, I think that it's getting more and more commonplace these days for people out there to be telling similar stories of their upbringing, which is really sad.


My biological father and mother divorced when I was four years old and my brother was two, and since then I can count the number of times I've seen him on one hand. I remember enough of him from back then to know that he was physically abusive towards my mother - apart from the stories my mother tells me about him, I recall him driving her out to a bridge one night trying to get her to commit suicide, and perforating one of her eardrums during a row. My mother moved my brother and I away from him, and remarried shortly after when I was about seven. This is where most of my memories start.

I was lucky to have a stepfather that took my brother and I as his own children and loved us accordingly. But there was never anything other than pure hatred from my mother. Growing up she made my brother and I feel as though we were meant to apologize for the biological father that we had by frightening us with stories of what he did to her in graphic detail, whether we wanted to hear them or not (and it was 99.9% of the time, an emphatic not). She insulted and teased us for inheriting most of our father's physical traits, trying to make us feel ugly and barbaric. When we brought any school grade below an A+ home to show, we were called "stupid", "retarded" - but I can't think of any one time when we were rewarded for an achievement. She finally had two children by my stepfather, and from then on we would hear nonstop about us being the throwaways. Sometimes she would hit us, but it was rare (I think, because it was so terrible and my stepfather wouldn't stand for it). I've been struck with a table lamp by her hand. I've been told several times that I'd be killed. There's too much about her for me to write here. But what made me fear her the most was her cold, indifferent and hateful stare. I got the stare whenever I cried, whenever I screamed, whenever I was sick, or whenever I looked directly at her. The last time I saw it was the day she kicked me out of her house, less than a week after my stepfather died of terminal cancer a few years ago.

I don't mean to write a pity-party blog. Sometimes that's all I do for days - pity myself. I've grown up with a low self-esteem, extreme shyness, feelings of being ugly that didn't go away until I started high school, and doubt in my capability to do anything. I've also spent a lot of time being afraid of people and the world, and distrustful of adults. I'm writing this so that, maybe a little, you can identify. Or to help shatter the myth that there's "no such thing as emotional abuse".

I'll try to tackle what emotional abuse really is in my next post.