All children go through the process of individuating from their parents, more or less, and becoming their own persons in adulthood. I am no different in that regard. Admittedly, I got a little stuck along the way; there were some speed bumps and derailments along the path of my psychological development. I think it’s that way for all of us.
We become physically separate before we are physically independent. Toddlers have strong desires for autonomy. I used to set traps for my dad. I used to plot and threaten. I don’t know what he thought. I thought I was going to kill him. After he killed my mom, I stopped fighting him, and, for many other reasons as well, he and I were stuck in a long-lasting pattern of violent, one-way engagement.
At 12, I mostly shut down while he was hitting me. I would cry about it later, sometimes, if I was alone, if it hit me.
At 14, I was making peace with a world in which each day, at some point, he was going to end up punching me in the face.
By 15, I was used to being beaten regularly, just looking, each moment, for a way to avoid it.
After he killed Sandy, everything got more serious. Each angry punishment/interrogation turned to him standing over me, debating the prudence of mercifully letting me live when I carried a secret that could send him to prison. That’s right; he was being merciful. Killing me was the only path that made sense. If he had been a monster, any less loving and human, I would have burned in that ditch, right on top of her. Well, that’s how he would present the situation. See? Things got serious.
I began to study the beatings. I was waking up, at least to my physical reality. Dissociating for the relief of pain and fear was no longer my automatic response. I could feel every blow, hear every word, and just stand there, taking it. After one three-hour evening beating with a baseball bat, Dad was surprised that I could still walk. I was starting to take pride in my strength. Yeah, I knew that was a little bit sick at the time, but I didn’t feel guilty. I wasn’t the one running the show.
Still, it was miserable to live that way. I wanted a change so desperately! I wanted to take charge of my life, but I didn’t know how to do that without his permission. I didn’t know how to do anything without his permission. He had told me, although indirectly, that he wanted me to hit him back, to stand up for myself. So, I knew that was an option. I just couldn’t do it. Whenever he was hitting me, we were already too far into my failure as a human being for me to find the will to fight back. I would just stand there, feeling completely hopeless, worthless, and ashamed of the miserable excuse for a human being that I had become.
Interestingly enough, my dad had already explained this process to me. It would take me years to connect his stories with our everyday experience. Back then, I just went through the motions of school, family gatherings, and secret abuse helplessly, hopelessly, day after day, watching the years peel away with no conceivable end in sight.
Dad had a lot of stories. One of his favorites was about an unnamed hit man who didn’t have the courage to kill. This man would befriend a target and take them for a ride in his car. He would just drive, waiting for his passenger to express curiosity about their destination. When this would-be killer started to see his victim getting nervous, fueling his courage, he would pull out a gun and gesture with it, still smiling and pretending this was only a ride. Then, as fear mounted in the car, he would set the gun on the seat between them. Once both men knew that both men knew that the passenger was too frightened to reach for the gun, our killer would have the nerve to pull over and complete his task. Dad spoke of the victim’s fear and lack of action with disdain.
I knew he was disgusted with me for standing there, arms at my side, receiving his blows defenselessly. That disgust would ramp up his intensity, often spiraling a simple grocery store mistake into a near-death experience for me, full of righteous judgment and total disregard for any human value I might have held in his eyes previously. Fear and shame angered him. He would take me to that place and then take it all out on me. I would have continued to just accept my fate, but he was making me nervous. How far would he go? Would he kill me like he killed Sandy? He might, and it might be that any one of these violent interactions would be my last. I started thinking more about hitting him back. That’s what he wanted; right? I couldn’t do it unless I could stay convinced that he wanted it.
In my senior year of high school, I went through this whole cycle with him several times. He wasn't punching me in the face every day. A totally different routine had set in, periods of calm punctuated by irregular, shameful beatings, my dad saying his worst while back-handing me repeatedly, me bleeding and crying, standing still and taking it, beating myself up inside for being unable to hit him back. I was holding onto hope that I could muster my courage while I felt the cement of his judgment curing irreparably. Would I stand up and fight back in time or become the "worthless cocksucker" he insisted I had been all along?
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