Secrets
Everything was a secret in my childhood home. "Shhhhhhhh don't tell - what will the neighbors say?" "Keep your mouth shut your father has a reputation in this town!" "You don't know what you saw, you're just a kid."
I never saw my mother flirt with the truckers that came into our family store. I never saw the men who would look at my sister and me with lust. I never saw my grandfather make passes at women. I never heard the whispers about my Uncle Bill and him doing stuff to my cousin Linda. I never heard the grown ups getting drunk and telling dirty jokes in the other room. I also never knew that my cousins were playing doctor in the basement while the adults were drunk. And I certainly never was abused by my Uncle. (secrets) No - no, I came from a good family, one that was in reality so dark that to this day I wonder how I got out alive.
My mother grew up in a big yet poor farm family. I never knew anything about them until I was a teenager and started asking questions. My grandfather was (as my mother put it "a mean and nasty SOB who I am glad is dead and I hope he is burning in hell") Mom has a way with words. My grandfather was, by all accounts, a monster. He would beat my grandmother unmercifully. He would beat the girls in the family until grandma stepped in and took the beating for them. He also would beat the boys so severely that he almost kill one of them one time I am aware of. And then there was the time he sat in the living room with his shotgun and he was going to kill the first one of his sons that walked through the door. It didn't happen but my mother can remember it like it happened yesterday.
But, to look at our family from the outside - you would never know. (secrets)I never knew the depth of the abuse until I was in my late 20's when I could get someone to tell me some of the stories. It wasn't easy. I still only know a bit - my instincts tell me there is so much more I will never know, especially since so many of my Aunts and Uncles are dead now.
We were kept away from most of my mother's family when we were kids. I would ask why and the standard answer was "Never mind why!". (secrets) Over the years I found out why. The abuse that was heaped on my mother and her brother's and sister's (there were 9 of them) they in turn heaped on us - the cousins. We all knew it was happening, you could see it in each others eyes, but not a word was said. (secrets) Some of my Uncles became physical abusers, one sexual (he actually had sex with one of his sisters) and several emotional.
My mother and her sisters married men who were abusers. Emotional and physical. Even my mother who prided herself on ending the abuse in her family, married a man (my father) who was emotionally and physically abusive to my sister and I. (other strange fact - yes she protected us from her family - however - the man who sexually abused my sister and I was married to my father's oldest sister - how's that for a slap in the face?) My father was mean - most of the time.. But to people on the outside they would all tell you what a great guy he was. (secrets) No one knew how much abuse we all took in the privacy of our home behind closed doors. My father liked to yell and hit. And another one of his favorite ways to discipline us was to kick us with his steel toe work shoes. How many times can you be called stupid and ignorant by your father before you believe it? But we never told - you don't talk about those things, (secrets) you just learn to live with it.
When I was 23 I wanted to see a therapist. I had been so depressed most of my life I was actually sure I was going to take my own life - soon. I tried to talk to my mother about it. She got so angry. (secrets) She screamed at me that "You don't talk to strangers about what goes on in the family!" (secrets). I told her I was going. Then she did something I have yet to forgive her for. She took my to our family physician and somehow got him to tell me to talk about my problems around the dinner table - not with a stranger! I was dunb founded and it only succeeded in making my depression deeper.
I didn't seek out help for another year and by then I was so depressed I could hardly get out of bed. My mother would rather I lay in bed unable to do anything except cry - then to go to a therapist and try to get better. That's how deep the secrets were. When I finally went to a clinic - my mother wouldn't talk to me for weeks. (secrets) But I found the beginning of my life in that clinic with that student therapist, who laughed with me and cried with me. I will never forget her - she gave me a lifeline when I was going under for the last time.
As I grew older and became an adult I found I didn't know how to relate to "normal" people. I had no idea how to be in a healthy relationship. My first real relationship with a man was an abusive one. To this day the only person who knows the whole story of what happened in that relationship - is me. (secrets) I stayed with that alcoholic drug using abuser for far too long. I remember begging him to take me back on more than one occasion. I didn't think I deserved anything better. And I never told anyone what was going on, (secrets)
To this day I have trouble with truth. I was a compulsive liar for a while in my 20's. Now I don't lie - I just don't tell the full story. It's just more secrets. Always secrets.
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