The Face of Domestic Abuse

I don't understand the world we live in and the people who live in it. I never have and I probably never will, no matter how much I try.

I grew up in a horribly dysfunctional family. My mother and father were divorced when I was about two years old. My father was not a part of my life growing up because that is how my mother wanted it. She was a very selfish woman and was only concerned about what she wanted. Other peoples' wants and needs didn't matter to her, even those of her own daughter.

At some point in my life after my mother's second marriage imploded, I was told that she only married my step-father because I needed a father. So, instead of living up to her mistakes, I was made to shoulder the blame for thirteen years of abuse because, in her desperation, she married the first guy she dated after going through a dating service. He was abusive and had a multiple personality disorder. One of those personalities was a gay man and cross-dresser. At thirteen or fourteen I found out the man that I had called "dad" most of my life was gay, or some semblance thereof.

From my mother, step-father, and my step-fathers family I was made to feel inferior because I wasn't born a boy. I was reminded of this in so many ways. I was verbally abused, physically abused and by some standards sexually abused (up until the age of about nine or ten I was taken to the drive in, in hopes I would fall asleep because they didn't want to pay a babysitter, where my parents could watch x-rated movies). My mother blamed the abuse she had to endure on me. She always found a way.

We lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business. Because everyone knew about my family and their issues I had few friends and I was the brunt of the jokes and verbal abuse of my peers. It didn't get any easier when their marriage came to an end when I was fifteen because people really do see children as a reflection of their parents. My mother, to put it nicely, had the morals of an alley cat. She would brag about her affairs while she was married and ended up pregnant. When I was sixteen my brother was born and I was promptly informed that she had the son she always wanted and I didn't matter. I was nothing but a built in baby sitter where my mother could spend four and five nights a week at bars.

The day after graduation I left home. I never went back. I tried once at the end of an abusive relationship and was told I wasn't welcome.

I learned a lot, not only about myself, but my family and what kind of person I didn't want to be. Even being the person she was, my mother served as an example to me. I also learned, on my own, how to break that cycle of abuse. What they say is true. Girls who grow up in an abusive home end up in the same types of relationships. My first real relationship ended at the end at gun point. It took me a long time to realize that he was verbally abusive and a pathological liar. It was something I had lived with my entire life so to me it was normal.

Today I see so much of my childhood coming back to haunt me and I wonder, as adults, if we are obligated in anyway to have any sort of family loyalty. Why do grown adults still put up with abuse? They are no longer helpless children, even though they may still feel that way when confronted with an abusive father.

A dear friend of mine just spent the night in an ambulance and the emergency room where her brother returned home drunk with his girlfriend and beat the crap out of her. She has a fractured nose, many bruises, stitches in her face and who knows what other injuries. I don't have the full report from her. She called me on her way to stay with a friend for a few days, but she did tell me that the hospital report tells her not to do anything for about three days. Yet, she still has to go to court tomorrow. All this because she was trying to protect her nephew from one of her brothers drunken rages. No nine year old should have to see their father drunk and abusive. It's traumatizing. I have been there.

The bottom line is, this is the sort of role model their father provided for them growing up, and this behavior is considered acceptable. Not by her, but by her brother and her father, who she is stuck living with because of life circumstances beyond her control. Not only that, her dad is ill and needs someone to take care of him. Late last year or earlier this year he spent a good amount of time in the hospital and almost died.

The worst part of it is her father is an enabler. Much like my own mother, the boy of the family can do no wrong. The son is stood up for no matter what happens, no matter what kind of trouble he gets into, while the daughter is tossed aside and left to the wolves. Her father was with her brother and his girlfriend at the bar. When the police arrived her father took his sons side even though he watched as his only daughter got the crap beat out of her. The last time that her brother went to court to face felony assault for breaking his then girlfriends' ankle, their dad paid for his lawyer where he didn't have to go to prison. Her father sees nothing wrong with this, because he was and still is the same sort of man.

Sadly, because of this kind of father figure, my friend, much as I did, ended up in an abusive relationship. In her case though, she married the guy. All of her life she has been abused both mentally and physically by one man or another. It makes me sad. She left her husband with nowhere else to go but back to her abusive family. No one deserves this. Even though my mother was the sort of person she was and would intentionally pick fights with my step-father where he would hit her giving her justification to her friends to cheat, she didn't deserve that kind of abuse.

I don't understand why women stay in these kinds of relationships. Yea, I realize that love makes us all do stupid things but I find it hard to believe that it is a stronger force than self-preservation.

The American Bar Association has up some interesting statistics on domestic abuse. 3.5 million violent crimes are committed by family members. It's heartbreaking that this how people treat those they claim to care about. A lot of the statistics deal with husband/wife boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. It makes me wonder if, when it's a parent and an adult child, if those cases still get classified as "child abuse" when it comes to compiling statistics. I also wonder how many instances of where a man has beaten his wife or girlfriend that growing up he also beat his sister and the family chalked it up to normal sibling behavior instead of recognizing the early signs of an abuser.

I can speculate and wonder about these things for days. In the end it really doesn't matter. It shouldn't happen and women shouldn't let it happen. Yes, I know there are cases out there where it's the woman in a relationship that is the abuser (I have seen it happen) but statistically men are the abuser in twice as many cases and it's the women who end up in the hospital or dead at the hands of their abuser. 50% of men in prison for domestic violence killed the woman in the attack.

If anyone needs it, here is the information for the National Domestic Violence Hotline:

Web address: http://www.ndvh.org

Phone number: 1-800-799-7233

Meanwhile all I can do is wait until my friend calls me and lets me know what is going on and hope that she is okay. I don't know where she is other than at a friends house or how to get a hold of her.