I’m sitting here drinking my morning coffee, and it’s quiet…
My Kiddos are off to school for the day, hubby is at work, and I’m alone.
For the longest time I didn’t know what that was. Not to be at someone’s disposal for hours of each one of my days. Not having time to do what I needed, or wanted to do, because I was listening to the same conversation repeatedly. Realizing that they didn’t care about me, or what I was going through, or what I needed. But I suppose that’s the way that it has always been.
I look at my own tween daughter, and I can’t imagine saying the vile things, or calling her the disgusting names that I was called at her age.
Being told that I was “useless as tits on a bull”, how many times that I was told that I wasn’t very bright, being called a “little wench”. Looking back, I know that it was all meant to break me down. By that age I already had so many negative experiences under my belt. I craved being nurtured, and it wasn’t coming from them.
It’s hard to think back and realize that I really wasn’t hugged or kissed by them, I cannot remember a trip to the park, or being pushed on the swing in the backyard. Never having played tea party with them, or dollies.
All that I can remember is that I could never do anything right, even if I was doing it right…
When I was little, our house was a war zone. I learned to make myself small, I learned to be quiet. I read a lot in my room, I stayed under the wire and most of all, I learned to comply. Once they split up, it didn’t matter how small that I made myself, I was picked on.
There were the rare moments when they didn’t have anyone else, so suddenly I became the best friend for the moment. We went shopping for them, I stood in a dressing room watching them while they did their thing. I stayed quiet. We went for coffee now and then, and for a moment it seemed good, until it wasn’t.
Just a quickly as I had their attention, they were turning on me.
I was the brunt of a joke that wasn’t funny. Every mistake that I made as a child was skewed and shoved in my face, usually in front of people. Usually that mistake was because of their own deficiency as a parent. Failing to teach me something, and having to find my way on my own.
I can never forget the days of them doing my hair, never gentle. Always so angry and frustrated. Dragging the brush through the tangles of my fine little girl hair, then smashing me on the head with the hairbrush when I dared to cry or say that it hurt. I still remember the day that they clamped my ear in the curling iron and proceeded to curl it with my hair. As I cried, I was told to stop crying or they would give me something to cry about. That it didn’t hurt.
But it did… They realized what they had done and released the barrel of the iron. I think that I saw the brief moment of regret, but I never trusted them again.
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