How I Scared Off My Mom’s Emotional Abuser

After a few failed relationships and miscarriages, my mom decided to go ahead and have me on her own. I was, as people like to say, her “miracle baby.” Still, just because she fulfilled her life’s goal of becoming a mother didn’t mean she lost all other basic human needs. At some point during my childhood, she ended up falling in love with the man across the street from us. Years went by and they even got engaged. I grew to see him as the father I’d never had.

But there was a problem. As funny and kind as he could be, he had a huge flaw: His temper. It began to show itself more and more as I grew up. He and my mother would get into serious fights over her going to see a male doctor because he was jealous and possessive and cared more about his ego than her health. His jovial nature would quickly turn explosive at the slightest provocation. He would literally fly off the handle, sending objects soaring across our kitchen when he got uncontrollably upset. Thankfully he knew he shouldn’t hit me or my mother, but the next best option was to leave our house, as well as our emotions, in shambles.

I bore witness to this childish spectacle when I was going through elementary school. Even in my childhood, I could identify this grown man’s behavior as more immature than mine. And yet, perhaps what bothered me most was not his emotionally abusive whirlwind of a presence, but the fact that my mother would just let him do it. I was hurt and confused by her behavior more than his. Why wasn’t she protecting me, her “miracle baby”, from him? Why wasn’t she standing up for herself?

When I turned 12 I decided I’d had enough. If my mom wasn’t going to stand up to this guy, I would. It wasn’t right what he was doing to us and I wasn’t about to let him continue to get away with it. Despite the progression of their relationship, he still lived in his house across the street. So one night I resolved to write him a letter, detailing exactly why he needed to leave my mother and myself alone and never come back. When I completed the letter, I crossed the street in the darkness and left the letter in an envelope on his doorstep, knowing he’d find it in the morning and everything would be changed. To this day I remember very clearly how heavy that envelope felt as I lay it on the ground. I questioned whether I should really go through with it. Even though he caused us such emotional distress, it still hurt me to have to deliver this message. I did love him. But realizing he had done too much damage, I let the letter lay and walked away.

The thing about people who abuse other people is that they’re cowards. It may not seem like it at first because of the tough guy front that they put up and all the screaming and intimidation that they put forth, but they wouldn’t be abusing if they weren’t cowards. A secure, emotionally mature individual does not abuse, plain and simple. It is a person who is extremely afraid of themselves and their own inner turmoil that turns it severely outward to hurt others — even those they care about most. This is why the man across the street, the man I’d adopted as a father figure, the man my mother almost married, stopped showing up after he’d received my letter. This is why a 50-year-old man got scared off by a 12-year-old girl.

How do I know he was scared? Maybe he just finally learned to respect boundaries. Well, despite my resolve as a pre-teen, my mother didn’t have the same characteristic. When I was 14, I came home one day to find him sitting at the dining room table with her, talking. “What the hell is he doing here?” I demanded to know. Upon seeing me, he darted out of the house, using the back exit. He left without so much as a word. My mother still loved him, of course, so she still had a weakness for him. What I learned then was that they still talked every now and then in private since the deliverance of my letter. I was furious at my mother for this. But still, I knew it would never be the same. I’d ended their relationship as they’d known it. I’d ended our makeshift family dynamic. And despite the pain it caused all of us, I knew it was the right choice.

This man was not a monster. He was not a bad guy. He was a good guy who had bad problems; problems that he refused to fix. That’s what made it all so tough. Even as a kid, I knew the situation wasn’t black and white. Even now, I hold back tears as I go through these events of my past. That’s what emotional abuse is. It’s confusing and disorienting. Emotional abuse makes the right choice difficult and sometimes almost impossible to make. From time to time I catch myself wondering what his life must be like now. I wonder how much I must have hurt him and part of me feels guilty for that. But I made the right choice for my family, and in the end that has to be more important.