Reborn

All my life I have had struggles, I don't count myself any differnt from everyone else that has had issues, I am now realising though how cathartic it is to put it down on paper. Well, you know what I mean, on screen at least.

I've never been conventional by any sense of the word and I feel that is because of all the aspects of my life over the years that have affected me mentally.

From a very young age I found out that parents and step parents aren't to be trusted, that they are selfish, cruel and ultimately will always put their needs before yours. My birth mother is a class A sociopathic narcissist,all her life she has manipulated people for whatever she needed at the time and I was no different. I was paraded around in laura ashley dresses and used as a way to make people feel bad not for me but for my mother, I was the traumatized kid whose biological father was an abusive arsehole that caused my mother to fear for her life, The child of a woman who so bravely fought against domestic violence to escape not once but twice from abusive husbands. All crap.

As I was growing up and reached an age where I was able to think for myself I remember being very confused,you see,my mother would make up reasons to wind up my stepfather into a frenzy and then she would storm out leaving me at the mercy of the monster in our house,worse though she encouraged their eldest daughter,my half sister to make up stories and lie in order to get me in trouble too. When I say trouble we aren't talking about getting told off and put to bed,or made to sit in a corner or on the naughty step.

The day of my brothers' funeral I remember being allowed to sit with my birth father but only as long as my birth mother was allowed to sit on the other side, I can recall cuddling into my father and crying, nine years old and so lost just wanting to be loved, I begged my mother to let me go and stay with my father for a while and I got told how selfish I was and that I was needed at home,not because I was loved in anyway shape or form but because mother was running round town and seeing other men so it was left to me to care for the younger ones, The twins and Crissy.

At nine years of age I had watched the demise of my parents' relationship, like most kids had but then I would be catapulted in to a living nightmare of cruelty neglect and torture. People think that things like this only happen within poorer families,that the parents of struggling family units are the ones that abuse their kids,like the key demographic for knocking the crap out of your kid is some council trash or redneck family with too many kids to be supported by the social check, not true. Affluent families have these issues too, I was the odd one out. My mother kept hold of me to destroy my dad. Growing up I knew that I was the spitting image of him,probably even more so now, but at the time I was punished for it. My mother hated my father with an absolute fiery hot passion and she used me as a slapping bag every oppurtunity she got,if I answered a question and she didn't like the answer,if I wasnt quick enough with catching crissy while she was running around,if crissy got out of bed at night ,(we shared a room) if one of the twins was sick on her, if I didn't respond to her straight away. This was always accompanied by a vitriole of pure spite. I never wanted you, I threw myself down the stairs to try and kill you while I was pregnant, then, when I got back into contact with my father; your father threw me down the stairs cos he hated you before you were even born, your dad was fucking his driving instructor and she was called nadine thats why he gave you that name. It was endless and alongside it her husband had a wicked temper and a a sharp right hook where he would literally flick his wrist out and catch me in the face with his hand. He matched her for cruelty but the difference with him was the mental torture was more sophisticated.

After each attack on me he would be remorseful and loving and would try so hard to make things upto me until he needed a punching bag again. I had nights where mother dearest would slope off to see one of her boyfriends and I would freeze in bed not daring to move in case he heard the slightest noise. It would seem that Crissy would love to watch her dad flip as from the age of 18 months old she would scratch on the conjoining wall between our rooms and wind her dad up until he would forewarn me I was going to get it, by banging back as loud as possible. Growing up nothing was more terrifying to me than hearing that boom, boom, boom on the wall or the sound of his heavy footsteps climbing the stairs two at a time. Today that sound or one similar to it will trigger a flashback that can leave me sweating and crying, trembling from head to foot. When mother dearest finally bankrupted him and had nothing to gain from being with him she decided it was time to move on to the next victim I was 11 then, I am 37 now. I faced my stepfather head on , when I had just turned 30, about my childhood not expecting any kind of response at all, the one I got however sickened me.

Finding out that you are literally kicked and punched from one week to the next because the NSPCC was less prevailant at that point, in the 80's to the 90's it was socially acceptable to batter the crap out of me for every slight, for every affair, for every squandered penny left me cold to the core. As I am now I have spinal damage, my pelvis has never been the same since he took a rolling pin to it one day when mother dearest went off to have a sex session with her toyboy. I can't walk unaided,good days I can rely on my husband holding my hand to be my walking support, bad days I have to use a stairlift to be a part of family life and my ever suffering fella has to help feed and bathe me, and still it never ends, the flash backs , the cold sweats , the nightmares.I got closure from one of my abusers that gave me the chance to heal and even turn it around so that when he died , it was me and my husband and ironically my stepfather's first wife that planned and paid for his funeral,not one of his kids put their hands into their pockets. She was there, mother dearest,she turned up at the funeral and tried to interject herself into conversations between my daughter and the only family member we speak to on that side, one of the twins dominic, I guess she didn't appreciate being told she has no right to talk to my daughter or refer to herself as gran, by my daughter as she was a stranger wasn't something she had figured on, nine years on and I still don't talk to her and now she has pushed my baby brother to a breakdown in order to gain financial and social control of him. It's been nearly four years since he was admitted to hospital and I miss talking to the crazy boy. Maybe when mother dies we can reunite,if he survives that long but sometimes self preservation and the love for yourself and your children just have to come first.

An edit to this post; Now I am forty years old and both the twins have died,the reunion with my crazyboy dominic came in february of 2022 when I went to see his body at the funeral home, the first time I had walked out of a room he was in and he didn't follow me out of it. I will never forgive my mother for the pain and hurt over the years or for keeping us apart,my only comfort comes from the fact that she is in a hell of her own making and has to contend with parkinsons' to boot.