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The Beauty of Suffering

A true story of how I survived child abuse

By Anthony LocontePublished 3 years ago 14 min read
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I am about to take you on an emotional journey. One that may be too harsh for some readers. A trigger warning may need to precede this entry. Every bit of what I am about to tell you is true. My name is Tony and I survived an extremely severe case of child abuse. I want you to stick with me because there is a point. From exceptional suffering can come something beautiful. So grab a box of Kleenex and find a comfy chair. With that, please allow me to begin.

When the call came in, I remember hearing my father asking someone “do you know if she is ok?”. With no additional information I started getting dressed. I knew what that question meant. My mom had been in a car accident again. She was certainly either drunk or high. Quite possibly both and had wrecked her car. After my father hung up the phone up, I approached him and asked “are we going to the hospital?” He nodded yes and we both walked out the door. The 20 minute drive to the hospital was complete silence between us. I would glance over on occasion to read the emotion on his face. It was disappointment and anger. I am sure we both hoped she was ok. But we also prayed she had not hit someone else.

At the hospital as we walked in the door, I noticed my mother at the nurses desk in the Emergency Room. She was walking which told me it wasn’t too serious. She was pacing and seemed angry. My dad walked over to talk to her as the paramedics told us that no other cars were involved. My mother rolled her car into a tree. She was covered in glass but completely fine otherwise. This was at least her third accident while intoxicated. One of her previous ones was a head on collision that injured two people. But this was going to be her forth or fifth charge for Driving Under the Influence. This one came with mandatory license suspension. A reprieve from the concern of her driving for several months but it also meant she would be home more often and we would all suffer for it.

Add this situation to the rumor mill in our small Mississippi community. It was well known that she was a raging alcoholic. An alcoholic who would drink almost daily and drive almost nightly. So a new wreck to the rumor mill was no surprise to anyone. What few knew was that she had become a violent alcoholic by the time I turned eight. She began hitting me and throwing things when she would get angry. By age 10 she began smashing glass vases over my head and burning me with cigarettes. On one occasion the vase cut my head open and blood began pouring from the wound just above my ear. I ran to her with both hands cupped under my head so the blood wouldn't stain the carpet. My silent way of screaming “see what you did to me?” She checked my head to see how bad the cut was then started crying and ran to her bedroom. I took that as a sign it needed stitches but she wouldn’t risk taking me to the hospital. How would I explain the wound to them? I kept repeating “it’s ok momma. I am ok.” But I wasn’t ok. She asked me not to tell my father. I never told my dad about anything she did. I always wondered what made her think he didn't already know. He was a small framed Italian man who worked hard to support us. His routine was arrive home, eat dinner and go to bed. He had my mom to deal with and she was an absolute wreck.

Ten was also around the age she started telling me almost daily that the day I was born was the most disappointing of her life. Words like that from a parent can destroy a child forever. But I welcomed words because they were better than being hit. Better than being struck with something or burned again. Words could not slice my head open. Words could not make me bleed. But as the alcoholism became worse, she began drinking anytime she was awake. Usually hard liquor she would hide in the bathroom or her bedroom. The routine was always the same. She would wake up and complain about a hangover. Promise to never do it again. She would start drinking by 9am. Then call me names and begin beating me. She would throw the cigarette burns in for good measure until I cried. Then me crying was the sign she needed and she would return to her bedroom.

By age 15, she began to notice that both the physical pain from her attacks and the emotional pain from her words no longer effected me. I had become numb to it all. This was the point she began harming herself or any pets I had. During one argument she walked out the door and shot my dog in the head, killing him. During another argument which involved kittens we found by the trailer. She became enraged we discovered them. She told us she was going to throw them into trash bags and then into a lake behind the house. I ran to my room following the argument and sobbed over how cold and cruel she had become. I never saw those kittens again. I told myself she found a neighbor who wanted them. They were taken to a warm home with a family that loved them.

It was probably a year or so later I was fishing in the lake behind the house. My line snagged something heavy. As the object cleared the waters edge I could clearly see that it was a black trash bag. It was this moment I realized she followed through with her threat. I sat there staring at the bag for a moment then sliced the line with a pocket knife. The bag, my hook with sinker attached, return to the lake floor. I never fished that lake again.

When I say she started harming herself. She would do it privately at first in her bedroom and I would notice the cuts on her arm after. Then she would begin taking razor blades and start slashing her wrists in front of me if we argued. One morning even smashing a glass in the sink and then taking the shards and slicing wildly as I stood six feet away. She would always look at me with disgust afterwards and say “you stupid kid. Do you see what you made me do?”. As she motioned towards me, the blood from her arms splashed me in the face. I ran to her with a towel begging her to stop. As a pressed the towel against the cuts I kept pleading. “momma please stop!! Please stop”. She never did.

By far her favorite act was holding a loaded gun to her head. ‘You want me to pull the trigger don’t you, you stupid kid? I wish you were never born?” I would then have to talk her into putting the gun down. She also started doing this with my dad. The gun to the head thing must have happened 20 or 30 times. My dad and I discussed how to deal with this and we both agreed to stare at the hammer of the gun. If the hammer moved, we would move to slap or punch the gun away from her head. He told me once that my response should be so significant that bones should break. I agreed with him if it kept the hammer from cocking and firing.

By age 17, I began acting out in school and around friends. I was suspended more than I was in class. Rumor began to circulate with school staff over what was going on back home. Years later I discovered that even the principal knew. That was why he kept giving me chances when I flirted with expulsion. But school became my escape. I was arrested twice within a few months of each other for damaging property. I got off lucky with a fine both times but inside I didn’t like what I had become. There were two choices for me after graduation. Both of them lead to prison. Back home, the arguments with my mother began to change. I was now strong enough to begin defending myself. One evening, that powder keg finally exploded..

I can't even remember what the argument was about, but I remember seeing her walk over and pick up a 10 pound concrete statue she had in the corner of the room. I knew she was going to try and hit me with it so I ran and grabbed a rifle from the gun rack. When she saw me with the rifle, she dropped the statue and charged at me with the gun. My father saw this and ran to break us apart. It was this moment that it all came flooding back. All the years of ‘stupid kid’. Everything in me erupted and I lost my mind. For the first time, I began punching back. When my father finally ripped the rifle from my mom’s hands, mom had been hit multiple times. Then we noticed blood seeping from a cut above her left eye. In a matter of seconds, everything changed. I would never again be a victim.

From my room, I heard her calling the police on the phone I wondered why she called them because she knew she risked me telling them everything. Once an officer arrived he asked to speak with me. He asked me why I hit my mom. I told him everything. It took 20 minutes to cover it all. When I was done he sat there with his mouth open. Stunned by what he just heard. He didn’t say a single thing. He turned and opened the door. He got in his patrol car and he left. I guess he figured out that some of the things going in the back woods of Mississippi were too horrific for others to know. It was also this night that I realized I had to leave. The only way for me to survive was I must leave everything I have ever known. The military was my only way out. This night was the first and last time I ever struck my mother in anger.

Two weeks later I was sitting in a military recruiting center. I signed up for four years active duty. But leaving bothered me with one nagging concern. I was worried with my absence she would turn her rage towards my dad. If she was going to beat on someone. I wanted it to be me, not him. I was use to it. I could take it. In the months that followed I would call to check on dad often. I had a gut feeling that he would not tell me if she was hurting him. Every few months I would use leave and fly home to visit. Each time was the same. My dad was a little older. My mom was still drinking. It was around this time I met my wife. We dated for several months and then were married. She was 19. I was 21. Within a year of marriage we had our first child.

On one trip back home with my wife and son, I noticed some of my things were missing. I asked mom about this and she told me she sold some things to pay a few bills. It didn’t brother me that all my fishing gear was gone. But what did bother me is a box of silver dollars that my grandfather gave me for each A I got on my report card was also gone. I didn’t mind her selling my things if she needed to do so for bills. But she didn't do it for bills. What I wasn’t aware of at the time is that mom had developed a new addiction and this one was to crack cocaine.

This new drug addiction made her even more violent and she confirmed my fear over my dad as she began attacking him. One evening she began arguing with my dad. She threw a phone that hit him in between his eyes. At the sight of blood, she panicked and called 911. She hung up before anyone answered but this set in motion a police and ambulance response. As she heard the sirens approaching she grabbed a revolver and a rifle and took off into the woods behind the trailer. When the officers walked back to talk to her, she fired several rounds. The officers believed she was shooting at them. They back off and set a trap. Luring her back to the trailer where one officer sat hiding. Moments later, she appeared from the dark at the side of the trailer. As one officer gave her commands to drop the gun. Another officer crept in behind her. She started to raise the gun to her head and was tackled by an officer from behind, before she could pull the trigger. I was later told by a responding officer who was a high school friend of mine that the only reasons he didn’t shoot was because he knew me and he knew my mom. He knew how and what she had become.

This stunt landed her in the Mississippi Correctional Facility for Woman with a sentence of five years. During those five years I went to visit her twice. Both times my wife refused to let our children go with me. They remained in the parking lot as I went in. I agreed with her decision. Prison is not place for children and we did not want our kids having memories of their grandmother which involved a place of such misery. She served her time and was released. Almost immediately she began drinking again. Then one September evening shortly after her release, I received a call from my dad that mom had collapsed in her bedroom and passed away on the way to the hospital. It was that sudden and that unexpected. She was 51.

Her loss filled me with a sense of shame. I felt relief where sorrow should have been and guilt that I felt that way about my mom. I was relieved it was over. No more midnight calls that she had been in a wreck. She was not hurting me or my dad any longer . Then I realized her passing also meant that there would never be an apology. No conversation where I congratulated her for being sober. No discussions about why she hurt me so badly. There was no point harboring any rage. As the top of the coffin closed my final words were whispered silently “I love you and I forgive you”.

With the end of that chapter in my life I shifted all my energy to my children. Raising my children became my joy. Their laughter fills me with such deep satisfaction that it’s hard for me to put it into words. My wife and I are not alcoholics. We are not drug addicts. It took a few years for me to realize that I was in fact, reliving a lost childhood through them. I don’t recall my mother telling me she loved me even once. I tell my children I love them as often as a can. There would be no punishment which involved killing their pets. No trying to hide bruises from teachers for them. Where I was told my birth was so disappointing. My children are told they are the best things that ever happened to me. .

The reason I am telling you this story is not that I desire sympathy or attention. It’s my hope this brings attention to severe cases of child neglect and abuse. Somewhere in this country at this very moment, there is a child experiencing what I did or worse. I was one of the lucky ones. I made the decision to leave it all behind and start again. A decision to create a whole new me. This entry really had little to do with a challenge. The challenge simply inspired me to begin writing again. My passion is being a father. Hearing my children laugh more in one day than I did over several years is what fulfills me. I have never used my past as an excuse. All of the burn scars on my arm have now faded. Much like the hellish memories have done as well. I laugh with my children and the laughter of a child is the single most beautiful thing in this world.

healing
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