Christy’s Lifestyle Essentials

As I entered my older childhood years, from 7-12, I went through some pretty traumatic things. In those years, I’d undergo physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Add in heaping doses of weekly domestic violence along with alcoholism and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster. My stepfather was the main monster, but my mom was his enabler. There are so many traumatic events that I could talk about, but I’ll just hit on a few of the most traumatic events that I can remember somewhat clearly.

Before I begin, let me explain the way memories work for people that have experienced ongoing trauma. We don’t remember things like everyone else. Our memories aren’t in chronological order. They are fragments scattered here and there throughout our mind. For example, most people can recall what they did yesterday in order and with detail. For me, I can remember everything that I did, but most of the time it’s out of sequence. I’m very detail oriented when writing, but my brain locks up when I’m speaking. I’d give a really bad alibi if I ever needed to. Most of my memories are also static pictures and not in motion. The few that are in motion are just 1-2 second clips before they’re gone. I’m going to try my absolute best to keep things in order. I hope I don’t skip around too much.

Okay. Here come the most horrible times of my existence. This is the most sensitive subject for me and it gives me the most anxiety, so I’m getting it out of the way first: the sexual abuse. My heart is pounding before I even get started. I will not go into detail, I can’t even think about it that hard. It’s too much. So, I’ll just say that it was at the hands of my stepfather. My mom knew, she always knew. She just ignored it and never believed me when I told her. As you will soon find out, no one ever believed anything at all that I told them. This was one of the biggest factors that shaped who I’d become.

The need for people to believe me and to believe in me make up a big part of who I am. I will do whatever I have to do to prove my innocence at all costs when I know that I haven’t done anything wrong. It consumes me and it hurts deeply when I have to go that far, though. If anyone truly knows me, they would know that I don’t tell lies. I do NOT have the energy to keep up with them.

I’m also extremely competitive. When I was a kid, I truly just wanted to be noticed. I desired for my achievements, accomplishments, successes – the good things about me – to be seen. Nothing I did was ever good enough for my parents. If I brought home an A, it was “why isn’t it an A+? We’re disappointed in you”. I’d get punished with the belt, or hand, whenever I fell short on anything. I had to be the best at all costs – and it still wasn’t good enough. Out of that misery, perfectionism was born. In my incomplete child’s mind, I had to figure out ways to be perfect at everything – so I did.

Perfectionism is something that I struggle with to this day. I tell myself all of the time that I don’t care if I’m perfect anymore, but it’s so engrained in me that I do it without even realizing it. When I don’t realize that I’m doing it, I need for someone to step in and put it into perspective for me. Only then can I self reflect and see it for myself. It can and will drive me to the brink of insanity because I get so caught up in it. Be perfect, be first place. After all, second place is the first place loser, right? Wrong! That’s definitely wrong on so many levels, but it is something that I just can’t seem to master.

My sister was the golden child of the family. She could never do any wrong. I guess it’s because she was the monster’s blood daughter after all. Whenever she did something bad, I got in trouble for it. I was told “you’re the oldest and you should’ve been watching her”. I could watch her and try to keep her from doing things, but she knew she had no consequences to face. She’d do things on purpose just to watch me take the punishment while she smirked the whole time. Do you think my parents listened to me when I’d try to tell them? Nope. I had to be making it all up because she’d never do anything like that. This made me feel as though I was born to take pain; that this was my purpose on earth. I had to handle and accept it in my heart. That’s what a child does when they don’t have the space to figure out who they truly are. They learn to believe what’s being driven into them.

There was also so much domestic violence to have to deal with. It was all utterly damning to a child’s soul. Every single weekend, and sometimes throughout the week, my parents would get sloppy drunk and decide to bring up past issues. That would make them so angry at each other. I’d hide in my room with my Bible in hand and pray as hard as I could for God to stop it. I’d pray “God, please don’t let him hit her”. Do you think it worked? Not at all. I’d be crying my eyes out and pleading with God and the next thing I’d know, he’d hit her. It would get so intense and I never knew just what to do. If I called the police, they would side with my stepfather every single time. My mom, sister and I would be the ones to have to leave the premises if that was their decision. Nothing ever happened to that monster. Oh yeah, if I was the one who called the police, I’d have to deal with the consequences from the monster afterwards. Can’t win for losing, right?

I remember a few times that were scarier than others. I remember slicing my stepfather across his back with a box cutter to get him off of my mom. I remember a time that I pointed a pistol, fully loaded, at him with the intent of ending all of the pain. I was too scared of the consequences. I didn’t want to go to prison, be sent away to a foster home, or want my mom to be mad at me. I was always trying to please her and make her happy. I remember him choking her out and I thought she was dead several times. I remember him shoving her in the door so hard once. She fell and tried to grab something while falling. Her wedding ring caught on something and nearly sliced her finger off. There was blood everywhere. It was complete terror and horror the things I had to witness.

I tried to self cancel a few times before I even hit my teenage years. I couldn’t deal with it all and there was no way out. It obviously never worked and that made me sad. I couldn’t even do that right. No wonder they hated me so. My mom tried self canceling three times. On one of those occasions, while she was in the back of the ambulance and before she went under from overdosing on anti depressants, she pointed at me and said “this is your fault”. That hurt me to my core. All I’d done to start that argument was pay off my car. (I was obviously old enough to drive here, but remember how my memories work?) I thought I’d done a good and responsible thing, but it was apparently bad. That’s all I seemed to do was bad things. There was zero good in me, so I believed. I just could never do anything right.

That’s the gist of it up to my teenage years. The next post will dive into that era.