When I was nine years old, my mother took my siblings and me–and the contents of the marital bank account–and fled. She was trying to protect herself and her children from her husband, who was highly narcissistic and abusive to all of us.
She took us across the country to California, where we stayed with her grandparents and mother. She enrolled us in the Santiago School, which I loved! We had classes outside, and I got to make constructions out of toothpicks. Every day, I would come home from school to be with my great-grandfather, my beloved granddaddy. He showed and taught me many things, including how to juggle.
But after two or three weeks, our father showed up. We were taken out of school and hauled back to Virginia, to be under his dominion once again.
When we arrived home, we found he had spent that time while we were away on a rage-driven purge of the house. He threw away whatever he didn’t like, most painfully, our treasured stuffed animals. One of the few comforts we had been allowed under his cruel regime.
The little yellow terrycloth and felt horse my great-grandparents gave me when I was born, gone. The fuzzy Snoopy dog with the wind-up music box that played “Where Has My Little Dog Gone?”, gone. Turned into trash.
Losing my love objects was one of the worst parts of returning to the sick power dynamic created by a domineering man who had no empathy, cared only for himself, and targeted me with the misplaced rage of generations of abused children.
My mother bought us replacement stuffed animals. She thoughtfully picked a nice one for each of her four children. The soft white kitty she chose for me was beautiful and had an especially fluffy tail, but it didn’t feel meaningful like the ones he had thrown out.
That’s the kind of man my father was. Vindictive, cruel, disconnected, abusive, and self-righteous. I was the second unwanted female child of a brutal man who desperately wanted a son. I was a useless eater. Good for nothing but destroying for fun and enjoyment.
He treated me like a filthy rag. He sexually abused me twelve times before I turned five. The last time, he nearly killed me. That’s the kind of man my father was.
Throughout my life, that man did everything he could to undermine my capacity for homeostasis, for well-being, for a decent quality of life. He constantly shamed me for being female, for having needs, for having feelings, for the weight I gained from eating the junk food he kept well stocked in the basement freezer.
When I was about twelve, he even had my sister and me evaluated by a psychologist. That was not to find out what we needed for healing or well-being, but to see if we remembered what he had done, and to pinpoint our vulnerabilities so he could more efficiently exploit them to increase the impact of his harm.
After I went no contact a few years before he died, my father called in a bogus welfare check with the state police. He told them I had been abducted, enslaved, was suicidal, and that drugs were involved. Fortunately, the police called me instead of showing up. I set them straight quickly. When they asked if they should tell him I was okay, I said no. Then he’d know he got to me. He doesn’t care about my well-being. He’s just using the system to hurt me.
Ironically, but not surprisingly, the things he described as threats were real when I was fifteen, when I spent ten months in the physical custody of a twenty-five-year-old acquaintance who subjected me to extreme sexual abuse and torture.
But when I escaped and went back to my father–because there was no better option for an unwanted girl–he made sure I understood that whatever happened while I was away was my fault. Nobody was going to help me. There would only be shame, so I should shut up and suck it up.
It took decades for me to realize he did that because he feared therapy. He knew if I went, I might start remembering what he had done to me from infancy until age four. Repressed memories were in the news. He was terrified.
So he did everything he could to make me seem crazy and to drive me crazy. That way, if I ever did remember, he could just say, “See? I told you all along she’s crazy. Pay no attention to that crazy person I drove crazy with my layers of abuse.”
Neither my father, my abductor, nor the doctor who mutilated me has faced any consequences for their horrific acts that I didn’t make with my words and watercolors. Every structure and system protected them and sacrificed me. Speaking the truth, including about what kind of man my father was, is part of reclaiming my capacity for safety, homeostasis, and connection, and the only justice I have known.
