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Category: Life

Just a glimpse into my CPTSD

TW- violence, abuse, drugs, alcohol
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I really don’t expect anyone to read this. It just needed to come out of my head. 

Biologically, my siblings and I have the same parents. Realistically, all 3 of us knew a different version of both of our parents. A lot of our stories overlap, but even those have variations. 

I was an only child & the only blood grandchild for 8 glorious years. My mom and dad worked and I spent most of my time at school & with my grandparents. It was great! Then, my sister was born, my grandfather who was my rock died, and I became a built in babysitter. My sister was a toddler when my brother was born, because this wasn’t already a shit show enough, without adding another innocent child. 

My father always smoked weed, which I had no problem with because I knew from a young age that it had a calming affect on him. He started drinking more often when my sister was little. There was a period of time where I’d come home from school to see how many “fingers” were left in the bottle of Crown, so I knew what kind of day to expect. My father already had a short fuse & a very explosive temper. He has always been very high strung & prone to violence. Alcohol intensified that. Cocaine amplified it even further. 

At least I had something to judge how my day may go with the amount missing from the bottle. At some point he started doing Coke. He was not just doing Coke, but dealing it. He became so much more unpredictable and violent & abusive in new ways I’d never imagined. Ways that my pre-teenaged brain refused to comprehend, and instead buried deep in my memories, only coming out sporadically in night terrors throughout the years. This allowed the abuse to continue. Since this particular form of abuse was blocked almost instantly by my brain, surprisingly this is not the reason I moved out at 15. 

I was a stubborn child. I was the kid who refused to cry while getting my backside tore up with a leather strap because I knew that my father got some sick satisfaction from my cries. This is when he escalated to punching, which he only got a reaction from a few times before I would look back at him and say “are you done yet?” This is when he started choking me. It became his go to. I moved out because of all things, my father choking me out while I was sitting at the kitchen table doing AP Level Chemistry homework in 10th grade is what crossed the line. I vaguely remember my little brother’s voice saying “daddy you’re hurting her” before my head hit the wood table. 

My intention was to run away. My grandmother stopped me and I moved in with her. I told them everything I remembered at the time- the physical abuse, the psychological abuse, the drugs, the alcohol, the black eyes, the busted lips. All of the lies mom told them about how she got bruises and what had actually happened. They did nothing, but the Coke supplier got busted soon after. 

In order to stop my father from hassling her about me coming home, my mom told him I was 18. He had no idea. He believed her. I wasn’t even 16, yet. I guess things got better for a while, but then he hit my little brother. My mom tackled him, told him she’d kill him if it ever happened again, etc. when it happened again, she physically attacked him, again. Then, she took the ass whooping of her life when she served him with divorce papers. 

They still had shitty parents, just shitty in different ways. My parents were older, but still not better or necessarily wiser. My brother realistically didn’t get the physical abuse as badly as I did, and my sister somehow escaped anything outside of a spanking; however, they still saw me getting my ass kicked. They saw mom getting her ass kicked. It was so normalized to them that there’s a story my sister will tell about mom reading a book to her & my brother, my father come in, blaming mom for something that wasn’t her fault, kicked her ass & left. Then, mom went right back to reading the book. 

It’s absolutely crazy to me as an adult to sit back and look at the amount of trauma caused primarily by one person, and that he was allowed to do so. Then, adding in to the equation, my grandparents- his parents- they were absolutely perfect wonderful grandparents to me, but apparently really shitty parents to him & my uncles. The cycles of abuse in my family are real. I’m so glad I didn’t have my own children. I’m grateful that both of my siblings recognize the cycle and don’t want to perpetuate it. My sister is breaking all kinds of generational abuse with my nephew. My brother doesn’t have kids yet, but when & if he decides to, he’ll also do his best to correct it.

To add to this, we all still have different versions of our parents. 

I disassociated from my father many years ago, but my brother & sister continue to have relationships with him. He’s mostly pretty good with my nephew, too. 

My brother & my sister have different relationships with my mother than I, as well. While I understand that my mother was also a victim, her refusal to validate some of the most traumatizing shit that ever happened to me has put an obvious strain on our relationship. 

Not once has my mother apologized to me for putting me in harms way, repeatedly.


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