Monthly Archive for February, 2006

This Is What I Understand
20 February 2006
1:45 PM I watched the movie Hide & Seek last night. I can see a few parts of last nights dream that were taken from that movie. The parts that coincide with the movie are highlighted in red. The part that represented my mother AND was part of the movie is the very last bold red highlighted area. My mother was a business woman. She seemed lovable, funny and odd but she didn’t appear to be an abuser. Boy was she!

I had a dream that I lived with my father instead of my mother. In the dream my father was Michael J. Fox. I have no idea why, maybe because when I was a kid I watched that show a lot and my mother said that I was very much like him. Anyway though, in the dream he was my father. He was an abusive father though. This particular day I did something he didn’t like and he was going to use the dowel rods on me. He sent my little sister (who does not exist) into the kitchen to tell me to stop prepping the turkey and come get whipped. I didn’t budge. I cut basil leaves and kept doing what I was doing. When I turned around the little sister had a thick dowel rod in her hand about to swat me. I stopped the dowel rod before it hit me and looked up at the mother. This was her first appearance in the dream. The scene changed to me in a different kitchen playing the board game Sorry, a game I played as a child. I told the mother I didn’t want to play that game with her because she took it too seriously and it always ended up in her wanting to hit me. The scene switched again to a playground outside. It was dark and the playground was flooded from several days of rain. There was a huge cage inclosing the playground. Something happened but I can’t remember what it was.

I wanted to show her how it felt to be whipped with a dowel rod. I started chasing her but it wasn’t her, it was Michael J. Fox. He made it out of the maze type cage and ran across a field. He then just sat down with his back to me. I swatted him several times but I remember thinking that there was no way he could get the full effect because the dowel rod was too thick. There was no give to it, which decreased the amount of pain. This meant he didn’t get the full understanding of what it felt like to be hit with one of those things. While trying to hit him he managed to stay clean from all that mud. While trying to hit him we talked about his childhood. He said his mother used a dowel rod on him. I asked why he didn’t use a belt like other people did. He said he didn’t think they’d work. He repeated that his mother used a dowel rod but then added that he often thought he’d lose his mind when getting hit by them. The whole time we were talking I was hitting him on the back. I asked him if he thought it was right to make his own children walk that same edge because of a dowel rod? He said, “I didn’t know.” I thought to myself, how could you not have known, you’ve felt this?

We started walking back to the house. I hit him on the back every few steps. This is what happened to my great-grandmother when she was a little girl except she was hit with a horse whip every few steps back to the farm house. Back at the house things were normal again until a new mother came into the picture. This was a talk, thin black woman about 50 years of age. She had long dark brown hair and features that were not that attractive but she was to be my new mother married to my father who was still represented by Michael J. Fox. By this time I the younger sister was about 6 years old. She stood beside me and an older brother (who does not exist) as I told her about the dowel rods. She started to explain that she wasn’t trying to replace our real mother and that she knew she was an outsider coming into an already established family. I told her that if we didn’t love her and trust her we wouldn’t consider her our mother. I then told her that the only time our father ever touched us was when he was hitting us. She was shocked, like she didn’t know he was a violent man. He put on airs. He was a business man, a well dressed, very social and distinguished character that no one knew had a different side. I remember laying in the new mother’s chest feeling like someone had come to rescue us from him.

When I explained that Fox’s mother used a dowel rod on him did you say to yourself, “Oh, okay” as if things fit together to explain his behavior? I know abused children often grow up to abuse their own children. I know this is a fact. I think what gets under my skin is on more of a personal level. To me is seems to offer understanding to my mother. It offers pity and maybe even forgiveness. That makes me angry because I know what she did to me. I know what my nightmares are like and I know how she worked hard to break my mind. To offer her any kind of understanding takes away understanding that I feel I should get. She’s the one that hurt me but when other say, “oh, okay” then the focus is off what she did and turned onto possible reasons for why she did it. The case is, she did it and now I have DID. It’s not going to help anything to go back and say, well she was abused and that’s why she abused you unless of course I'm looking to offer blind forgiveness. I can not, I will not offer her any understanding because what she did she could have prevented. She could have gotten help but instead she looked for ways to maximize the pain. That is why she used a dowel rod instead of a belt. One day I asked why she used a dowel rod. Her answer was, “because it hurts.” Tell me where blind forgiveness is in order and I’ll find a way to fit it in.

To me, an abused child who becomes an abuser is worse than those that abused him. He knows how it feels to be at the other end of a fist, at the other end of abuse. To do this to another being, especially a child, makes him a bigger heartless monster than his parents were. If you know how it feels but you do it anyway then there is no “oh, okay” that can explain any part of your behavior.

If you decide that abuse is something you’re capable of and you carry out that abuse, don’t ask me to be willing to remember how you grew up so that I can “understand.” I'm not willing to look for truth and answers in places where I’ll only find lies and excuses.

We tell adults that they can’t always fall back on, “but my childhood was abusive.” We tell them that they have to move on. They have to leave the past behind them UNTIL it comes to explaining why they themselves became an abuser. Then we offer understanding by saying that her parents were abusers. We tell people they can’t have it both ways then we make room for them to have it both ways.

I know that many abused children grow up to abuse and some grow up to be murderers. Our childhood has much to do with the adult we turned out to be. I believe if that foundation is rocky it will be difficult to build a stable adulthood. Difficult doesn’t mean impossible. If you know how it feels to be broken why on earth would you ever want anyone else to feel that powerless or that humiliated? If you know the fear that was in your heart, if you know and can feel those huge hands on you why on earth would you ever put your hands on someone else that was defenseless? If you do this, don’t ask me to remember how bad you had it as a child. I’ll remember that you knew how it felt. I’ll understand that you had choices and options unlike the child you hurt. I’ll understand all these things when I'm sitting on a jury of your peers to decide how long you should stay in prison.