Don't Tell Daddy

I remember the last time I felt connected to the child I was supposed to be.  It was a warm summery day after a rain.  I was about 4, wearing a sun suit, and went outdoors to play with my baby brother.  He was still in diapers, the old-fashioned cloth kind, and not much more than a toddler. 

We explored the yard and were delighted to find a small mud hole.  It was still partially filled with water.  Swimming pool!  We took turns plopping ourselves down butt first into the little mud hole, splashing ourselves and giggling with delight.  It was my brother’s turn to sit in the mud hole and I was watching him.  I never saw my enraged mother loom up behind me.

She grabbed my arm and turned me to face her, and I thought a monster had taken my mother’s place.  Her eyes were blazing and bulging; her face a near shade of purple.  Her hand swung back, up and down and the next thing I knew, I was laid out flat out the ground.  Something warm gushed from my nose, tasting of salt.  I was too stunned to move.

Suddenly, Mom was there again.  Picking me up in her arms, she rushed me into the house and put me down on the kitchen table.  She pushed my head back so my chin was in the air and pinched my nose.  Nasty salty stuff went down my throat.  She was saying to me, “Don’t tell Daddy. Don’t tell Daddy.”

That was when I learned the number one family rule:  don’t tell.

Until then, I’d felt safe and surrounded by love.  My grandparents lived across the field and all of my maternal relatives lived within a short drive of each other.

I felt shame.  I must have been such a bad awful girl to have made my mother so angry.  Of course, I wouldn’t tell my Daddy nor Grandma nor anyone else how I’d been so bad and made my mother so angry.

I didn’t realize that my mother wasn’t well emotionally in addition to her deafness.  Looking back, I suppose my father must have suspected because he’d come home from work and frequently took my brother and me elsewhere.  We’d go to the neighborhood beach or to McDonald’s to feed the seagulls fries.  I spent a lot of time with my grandparents during the week and weekends.  It just seemed normal.

Mom had recurrent bouts of rage, totally unexpected and out of the blue.  There was violence.  I remember seeing bruises on my brother’s legs from the broomstick with which she’d hit him.  He must be very bad too.

Was this normal?  When I visited my cousins, aunts and uncles, everyone seemed happy.  Was it only at our house that my brother and I would hide in fear from our mother?  We didn’t have the words or the courage to ask.

I knew I wanted to live with my Grandma.  At the end of a weekend stay, I didn’t want to go home.  Ever.  I would hide, even knowing I would be found and taken home.  And then my mother would come for me, enraged that I’d embarrassed her by hiding.  I remember backing into corners, my arms thrown up in front of my face, cowering.

Sometimes she would reach out to touch me affectionately or give me a hug and I would draw back, terrified she’d turn into the monster again and hit me.  It was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because pulling away always made her angry.

Still, there were some limits to her violence and I credit the rest of the family around us, particularly my Grandma.  Did she sense something was amiss?  Was that why I spent to much time with her?  She’d pick me up after school, and we’d walk back to her little cottage.  It didn’t matter what we did together.  The important thing was that I felt safe and loved.  I came as close to still growing up the way I was meant to if I’d had that love throughout my childhood.

When I was 9, my dad was laid off.  He was a printer, one of the few jobs open to a Deaf man.  There was nothing available on Long Island and so we moved to Baltimore, MD.  My brother and I were completely removed from all of our extended family. 

For my parents, it was as if restrictions on them had been lifted.  They discovered a thriving Deaf community with an active social club.  They began spending weekends there, drinking and gambling.  With increased drinking, so did domestic violence begin and increase between my parents.  Usually, my father hit my mother but many times it was mutual combat.

Imagine being a little kid with a still growing brain absorbing up close and personal your parents punching, slapping and clawing each other.  It was terrifying.  Were they going to kill each other?  We should stop it!  We would try to put our little bodies between theirs but they would just shove us out of the way.

We lived in a row house.  The fighting would be so noisy sometimes we’d hear our neighbors pound the wall to keep it down.  No one came to the door to check on us; no one called the police.  So, was this normal then?  After a big fight, if we’d see one of the adult neighbors, they always looked away.  Everyone was being too noisy.  Bad.

There was no one ask for help.  There was no such thing as child abuse or trauma or domestic violence in those days, the 1960s.  For days or weeks, the house was cold and silent as my parents gave each other the silent treatment.  My brother and I crept around, trying not to be noticed. Eventually it would be broken, usually by my dad, who would come home with gifts and flowers for my mom.  Life would be good for a month or two and then they’d come home drunk and fighting again.

Another dysfunctional family rule centers on roles.  I became the “hero”, the quiet good girl, non-rebellious and obedient.  By junior high, I’d put on stress weight from trying to keep things on an even keel, keep my parents happy so they wouldn’t drink and fight.  I had some oddball magical thinking routines like this one: if I stayed awake until they got home from the club, they’d arrive safely and in a good mood.  I became reclusive.  When they did fight, I’d lock myself in my room when things got out of control.

My brother became the “black sheep”, the one who was always in trouble at home and at school.  As he grew older, he began skipping school regularly, drinking, fighting, and running with a gang.  He didn’t like to be at home.  Once close, we drifted as teens.  We were polar opposites.

I don’t need to go into any gorier stuff to show how being exposed to frequent, unexpected violence in our home changed us.  I continued my reclusive ways all through high school.  I didn’t date.  The thought of having a boyfriend filled with me horror.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t attracted to boys.  I most certainly was.  I just didn’t want to love someone who would beat me up.

Don’t tell was such a hard fast rule that I was totally tongue-tied when a perceptive teacher reached out to me after class one day.  The words tried to form.  My mouth opened and closed and I tried to speak but my jaws and tongue felt locked.  I couldn’t tell.  A thought crossed my mind as I stuffed my feelings down.  The teacher sensed something was wrong.  Did anyone in the extended family guess?  What about the neighbors who could hear the sounds of war through the walls?  I concluded there was just no help because of the don't tell rule.

I wrote before that I began to have panic attacks, brought on by what I know now was dissociating.  Sometimes things were just so bad, I could feel myself become completely numb.  I felt detached, almost as if I was no longer part of my own body.  The weirdness of the experience brought on the panic attacks.  They occurred spontaneously and unpredictably.  I felt as if I must get up and run or I would die.  But I would force myself to stay still and act as if nothing was happening.

I told my parents I was afraid I was losing my mind and that I needed a doctor.  They wanted no part of that.  It would be embarrassing to them if their friends found out.

It’s no wonder I believed sincerely that I would never marry.  I would never have children.  To live as my parents had seemed a fate worse than death and there’s no way I would curse any child of mine with that legacy.  Besides, I was losing my mind.

Meanwhile, my brother was having his own issues related to trauma.  He suffered too.

Domestic violence is passed generation to generation until someone takes action to stop it.  I did.  I began to seek out psychiatrists, therapists and 12 step meetings to help me work through my dissociations, panic attacks, chronic depression, and codependent behaviors.  It’s not one and done.  This has been a process that has gone on for almost 50 years.

I’m better, yes.  I did marry.  I did have children.  I did not abuse my children.  My husband and I did not hit each other.

And, yet, I still struggle some days with feelings and memories.  I don’t talk about it much because of well meaning people who say, “It’s over”, “think positive”, “it could’ve been worse” to try and help me.  Those words just trigger me more.  It took reading this article to get a better understanding of why: https://themighty.com/topic/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/trauma-cant-let-it-go/

So.  There’s no getting over the injury trauma has done to my brain and personality but I am as close now to being that 4-year-old I once was as I’ll ever be.