Used to be very depressive. Drank a lot from an early age. I have distinct memories of staying up late and having to knock back double shots of whiskey by 7th grade, just to go to sleep.
Some of that no doubt stems from childhood trauma, some of which I've alluded to before. My folks split when I was three, ended up with my mom and living with *her* parents for a couple of years. Those were happy months. Then she met this guy. We moved in with him. I didn't like him. He didn't like me. Thought I was too scrawny, too weak, that I was stuck-up because I could read at age 4 (and as I later discovered, he couldn't read at 35). Shortly thereafter, they got married and the gloves came off for real.
I was 4 when the "toughening-up" began. Cause, y'know...it builds character to be smacked around. To be left to freeze in nothing but underwear and a thin baby blanket in an unheated, drafty apartment in winter. To be locked in your room all day and not allowed out for anything, even to use the bathroom.
It got worse over time. "Toughening up" turned into outright sadism. I had my arm broken. I was set on fire. I had my hand pinned to the table with a steak knife for refusing to eat nearly-raw beef liver, then forced to eat it with my own blood on it. My mother couldn't defend me because she was beaten regularly as well. And most of the time she was passed out drunk when the most egregious acts occurred.
It continued for what seemed like a long time, but was in actuality maybe 18 months or so. At some point, our finances got poor enough that we all moved back in with my mother's parents. I was glad for that, because they had always treated me really, really well. But they couldn't protect me all the time. Especially when he loomed over everything like an omnipresent spirit of vengeance. If I told anyone, he'd find out. And then he'd kill me. I didn't really know what it meant to be dead, but he had told me they tied up your dick with a string and stuffed your ass full of cotton balls. That didn't sound pleasant. So I was ready to lie and put on the happy face to avoid it. I "fell out of bed" a lot.
Then one night, he came into my room after I had gone to bed but before my mother had gone to bed. Dunno if he'd been drinking extra or had had a fight or what, but he just walked in and threw a series of punches that left my face looking like a mile of bad road. Two black eyes, broken nose. Snot and blood streaming down my face and all over my onesie pajamas. (Yellow Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas. Dunno why I remember that, but I do.)
I think he pretty quickly realized he might have overdone it. He tried cleaning me up a bit, and then when that didn't work he shoved me under *their* bed. I spent the rest of the night there, lying in a shallow pool of my own blood and trying to fall asleep despite being pinned uncomfortably once they came to bed. I don't remember if they fucked or not, but probably did. It would be the kind of thing he'd do---maybe hoping they'd crush me and could claim I must have hidden under there and they didn't know. There was a lot of that "attempted murder through neglect" shit. Taking me to the public pool, then when my mom wasn't looking, taking me out of the kiddie pool and dumping me in the 6ft section. Because hey, he was trying to teach me to swim, right? Toughen me up.
Next morning, my grandfather was supposed to take me into town on errands. They couldn't find me, wasn't in my bed. And there were drops of blood on the carpet. While they're looking around, he pulls me out from my spot, does what he can to clean me up (good luck with that one) and tells me to count to 100 before coming out of the room. He got my mom and they jumped in the fucking car and split. I came out, my grandfather saw me, and went white as a ghost. I've never seen pictures but I've been told I looked like something out of a horror movie. Eyes swollen half-shut, nose off-kilter, blood caked all over my face and mouth and hair. A little kid zombie shuffling down the hall.
He and my grandmother cleaned me up a bit more successfully, he put me in the car, and as we start to leave the house he asked what had happened. He'd asked that sort of question dozens of times before. I'd always lied. I don't know if it was the exhaustion or the pain or maybe the fear in my stepfather's eyes when he asked --no, pleaded -- that I wait to 100 before I came out...but I just opened up and starting telling what had happened.
Rest of the day was kind of a blur. Hospital. Two or three doctors. Vision tests. Sheriff's office. We came back home with the Sheriff right behind us. I still think that was more to keep my grandfather from killing my stepfather than the other way around. He was a happy, non-confrontational man but he loved children. He would have ended that man, if he had still been hanging around.
My mother voluntarily surrendered custody. My stepfather got six months' probation and some anger management classes. Because this is the South and that was a little over 30 years ago. Child abuse charges were seen as a bunch of liberal pansy-ass handwringing.
Things got much, MUCH better after my grandparents got custody. I got a little bit of counselling at school but it was pretty weaksauce. Mostly focused on "You know, this isn't your fault."
Even at six, I was like, "No fucking shit? I kinda figured that part out."
Didn't deal so much with "WHY?" or "Why did my mother choose to abandon her son and stay with a man who beat her?" or "Is it wrong that while my peers are fantasizing about getting a new Hot Wheels car or a new toy rifle, I'm sitting here plotting elaborate kidnap, torture and murder revenge fantasies?"
So yeah. Learned to drink a lot. Learned that my brain doesn't turn off easily at night. Learned that I could get angry. Really angry. Really REALLY angry. My brain tended to run a lot faster than my mouth could vocalize, which meant that when I got into an argument (particularly with my grandmother) I would find myself unable to speak because I had six lines of argument all trying to come out simultaneously and I was reduced to clenching my skull and screaming through gritted teeth like a wounded animal. I punched holes in things. I frequently went from talking in a near-whisper to screaming things at the top of my lungs. I was fucking broken. Probably should have ended up in an asylum.
But I didn't. Over time, I got better. Wound up with a girlfriend for the first time when I was 17. Suddenly my thoughts were "Oh. Hmm, I actually don't want this person to get hurt as collateral damage if I fly into a rage. I guess I should learn to control that."
So I did. I don't know how, I don't know when, it was just sort of "I'm not going to act like a crazy wild animal anymore when I get mad." And I didn't. Mostly.
Still got depressed though. So much so that I sat, Thanksgiving night 1993, staring at a full bottle of atenolol that I had recently been placed on for a heart condition. Kept thinking "If one slows down my heart, then ALL of them should do the trick." After all, what did I have to lose? My GF had gone off to college 1000 miles away and wasn't interested in a long-distance relationship, I was flunking out of college, I was sleeping 20 hours a day, all my much-vaunted potential and academic brilliance had failed to materialize, and I had just a few weeks before gotten so drunk that I nearly died. I was just really, really tired. And then she called (alerted by a mutual friend as to my state), and made me promise that I'd see her at Christmas (she was clever enough to make me phrase it that way, because otherwise I could have used a loophole that she'd see *me* but not that I'd necessarily be alive). I really didn't want to make that promise, but I eventually relented. Once I did, it was out of my hands. I was good till Xmas, at least.
Wound up on Zoloft, which got me out of the worst of it. Took myself off it after a few weeks because I didn't like the side effects -- no dreams, no sensation of the passage of time. Just "Close eyes, open eyes, get back up. It's morning!"
So that covers up through age 18.....
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 8577523 times)