#8: Family life, custody and abuse
When I was a kid and my little head hit the pillow for the land of dreams, just what went on in the rest of my household? A literal nightmare.
When the flood of 1983 hit our interests hard, my family moved into my grandmother’s trailer. That would set the events in motion that would make the next few years of my life utterly confusing.
My father was very abusive to my mother, and my grandmother didn’t care. Often he would beat my mother up right in front of her while she painted her gaudy looking nails. My mom started staying out late with her best friend (my godmother) for moral support and to escape her home environment. Her biggest regret was that she couldn’t be near her child unless she was subjected to those situations.
Here’s an example of how awful Old Man was to her. Back then, my mother’s pride and joy (besides me) was her long brown hair, her defining trait as a hippie that she kept going into the 80s. One night she came home and got thrown to the ground by Old Man, who had a pair of scissors in his hand. He threatened that he’d cut off her hair if she didn’t give him a blow job. She sobbed and complied, and when the deed was done, he pushed her aside and flatly said “That was good.” She described to me as she was telling this story years later that she never felt so treated like a whore than in that moment.
So what about me? I wasn’t aware this was going on, probably this stuff was going on way past my bedtime. But maybe at some subconscious level, I knew what was going on. My mom said that despite teachers raving on my abilities in Kindergarten - primarily being able to read at a level far beyond other students - teachers were noticing my attitude at school and were starting to question my home life. Thus, arrangements were made to help my situation by placing me in a transitional class.
Mom eventually had enough, left home and got her own apartment. I didn’t understand at all why she had to disappear all the time and only made an appearance every now and then. I despised her for leaving me behind all the time, but only now do I understand that she wasn’t the bad person in this situation, just a person that bad things happened to and had no other alternative.
Eventually all the pressure finally got to her condition and she broke down and had to go into a mental hospital, which made my grandmother pleased as punch since she was out of the picture.
Old Man was out of the picture and my life not long after. Prior to my mom fleeing the coop, his Huntingtons was starting to set in and that only made him more violent towards her. My grandmother didn’t care…until one day Old Man hauled off and belted HER. He was in a nursing home a hundred miles away the next week.
My mom would eventually get out of the hospital a year or so later and rebuild her life, but she wasn’t in a fit condition to be a parent again just yet. So my grandmother had custody of me now, and it would be this way for the next six years of my life.