Exactly like for so many people abuse is a complex thing to experience! It is not as easy as just saying 'well they did this thing and it was abusive, so they abused me' because people living in abuse are primed to look at why that person did that thing before pretty much anything else.
It never occurred to me for a long time that my father's behavior was abusive, because I was seeing his anger and threats and violence as an understandable reaction to being in chronic pain and childhood trauma. I figured, yeah, the dude assumes the worst about everyone and demands respect- I would too if I'd grown up being used as a real life 'my sisters keeper' case study for relatives who I'd be blamed for when they died of a terminal illness. I was experienced in justifying his rage, his financial abuse, and his manipulation and eventually even sexual abuse because I saw him as a traumatized man who happened to be doing cruel things- not a cruel man who happened to sometimes be nice to me. I was seeing the day to day life whereas most people were only seeing him at his worst.
So for years, I would say 'yeah he hit me with his cane, but he's just in a bad mood today. His pain meds ran out, and I know how hard it is to go through that cold turkey. He isn't always like this. Last week we sat on the hammock and he taught me about meteor showers, and someone who is abusive wouldn't have done that, right?' You just live your whole life explaining away every cruel thing by balancing it out with a good memory. And every time someone says 'oh god, he's abusing you, you have to get out of there' you think what? that's crazy. He's just being an asshole, he's not abusive. He's just disciplining us, not violent. What kind of abuser takes their kids to the petting zoo, or brings them on work trips so they can visit new places? What kind of abuser cries to their kids because they're afraid they're a bad parent? After all, bad parents don't worry about if they're bad, right?
And all of that continues and suddenly it's two decades later and you're in therapy realizing that no, other kids don't share beds in hotel rooms with their fathers when they're 17, and no, it's not normal for a person to buy a house in a foreign country without telling their spouse, and no it's DEFINITELY not normal for flower arrangements to get thrown at the funeral or guns to get pointed in people's faces or for you to get left on the side of the highway in december to walk home at 14 because you refused to beg his forgiveness for 'making him' scream at you in the grocery store. It is SO difficult, and traumatizing on its own, to process abuse when you've been in it because you have to realize how much you yourself have been willing to justify in order to prevent yourself from breaking. My mom stayed married to him for thirty years- divorced him and came back- because she was terrified to admit that if it was abuse then what would she do with the love? Where would she put the genuine times they loved each other?
My father loved me. I know this for certain. He loved me so much he was willing to refuse me medical care so that I wouldn't have to experience the same medical trauma he experienced. He loved me enough to attack a child he perceived as a threat to me at the park. He loved me so much he never wanted me to leave him, ever, and he'd rather me be dead than let me leave of my own free will. And escaping abuse taught me that just because someone loves me does not mean they are entitled to do those things. No matter how real that love is, no matter how genuine those good days were, I should not have had to endure those bad things and neither should the other people who got dragged into it. People can love you wrong, even if they really mean it or are trying their best. You don't have to accept abuse just because someone is not evil. It hurts to recognize that, but no one was around to tell me this when I was trapped, so hopefully this message reaches someone who needs it.
dededos
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
areudirty
andulkaphoto
