Why are you the way you are?

TW: Sexual, emotional and verbal abuse.

Where I come from, like a carved, stringy Halloween pumpkin, I scrape the insides of my brain for any shiny, bright childhood memories. The memories are fickle. Through the thick liquid of recollections, I drudge through the memories, viscous with sludge and distain. Pleasant memories were produced like the supernova of space, the relic of a far away galaxy. Rare and fleeting.

More accurately, insults would be thrown around like punches in a ring. My mother, helpless and weak, would cower before the belligerent, erupting voice. Something as simple as not washing his shirt or spending his cigarette money on that extra jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise. Money was always a daily source of verbal poison. 

This mother consummated the role of subservience. She was a coward, an enabler. Rationalizing his behavior just stung me like a brisk slap. She resembled a twittering, little helpless baby bird, with patchy fuzzy feathers and a veiny, weak neck. Her mouth gaping waiting on a bolster of regurgitated self-esteem from my father. It always emerged after the predictable battles. My mother was foolish to think his manipulations would shift. He was a textbook narcissist. Displaying a fake persona that hid behind the magnifying audible click of the front door. Years later it made me wonder, who the real monster was. My father, my mother or myself?

I flitted my eyes to the side to avoid his beady, jaundiced gaze. With his leer fixated upon me, my chances of escape vanished. The fear reflected from my wide set, chestnut eyes that stood above the scar on my freckled nose. The fear held rooted and strong. I was the target of his next tirade and chastised myself for not tucking myself into a dusty closet sooner. 

“Get the hell over here! Why are you so stupid, you little shit? You get home from school and just hide in your room?! Doing your homework, my ass! Help your mother make dinner!” With the beat of his temple vein, he shouted throwing a dirty red ashtray in the sink.

There was never a small fight, a petite disagreement or conflict to be resolved in a manageable quiet way. This resolute manner was an impudent fallacy in the monster’s eyes. The method was lock and key tight to solving problems.

The monster would be pacified when he become tired of the screaming, throwing and violence. It exhausted him. Lighting up another cigarette, he would slump on the sagging pleather sofa and disgustedly sigh at his life.  

He noted that his failures that had multiplied over the years. As the only surviving boy, he was the sole male heir to the family fortune. A distant grandfather cultivated a foothold that financially bolstered generational wealth. This instrument allowed those from breast to casket in live in opulence. With a moral compass that never faltered, his father disowned him to embarrassing dalliances with underage Asian girls and a clandestine cocaine addition.

These issues grated upon his remaining sliver of confidence and manhood. Getting dishonorably discharged from the army, marrying a little bitch of a woman who eventually cheated on him, he divorced and he found another.

His second wife, (my mother), he claimed to be even more worthless than the first. The two children he fathered with her were more than an annoyance, they grated on him like a bunion in an ill fitting shoe. He reflected upon his dead end job of pushing papers that yielded minimal respect from the neighbors, his friends, alas his ignorant fan club. He somehow managed to conceal his unsavory reputation from the community as the family didn’t want his indiscretions to interfere with 

The years of chain smoking, left his dirty fingernails yellowed and his pointy incisors decayed. His breath smelled of ashtray and onions. A revolting, swampy mouth salad.

My childhood irrevocably vanished every evening. The water would wash over my small hands. Opening and closing them, they were a distant as the smoke from an extinguished candle. Disassociated from my body, my mind would wander to another life. Another world. My hands were smaller than everyone else’s in my class. I was so small. I looked down and my wet, simple body. It was taught to not take up space. The tears dripped down upon my large feet. Larger than most kids, I was teased, forever possessing a reminder of my father’s genetics. The one thing that allowed me physically escape from his presence would always be attached like a parasite.

He would enter the shower slowly with a purpose. I hovered in the curve of the damped plastic wall. There were small patches of mold in the shadowy corner of the shelf. Unblinking, I focused on a particular dark smudge until it morphed into hideous, pockmarked face. I blinked when I could no longer tolerate the image, snapping back into the leer of a different face.

I longed for the bubble of popularity to sort out my feelings of inadequacy and pain. During peer review in Mrs. Miller’s 7th grade English class, an acquaintance approached me. I lifted my eyes from the paper I was editing, curious why she sat next to me. 

“I saw you yesterday in the backseat of your car on Highway 51 by the river. I think you were with your parents and you were crying really hard. I don’t think you saw me since you never looked out the window,” she said. “Is everything okay?” she whispered with concern.

I should have said no, nothing is okay. I need help. My parents are literally crazy. I hear voices to block out the fighting. But what was she going to do? The humiliation to admit my home wasn’t like everyone else’s. That I wasn’t like everyone else? I desired normalcy. 

My chin dipped down as I realized my two worlds were colliding like a splitting atom. At school, I lacked popularity or status, but I was either ignored or treated cordially by my teachers and peers. Everyone was immersed in their own mountains of sand, their own problems of likeness, and this allowed me to slip hidden in the seams of adolescence. Fear was a motivator of conformity. I needed protection from drowning volatility.  My heart started beating rapidly, and I instinctively glanced around for an outlet.

A fake smile and nervous laugh slowly emerged, as my cheeks burned impossibly hot. God, why did she have to see me? 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about? I’m fine.” It wasn’t me,” I replied with tight lips. I thought I was going to cry.

“No, it was definitely you. You were in that white car I’ve seen before at drop off,” She insisted.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Of course it was me getting screamed at from my father. Driving in a stifling, dirty, car, smelling of cigarettes and tears. My mother crying in the front passenger seat and a stone faced motionless sister besides me

“I’m really fine. It was nothing, really.” Just leave already, I pleaded in my brain. Leave me alone. My face was burning up and my squeaky voice was no longer steady.

Upon reflection, I wonder what her parents thought. I never considered if they encouraged her to approach me. Was there recognition of abuse? Would there have been change if I confessed my secrets?