Watching my parents beat the hell out of each other for 16 years has taken a toll on my psyche. Back in the early 1960's, it wasn't unheard of for a couple to have kids at a very young age. For my mother, it was too young. Oh, I know, I know, I should try to think of what they went through with more compassion. But I can't. I have so much animosity towards my parents that I still feel angry. Even now, after all of these years, I feel angry about what happened. I was right in the middle of it. And I was treated so unfairly, as if I wasn't even 'good enough' to deserve better. As if being a small child was some kind of inconvenience to the adults around me. And what immature idiots they were.

My mother , what can I say about her? There are good and bad traits. She's creative, artistic, generous (when she wants to be), She managed to acquire 2 degrees, Archeology and Sociology BS'. She knows how to earn a lot of money and invests well. She's wealthy, because of her own smarts about her own money.

She's also selfish, self-centered, competetive, a drama queen, abusive, cruel and basically thinks the world revolves around her. Everything is about her. When one of us (my brother, sister or I) would feel emotions, or show emotions, she couldn't stand it. And would make the situation at hand about her. In essence, we weren't allowed to have emotions or show feelings. We would be ignored, it was only supposed to be about her. And she was (and still is) a screamer and a door slammer. Our neighbors got an earful, every place we ever lived. Everyone in the neighborhood knew about my mother's psycho dramatic tantrums.

Every few weeks my parents would have a "blow out", a fight, a "knock down drag out" fight. Sometimes it would involve guns. My dad (the one who was supposed to be my dad), was in medical school, and working as a Sergeant for the Burbank Police department. And he had guns around. And the name calling and cursing, yeah, that I remember too. Beating, cursing, hatred, threats, that was my childhood memories of our household. They are divorced now. Their marriage finally imploded.

The one and only message I ever received from my father was that I was not "good enough". I was not perfect enough.

I remember one morning while we were in the kitchen and she was making breakfast, my brother sister and I were seated at the kitchen counter having our breakfast. And my mother had an emotional episode. I remember her yelling "bastard" at my father. And then an entire plate of food being hurled across the room, we had to duck. And then knives and forks following the plate. And all the time my mother's screams and us ducking in our chairs. I don't even remember what it was about. It all happened so fast. One minute, peace and quiet. And the next minute pure insanity and fear. This happened often and without warning. I realize now that she used her emotional outbursts and the threat of violence to manipulate us. 

It's like my mother never imagined that we would ever live to talk about it.

On the outside we were the perfect looking family. We all had blond hair, except my mother's was dyed red. We were raised Catholic (mostly because of my grandfather's beliefs), all went to Catholic school. We lived in the Valley. My father drove really nice cars and was rarely home. He also had affairs. That made things a lot worse. That was when my mother would turn her anger on us kids and beat us. I remember one night she was in a state. She beat my legs while I laid on their bed crying. I think it was because my dad's then girlfriend called my mother at home and antagonized her. My mother was never really present mentally. And she got depressed a lot I recall. Even as a baby, I couldn't show any joy. And yes, I remember a lot from the time I was even an infant.

On the days when they had fights I had to call the operator on the telephone and tell her to call the police, that my parents are fighting. Back then we didn't have 911. But even as a small child I was ingenious enough to be able to figure out what to do. But was this something I should have been expected to do, as a 5 year old? Nowadays I would have ended up on Oprah. But back then everything got swept under the rug. I can still recall the screams, slapping noises and how my mother's voice would sound when my father was choking her. Oh yes, with his own hands. And why would she always yell for me? I could hear her screaming my name while she was being beaten, by the man who was supposed to be my father. Why me? Was it because I was the oldest? Why was I supposed to save my mother's life, when she showed me no love, when I didn't matter to her?

To this day if you ask my mother about me, she'd tell you how she's always expected to "rescue" me. How very interesting. Her rescuing me.

My mother was a bitch, for sure. And my father was and still is abusive and totally unaware of what he did and still does. I am afraid of him. I watched him do things to my mother that were, well, figure it out. And yet to this day, he talks shit about me to his wife. Treats me like there is something "wrong" with me. Doesn't even introduce me to people he knows when we are out in public together. I get the feeling he is somehow embarrassed by me. This is maddening to me. But to him I am something to laugh about.

And the woman he had an affair with, she was murdered. She was a nurse at the hospital where he worked. She was found strangled to death in her own closet back in the early 1980's. When I told my mother about it, she cried and cried. Just the memory of that woman makes my mother cry. When I heard my father told me as if it was something nice. He didn't even sound sad. As if he was glad to get the phone call from a voice from the past, their old bartender friend in Hollywood, calling to have a chat with me dad and then tell him his old vindictive girlfriend was found murdered in her closet. With a coat hanger around her neck. The body was decayed. She'd been there for weeks. I just said "good, that bitch. She was probably murdered by one of the wives of one of the husbands she was screwing around with." I was 22 then. He then only tried to remind me of how she "was so beautiful" and "looked just like Marlo Thomas." My sister thought she was Cher. She thought my dad was dating Cher.

 

Since then I've learned that a lot of times, the reason that people are 'bipolar' is that they've gone through so much emotional trauma that the trauma makes them ill psychologically. But then, my mother was this way from a young age. So that theory doesn't apply. And when I say 'a young age' I mean 16. My mother had me when she was 16 years old. I was literally raised by children. This is another fact that pisses me off to no end.

We lived in North Hollywood until after the earthquake in 1970, I remember. I was a 'light sleeper' always. This was due to having to be hyper vigilant constantly, in fear of one of my parent's or my mother's fits. I was woke up at some super early hour one morning, to hear dogs barking everywhere in the neighborhood. And then about 15 minutes later, came the rumbling and the shaking. At about that time I heard the screaming. It was my mother's screams coming from her bedroom. My father was working that night, so we were left alone with the crazy woman. She came screaming down the hall, ran into my bedroom I shared with my sister, jumped onto my bed and began jumping up and down screaming Christine, and earthquake and earthquake! and peeing! Peeing on me while I lay there and became paralyzed with fear. I can remember looking up to see the lightbulb swinging back and forth in the ceiling. I looked over to my left to see what my sister was doing, she was still asleep. Our beds were rolling back and forth in the room. All of this, with my mother jumping up and down hysterically screaming my name and peeing on me. I don't remember anything after that.

One would wonder why and how I am still alive.

My mother has constantly and persistently projected her own issues onto me from a very very young age. Her low self-esteem issues especially. When I was just 10 years old she was snooping into my diary for proof that I was having sex, at 10 years old! One evening I came home after riding my pony, he'd bucked me off and my foot got caught in the stirrup or something, and I somehow got leaves and dirt on my back. This wasn't out of the norm, to get bucked off a pony. But when I came home, upon walking into the door my father just began beating me with his fists. I remember screaming and literally being bounced off the wall in the living room. Totally unaware of what I'd done wrong. I later found out, on my own, that my mother thought I was having sex with a boy down the street named David. Just because I wrote about him in my diary. So she came home when she'd seen my on my pony standing in front of the house where he lived, with my friend Jill. And she jumped to the conclusion that I must be having sex with him. So she drove him, told my dad, and just like that I was beaten. There were no questions asked. Upon entering the home, I was beaten with no words. And my mother allowed this. Not only did she allow this, she caused this cruelty. She caused me to be beaten up by my father. Then afterwards she took me outside and brushed off the leaves from my back, while I was standing there hyper ventilating from the fear. And I told her "Star bucked me off". Then she went back inside the house and told my father. I remember him yelling at her saying "I thought you said she was with a boy!"

Never apologies, they never apologize.

It's a wonder I can speak at all. Communicating was unheard of in the family I grew up in. And showing feelings was next to expecting to be slapped or told to "shutup!" I was not allowed to cry ever. My father would tell me to shut the hell up. And "Goddamnit, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!" What he didn't even realize was that I already had plenty to cry about. And I still do. So he followed through in his threat, he gave me something to cry about.

Both of my supposed parents are idiots. They are both racist too. And when my mother would 'catch me' talking to poor kids, she'd scream at me. She'd scream "why do you talk to those kids of people, why! Do you feel sorry for them?" Those kinds of people, I thought, what does she mean by those kinds of people? I was stunned by her outbursts sometimes. She was so violent in her hatred. It literally stunned me into silence. Poor people, it was poor people who she didn't like me associating with. But at the time I just thought that she was having another psychotic tantrum, and really, she was.

 

Why do I still feel so angry? Well let's see.................my childhood was taken away from me by my parents! Not to mention my innocence.

In the last few years I've done a lot of research and reading about child abuse, and what happens to the children of parents who are abusive. There is a term I learned, it's the word "safe". My parents aren't "safe" people for me to be around. They weren't then especially. My parents didn't protect me. My mother allowed my father to be cruel and abusive. Not only to her but to me also. They also allowed people into our home, who were unsafe. Without going into a lot of detail, there were a lot of men around who were my father's friends and even some of his family from "the backwoods" who were completely unsafe adults to have around kids. But even as I write this, I am reminded of the fact that I probably wasn't thought of, by my parents, as a child. I wasn't thought of as a human being who needed protection and shelter. I at least needed a safe environment to grow up within, and that I didn't even get.

I also read some literature on "post-traumatic stress disorder". And yes, it's what a lot of soldiers have after they've been in combat. But guess what?! It's also what happens to you after you've witnesses violence and someone either getting killed or the threat of someone getting killed. And I literally lived in a combat zone during my childhood (or the childhood I was supposed to have had). When a person pushes the feelings down, and ignores the feelings of fear and everything that you witness, it comes up later in life. And those memories literally paralyze you. Another thing that happens, a symptom is that we are not allowed to feel, talk or trust.

And I also found that when parents give a very young child the responsibility of having to be "the adult", expecting the child to grow up fast and literally save the life of one or both parents, that the child develops feeling of....well resentment. And also something akin to power. The child starts to feel powerful, for having to be "the adult" for their parent or parents, or even needing to protect the other siblings from the abusive parents. I remember feeling as if I had to be the protector. Because neither one of my parents could or would. Because if I couldn't feel powerful, well then I'd have to feel fear and helplessness.

One of the ways that having an unbalanced mother has affected me is that I absolutely resent crazy people, who are allowed to be crazy and harass and bother people. I cannot deal with emotional outbursts, especially if I feel that crazy factor involved. I am now so able to spot a crazy person that I literally feel it when I am near one. It's very hard to describe. They give off a certain vibe, unlike any other. And something triggers in my brain and I want to get away from them as fast as I can. I heard that there's something called the "McCullough Law" that protects the crazies. They are actually protected from being arrested, if they do crazy things to you. Especially if they have been diagnosed as such. How fair is that? I've had experience recently where a crazy person, or a person who is "on medication" is allowed to act nuts, just because. And it makes me freak. I can be totally fine, and then someone around me will act nutty or yell and I feel the "flight or fight" reaction.

Thanks Reagan.