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This is a recollection of events I have wanted to share for twenty years but have been unable to. I have spent the better part of the last year organizing these thoughts in therapy, and am still not truly comfortably sharing this information non-anonymously. These are incidents I wanted to tell my father, a police officer, or a therapist when I was twelve. I could not and I hate myself for it, and have repeatedly wanted to harm myself over the years. I thought it was too humiliating to share, and that I would be laughed at if I told an authority.
My mom and step-dad were cruel and abusive to me growing up. Upon marrying my mom, my step-dad enacted a very “southern” set of rules in the house, where disobedience would be met with belting. The first incident started during one of my family’s road trips down to Baja. We would wake up at 4am to beat traffic, and everyone was allowed to sleep except me. I was forced to sit in the middle, and my brother and step-sister were both allowed to sleep on me. I had to let them because “I was the oldest”. My brother started punching me. I told mom and step-dad, and they said, “Punch him back”. I kept screaming for help, and they both kept saying, “Punch him back, stop being a wussy.” This lasted the entire car ride. I was in so much pain.
In the hotel, my brother and my step-sister would purposely wake me up at 6 or 7am every morning to torture me. My parents refused to do a thing about them, telling me to fight them back. On the ride home, the same thing happened. They pulled over at a gas station near the border, made us both step out of the car, and told us to fight. I kept hoping a police car would drive by and take me away. No one saw it. I tried running away, and my step-dad chased after me, physically dragged me back, threw me in the car, calling me “Michelle”. I was rarely called “Michael” again by either of them for the next several months. It was either “Michelle” or “wussy”.
They made me fight my brother every night I was at their house for the next few months. These fights would last up to 30 minutes and would consist of my brother violently ripping my hair out and kicking me in the groin. My step-dad would referee each fight like it was a spectator sport. I always dreaded leaving my dad’s house for theirs. One time, my dad noticed bruises all over my body and asked about them. I didn’t say anything, but he didn’t question it beyond that or bring it up ever again.
They bought me boxing gloves and forced me to punch a bag for 20 minutes every day after school to “man up”. On weekends, I would have to saw wood in the backyard for hours on end with a dull, flimsy saw to “build character”. They repeatedly told me this was for my own good, because when I got to high school, students would beat me up and shove my head into toilets. They made me watch programs about self-defense. I was even required to watch Dragonball Z every day with my brother because he claimed it taught him toughness and martial arts.
I kept a countdown in my room that would count down the days until I turned 18 and could legally move out of their house. The abuse didn’t just occur when I was at my mom’s house either. Any time I was not with my dad, my brother constantly insulted me and called me stupid, or “14-year-old baby”. My mom started piggybacking off him, and I was regularly told I was “too dumb” to do certain things. Even after the punching stopped, he would hide in my bed and not let me go to sleep. My mom told me I had to wrestle him out. I tried and he would elbow me. I couldn’t sleep in my own bed.
A few years later, they made us fight again. By this point, I was older and more capable, and brought it up with my father, but did not mention prior incidents. He confronted them. They passed it off as my dad trying to create drama, claiming he was jealous of their happiness. They told me that nothing that happened years earlier should matter anymore, and that I should be “over it already”.
They also always called me a liar and enacted cruel punishments on me for things I didn’t do. One incident occurred when they took us camping. They always made me eat food that I didn’t enjoy, like spaghetti and hot dogs, because I would have to “get used to it” (I have eaten neither in the last 15 years). They only brought hot dogs to roast for camping once. One sibling accidentally dropped part of their hot dog on the ground. I ate mine even though I hated it. My parents saw the piece on the ground and accused me of throwing it there even though it wasn’t mine. My siblings were laughing about it in the tent. I kept telling them I didn’t do it, and they forced me to wake up at 5am for several days, scrub all the floors in the house, and pick up rocks in the backyard. I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep early either. They forced me to only sleep a few hours every night for something I didn’t do. It was literal torture, and had police known at the time like I wanted them to, they would both be in prison right now.
To this day, I continually have nightmares about these incidents, especially after talking to my mom on the phone. I wake up gasping for air in the middle of the night a couple times per month because I have a dream about them screaming at me, trying to kill me, or in one instance, letting me drown while my brother was saved.
I do not blame my brother for these incidents. He was less mature and largely just doing what the parents told him to do, and I know my mom and step-dad are where the blame lies. I have considered formally cutting them out of my life, flying out to sit down with them, and explain that I am freeing myself. I have currently not spoken to my mother since the beginning of 2019. It has decreased – but not eliminated – these nightmares and flashbacks.
It took me over 15 years to start telling people about these events, mostly confined to the therapy room. When recalling them, I continued to experience horrible flashbacks that completely interrupt whatever I am doing at the moment. Even now, I feel deeply embarrassed to share these stories and full of regret for my inaction. There’s a part of me that would love for this to get out to the public somehow, and that during a time where toxic teachings to young men are finally coming to limelight, that I could have a moment of vindication for the cruel, unusual treatment I endured. I do not believe I have become the emotionless “tough guy” that my mother and step-father tried to make me become. But they permanently broke me, and I still endure the pain every day.
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