I Was Abused As a Child. It Took Me Years to Realize It.

A warning to our readers: This piece discusses child abuse. We encourage you to read this story as an act of empathy-building, and please be gentle with yourself.

My father only hit me a handful of times in my childhood. But the times he did were enough to leave a mark on my psyche. The threat always seemed to be just under the surface. My baseline feeling for my father was one of fear. But that’s normal, right? That’s what fathers do, isn't it? You’re supposed to be afraid of getting an ass-whooping from your old man. Every stay-at-home-mother warns you that your father will hurt you if you don't listen to her, right?

That was my belief. If anyone asked, I had a normal, happy, and healthy childhood. Abuse was something that happened to other people. I went along with this belief for a long time. Two things changed it: getting married and having children.

I don’t remember the first time my wife said that I was raised in an abusive household or how she phrased it, but I remember my response: complete and absolute indignation and denial.  She might as well have told me my parents were aliens. This would be something she’d voice often when my family would start trouble, and I would expect her to kowtow to them, as I always had before.  

Whatever my parents wanted—visiting on a specific day, changing our plans, or allowing them to step over our boundaries—was “the norm,” and my wife’s refusal to go along with it was a disruption and threat to my peace. If she would just allow them to watch her give birth, for example, then they wouldn't have said anything unkind about her or harassed me with guilt-trips. 

Over time, my wife’s attempts to explain that my parents’ way of acting was unacceptable began to slip past my defenses and I began to consider the truth.

Between my mother's guilt-trips and my father's insults, I did not feel allowed to have my own feelings.

Then there was becoming a father. Suddenly, I saw events from my childhood in a new light. I remember one Halloween when I was “difficult” about wearing the Bionic Six costume purchased by my mother. As a result, I was made to stay with my father while my sisters went trick-or-treating with my mother. I never got any candy and I was told that it was my fault for disagreeing with my mother. Over the years, I laughed about what a “pain in the butt” I must have been to my folks to warrant that. My wife never laughed with me. “You were only four years old!” she’d say. It was having a four-year-old, and dealing with his occasional stubbornness and respecting his likes and dislikes, that made me realize my parents’ severity.

But the abuse wasn’t just that their punishments included physical aggression or tended toward the severe. It was their way of asserting control, of manipulating me to do things their way through guilt, insults, and pulling the strings of my worst fears.  

A tipping point in overcoming my denial came after a miscarriage. My wife and I felt as if we were drowning in grief. We both invited relatives to our home on a Saturday afternoon. We hoped it’d be healing to spend time with loved ones. My sister declined, telling me she didn't feel like coming. In a rare act of assertiveness, I voiced my disappointment. I told her I didn't feel like she cared about me. 

The response was swift and severe, a call from my mother berating me: “How dare you upset your sister?” and threatening that I “wouldn’t have a family anymore” if I disagreed with or upset my sister again. 

That threat was a coded message that immediately triggered a panic response in my brain. Lose my family?! I couldn’t lose my family! The room began to spin. Breathing became difficult. My wife told me my mother shouldn't have said that to me. She was trying to help but it just felt like an attack. I was like a cat with its claws stuck somewhere—quick to perceive even an attempted rescue as a threat. I lashed out, saying something about not being able to take it anymore and threatening suicide before I drove off.

Truth be told, this wasn't the first time I had felt suicidal because of my parents’ harsh words. When my father disagreed with my choices, even over trivial matters such as postponing a visit or choosing a wedding DJ other than the one he preferred, I was told I wasn't a man, wasn't his son, he didn't know me, I disgusted him. Between my mother's guilt-trips and my father's insults, I did not feel allowed to have my own feelings or my own choices as I grew up. I began addictions as a teen to cope with my unhappiness. I continued these addictions in secret until I hit rock bottom in my early 30s. 

Part of my recovery involved seeing a counselor, who often wanted to know about my childhood. In our conversations, certain images began to stick out. 

My father boasted that I had been left in the crib crying at dinner time so that they could “enjoy their meal in peace.” One Easter when I was eight, my mother sobbed for hours because I told her I was too big for the coloring book she’d bought me. I remembered my father’s readiness to insult my weight or intelligence whenever we disagreed. I recalled my mother’s resorting to sobbing when I made plans she didn’t agree with (such as wanting to join the military after college).

I began to see what my wife had recognized earlier on: I had been abused. I had been made to feel less-than, unimportant, a bother, and a target. I had grown up without security or reassurance, constantly feeling that I needed to maintain the fragile peace or everything would fall apart. I “wouldn't have a family anymore.” 

At the beginning of one of our sessions, my therapist remarked “I just started treating a new patient that reminded me of you—he just left a cult.” I let out a surprised laugh. It was true. I had left a cult. In my late thirties, I was, for the first time, learning to assert myself and accept my wants and needs for what they were without referring to my parents.

I had already cut off contact with them a few years earlier because of an incident after my wife and I had our third baby. I asked to postpone a planned visit because my wife and I were feeling exhausted. My parents and both of my sisters were outraged and spent the day sending text messages designed to make me feel guilty. Once again I was told that they didn't know me, I was a disappointment, I must be emasculated and under my wife's thumb, I would miss them and would be alone. All this, despite my willingness to reschedule for the following day. 

They collectively ignored me through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my birthday. Seven months later, they felt like speaking again. I didn’t. That was six years ago.

In the past six years of healing, I’ve made progress but continue to struggle to unlearn habits and ways of thinking I’ve clung to over a lifetime. Once a year or so, my parents or my sisters will try to reach out and re-establish contact. I ignore them. Whether it will always be that way, I cannot say. All I know is that my primary focus is on my own life and family. My wife deserves a partner, not an addict who desperately seeks his parents’ never-available approval. My beautiful kids need my head to be on straight. They need a childhood with only relatives whose love is unconditional. Clearly, that doesn't include my family. 

Was I smacked around? Only a little bit. Was I locked in the closet? No, nothing so dramatic as that. But was I abused? Yes.