Reminiscence

This post might seem a little angsty, but it's not. I don't think about these things a lot anymore, but after seeing a career Councillor yesterday and sharing about my whole life/past/childhood/youth and then spending the rest of the day with mom, aunt and step-dad, these things have been on my mind. And I feel like I need to write this down. =D

I was about 13, when my mom met this man, a doctor, a respectable guy. They started dating, seeing each other and finally the guy moved in to our house. At first everything went fine, but then he cave in: he had been an alcoholic for years, but had not drank for along time. But suddenly he was always coming home drunk, went to a bar with mom, spent the whole night there and came home completely out of it.

He walked to the wrong house and fell asleep on the couch there, fell down the stairs and almost set the house on fire lighting a cigarette. He smoked them inside, I hated it, the smell was horrid. And he yelled. He yelled a lot, every night, all night, until 3-4 am. He called my mom and me horrible names and yelled so hard the whole house echoed. Then he became violent. He beat my mom up, slapped her, she came home with a bloodied nose, crying, unable to explain what had happened. I was only 14.

When I came back from my confirmation camp (at the age of 14), my bed was full of shards of glass. I never found out what exactly had happened. Once my mom came running to my room to hide from the man and I tried to lock the door with a belt. He broke it and burst in. I was so afraid I had a panic attack and ran to him, clawing and screaming and he ran away.

After that my real dad got me a real lock on to my door. And more often than not, mom came knocking on the door in the middle of the night in a panic to get away from the man, to escape from him into my room. I got so afraid of the mere sound of his yelling, that I hid into my closet and slept there for the night. Sometimes  I escaped to go to my brothers house who lived next door. When he found out (eventually) what was happening at our house, he said that I was always welcome to stay at his house, even in the middle of the night. That happened, a lot.

But I wanted to stay home. And I fought my step-dad. Rarely physically, once I bit him on the arm when he was about to attack me, being dead-drunk. Usually it was enough that I dared to face him and scream back, he didn't dare to do anything... he knew he would have to face my real dad if he ever hurt me. Once my real dad came to get me in the middle of the night when the yelling and name-calling just wouldn't stop. My step-dad, drunk as a pig, attacked my dad, and my dad (an ex-boxer) hit him once as self defense, in the middle of the ribs. And broke one. HAHA! XD After that my step-dad was so afraid of my dad that he was not allowed to come to my house anymore.

And he was afraid of me too, because he knew that if he did something horrible, my dad would find out. He added my dad's name to the things he was yelling. It was insane, nothing he yelled made sense.
"He will come and beat me again! He will come and beat me! And you let him, *****!"
It was like that, with as loud volume as possible. Every night, even when I had school at 8 am, I had to stay up until 3-4 am listening to it.

So, my youth wasn't an easy one. But since mom was trying to keep this charade of things together, nobody on the outside knew what was happening, I had nobody to tell me what I should do. I grew up without rules. I could have so easily ended up in the wrong crowd and in a really bad way. But thank goodness I had friends with healthy homes, real parents who took care of them and who had rules. With them I didn't feel like breaking the rules. When I could have ran to the city to get drunk or worse, I hid into our sauna or garden and slept there. I started to make my own rules.

The worst year of my life was when I was 15 and on the tenth grade. It's an extra grade after elementary school, where you can lift your marks and aim higher, learn more of subjects that you haven't learned enough. The kids there are mostly trouble makers who don't know what they want or are not interested of anything. I very quickly became one of the kids the troublemakers liked to harass, being shy, quiet, with glasses and a little plump.

And so my days became hell. When I went to school they called me names and laughed at me every time I opened my mouth. And when I went home, my step-dad was there yelling, acting like a maniac. I could never lower my guard. But as horrible the year was, I learnt a lot, and grew a very thick skin! I refused to just give up so I started to loose weight, got new hobbies, learnt new things and became much more confident. I was a good dancer and an artist, I got better at those things and they gave me more confidence. When the kids at school called me names, I started to laugh back or whispered something to my friends and made them laugh. Eventually they stopped, when they realized it no longer affected me. And as my confidence and self-esteem grew, I could face my step-dad and not even say a word and he would back down.

He would still yell, but I yelled back. Or just walked into the room, stared at him and he stopped. I told him with a straight face that if I could get away with it, I would kill him gladly. He answered that he knew it. We made a sort of truce, since we still had to live under the same roof. My mom was in the middle of all this, but she stopped going to the bars with my step-dad as often as before, and started to live her own life again. It didn't stop the yelling or name calling, but it made it easier to take. On my 17th Christmas we were decorating the Christmas tree with mom, Christmas songs were playing in the background and my step-dad was screaming at us a few feet away, smoking a cigarette. I remember that I got really annoyed by the horrible smell.

You can get used to the most horrible things. When I knew my mom was not in danger or getting beat up, I could sleep calmly, though I still snapped awake as soon as I heard a yell from the other rooms. But it was already a norm...

I don't even remember how I survived the next three years, but I was 18 when I finally moved out. And I've never been as healthy in my life, I went to gym 3-4 times a week, danced and ate healthy. I started dating and went to clubs a lot with my friends. I studied hard and went to school every day, I was in senior high school then and no longer got teased by anyone. I wore nice clothes and dyed my hair back to blond (it had been red for years). The guys who teased me on tenth grade no longer even recognized me.

A week after my 18th birthday I started to look for an apartment and a month after that I moved away. I was finally free. I think all this made me much stronger. And able to avoid certain dangers. I learnt to set my own limits and keep them. Sure there are still things that make me flinch or panic, small gestures, yells, words, drunks at the town... But I can now say that my life is good. I know what it can be when it's truly bad. Life's still a struggle because of the depression, but I'm not afraid, I can be safe in my own house, I can enjoy life every day and sleep my nights without fear. =)