Why On Earth Did I Stay? (The Answer.)

By Kali

Turns out it started because the mother needed a perfect child to be good enough herself. Her rage would explode out of nothing - red raging screaming - viciously hurling - little body flailing tumbling... Every day, sent to my father to be punished for - what? My feelings hurt her - so - I hurt her - but…how?

Explain: “What did you do today to hurt your mother?”

What does a tiny child do ‘to hurt her mother’? How can a tiny child understand? Know what she has done when she has done nothing but been hurt by the person who should be caring for her? A child so young barely knows the words.

My father taught me that I was like him. Not like that mother who was so weak and emotional: only pathetic, stupid women are like that. I wasn’t like that. This was love: being ‘like him’. But the punishment had to happen anyway because he cared about me. How does anyone understand this? I was strong like him so I didn’t feel anything when the punishment hurt me. I didn’t hurt because I was like him.

It was not safe to feel. I learned to watch out for my mother, to care for her so she wouldn’t get upset and feel I had ‘hurt her’. So the explosions of rage and violence didn’t happen, so I wouldn’t be sent to my father to be punished. He kept telling me I was like him as I was strong and didn’t feel - not like that pathetic woman who was so emotional. Now I understand that as ‘grooming’.

So I did not know I was scared or hurt either when at the age of 4, in the middle of the night the world exploded… writhing, weight, pain, trying to reach for something, anything to hang on to, to touch, to remember that I still exist as the tiny body was overwhelmed by something so enormous and powerful, strength overwhelming, caught in a storm of swaying, storm-tossed waves of brutal pain that climbed higher and higher, tossing me from the safety of my bed into nothingness. There was nothing to reach. I had no feelings. I didn’t exist.

How can a child so young even know or understand that her father is raping her in her own bed at night? Who could there be to tell something that there are no words to describe? How can you tell that something is happening to you that is too painful and terrifying to bear if you no longer exist?

There was no-one to tell. I had no feelings. I didn’t exist so there was nothing to tell anyone anyway. Just keep going. Stay in control. Be good to stay safe - as safe as possible, anyway. What happened at night, those nights his footsteps would approach my bedroom, just didn’t.

He’d get drunk and abuse her in front of us. I would try to stop him, get between him and my mother as she couldn’t cope. Then he’d attack me too. Life was just like that - for years and years.

My mother needed my help to manage. She had grown up with violence, with fear, in a family that didn’t protect her, only to leave home to marry a man who terrorised her and her children too. But, she had no-one to go to for help. He was so charming, so respectable, so intelligent and considerate, so respected. He could do no wrong. So she looked to her child (me) for the protection she’d never had. I had to stay in control, make sure she would be safe enough, keep on reassuring her that everything would be fine, that I was fine (nothing could ever be wrong with me - or for me). She saw no wrong done to my brother or myself - even all that was happening right in front of her eyes. Hear no evil, see no evil. That was her way of coping.

So no-one was interested when I told about the drinking and violence - not being allowed to sleep. It was me who was ‘bad’ - bad for upsetting my poor parents who cared so much about me and only wanted the best for me - for me to be a model student, for me to be successful.

But, I couldn’t keep up being so good. I had ‘a breakdown’ at school. Was diagnosed as bi-polar. Hospitalised. Medicated. The incest and abuse continued for 21 years. I wasn’t allowed to have feelings. Just drug them away. No-one wanted to know.

In the end I ran away to the only place I could find, overseas as far away as possible, only to again believe I could control the uncontrollable: another person’s feelings and so, their behaviour and also, my own.

But, in the end that’s never possible. To stay alive I had to return to Australia, though not to my family.

That was many years ago now. I’ve been helped by many, many years of study, work and therapy. Having a human being care enough, stay with me - all of me - allowed me to finally admit to my pain and learn to feel it.

Everyone has the right to feel both good and bad and with help we can learn to live with our feelings. We also have the responsibility to choose how to act on our feelings. And everyone has the right to have their feelings respected. Including me.

I do not have 'bi-polar disorder'. I am not 'mentally ill'. I came from a family carrying generations of violence and abuse, a lack of capacity to care for and respect another person and their feelings. Everyone needs help to get away from someone else’s violence and be safe. The generations before me found no-one to go to for help, no-one to help them be safe, no-one to understand so they pretended to the outside world that all was well, yet inside they couldn't manage their anger and fear.

It’s taken a lot of years for me to find enough help but, in the end, I have. I have also watched the front-line services for people who have lived with violence and abuse that helped me decimated by funding cuts over the past 20+ years. There are more and more people needing help yet too often, no-one really wants to know. The quick solution, to just medicate the feelings away, is so much easier than to sit with and understand the reality of life and the pain. But in the end that doesn't help anyone learn how to live safely. That doesn’t help us learn how to raise our children to be safe and respectful of themselves and others so they do not fall into the same traps we did.

Our experiences and our pain need to be seen and heard and, especially, respected.

Much love and respect to you all.