What It's Like Growing Up With Adults Who Act Like Monsters

It was a serious thing, to dare to come alive on that fresh May morning in 1958, into the broken world my mother had created around herself. She’d decided to live as one dead before I ever met her. She had the potential of becoming a grand matriarch, except she’d abandoned that throne before giving birth. And there I was, covered with gore, yelling life into her face. How dare I?

• What is PTSD?

How dare I come into the world with a bright, shiny mind ready to immerse myself in all the feelings life had denied her? How dare I cry my needs into an environment where no one dared feel anything. Anything except the pain and anger that had drawn her and my father together, and the congealed ugliness that prolonged, concentrated doses of those emotions produce.

“It isn’t a boy. You promised me a boy.”

Was she talking to my father or the doctor? Or both? Whatever the case, she treated me from that first day, like an “it.”

She refused to allow my infant lips to suckle. Instead she glared at me from the other end of a cold rubber nipple. She snickered as her own anger transferred itself to my tiny bottom in a red, welted rash. She mimicked my cries, throwing all the vile energy she could into each snarling imitation.

When I drank the chalky formula, I tasted the death that clung to her like the yellowish cigarette smoke that constantly engulfed her. She hid her death from other adults, drinking tea and tittering about this one or that one, as if she was just as happy with her life as they were with theirs. And maybe that was so.

She killed through neglect and barbed words, like a fairy gone fey, turning all growing things to tinder at her touch. I was a newborn to a zombie mother who refused me nourishment and instead fed on my most private gray matter — my thoughts. The perfect breeding ground for my own sense of outrage.

Then they ask you, much later, in therapy, “Who did you identify with more? Your father or your mother?”

And I’d answer, “neither.”

That was not acceptable.

My father wasn’t dead. His anger and violence was as hot and volatile as a live electric wire. He, with the full head of raven-black hair and molten chocolate eyes, was as nasty as a rusted razor blade. All who got too close left scarred and bloody. He with the oh-so-bright public smile.

He killed by bait-and-switch and a sociopathic coldness that meant he could cuddle a friend’s dog, then go home and shove into a bag the kittens a stray cat had birthed under the house. He could walk causally to the river, talking amiably to neighbors along the way. He could tie a rock to the bag and watch, brown eyes burning with a dark inner light — of what? Triumph? No, the hint of sadness behind them showed something lived under his anger. Eventually, the pupils became gray coals, as the squirming bag disappeared into the current.

His polished art of public schmooze, of being at all the right places at the right times, created a veneer of trust that made the utter brutality of his private violence seem unbelievable.

I learned before I was old enough to walk, how his meaty fingers could fondle my most intimate places, then suddenly shift into fisted rockets to pummel me. By the time I was 6, I knew that the beatings and pointless arguments would continue until I was old enough to leave. That was my only escape.

I also knew I had to make a choice, much more consciously and deliberately than most children. Did I want to sink into the emotional muck my parents had created? Did I want to eat their filthy garbage and make it my own? And, were I to take up their torch, what would become of me?

Daily life was so intense that I constantly wanted to scream. Scream so loud that the next-door neighbor’s son, who rattled the air every afternoon with hours of drum riffs, would be forced to hear me over the pounding beat. Hear me and do something to make them stop — or at least get me away from the adults who acted like monsters.

And then they ask you, years later, in therapy, “Did you ask for help? Did you try to tell what was happening?”

And I’d answer, “Of course.”

And they say, “That is unusual.”

I screamed and screamed, as my father beat me and my mother used forsythia branches to whip me, until I felt surely I could go on no longer. I wondered, whenever I heard a little girl scream in fun, seemingly for no reason — was she really doing that for the sheer joy of the fact that she could? Or was there hidden desperation behind her exclamation?

Weak from bruises and blood blisters, exhausted from daily trauma, from having no concept that touch could be comforting or soothing, and that voices could encourage as well as yell, a despairing sense of cold anger began to boil deep within me.

I longed to know what a full stomach, and a full refrigerator, was like. Instead of hating my parents, I transferred that mighty emotional energy. I chose to hate the little girls who had matching clothes, pretty haircuts and a causal attitude about food that belied the fact that they’d never had to give a thought about not having enough to eat, or warmth, or clothing.

I struggled for existence, day by day. Without nourishment. Without hope. How dare I express the abject terror that I felt? Better to pull the head off a grasshopper or steal a lollipop held carelessly by a neighborhood kid.

Somehow the years passed. By kindergarten, I was a skeleton child. Or so it felt. Oh, they made sure I looked like other children. On the outside. They dressed me appropriately. They didn’t let me become too thin. But on the inside, the chilling winds of their unending war howled. My psyche was so undernourished that instead of making friends, I created ways to push people away.

And then they ask, years later, in therapy, “What did you feel though all this?”

And I’d answer, “At first, shock, then pain, then anger. Then, nothing.”

That was not acceptable.

I tried to pretend to like hopscotch and stickball like the other children, I just didn’t have the energy to pull it off. I’d get partway through a game ad my head would start to spin. The giddy lifeforce that other children seemed to relish sapped my meager strength. I’d slump to the ground like a spent old lady, panting and red-faced.
By the time I was in fourth grade, whenever anyone was kind to me, all that came out of my mouth was pus and gore. I wanted to do so many things. I wanted to burrow deep underground and discover a troupe of peaceful gnomes to live with. I wanted to sprout wings and touch the sky.

Instead, the anger that flowed from my parents like a never-ending steam of lava infested my mind. I was in such constant physical and motional pain that all I had to offer others was aspects of this pain. I became a pariah. Unable to tell the truth, yet unwilling to create an acceptable lie of a life for the benefit of others.

I don’t blame the children who laughed and pointed. The classmates who told the teachers that I was saying terrible things. They were just children. I wanted to be like them but even at age 5, my life was so full of filth and gore that no sense of normalcy existed.

And then they ask, years later, in therapy, “Did you exhibit any of the behaviors of your parents? Did you ever hurt anyone?”

And I’d answer, “Only with words.”

That was not acceptable.

On warm spring and summer days, when I lay in the sun, I would speak to my imaginary friend, the Old Stag, from the book “Bambi” by Felix Salton. He showed me mysterious things, like the crystalline shed skins of flies, clinging to blades of grass, and which stones garter snakes snakes liked to hide under.

He showed me that peace was possible. It emanated from him so strongly that I couldn’t deny its existence. Though I had to snatch it in tiny segments and hide it like a precious treasure from my parents.

In middle school I discovered the writings of Isaac Asmiov. This provided another inkling of connection and the hope of an identity beyond the one my parents provided. Here were descriptions of beings who were different from humans. Aliens. I felt alien. Forced to be a tortured thing in their presence, and act like life was a bowl of cherries in public. The alien label helped me endure the hours-long lectures that now preceded my father’s beatings. I could be the Observer alien while he droned on and on, describing his philosophy of life. Which consisted of black and white rules where only he could be in the right. Therefore, anything he did to others, including me, was “justified,” and, being justified, somehow correct.

It was strange, living between life and death. I felt my soul — my inner energy –fluctuating with the atmosphere. Expanding when things were calm and safe, contracting like a hangman’s noose whenever emotional turmoil threatened.

The only thing that released the tightness was running. I’d race down Arch Street, where our house was, to Main Street, then all the way up the steep hill where the nicer houses were, to the city park. There, I’d usually catch my breath and wish that the park had a water fountain, before dashing up an even bigger hill that led to the school.
By the time I got to school, my hair was windblown, my lungs were cleared of the polluted atmosphere of my parents, and the water fountain near the girls’ and boys’ bathrooms gleamed like a wishing star.

And then they ask you, years later, in therapy, “What kept you going?”

And I’d answer, “The wind, the stars, books,and being fleet of foot.”

That was acceptable.

College was a glimmer of hope. Fifteen hundred amazing miles from my hometown. Surely, now, my redemption could come. I couldn’t fathom forgiving my parents for 18 years of torture. Yet, the piles of absolute crap I left everywhere in my freshman and sophomore years showed that though I’d created a somewhat shiny outward veneer, underneath, my keel was crusted with barnacles and mold.

Yet I made some progress, after recoiling in horror as the challenges of young life that no one had prepared me for resulted in the vile words of my parents spewing from my mouth. Until.

Somehow, even though I’d transferred to a school even farther away from New Jersey — they yanked me back.

All that time, a little over two years free of them, I thought I truly was free. But if they could yank me back like I was the rubber ball at the end of the elastic string of a paddleball game, even my sense of freedom must’ve been illusory.

My mother was sick. Not a quiet, clean, wasting illness. Oh, no. She’d allowed cancer to fester in her and eat away parts of her body. When I landed at Newark Airport in New Jersey, I felt like I’d landed in a M.A.S.H. unit.

The smells and gore that greeted me were beyond my ability to take in. Buckets filled with bloody shirts — and not just blood, but huge clots, bigger than both my hands could hold. Lined up in the kitchen.

Shirts I was expected to wash, once I’d figured out what in the world to do with all that blood. The space where the washing machine had been was empty. Upstairs, in the bathroom, the concentrated odor of cat urine and feces jumped in my face, burning my eyes. Walking from the entry to the toilet, my legs were instantly dotted with voracious fleas. On closer inspection, I found a black mother cat and her four kittens curled up on the bottom shelf of the linen closet at the end of the hall.

And then there was the constant moaning. My mother was in dire pain. But the only help she would accept was from a natural healer who could offer nothing other than a urine test. She utterly refused to admit she had “the big C.”

And then they ask you, years later, in therapy, “Did you feel compassion for your mother?”

And I’d answer “No.”

That was not acceptable.

This time, instead of spewing anger and ugly things, I cried. I slumped to the floor in the bathroom, not caring how many fleabites I received, and cried. I was still crying when my father showed up later on. Anger and despair had finally driven them apart, but he still showed up off and on to “check on things.”

I blubbered at him.

“I can’t do all of this!” I wailed.

Then I splattered him with the details of all the amazingly horrid messes. I didn’t care if he hit me. I didn’t care what he did. He’d yanked me back as if I was a toy he could do whatever he wanted with. But even I couldn’t live in such squalor.

Though he made me empty the bloody buckets and dump the filthy litter box outside, the next day, a washing machine had appeared in the kitchen. The cats were gone — I hoped to the animal shelter and not the river. Though each day was grueling as my parents’ torture machine rolled on, I saw early on that if I just did what must be done each day, I would eventually be free.

And, on a cold morning in October, 1978, my mother’s wretched soul left her body. My father tried to hold me, but instead, I held him — to his promise to return me to college after the ordeal ended.

And then, finally, I was free.

And then they ask you, years later, in therapy, “Have you forgiven your parents?”

And I’d answer, “No.”

That was not acceptable. But it was understandable.