The ugly truth, facing my past and telling Nixon the truth....it's one giant grey area

     This isn't exactly a normal Random blog. This one is a deeper topic brought on by recent events in the NFL world.
     Abuse. Domestic and child abuse. Sadly it has become a topic that Mac and I find ourselves struggling to address with Nixon.
   
     I asked Mac this morning, how and if we should talk to Nixon about child abuse. Nixon is in kindergarten now and that means he is around a variety of children from different backgrounds, we don't know any of his classmates families. Mac's answer was that we don't take the easy way out and we talk to him about this topic like we have with any topic honest on a level he will understand.
     But how honest is too honest. Do we tell him about our own childhood?. Do we not tell him, to protect his view of our parents? We often joke about our childhoods, but the truth is we suffered some serious shit at the hands of our parents. Were we growing up today, instead of in the 80's and 90's, there is a real chance at least one of us (Mac and myself) would have been removed from our family by the authorities.
     I don't shy away from my past and the shitty situations I have overcome. A physically abusive father, an emotionally distant (practically emotionally absent) mother, a physically abusive first boyfriend and my ex-fiance became emotionally and mentally abusive as our young love matured into an adult relationship. To say I was a broken and abused mess would be an understatement.
     I have long said, physical abuse is the least of my issues. Bruises, broken bones, welts and scratches all heal and while the memory of them remain, even scar, it is the mental and emotional abuse that haunts me to this day. I am not saying physical abuse is easy, I am saying the damage does not last as long, if you are lucky. I struggle daily with trust. The men I loved and the father I wanted to trust did a real number on me. I was beaten and told it was my own fault for making him do it. I was slapped and backhanded because another guy looked at me. I did nothing but look in the same direction. My ex backhanded me before I knew what was happening. I was 14 or 15 at the time. I was in a shitty family situation and an even shittier relationship.
     I was sexually active with boy, T. I remember thinking I might be pregnant. I told T and he slapped me,  called me a whore, and after I fell (tripped over something on the ground backing away from him) he kicked me in the abdomen and ribs multiple times. When I got home, late less than 5 minutes for my curfew, my dad beat me. I tried telling my mom about what T had done to me. She walked away and told me I probably had it coming, whatever it was. I do not know if I was pregnant or not. I am pretty sure I had internal bleeding but never went to a doctor.

      Mac tells stories of growing up in an Asian household and kneeling on rice as a punishment. He was sent to the backyard to choose his switch for a whooping.
     We grew up in a time when neighbors and family members were instructed that ass whoppings were allowed and these adults could do it if our parents were not around.

      I saw a shrink once. We barely scratched the surface of my issues, but after just 2 sessions he told me I am far more well-adjusted than most people with like pasts are. I'm pretty sure he was full of shit because well-adjusted is NOT a term I would use to describe myself.

      My ex, M. I spent 9 years of my life co-dependant on him. He was tragically damaged and I needed to be needed. After we moved in together and started growing into our adult selves, we weren't the same teenagers we were when we met. I had learned I didn't want to live with an addict again (Dad is an alcoholic) and he was hiding a gambling addiction....poorly. We fought often and epically. I threw dishes and he swore he'd change. He struck me. Once.
     I was stunned. We'd never been physically abusive to each other. I left for a few hours. I came back and he had notched up the emotional abuse, making me think I wanted him to hit me because it was the only kind of love I ever felt from my father. What an evil fucking dick he morphed into. I stayed because I believed what he said. I stayed because I was afraid to live on my own. I stayed because he helped me financially. I stayed because his words spoke the words I said to myself every day. I stayed when the cheating happened, but I never admitted to him I knew. I feigned ignorance and kept my focus on the degree I was going to school for. When the words coming from his mouth were bitter and ugly about the degree I was earning and the goals I wanted to achieve, I tuned out. It took 2 years of lies, his painful words, his emotional manipulations, to earn my degree. Less than a month later I left my hometown, my family, M and everything I knew. I fell back to him and his lies more than once those early months away from all I knew.
     And then, I just let it all go.

     He crossed a line and I was unforgiving. I went home when my dad was hospitalized after having suffered a stroke. I stopped to talk to a couple friends, M was there. While listening to me describe the insurance mess and my dad's weakened state, M says "Well, no offense, but it's not like he has that many brain cells left to damage after all his years of drinking."  No offense?? A stunned and awkward silence fell and I left.  I could say things like that, a few years later my dad and I will say almost those exact words to each other, but M.....M could not! It wasn't his dad, or even his family. That day I left and never looked back. I mourned the boy M was and the vile man he'd become.
    I found my backbone.

    Sadly, not every abuse victim does. Sadly they stay, for whatever the reason.
      I'm struggling how to tell Nixon about abuse. How to tell him about my own past and why sometimes I read a story or watch TV and feel tears welling up. How to tell him about the pictures of the marks on Adrian Peterson's child, put there at the hand of his father. How to tell him he might have a friend in his life who lives a life like that. How to tell him his parents know the pain that little boy, a year younger than Nixon, feels. How to tell him about the lies I heard about myself from the men I loved. How to tell him about the fear deep inside me, the fear that I'm my father's daughter and I will eventually do to Nixon what was done to me. I'm struggling with how to still be strong for my child and not pollute the love he has for his grandparents.
     I know I need to be honest with him. He's not old enough to hear tales from Mac and I's childhoods. But some day I'll have to tell him. Someday he'll see the damaged goods mom once was.
      For now, I guess telling about about abuse and the types of will be good enough.    I adore Nixon and I've made peace with my past. As difficult as it was, I'm not getting any younger and holding on to that kind of anger, bitterness and hatred was not good for me. I made peace with my parents and the role they played in my fucked-up life.     I'm very angry that people are judging Ray Rice's wife for marrying him and staying. Anyone who has never been in any kind of an abusive relationship can quite easily look at her and say she's dumb for staying. They say she should have left, if anything happens now, it's her fault for staying.     Sadly, she may think she will never do better. As awful as it is, she may feel that staying and dealing with things at home is better than leaving him and the life style he gives her.      It's hard to start over with almost nothing. I've done it. It's one helluva struggle. I had to dig deep and go through some shit, on my own, before I started to accept and believe I was a better person for those experiences. 

    This blog was supposed to be about my struggle to tell Nixon the truth about abuse, but it turns out I needed a little therapeutic outlet.  

"Everyone has stuff that no one can see"

Sometimes the only way to learn from the past and move beyond it, is to stop hiding the truth. There's a new music video out that's been causing a stir, because much like almost everything in society today, parents are claiming it glamorizes a disturbing behavior. The video is Pink's Fucken Perfect.


The uproar is not the F-bomb being said multiple times, though I'm sure that does irk people. Instead people are upset by the disturbing bathtub scene in the video. The cutting/self-mutilation scene. GASP! I said it, I called it what it is. Its becoming an epidemic among our teens and young adults but we still want to pretend it'll never happen to our kid. If Pink never showed those images, little Sally would never have thought of it, right? Wrong, because little Sally already bears the scars from this behavior.
The numbers read like this:

• 90% of self-injury individuals begin harming themselves during their teen years or younger.
• Cutting and other self-injury behavior crosses all cultures and socio-economic norms.
• Cutting and self-injury is a method used by individuals to take care of themselves, their feelings and actions.
• 40% of all individuals who commit self-injury type behaviors are males.
  Almost 50% of cutters or self-injury individuals have reported being sexually abused.
• Almost 50% of self-abusers begin at the age of 14 and continue into their 20’s.
• Some studies indicate that cutting and other self-injury behavior is learned from friends or peers.

(http://www.scottcounseling.com/wordpress/cutting-self-injury-facts-statistics/2009/02/06/)

Statistically, cutting occurs most often in female teens and young female adults. One such study, done by the British Medical Journal, estimated that 13% of teen between the ages of 15-16 were participating in some form of cutting or self-injury behavior. In the United States, it is estimated that one in every 200 females between the ages of 13 and 19 have tried cutting or are currently cutting. Typically cutters come from homes where physical abuse, alcoholism or sexual abuse has occured.
Medical Health America and Discovery Health report that during the past decade, 1%, or over 2 million people in the U.S. have been involved in cutting or self-injury behavior

(http://www.scottcounseling.com/wordpress/cutting-and-self-mutalation-statistics/2010/09/13/)

So there's some actual numbers, facts and a bit of research I did in less than 5 minutes. But who cares, right? Who actually knows someone who's cut themselves? These people, the cutters, they're all freaks who wear all black and hate the world, right?

Actually, there's some truth to that. I know I wore black and hated the world when I first cut myself. I also know I was in an abusive home, an emotionally co-dependent relationship from the age of 16 which later because mentally abusive, I felt alone, I was an outcast at high school for the most part and.....my parents knew what I was doing. I remember sitting in the living room, razor blade in my hand, cutting my leg in front of my parents and all I was told was "don't get blood on the carpet". Its a wonder, and a testament to my own determination to get the hell away from my parents without hurting the rest of my family (especially my sister) that I never killed myself. Balls to the wall serious, it was that bad more than once by the time I was 18 years old.
Only a handful of people, before I publish this blog, knew this about me. I have scars on my thighs, ankles and inner bicep. All on the right side of my body, which is odd since I'm right handed. They've faded as I've gotten older, but I still know they are there. I have one in particular that I have occasionally caressed almost lovingly because its the deepest and also the last time I ever cut myself. It's on my thigh, very few people have seen it and if they have seen it they never ask about it. I appreciate the privacy allowed to it. It's personal and I'll share when/if I'm ready to.

The thing is, I was never alone. As I learned today from a surprising conversation with a loved one, we're never as alone with our life experiences as we think we are. We just never know who to open up to because our secrets are so controversial, if that's the right way to describe it. How do you know who to turn to when everyone around you seems to have their shit together?
I've been shattered, broken, bruised and ruined. I've had to make peace, forgive and let go of so much more than I ever want to admit to. I'm a firm believer in Karma, but I had to ask sometimes, what did I do that was so horrific THIS can be justified to come back to me? I never quite know the answer. Because for all the bad things I've had done to me by people I've loved, I have been the person responsible for most of the damage to myself. It hurts like hell to realize that. Choices I made put me in bad situations, bad situations left me in bad places, bad places put me in worst circumstances for a while it felt like it'd never end. And it wouldn't have if I didn't find the courage to end the pattern.

I was told I inspired someone. I'm an inspiration?!?! This person has 2 of the most amazing role models in his/her life and I'm an inspiration to him/her?!?! It shook me. It shocked me. It flattered me. But most of all, it made me realize someone else sees a me I don't see. When I look in the mirror I see a damaged, abused, tired, fake of a person. I feel like I spend most of my time pretending to be whole. But the reality is: I am whole, I just have scars. Scars are just healed wounds. The wounds are gone but the memory remains. I'm plagued by memories but my wounds have healed. I haven't forgotten the lessons they've taught me but it might be time to stop letting the scars control me.
Part of doing that, just might be opening up and letting people see my secrets. I have many secrets but to keep quiet about them gives them power. Today's secret is: I used to cut myself to make myself feel something. I was so numb from the high school bullshit that I put up to the shitty home I lived in. The only way I could survive day-to-day was to become numb to it all and the only way to remind myself I was still alive was to cut. It won't make sense to you unless you've been in a similar situation.

I'm rising above it. I've stopped being a victim. I've opened up to love, really love, someone. I've even bound my life with someone else through a child. A child that I am trying desperately to NOT screw up. I might fail at some things, but I will not fail him.

Shows like 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom and even this video from Pink can all be used to open communication between parents and kids, if the parents stop pretending this stuff only happens to other kids, in other cities, in other states. Instead of blasting this topics and accusing them destroying innocence of youth how about realizing there are messages to learn from and learn. If I can only have one goal as a mother for Nixon, I want it to be that he learns from my mistakes, but he will never do that if he never knows about them. I have to find a balance between TMI and sheltering to keep him from making a mistake he can't recover from. Sadly, I'm almost abnormal in everything I've accomplished so far in life. There are so many statistics out there that would tell you I CAN'T do what I've done from where I've been and what I've done. And it pisses me off because kids in situations exactly like what I was in hear this shit and assume that'll never do any better so why try, right?? WRONG! Fight for it, get out and fight like hell to get as far away as possible!!
I'm not that fucken special. I just hate being told I can't do something and I'm too stubborn to give up sometimes. Its not my best quality, but look how far I've come.
My parents married at 19/20 years old, they had me at 20/21 and my sister 15 months later, struggled financially all my life, I have a alcoholic parent who is also bi-polar, my parents separated for 6 months only to get back together and send my sister and I to live with their parents for a year while they "fixed" their marriage (guess since we were only the result of the marriage we didn't need to be included), I was in an abusive relationship at the age of 15, I did graduate high school, went to college, then dropped out for 2 years. Here's where I started fighting back...I went back to school after the time off. I graduated with a 2 year degree then went on immediately to get a 4 year degree! I left an almost 9 year relationship and moved over 500 miles away from home knowing only one person in that city.
I'm now almost 32 years old. I'm married (3 years in March!), I'm a mom to one helluva kiddo. I have an amazing circle of friends who I love more than most of my family and who see me for me, not my scars. I have family members who hold my secrets in their heart and don't judge me for them. Instead they support me and give me the unconditional love family should give each other. I've cut many ties from my past and I continue to let people who are less than stellar come and go from my life. I've survived!

I'm not cured, but I'm whole.