Black-Eyed Peas and a Bully
This is a writing sprint. Please excuse spelling and grammatical errors.
Earler this week I posted about significant change in my life. Nearing toward the end of this year, a coupl eweeks ago I decided to finally face my bully. I felt I could not totally move forward without doing that. As an example, as I type these letters mysteriously hands tremble somewhat because of the bit of fear that is still there in opening talking about it.
My bully, was my step-mother. I will post letter belo once this timer is up to a post that is a copy of a message I sent to her a few days ago. I decided this would be the year bbecause se after not hearing from her for a coupl years she tried getting in touch with me a few tines since Thanksgving. I felt this was the opportunity to finally have my say, to quit living in a fantasy realm where these evil things never happened, and she never had to face her victims.
The Letter
I apologize for not replying sooner to any of your messages lately. Before I go in to what I need to say to you, I want you to know that I am genuinely happy for you finding ***. Everyone deserves to be loved, and I know how difficult my father could make it to feel that from him. I wish you both the best.
My life today is still affected by what happened in my childhood and thanks to therapy I am finally recovering from those things. Many are a direct result of your actions, especially in areas of “discipline.” All those years when dad was on the road, you reminded us daily through your actions of how unhappy you were being stuck with his kids. When dad finally got a local job and no longer was on the road, your methods of “discipline” also changed. Things just seemed to settle into a quieter pattern for us kids, so we all acted like everything that happened in the past never occurred. If that was all left alone, then the bad memories caused by your actions and you yourself, wouldn’t hurt us anymore. You became nice.
This is 100% true for me. Neither **sibling names** are aware of my writing this letter so you’ll need to ask them, but I feel pretty confident they agree with what I am saying.
Above, I put the word discipline in quotes because that’s what you called it. You would even sometimes quote scripture as if to justify your actions before grabbing whatever was convenient to beat us with. To us kids, it wasn’t discipline, it was abuse.
When you would sometimes wake us from a dead sleep by throwing a cup of water on us, then beat us, it was abuse.
When you would sometimes make us get on the floor and stand with our knees until you got a confession, for which one of us didn’t even do oftentimes, it was abuse.
When you would become enraged and destroy our clothing or chop up our hair, it was abuse.
When you backed me into the hallway that lead to the back door, the house on ** drive, and proceeded to repeatedly beat me in the face until I bled, it was abuse.
Every time you told me I was worthless, stupid, or garbage and when you called me a fag, it was abuse.
There were so many more times you did this to us. We were children who were supposed to be able to feel safe and secure in their home. You stole that from us and made us live in a constant state of fear and terror, never knowing who was your next target and when the beating would occur. You were a monster.
Do you even think about your actions from all those years ago? Do you feel the slightest bit of regret for the trauma you inflicted? Have you ever once even considered trying to make amends for your behavior? If you’re still reading this, do you even remember it?
I hope you do. I hope you can look back and see yourself for what you were. I hope the person you seem to be now can look at the person you were and see just how much of an incredible amount of damage you did, to four children. I hope you see that person and feel an immense amount of shame and remorse.
If you want to reply to this message, let me just say this loud and clear. If your reply is merely a litany of excuses for your behavior or if you think I am making this up, don’t bother. I clearly remember each physical assault and psychological attack. Every. Single. One.
I reiterate my opening above. I do not wish ill will for either you or ** and I am genuinely happy you seem to have found peace. As far as a relationship between us, for many years now I haven’t considered you my mother, and now that I’ve spent time recognizing the real past and dealing with what it has done to me, I don’t yet know what I am open to in regard of a familial relationship. I think any next steps depend on how you react to this message.
Her Reply
I’m sorry, that’s all I can say and I truly mean it. Have a wonderful life. I wish you well.