5. Don't hit.

After my dad left my Mom followed some friend of hers to Shelton. My mom wanted to meet a guy so she started going out to the bars on Friday nights, sometimes Saturdays too. She started dating a guy named Paul. He had served in the military and was working on becoming a truck driver. Money had been an issue with our family. We lived off food stamps and some help from family and friends. So mom was excited to have a man in her life that would support the family. They got married soon after. Paul wanted us to be disciplined. He would get frustrated when I fought with my brothers or didn't do something the first time he asked. It started out with jabs, he would take two fingers and while he would be telling us to be quiet or go outside he would strike two or three times on my sternum or my side. The longer he and my mom were together the more comfortable he got hitting me. Jabs became arm locks or back hands. Paul was sneaky about the abuse. He knew my mom had been beaten as a child and that she would not put up with it. I also think my mom was stupid about it. She would often come into the room while I was on the floor crying and she would ask what happened and he would say "oh nothing" and that was enough of an answer for her. My mom got very depressed when my dad left and her boys all saw that. So we didn't say anything to her about it. We didn't want it to be our fault if he left.

My mom only ever hit me twice in her life once was a spank when I was around six. The other was when I was fourteen, but to be fair she thought I was a home intruder. (I was coming home late and she didn't know I was out.) I often keep small bits of my sanity by looking at her life and thinking to myself, well at least I didn't have it that bad. My mom's parents separated when she was young. Her Dad took off and she was left with her mom. Her mom who at one point in time broke a fire place poker over my mom's back and threw a coffee cup at my mom's face. My mom lived the rest of her life with a piece of glass embedded just under her eye. My mom wanted to escape the abuse and she asked her dad if she could come live with him and they agreed it was best to wait until the end of the school year. She waited 3 months, then two weeks from the end of the school year he took his own life. Where I am standing now I see the parallels in my life but I know it does not control my future. I am my actions, not the mistakes of my parents or abusers.