Memory I want to address because it's bothering me:
My dad breaking the wall when I pretended I had to pee.
I flashback to that one frequently when I hear loud banging sounds. That's what made the surprise surgery (at the hospital -- it was an emergency and there was no anesthesiologist available and I had eaten a hotdog from Cookout earlier anyway) that much more alarming. Construction workers barging through a wall during construction, inappropriately (even if I didn't have PTSD).
So, my dad kept us in cages. Pretty much until we started going to school.
He would leave us with a bowl of treats, usually pretzels (which is why I used to hate them), but grapes were a surprising treat. Even when we started going to school, we'd come home to Snacks. It would be a bowl of something for the three youngest children, the one he considered his.
He never offered water or juice unless it was a meal. I have difficulty to this day remembering to stay hydrated.
We were left in a room all day. My twin brother (the autistic one, who was very low-functioning at this time) and I had our own language. My little brother was a year younger than us but practically a triplet. We would pour food on him when our dad would not feed us. He was about one year old, and my twin and I about two years old, in the specific memory I have.
At this age was when I started roaming the house at night, stealing food and looking for stuff to do. Confinement and neglect makes it hard to sleep. The boredom literally hurts, especially at that age.
Our dad would occasionally interact with us but was mostly uncomfortable with us. If he came in, it was because one of us said we had to pee or something. It was the only way we could get out of that room -- potty training.
Our dad was okay with coming in and interacting only when he had flash cards, a food bowl, was high, and usually if his weird boyfriend thing who had a purple penis (and very short shorts it would stick out of) wasn't there.
My dad only wanted us to be smart, like him. Ironically my father is an idiot.
I guess my mom was at work.
I was bored. I was so bored it hurt. (Maybe that's one reason hospitals are so annoying for me?) But I was in a good mood. I was looking for stuff to do. I decided I would wander to the gate and tell my dad I could read.
No reactions.
Later I went to the gate after climbing out of whatever I had been put in (the cage thing) and I told my dad that I had to pee.
He said, "Okay. Let's make it quick."
He opened the gate and my brothers stared. When my dad enters the "Playroom" (cage room, in reality a living room) he looks huge and weirdly distant, like a apprehensive bear. His black hair isn't turning white yet. I can't remember his face -- I can't remember any face -- but his eyes were reddish and glazed over. He wasn't making eye contact.
No one spoke while he was there. It just wasn't a thing you did.
He let me walk to the bathroom myself, and then that's where my mischievous plan for a little free time failed.
He walked behind me. Reminded me I was not allowed to enter any bedroom. (He had things in them that toddlers couldn't play with. Hewas hoarding and slowly destroying my mom's house. They'd already been married for almost three years. My mom was pregnant with my twin and I when she married my dad.)
I looked at my room I shared with Twin sadly. My little brother's room. My older sister's room, where all the toys i wanted to play with were.
I walked into the bathroom. There was a Fahd toilet on the floor. He asked if I knew how to use it.
I proudly told him I knew.
Then I pulled down my pants and sat down. I didn't have to pee. If I did, I wouldn't have been able to.
He was staring at me. His eyes aren't glazed in the memory at this point, but they are still red, like he was drunk. He smelled like alcohol. Cigarettes too. He was sipping from a can of beer. He looks angry and impatient, in the memory I have. Not friendly at all.
He told me once that evil didn't really exist, and everyone thinks that they're doing the right thing. Everyone thinks they're right.
I couldn't pee because I didn't have to and I was too afraid to be able to anyway. He probably kept us dehydrated so we wouldn't pee often. I couldn't pee. He was standing there looking at me angrily.
That's where the memory fuzzes out a little. I was beginning to feel uneasy. He asked if I was lying to him, if I really had to go. He told me to hurry up.
(I remember also, when he told me I was lying about knowing how to shower, when I was 8 or 9. He burst in without permission.)
I sat there, doing nothing. Feeling stupid and bad.
Suddenly he lost his temper. He yelled at me. For lying and being bad. I believed him because I was two. He punched a huge hole into the wall.
It's still there. I glanced at it just now because even though we filled it and tried to cover it, it's still there. It was there for years. It was my fault.
I want the baby bunny toy I dropped down that hole, a year later, on accident. It's still in there.
That hole is my fault. That's how it feels. That's obviously not true -- I didn't punch any walls.
He retreated to the kitchen after he lost his temper. Maybe trying to calm down. Not yell. If I cried, he would retreat. (Do psychopaths do that? Was he fighting himself?) But then he came back after lots of banging and silence from my brothers. He charged into the bathroom. He forcefully pulled up my pants and grabbed my arm so hard it hurt, and yanked me.
I don't know what happened, but I must have hit my head, because my head hurts when I try to remember. As in, the head hurting is part of the memory, and I can feel it. Not that it's hurting to strain to recall it.
Until I was aged 11, I spent the rest of my childhood with a goal of only peeing three times a day. One when I woke up, one in the evening (or when I got home from school), one before bed.
I was good at it and was careful what times I peed so that it would be okay -- wait until it hurts, and you will last longer.
My dad burst into the bathroom frequently. I can remember one instance when my mom hid there with us while he kicked down the door.
I think this is why I'm nervous lately. I shower every single night before bed. I play music now, but quietly. I try really hard to not feel that a scary man is on the other side of the door.
My mom has bladder problems so I frequently feel I must leave the door unblocked (the lock doesn't work, hasn't since my dad destroyed it to keep us from having privacy: we lock it by opening a drawer that goes in front of the door). It goes okay if I'm not too symptomatic.
I think I handle myself very well, all things considered. One day I do want to break that wall some more and get that toy bunny out. Rescue it. Might sound silly but I was very attached to that tiny, marbly rock bunny toy.
I also remember being scared and showing my dad I was depressed, trying to safely show anger and rebellion. But I was crying and not wanting to respond to his questions.
I was holding my cockatiel to my chest, standing in front of her cage. (I was in seventh grade, maybe eighth. So... 12, or 13. After the pedophile thing had ended.) She would prevent my dad from hurting me. My dad didn't like hurting animals. He collected them and he viewed them as part of his hoard.
But even the dead ones he kept in a deep freezer downstairs. Not as a biologist would. They would just be there. Hundreds of critters. When he was kicked out by the law, I endevored to burry them all out of respect. There were so, so many.
He kept talking to me even though I was crying. I was using the cockatiel for comfort. (I bet she remembers this, but I won't ask her.) I was replying with, "M."
He got pissed off. He told me not to reply like that. He yelled, snapped. I froze and cried, really cried.
He looked frustrated, and then... awkward. Like a human being had just peaked through the mask of a demon, and then he left. He got me food after that.
Why did he hate my little brother so much? He never showed him mercy. Never. Nor my twin, who he bullied and called retarded. Definitely not my sister, except when she had a birthday after she had clinically died -- she got waffles with ice cream on top.
Why, though? Was it just a honeymoon phase in a cycle of abuse? I have such a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of someone never feeling guilt or shame.
I mean. My service dog doesn't; but she's a dog. And yet -- she has never hurt me. Never. And she feels such strong love and our bond is unbreakable.
Cats don't feel guilt and they kill lots of small animals for fun, but they make friends too. They love. Cats love so much that if they get isolated, they risk serious illness. Years off their lifespan. Just like dogs and humans.
