Tall Midget wrote:
Seacrest wrote:
Tall Midget wrote:
Wow. There is a lot of truth in his statement that "the beatings never really stop."
They become a different kind of beating. One which is worse than the physical beating.
But thankfully, his conclusion is not always true.
The physical "punishment" I received as a child has reverberated across multiple decades and has had a devastating impact on my life.
Seacrest and TM, I feel your pain.
I never got hit with a tree branch, but my mother beat me with wooden spoons. She hit so hard, sometimes they broke across my body. My father needed no weapons, as his hands were enough. When I was little, he would slap me right across the face, flick the back of my head with his finger as hard as he could, or he would grab a handful of my hair, lift me off the ground, and throw me to the ground, all in the name of discipline.
In my teenage years, the open hands closed, and I was routinely shoved into a wall as hard as he could, sometimes slamming the back of my head into the wall. Sometimes, I had no idea why he was beating me. The best day of my life, to that point, was when I was big and strong enough to stand up to his cowardly ass, and I no longer had to fear him.
He is no longer with us, and the beatings stopped two decades ago, but it still affects me today. Not like it did in my childhood and early adult years, but those feelings of shame, embarrassment, worthlessness, and sheer horror have never fully left me. He also smacked my mom around a few times, once in front of me. Sometimes, I wonder how much worse his abuse would have been, if he was a heavy drinker.
Obviously, we didn't have a good relationship, for the rest of his years. My mother and I still have a terrible relationship. I'm sure a therapist would say it was because I feel she didn't do enough to protect me, and I'm sure there is some truth to that. The physical and emotional abuse from my parents, the people who were supposed to protect and nurture me, is probably why I turned to drugs in my late teens and early twenties.
The best thing that ever happened to me was meeting my now wife, thirteen years ago. It's nice being loved by somebody, who doesn't need to assault me to show it. I vowed to her that I would never lay a hand on her, or our kids, and I have kept that promise. I don't want my kids to feel what I felt. The emotional pain was worse than the physical pain. I saw how things were done the wrong way, and I have learned from their mistakes.
That's enough whining from me. Throw another log on that fire.