My stepfather was not always an abusive alcoholic. He was simply a man who loved a glass of scotch in the evening before bed during the early years of my childhood, the years I called him “Daddy.” He was kind-hearted and taught me the life lessons that a girl needs in order to become a compassionate member of the human society.
No, he was not always an abusive alcoholic but he is now.
Don Mustard has been my dad since I was eighteen months old. I was not fond of men as an infant, especially those I had never met. Despite this, on the day we met, I ran straight to him and begged him to pick me up. We became inseparable for the next several years.
I owe most of my character to this man. My love for animals, my passion for hunting, my need to be around horses, and my unconditional love can all be attributed to the years I spent at his heels. I learned the value of hard work by taking care of orphaned cattle from the rancher that employed him. I woke up in the wee hours of the mornings to answer the cries of a calf searching for breakfast and did so without complaint. I had no friends during my elementary years because I smelled like animals, but I cared not. I had a family who loved me. I had a large variety of animals that were much kinder than humans for companionship. I was happy.
I was entering junior high when I began to notice that there was a problem. The bottle that had taken my dad a few weeks to finish now needed to be replaced once a week, and soon after, twice a week. As a family that was struggling just to keep food on the table, this seemed like a luxury that we just could not afford. However, my mom discovered that being unable to provide this bottle was a much worse problem than the money that was being spent on it. Dad would become irritated without his “nightcap,” but we just brushed it off as crankiness.
Then, the irritation was turned my way. Suddenly, nothing I did was right. I was an honor roll student and worked right beside the cowboys on the ranch from dusk until dawn, with the exception of school hours. Still, it was not enough. I was the entire reason for his and my mother’s marital problems in his opinion. I was called a mistake or “that bastard child” on more than one occasion. I would fall asleep many nights in tears. I worked harder to achieve more, aching to hear him tell me he was proud of me once again. It never came.
My mother sat me down during my freshman year of high school and explained our situation to me. My once loving dad was sick, and until he would admit it, there was nothing that she or I could do to make him happy again.
I did my research, like any good student. I learned everything I could about alcoholism, not only about the physical effects, but the psychological effects as well. I learned that the man who spat such ugly words at night was simply not the man who had taught me to ride a bicycle and tie my shoe. Sadly, he might not ever be again.
I wanted to be angry with him.
After all, he was the one who had taught me that allowing anything or anyone to have such a hold over your actions made you weak. The night his anger turned to physical blows, I might have grown resentful, had I not been able to remember one cold morning in a deer stand so many years before. I had proven myself to be a near perfect shot, after years of practice, and I was being rewarded with my very first hunting trip. The excitement of the next morning kept me awake most of the night, and I jumped out of bed the moment my mother woke me. I entered the living room proudly wearing my new gear. That warm camouflage uniform was prettier than any dress in my personal opinion. I tucked my bright red hair into the baseball cap and double-checked the gun that I had lovingly cleaned the night before. My mother handed my dad a lunch box with sandwiches and jerky, and we were off. He drove patiently and carefully through the field while his daughter was unable to stop talking in bubbly excitement over the possibilities of the day.
My dad did all the talking once we were in the deer blind, keeping his voice down to a barely audible whisper as he spoke about the feeling of sighting a deer through the sights of your gun. He warned me about the possibility of freezing up once my sights were lined up and told me how to fight through it. Soon, those words of experience soon turned to wise lessons of life and love.
I valued these lessons and tucked them away for later years, but it was his speech about unconditional love that would eventually turn that little girl into the woman I am today. He told me, “when you love someone, be it your family, an animal, or your husband, you must love them unconditionally. Everyone makes mistakes and we always hurt the ones who love us the most. Love is worthless unless it’s unconditional. You must always forgive those you love without hesitation. If it isn’t unconditional, then it isn’t love at all.”
Many years later, I would forgive him instantly for his abuse. This abuse increasingly grew more violent, and by the time I moved out of my parent’s home, I was grateful to be free of his anger and bitterness. I kept the lessons he taught me in the deer blind close to my heart but added my own touch to it. I decided that while love was worthless unless it was unconditional, that did not mean that a person had to stick around to be abused and walked on. A person could love unconditionally while doing so from a distance.
My dad’s drinking grew increasingly worse after my mother passed away. Today, his mind is half gone from the booze and the evidence is apparent even during the sober moments of the daytime. He has become an empty shell of a man. He is deeply affected by depression and seeks to fill his emptiness with women who could never hope to fill the shoes my mother left behind. He has yet to admit that he has a problem. I still love him unconditionally although I am sure he would tell you otherwise.
I will always be grateful for the earlier years that I spent with my dad. I am a woman who always seeks a brighter future because of these moments. More importantly, I know how to love someone with everything I have, no matter their crimes against others or me. Experience has taught me that there are not many souls out there who can say the same. Most people speak their love without ever knowing exactly how to show it. My Daddy taught me that showing it is more important than three empty words and my children will learn this as well. That is the greatest gift any man could have passed down to his daughter.
I have lost hope that he will ever seek the help he needs to change but on the day of his funeral, I will proudly stand there and speak of the man before the disease. I believe that on that day, I will finally receive his pride as he watches my eulogy through eyes unclouded by booze. Maybe then he will realize that I learned my lessons well and grew up to be everything he had once hoped for. Alcoholism will have finally released its hold on my dad. I will not speak of the horrible deeds or the years I spent as his victim. After all, love is worthless unless it is unconditional.
Unable to have children of our own, my then-husband and I had the opportunity to have a foster-to-adopt situation with a precious little girl. Just before her adoption, we were asked to also foster her little sister, who was about to be born.
I was hesitant. I didn’t want to take on a child who had a high chance of returning to her birth parents. But I couldn’t let my little girl’s sister go to strangers, so we said yes.
As time passed, the birth parents weren’t doing their part, and I felt more and more like she was my baby, and I would have her forever.
I should have been happy. I had everything I’d ever wanted! The money the state paid us to take care of foster children made it possible for me to be home with those two pretty little girls all day. I had always wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom. And now I had not one, but two children to take care of! The girls were happy, and the best sound in the world was their laughter as they played together.
I wish I could say my husband felt the same way.
He was resentful of that baby as soon as she entered our home. He hated all the time I was spending with her, instead of him.
He was jealous.
Of an infant.
This one particular night breaks my heart. I wish I could go back and change things, but he had trained me for years not to question him. Fear of his anger kept me frozen.
The baby had learned to stand. She was so proud of herself! There was no stopping her now! From the time she was a newborn, she had always hated going to sleep, and getting her to settle down for bed was a long, drawn-out process. But with her newly developed skill of standing, it became much worse. I would lay her down, she would stand up. I would put her down again, she would stand right back up.
One night, he had enough. “I”ll make her learn she has to lay down when it’s bedtime,” he said.
He came into the girls’ bedroom with me when I put her to bed. I laid her down in her crib, telling her goodnight, same as I always did. She stood up, and he sprayed her right in the face with the water bottle we used on the cats when they were doing something wrong. I was horrified! But what was I supposed to do? He was my husband, and I was afraid to question him.
The battle of wills between a man in his 40’s and a less-than-year-old baby went on for a while. I would lay her down, she would stand up, he would spray her in the face.
Finally, he pushed me too far. She was soaking wet, dripping on her sheets. I knew even if she did go to sleep, she would end up getting sick from trying to sleep in her wet clothes and bed. I took a chance and said, “That’s enough!”
Amazingly, he walked out the door without saying a word.
I took her out of her bed, pulled her wet clothes off of her, dried her with her little hooded towel, then put clean, dry pajamas on her. Then I changed the bedding in her crib and started the bedtime process again.
When I walked out of the bedroom, she was back to standing in the crib. I walked out to the living room where he was watching TV. I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Your way didn’t work, and you’re never doing that again.” He didn’t argue, and he never tried that stunt again.
I think he figured out that there was only so far he could push me when it came to the children. He could belittle me and mistreat me all he wanted, but don’t mess with the Mama Grizzly Bear.
I always knew there was something wrong with me. Other kids didn’t understand why I acted the way I did around adults. I spent my entire childhood wondering what the hell was wrong with me, afraid to say or do anything, afraid to interact with other people.
30 years later …I know that the problem really wasn’t me. It was the monster who calls himself my father. The beast in me wants vengeance for him handicapping my emotional and psychological well being …vengeance for leaving me afraid to have my own children …vengeance for being afraid to get married for fear I’d end up marrying someone like my father. But this same beast has given me a voice. This same beast gives me the courage to stand up to those who try to use me as a doormat. This same beast drives me everyday to heal the deep wounds and to unlearn all the nasty crap that was beaten into my head as a child and teenager.
I used to worry that everyone was right when they’d say, “You’re just like your father.” I now realize that I’m NOTHING like my father. I just managed to pull myself out of a fucked up mess of a “family.” IT HAS BEEN HELL!!! Forty years of being told that I am nothing, being emotionally neglected and abused, told repeatedly that people don’t like me, told that I don’t deserve friends, that everything I have belongs to my father, that I am a pet to be kept at his discretion, rewarded for good behavior or punished for failures.
There was nothing that I had that he could not take away, everything I had and everything I was, according to him, originated with him and therefore was his to control and do with as he pleased. If I tried to express my feelings I was greeted with anger. “It’s not okay to cry. It’s not okay to show your feelings. It’s not okay to express your opinion. In fact, you are a child – be seen and NEVER heard.”
My father would hit or grab and shake my mother when she did things he didn’t like. He still does. He only ever spanked me twice. When I got to be a teenager he’d just shake his fist in my face. I never understood this. Ultimately I think it was because he was afraid if he hit me he’d end up exposing himself publicly. If I were to report him for child abuse, or if one of my teachers, seeing unexplained bruises on me, would have brought his “I’m the perfect husband and father” public mask crashing down.
I didn’t start to understand what my father had done to me until I graduated from college. The more distance I put between us, the more I understood that I wasn’t the problem. This was wrong. Abuse isn’t just about getting physically beaten, it can also be about getting the emotional and psychological stuffing beaten out of you everyday.
Thank the gods for my grandparents who looked out for me and sent me to college. My father made no bones about refusing to work. He said he “had a problem with authority,” and that no one had the right to tell him how to do his job. When I was 7, he was fired from the only job he’d had. So my father forced my mother to get the paying jobs, and then promptly got her fired from every one of them. He’d try to tell her bosses how to run their businesses or he’d tell lies or exaggerated truths about her boss around town. No one would stand for it, and my mother paid the price.
When I was 5 or so, my father got into a fight with his parents. I didn’t see them again for many decades. I only know who my relatives are because I see them on my family tree, there are only two or three I would even recognize if I was face to face with them. The ones I do know are narcissistic just like my father, so I don’t mourn the loss anymore. Most of them are just as toxic to my well being as my father is.
My father’s mother, his brother and his wife came to our house on the day of my high school graduation. My father’s mother said, “Here is a card for you. We’re going to your cousin’s graduation.” With that, she and my aunt and uncle turned their backs on me, got in their fancy car, and left me standing there. They were just there to rub it in my face that my cousin was more important than I was.
My father is a saint in the eyes of many people. He gives lavish gifts and bails people out of financial trouble, when he can ill afford to do it himself. He invites strangers to holiday family meals and springs it on us at the last possible moment. Meanwhile, utility bills go unpaid, disconnect and repo notices arrive. In the past, if he couldn’t scrape the money together to do these “humanitarian” things that people “love” him for, then he’d send my mother to beg from her family. Later, he would demand the money from me. The last time he did this to me, I threw him out of my home, returned the last of the “gift” money he had given me for Christmas, and told him never to come back.
My father has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He blames his abuses of my mother and me on PTSD, for which he is considered disabled by the VA, but the truth is, my father is simply a manipulative, truth stretching, self-centered, self-serving, “The world revolves around me, I will live my life anyway I see fit, I don’t care if it’s legal, I’m never wrong, everyone is entitled to my correct opinion, the sun and the universe revolve around me” NARC!!
A huge weight has been lifted from my life. I still find myself wanting to cower when someone gets in my face or publicly criticizes me. Sometimes I have to take anxiety meds, but I can get angry now. I can scream and yell. I can say no and not cave later. I can cry. I can laugh. I’m learning slowly how to love. The anger reminds me that I am a person. I’m not someone’s possession. I’m not a doormat, and I deserve better.
I’ve only posted one thing on here thus far, and I wanted to first thank everyone for their kind words. It’s strange how much helpful it is just knowing you’re not alone in this.
It has been over a year now since I left. I’ve been slowly finding myself again. A day doesn’t go by, though, that I don’t remember something about the abuse. What gets to me the most is how many friends I lost because of him. No one ever wants to believe that they’re friends with a monster. So why would they believe the “crazy ex-girlfriend” when she shows them what’s behind the mask? Sometimes I wonder if I really am just crazy. I wonder if the amount of loss was really worth getting away. What scares me more is that I don’t know if it was. Are the people that I trusted that blind or am I just nuts?
Has anyone in The Band dealt with this kind of regret before or have any advice? While trying to move forward I can’t help but take stock of what is left and see how much that was lost because of one jackass. It’s hard to move forward when I keep looking back.
Even seven years after he left me, I have come to realize that my ex-husband still takes up residence inside my head. In an attempt to clear him out of there, I’m going to start telling more of my stories. Maybe if I send my stories out into the world, they will get out of my brain.
He loved to pick fights with me. Easily, 75% of our fights were about food. Clearly, they were never REALLY about food, but that’s how he chose to express his anger with me.
There was an excuse for why food was such a hot point for him. For most of his childhood, he was raised by his grandmother. She didn’t have the financial means to support her children still living at home, as well as the grandchildren she was then responsible for. They were poor. Food was hard to come by. But she was also very frugal and knew how to make every last scrap of food last.
My family didn’t have a lot of money, but by comparison, we were definitely not poor. If a little bit of leftovers went to waste, it wasn’t the end of the world.
The day that some ground beef went to waste, he started a screaming match with me in the front yard. I’m sure the neighbors loved that!
But easily, the worst fight over food was Thanksgiving, 1999.
Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, and I always went all out to make it special for my husband. I took charge of the entire meal – except for mashing the potatoes. He enjoyed doing that. We had had a lovely morning, we even took the dog for a long walk between basting times on the turkey. As I finished the cooking, he was downstairs, looking through family photos.
When the potatoes were done boiling, I called down to him that it was time to mash them. He said he would be right up, so I left the water in the pan for him to drain and set them aside.
I was busy. There were a lot of other things to do.
I didn’t notice that he didn’t come right back up.
When he finally did, the potatoes had gotten cold and a little slimy.
He was PISSED.
He screamed at me about how the potatoes were ruined and it was my fault and I should have drained them. I should have called him again when he didn’t come up. He stomped around the kitchen, swearing, yelling, and slamming pots and pans around.
He icily told me, “Thanks for ruining my favorite holiday,” and then he got in his truck and left.
I continued to cook as best I could through my tears. I cut up more potatoes and got them boiling. I finished the stuffing – just the way he liked it. I made the gravy. When the potatoes were done, I mashed them myself. They were lumpy, but at least they tasted good.
And then I waited.
He didn’t come home for about four hours.
I know now that when he was downstairs, he must have been talking quietly on the phone to his girlfriend, and she convinced him to have Thanksgiving with her instead. He picked a fight with me so he could justify leaving. If it hadn’t been the potatoes, it would have been something else.
When he got home, we ate in silence, and I held back tears.
I have not had an easy road. My mom had a lot of mental health issues that she didn’t deal with properly, so I, as an only child, was usually the target of her screaming, anger, and hatred. My father was there mostly as disciplinarian, but at least I felt like he loved me.
As I got into my teens I searched for attention. I was always looking for male companionship to boost my self-esteem. At age 15 I met, dated, and lost my virginity to a jerk that was a year older than I. He was my first boyfriend.
After we broke up, I started being pursued by a guy friend from school. I’d always thought he was fun to be around and he seemed the warm, friendly, protective type. One day he showed up at my house and asked to take me out, but his idea of “taking me out” was to take me to his house where he had been drinking with some friends who were a couple. I guess he was just looking for someone to be his drinking/sex partner for the night. I’m guessing that my ex-boyfriend had done a good job letting others know that I had willingly slept with him.
Sex with this guy was disgusting. He really just wanted oral sex and plied me with beer until I consented. That was my first experience with it, and I was so disgusted. I felt really used when I realized that he didn’t really “like” me like I had naively thought. I don’t really remember him taking me home. That bad experience got worse when he started spreading rumors around school, claiming I had done more things with him than I actually did.
There was another guy I worked with at a local fast food place, and things were just as bad there. He would alternately flirt with me, and yet urge on a co-worker who was treating me badly. This other guy would grab my chest or shove me around. He seemed really angry, and I was scared of him. I was also afraid to tell my manager, because he was a favorite of hers.
Not long after all of this, I also dated a guy that was 23. I thought an older man would be more mature, instead he was controlling. I ended up breaking it off with him on New Years Eve. I promptly started dating a guy that I’d had a crush on at work. He was 21. And he was a little weird. We dated on and off for a few months. When I broke up with him for good, he started stalking me and mailed me this crazy letter along with all the drawings I had done cut up into little pieces. My mom had to change our phone number because he wouldn’t stop calling.
About a month before I turned 17, I was invited by a friend to stay the night at her house. Our plan was to sneak out the window, after her parents were asleep, to go to a party at her boyfriend’s uncle’s house. This was a small, ramshackle house in a very, very small town out in the country where no cops would interfere with the underage drinking.
I remember sitting by the fire listening to Zeppelin (that probably shows my age), drinking beer and smoking weed. Somewhere along the line the guy that had spread rumors about me showed up. He immediately sought me out. Maybe I sought him out. I’m really not sure. My self-esteem was so low that if anyone was friendly to me I loved the attention in spite of past offenses.
He had brought a bottle of whiskey and I remember adding this to six or seven beers I’d already had. I went into another room and started talking with the older brother of another friend. He was a very nice guy. I’d always wanted to hang out with him, but again, my low self-esteem told me he wouldn’t like me. The alcohol told me he did.
Some time later the uncle barged in and accused us of having sex in his house. We weren’t, ironically. The guy was always a real sweetheart. I can’t blame him for what happened next.
We all went outside. One of my friends was sitting in a chair by the fire. He talked me into sitting in his lap, and I remember drinking some more. I remember kissing him. I also remember him trying to put his hands down my pants and me telling him to stop. I remember trying to pull away his hands.
After that, all I remember is waking up on the wooden floor of the dining room wearing nothing but my t-shirt and some shorts that were too small. I smelled like vomit, so I stumbled to the bathroom and washed my hair.
I had no idea what had happened. I think I was still drunk. I laid down by my friend’s boyfriend because I couldn’t figure out where anyone else went, and he was like an older brother figure. When he woke up, he asked me if I remembered what had happened. I said, no.
My friend showed up and told me what had happened. Apparently, when she came in the house, she saw me laying there with just a shirt on, so she took her shorts off and put them on me. I kind of put two and two together and so had she. After she found me she freaked out and told her mom that I had been raped and her mom called my parents. My dad was on his way.
To make matters worse, she had also called my crazy ex-boyfriend and he showed up and demanded that I get into his car. It got a little intense, so I decided to just go, because we were making a scene. We drove about a quarter mile away where we fought for a few minutes. When I demanded he take me back to the house, he refused to let me out of the car. My dad pulled up just as I punched the guy as hard as I could.
The ride home in my dad’s truck was the longest drive of my life. Total silence. When I got home, my mom left me to take a bath and actually let me go to bed in piece. Any other time she would have delt out punishment in the form of chores, criticism, and lack of sleep. I guess maybe she felt sorry for me. But said something I’ll never forget, “Well, that’s what happens to girls who sneak out to go to parties.” It was just a done deal after that. Life went on. I never forgave her for that.
I had a nightmare of a boyfriend after that who got me pregnant. At age 18, I had my first child. Six months later, I met my husband. It’s been a series of ups and downs with him. Fifteen years of drug addiction, two more children, and some domestic violence. I turned to dancing at topless clubs when I was 23 to feed my drug addiction. Working in the bars made me think that I was in control of the men, but it was just a farce. It made me feel more degraded and used. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to overcome that feeling.
In 2000 we moved to a different state. I halfway tried to get my life together, but I couldn’t fight the addiction. In 2006, I lost my mom in March, and my dad in May. It was somewhat expected, yet unexpected at the same time. I have always struggled with depression, had attempted suicide once seriously and one half-heartedly, but losing my parents sent me into a downward spiral. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to pull out of that one, but I did.
In November 2007 I got on my knees and asked God to forgive me and to help me get clean. As of today, I’ve been clean six and a half years. I still take anti-depressants off and on, and I struggle with depression and anxiety.
Last year I was diagnosed with Rapid-Cycling Bipolar, Type 2. Fun. Good times man. I’d like to be doing better than ok, but I’m working on it. That is what led me to The Band. I saw an article on Rosa Parks which mentioned a rape trial that she helped defend. In the process of reading about the trial, I realized, not for the first time, that I really need to deal with my past. A Google search for help dealing with date rape brought up this website.
One of the first things I saw mentioned was agoraphobia. Yeah …I haven’t been able to go outside or leave a door unlocked when nobody is home in a very, very long time. At 40 years old, I depend way too much on my kids to do things like call people or go in the store with me. It really sucks, and I’m tired of being a prisoner in my own home. A prisoner of my own making. If I get really depressed I have a space between my bed and the wall that I can lay down in that’s nice and dark and secure. My past is affecting me to the point that I’m not enjoying my life anymore.
I’ve decided to go back to counseling, and I am determined to work on this. It can’t get any worse. It has to get better. It has to.
