Is it abuse if you don’t know what non-abuse is?
I had a pretty normal childhood.
I mean every kid had a dad who was gone a lot (he was in the Navy), and a mom who burned their only child with a cigarette and chased them around a 9th floor condo with a butcher knife, right?
What? You mean that’s not normal?
I know, I know..it’s not normal…but to a 4 or 5 year old who didn’t know any better, I just thought that is what moms and dads do. I’m not justifying my mom’s behavior now or anything..I did eventually come to the realization that what she did to me was fucked up. And my response to it was just as fucked up…but never realized how fucked up it was until recently.
Let’s start with the most fucked up situation. The one I like to call “the one with the knife.”
I remember we lived in Hawaii and my parents had a condo. My dad must have gotten a deal on it or was renting one out or something because he was also acting as kind of the maintenance man for the entire building too. I don’t know..what do you expect? I was like 4 years old at the time.
Anyway, it was just me and my mom in the condo at the time. Not sure if dad was as work or what, but I remember sitting there in my tighty-whiteys playing with some toys on the living room floor and watching cartoons.
My mom was in the kitchen and had asked me to do something. I can’t remember what she wanted, but basically my response was “Not right now, I’m watching cartoons.” And the next thing I know, my mom is yelling at me at the top of her lungs..calling me all sorts of names and I knew I was in trouble.
Before I even got a chance to say “ok ok, I’ll do it (whatever it was)” she was in the kitchen area and grabbed the biggest knife we had. It looked like a fucking machete to me, but I’m sure it was just chopping knife. And she was storming right toward me with the knife in the air, saying she was going to kill me.
I ran around the condo for my life. I could only outrun her for so long and I could only say a few things as I was too busy crying for my life for her to stop. Literally, begging her to stop.
But she wouldn’t stop. She kept chasing me around the condo with this butcher knife in her hand and a crazed look on her face.
I literally was scared for my life and then I had a realization. We had a balcony and that was my way out…I couldn’t run past her to the front door, so that was my way to save myself. So I flung open the sliding glass door and ran out into the balcony. Remember, it was 9 stories up…
Then I began to climb the railing. Also remember, I was 4 fucking years old. And I remember thinking to myself that I’d be better off jumping from a 9 story balcony than being chopped up by my mom. What other 4 year old has that kid of thought? Pretty normal right?
I remember yelling to my mom, who was now standing by the sliding glass door, “Get away from me or I’ll jump!” I guess the sight of her kid climbing a railing and yelling that must’ve snapped her out of it, because she lowered the knife and walked away. I don’t remember anything being said after that. I climbed down from the railing and went back inside the condo..the rest of the day was a fuzzy blur to me.
I can’t remember if I went to my room, got sent to my room, what my mom did, or even when or if my dad came home that night and if he did, what was said. ABSOLUTELY.NO.CLOSURE.
I can’t remember if I ever trusted my mom since that day and I can’t remember how I even felt about it: sad, mad, nervous, whatever. I had no feeling about the situation at all. I guess that is when I became “disconnected.” And it was never discussed, ever.
For the years that followed, I remember having thoughts and feelings that I was some kind of robot. I’d see movies like E.T. or Flight of the Navigator and remember thinking that I was like the kid in those movies where nobody really understood what I was thinking or feeling, so the notion that I might not be “normal” or a “robot” was entertaining to me.
Of course, at the time, I didn’t have any inkling of how this knife situation would effect me for the rest of my life and still does today. Even as I type this, I still don’t feel anything about it. It’s like it just kind of happened like somebody crossing the street…no consequences, no ramifications..it just happened and was inconsequential. Obviously, it’s not because it’s basically the reason I am who I am today, and the keystone of why I feel the need to write about it.
I can honestly keep typing on and on about this, and don’t know the appropriate way to wrap up this post. I may come back and revisit this to add addenda to it in the future as I keep trying to sort through the feelings I have or supposed to have…
More to come…