It took me a long time to be able to bear it when people say, "I love you Lisa." I still don't really enjoy it. You see, as a child, every time our house would be riddled with the sounds of pounding, loud banging, glass breaking, Daddy hollering and Mama screaming...the episode would inevitably be followed with the "love" proclamation. Little girls who grow up in homes where the word "love" is bastardized have a very difficult time processing the word "love" as women.
After the hell in the house would die down Daddy would come, sit on my little sister's and my bed and say, "Now Daddy loves y'all. And I ain't never gonna hurt your mama again." Then he would hug my sister, say, "I promise," and then try to hug me too.
"Do you love Daddy?" he would ask my sister.
"Yes, I love you Daddy," she would whisper from a little-baby-doll-face puckered and swollen from crying and the terror of listening to her mother's screams. My sister would always cry hysterically and scream the whole time these violent episodes would occur. She would run around frantically and fall out on the floor begging for it to stop.
During these terribly violent episodes, I would stand frozen looking at my sister, my mother, my father and the entire scene. In a way, I would simply disconnect from reality during those times as a means of coping. I would simply shut-down and exit mentally, emotionally and spiritually. In many ways I feel I exited life in general when I was a child. As an adult, parts of me have had to be nurtured and loved back into "being" by God.
After the "loving" scene with my sister, Daddy would then move in my direction. My blood would curdle. My flesh would crawl. After all, I thought, "I am six years old and you can't charm and trick me like my ol dumb little sister!"
I remember burning with the urge to punch him and I wanted to slap my sister for hugging him back and telling him that she loved him. I felt huge violence within me but I was too small to express it. This dichotomy is the beginning of mental and emotional challenges for many females who grow up this way. We cannot explode in our dis-empowered states...so we begin to implode. This often manifests later in life as addiction, abusive relationships, promiscuity, co-dependency and a host of other self-destructive vices. We and the world blames us for the results of this negativity in our lives but it is truly not our fault. Once we become aware of our situation, it is our responsibility to seek help...but not our fault that we need help. God holds us blameless and can heal the wounds we suffer at the hands of others and ourselves. Unfortunately, it often takes many years of destruction and despair for us to let go and let God.
At any rate, when my father would come with his "love" tales, I really wanted to attack my sister for hugging Daddy and telling him that she loved him. I remember being so angry that I wanted to scream, spit and kick her in the head. My poor little sister. She was naturally just as traumatized as I was. She was just trying to survive. Perhaps she thought she could love Daddy into acting better. Of course, now I understand that she was just a baby. She just wanted to love and be loved basically. From my six-year old perspective, however, I just did not understand her.
"Do you love Daddy Lisa?" he would ask with this sorry-dog tone that made me want to scream as he forced me to allow him to wrap his arms around my shoulders.
"No..." I snapped with the urge to actually snap his neck.
"Come on Baby--" Daddy urged trying to hug me more tightly.
"No," I stiffened, "I hate you." I was only six but I meant it when I said it. I was filled with rage and indignation that we had to live like that. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that he was responsible for his behavior. He was terrorizing my little sister and me out of our senses--literally! He was beating the very soul and beauty out of my exquisite mother. So at that time, I drew all of my mental, emotional and spiritual energy way up into myself in a futile attempt to protect my vulnerable young psyche. I felt absolutely no "love."
"I hate you," I repeated as I turned my back in defiance.
When Daddy would turn to leave our room, I would entertain visions of running up behind him and stabbing him in the back with a knife. I would be plagued with guilt--guilt much too great for a 6 year old soul afterward but the visions seemed to just leap upon me. All I knew was that he needed to be stopped. I knew that he would never stop on his own. He had made too many promises and had broken everyone. Of course, as an adult I know that murder is no solution for this situation, but I was just 6 years old and a child living in a violent situation will often choose violence as her only solution. What else does she know?
When you are lied to as a young girl over and over again by your father, you have a real challenge hearing Truth from anyone as an adult. It often sets up the expectation within you for a continual stream of lies from anyone that you love or want to trust. The negative energy of these expectations often set into motion a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. You unconsciously draw individuals and situations into your life that will cause you to be lied to, betrayed, insulted, over-criticized, injured and abused.
A word of caution: Do not fall for the trick that some people who may know of your past may try to use on you. Abusive individuals may attempt to discount your feeling that they are treating you badly. They may call you crazy, over-sensitive or accuse you of projecting negativity onto them. Just because you have suffered this type of childhood, however, does not mean that the people who may be hurting you in your life presently are not really responsible for hurting you. Do not let anyone get away with that. Besides that, feelings can not be "wrong" or "right". If you feel hurt...something is wrong and something needs to be addressed.
Soul searching is needed in this area. What you must examine is how this type of childhood may cause you to attract and be attracted to situations and people that will be abusive to you on some level. Your past is powerful. God, however, is even more powerful. The power of the past is very great until we see it and begin to invest ourselves into a transformed present and future through God. Then all bets are off. We can leave the past pain where it belongs and claim a joyful present state of well being, safety and self-love.
Back to my story...
The most ironic thing when I was a little girl was that my mother would often follow Daddy's little "love" scenario with a similar one. She would eventually appear at our door with puffy eyes, sometimes obvious injuries, sniffling lightly and trying to appear as if everything was "all right." She would hug me and my sister, say she was sorry, tell us how much she loved us and ask us if we loved her. My sister would invariably say, "Yes...yes Mama!" and hug our mother's neck tightly. Then it was always my turn.
"DO you love Mama too Lisa?" she would say in a pathetic tone pressing a hug on my wooden withdrawn frame.
"No," I would look at her from a huge sense of helplessness in a tiny body, "I don't love you Mama," I said. "I hate you too!" I thought but dared not utter. I wanted her to kill Daddy or leave and take my sister and me out of there. It seemed quite clear to me what she should do. Of course, I understand her dysfunction now. Many women are so wounded physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually that only God the Creator of all can truly perceive what is happening within their tortured souls. I would never judge a woman in this predicament today...from my six-year old perspective, however, I just did not understand my mama.
I felt guilty all of my childhood for hating both my parents and for not being able to stop the hell that raged through our walls. I felt guilty because I actually did and do have intense love for my mother and I wanted so to protect her. I felt guilty for hating my little sister for being so loving. I felt guilty for taking out on my little sister what I could not take out on my father and the destructive circumstances he forced us all to exist within. I felt guilty just for breathing.
My entire childhood was shadowed by guilt, fear, shame and an awful suspended sense of desperation that never quite went away. When a young girl grows up in a domestically violent home she develops a truly helpless sense of herself in the world. She feels powerless, small and of no great consequence. This is a terrible string of misnomers that many of us carry into womanhood. The patterns of many of our lives before we grow into awareness and healing often bears this out.
The guilt of childhood finally went into the shadows of my consciousness as I entered young adulthood. How had I the time to think about Mama and Daddy when I had my own drama(s) to create and battle through? As an unwed teen-aged mother I endured the same kinds of abuse my mother had endured. I was dragged up the street after giving birth to my daughter causing the skin on my legs to be scraped off the sides. I was punched in the head with my 5 month old daughter in my arms. I was picked up and my body depleted to less than 100 pounds from a deep depression, was tossed about our apartment like a bag of garbage. My daughter's father would of course follow with the "love" speech, try to hug me and ask me if I loved him. Ha! Strange dichotomy. Why do those most undeserving of love always seem to beg for it the most from those that they deserve it from the least?
The real heartbreak and self-loathing began when I saw him try to hold our baby-girl and her entire little body stiffened like a board. This was after he had punched me in the head and sent the baby and me tumbling to the kitchen floor. I was crying. She was screeching in a tone that I had never heard come from my baby before. She was just a little baby and I saw how she hated him...and I was so afraid that she might end up hating me too. I truly wished him dead for what he was doing to my daughter and to me. To begin to do to my daughter what my father had done to me was finally the end of it for me...and my baby. I left him and I never looked back.
And I lived happily ever after, right? Wrong. Until a woman takes stock of her life in a really honest way, there will be no change. She can run, but there is no where for her to hide. She will go on in her insanity doing the same things and expecting different results. She will get a fellow with a different name, different face and be with him in a totally different place, BUT he will be the same man essentially. Her next relationship will pick up from her last and she will re-live her past...it may even get progressively worse than the past.
As Fate would have it, little Lisa was not yet done treading her path of mass destruction. Even when I left my daughter's father, got married and had two sons, the dysfunction and infection of my childhood bubbled up like sewage into my life. It seemed inescapable. Nothing ever seemed to work out right for me. No one ever really "loved" me without hurting me in some way it seemed. It was what I expected and it was what I got. Why else would I marry a man who was supposedly my best friend yet told me that he had sex with a woman at a party just weeks before our wedding? A whole woman would have walked away from that betrayal. A whole woman would have been spared the subsequent 8 years of pain and agony that I endured in that ill-fated marriage.
Unfortunately, women who grow up as I did often have a deep seeded urge to re-create what they did not have in their childhoods. The tragedy is that they often lack the awareness and healing needed to bring forth what they desire. I always had a dream in my heart of the kind of family, home, marriage and relationship that I wanted to manifest in my life. I think most girls and young women have their own version of this vision. Those of us who never had it, long for it all the more.
What I failed to realize is that I simply did not have the skills as a person. I did not even know how to attract positive, real men into my life. At that time, I just attracted and was attracted to one abusive man after the next. How could I do anything but this? You see, I had never actually witnessed a functional, loving relationship between a man and a woman. All was chaos in my young life. Even when my mother divorced my father her relationships with men were fraught with drama, arguments and some were even as abusive as her marriage with my father was--though, thank the Lord, not as long lasting.
With my ex things could go from nice to nasty in 10 seconds flat. He might start something and I would often just escalate the situation. In my mind, I was never going to be a "pushover" like I thought my mother had been. I vowed that if a man was going to try to hit, disrespect or in any other way tear Lisa down, he was going to have one heck of a fight on his hands. And so that's what we did. We fought and fought and fought. He never actually "punched" me so to this day he feels justified. He is one of those classic characters that tells the world and anyone who will listen that his ex-wife actually abused him. There may be a very special place in hell for men such as this.
Let me tell you about this man. You may know him. He may have a different name, different face and totally different DNA, but it is the same man nonetheless. This is a man who threatens, mistreats and makes a woman afraid for her babies. This is a man who grabs, squeezes, drags and threatens. It is all hurtful but as long as he does not do what he "could" do to you, he feels as if he is somehow saintly. This is a man who does not give you a moment's peace in your heart, your soul or your mind. He thrives on feeding into your insecurities and pain. He rejoices in bringing you to crisis and blaming you for being critical. This is the perfect man to allow you to replay your childhood trauma and try hopelessly to "fix it"...just as you did as a girl. Yes, there are real reasons why you attracted and were attracted to this man.
In my case, this is a man who tried to choke and force a pillow case down my throat. This a man who I would often drink to escape and find that I had been violated sexually in ways that I would not allow when conscious. This is a man who told his wife regularly that he flirted with other women and would not stop. Then this man would accuse me of being paranoid and possessive when my insecurities about his various "female-friends" would arise. This is a man who had pornography stashed all around the house and did not care at all that his wife found it highly upsetting. This is a man who purposely drove his young wife to insanity and blamed her for being so "messed-up." This is a man could only feel important when he could cause me pain. The more pain he could inflict on me, the more important and powerful he felt.
Do you know this man? This man is the worst type of woman hater. A domicile with this man is infected and infested with the physical violence, emotional abuse and spiritual death. Insist upon living with this man and you will die by his hand. This man gets you in your head, he gets you in your soul...he makes you hate yourself so much that you become willing to do to yourself all the evil that he himself wants to do. Do you see? He will destroy you if you let him. Then he can sit there, shoulders shrugged..."blameless" and go about his mission to tell the world how "crazy" you are.
You see? My father had my mother locked-up in a mental ward at one point after she attempted suicide. The psychiatrist told my mother that it was normal for her to want to escape her awful circumstances. He told her that it was my father who needed to see a psychiatrist. He should have also told my mother not to share this with my father. When she told him what the psychiatrist said he jumped on her...naturally. Even to this day, my father tells everyone who will listen that she is CRAZY...just like my ex tells everyone about me.
This is what I stayed married to for 8 years.
We fought, argued and acted like fools for years. After a while, I noticed that my children did not even notice us. That scared me. Though they were not stiffening into "wood" as I did as a child, what I could see was that their inner selves were stiffening and numbing to the madness. I had thought I had escaped the curse that seemed to be on me from birth. I had left my parents to live with my daughter's father and the curse was still there. I left him and married my so-called best friend. The curse was still there. It was in me and on me. Only God could break this awful cycle in my life and I was running out of time, energy and mind.
I hated myself for not being able to stop the crazy, desperate cycle that my life seemed set on from my birth. I cried endless tears almost all of the time. It was a very hopeless and dark time in my life. It seemed that I had become some pathetic version of my mother. I fought back but I knew that even that was not enough. Even if a woman fights back in a violent relationship, she is still a victim of the circumstance and her children most definitely are. It is not about the fight...it is about the FLIGHT!
When I divorced my ex after 8 years and all kinds of body, mind and spiritual damage, I was in a true state of crisis in my life. I was deathly ill, physically and emotionally. My soul seemed bathed in utter darkness. I was walking through the proverbial valley. In my experience of it, I was walking through "the valley of the shadow of death." I really did not believe that I was going to make it through. The bruises I had suffered stretched from my childhood into womanhood. They were bruises on my soul. I felt that I deserved it. I felt responsible for continually choosing poorly. I did not believe that there would ever be any healing for me...God, however, knew differently.
At that time in my life I realized that my mother had taught me much more than just how to be a victim. She had actually taught me how to pray and to reach out for God when it seems all hope is gone. I felt so alone until I turned to God and I honestly felt like I was swooped up into loving arms and carried through the toughest part of my life.
Through God's grace and love, I got counseling to help me with the grief and the sorrow of my failed marriage. I got help from a family service agency that sent a mentor to my home who helped me with the basics, that come so hard for an individual in transition dealing with depression. She helped me get the kids registered and prepared for school. She helped me get the problems my ex had left me with utilities, bills and such in order. She reminded me to take my children to the park and to just allow them to run and play and laugh. It was just an 8 week program to help women in crisis through difficult transitions but those 8 weeks were more saving grace from God for me. A Voice whispered to me in my darkest hour, "I love you Lisa..." Finally it did not sound like a lie. My healing began.
God brought me through all of that. I am ever thankful. A year after my divorce I started college. It was great because when I was married I thought I had forever given up any real opportunity to get my education. God, again, had other plans for me. Today I have 2 college degrees. God is so good.
I now view my past as just another level of the education I needed in order to do my work in the world. I have learned a lot about the nature of pain and the power of testimony. Our pain makes us more human and able to empathize with the struggles of others. When we overcome our pain and share our testimony God uses us to uplift one another.
My hope is that some woman somewhere out there might read these words and see herself as a little traumatized girl. I hope she will see herself as an unwed teen-aged mother struggling to maintain her identity and dignity in a world that seeks to strip it away. I hope she will see herself as a young woman desperate for love in an un-loving marriage. I hope she will see herself as a mother longing from the very core of her soul to give her children more physical, emotional and spiritual sustenance than she herself ever received.
I hope she will see the mighty hand of God reaching into my sorrowful little life and transforming it in ways I could have never imagined. I hope in all of this she will see that she is no different from me. We are sisters in this journey to real LOVE. I hope she allows my voice to serve as a messenger of the Voice God in her life. I hope she allows me to speak to those places within her that others try to "hit" and tear down. I hope she stops listening to people who only seek to criticize her, malign her, steal her joy and keep her from what God has in store for her in this lifetime. I hope she knows that while others will never see how hard it is for her to just make-it-through-another-day.....dragggggiiiinngggggg her weary soul along. God sees. God cares. God knows and will empower her.
I hope my testimony, through God, can help some woman...somewhere get up, pick herself, her kids and her soul up and get what she needs to survive, thrive and become the truly powerful child of God that each woman has been sent here to become. I hope she can listen excitedly to the Voice of God saying, "I love you!" I hope she can gain strength, power and inspiration to make it through the day ahead from knowing that God's love is the only love that is real. God's love is the only love that lasts. God will never abuse us. God will never betray us. God will never call us by any named but BELOVED.
I hope she will reach out and accept the support that is out there to help women in abusive situations and realize that her future does not have to be just a reflection and repetition of her past.
It took me a long time to be able to bear it when people say, "I love you Lisa." Now through God, I am able to put the love of people into perspective, appreciate but rely only upon the love of God.
