When my little girl was about 5 or so, I brought her to the zoo.
They had all kinds of animals.
They had an Elephant, they had wolves,cougars, A circus bear that would hold its feet, and grin for food, lamas who Whitney always called "mamas", funny kid...and ducks (Whitney called them Gucks.:p) We saw ALL the animals..
Then we stopped at a little pond with a fence around it.
I saw a bunch of people in a crowd watching something.
I realized as I got closer the ducks were gathered around a little hurt duck, their little waggling tails getting worked up.
A poor duck that just wanted to be left alone was being bullied.
I saw it tried to fight back at first.
It tried to shield itself, sticking its face as far as it could under its wing.
The other ducks took that as a sign of weakness and they all started pecked at the duck. I could see that the duck was covered in blood, and desperately clinging to life.
I saw the poor things eyes start to glaze over, as if it was giving up hope.
Like it gave up and knew it was going to die.
I panicked. No one was doing anything to help the duck. WHERE were the zoo keepers?
I ran everywhere to try to find someone, ANYONE, but I found nobody. I ran back thinking I would jump the damn fence to save the poor thing.
I came back just in time to see the little duck slip into the water dead.
If I had to do it again, I would have jumped the fence to save that duck.
I see a parallel here
Ok, other than I lived in a zoo.:p
Other than I was caged.
When there is no one to protect you, and you are the object of all your families hate, all their anger, and there is no way to get out, you do one of two things. You give up because you are cornered, or...you FIGHT.
The sad thing about bullying...
People do it (I hate to say it but women can be AWFUL!)
children do it (especially to someone who is different)
Teenagers do it
My father knew EXACTLY how to do it. And he knew how to instigate it, how to channel it.
It is hard to wrap your mind around the fact that your father is out to get you, that he doesn't have your best interests at heart and that he wants to outright destroy you.. A strange, but effective way to get everyone's focus off of YOU (my father) the abuser, and onto one tiny little "duck".
My moms journal entries have holes EVERYWHERE.
One of the first things I noticed reading it:
"We have a rule in our family. Breakfast is served until 10 am.
If your not up by then, there's no eating until lunch. Heidi might come up as late as 11:15 going through the refrigerator for food. When I tell her no, she gets angry. When I go into my room, I hear her going into the refrigerator and an argument ensues."
And shes shocked that her starving children get into the food storage downstairs because they get hungry and aren't allowed to eat at all after certain times, or if they sleep in.
When your a growing kid, kids stay up late, they sleep in. If your a teenager, you go out dancing, stay out late, come home, sleep in. See the pattern?
Who takes food away from a child and tells them when they can and can't eat? You would think maybe a child would take food away from each other, but an adult?
My point is they are adults.
I am a CHILD. A growing child who needs to eat.
I am not a robot.
In one entry because I mouthed off, they took away my lunch money for school lunches so I had nothing to eat at school.
When they did that I just told them in typical sassy Heidi fashion that I "needed to lose weight anyway".
If child protective services would have heard I was having lunch money for school taken away and that they made me go hungry, I bet they would have taken a closer look at my parents. But seeing that child protection services weren't being called (though the police were)
Then there was the car. I got to drive it by myself 3 times. Probably within weeks of each other.
The state I lived in let everyone have a licence at 14, so... I got my licence.
I do remember one thing that was nice. My dad actually brought me out for the required driving, He used to have me go around the tightest curves and I actually loved that. I loved the feel of the car going around the curves. What a rush!
But I was terrified the whole time, if I got something wrong he could get VERY angry and then, where would that lead?
When I started driving on my own things changed, It seemed they were ALWAYS taking the car away. Until finally I was grounded for life from it (well 2 years anyway - till I left home and anytime thereafter. Never drove any of their cars again.)...
The first time I had the car my friends all piled in, they had all been walking home and I offered a bunch of them a ride. It was cheek to cheek.:p Thats the one time I don't remember getting in trouble...I think:p
There was a stretch of time I was grounded from it. When I finally had it, my mom tried to take it away again right as I was getting ready to leave.. Instead, I took off in the car, not looking back, and thinking "I never get the car, might as well take advantage of it", and I sped away... I finally had the car. That one day with the car was nothing compared to the months my parents made me walk to school as punishment.
The third and final time I drove My best friend Jennie and I were driving in the car, and we saw my dad.
She waved at him. She really did. She was being polite.
I got home and was accused of my friend flipping my dad off. She had done no such thing. When I was honest about it (Jennie would have never done such a thing!), it turned into an argument over how they thought I was lying.
Mom and dad (more my dad) started off grounding me for a week from the car... then a month, and then a year, and that year jumped to 2 years, all in a few minutes.
All because they accused me of my friend flipping them off, and I would not validate their lie. Mind you, I got mad, Yelled a lot, what teen wouldn't?. What adult wouldn't get angry?? Who wouldn't get mad if they where accused of lying when they weren't?
And my mothers words ring in my mind : I could turn a mole hill into a mountain.. Who in reality was really making a mole hill into a mountain?They could of ended it anywhere.
I just wasn't going to lie when I knew my friend did nothing wrong.
I did nothing wrong.
Its laughable. What parent does that?? And they actually didn't let me drive the rest of my high school years, Ya gotta have some kind leeway with a teenager or your gonna have an outright war on your hands.:p
Even I know that!
I drove the thing maybe 3 times from 14 years old -17 when I left home. I actually think those 3 times were in betweeen a few weeks or months.
Well, my sisters were driving the car all the time.
They could have at least made it fair, taking turns , dropping each other off at work, picking each other up.but no, Ava ALWAYS had the car. (One of my sisters said not long ago that Ava and I would fight over the car all the time...Yeah???? Which 3 times???? boiled my blood1)
To make matters worse, they made it so my punishment was to walk to school.
My mom drove EVERYONE ELSE BUT ME. And this is sometimes in 30 below weather.
You have to understand that this wan't a short walk either. this was a mile or more. (I'll have to get the old address and google it to see how far it really is)
This town got bitterly cold. SO cold your nose hairs would freeze and if your hair wasn't dry,you could give yourself a mohawk as you walked out the door and it WOULD freeze that way.
So...Why did my mom single me out?
She had to have the attention on ANYONE else but my dad. I was the convenient scapegoat.
There were entries in there about me hitting about me kicking at people.
Where were these mysterious people who weren't even there when I started kicking in one post?
Am I kicking at AIR? Why would I do that?
Did she somehow omit that I was being held and PUNCHED when I was kicking?
I never kicked or hit unless I was trying to defend myself! .(I'll go into specifics on that later, believe me, there's a LOT more, and things start to make more sense when it comes to how twisted the family dynamic is)
When a sister "Bonked me on the hair" as my mom attested to in one post, how could that happen?? How do you "bonk" someones hair?
You DON'T.
You HIT THEM ON THE HEAD.
Everyone in my house was "groomed"by an attacker, all to attack me. Learned how to pick at the "duck"
All that little duck could do was cover her head and hope that she didn't get beat up, always on guard, always waiting to be hit, AGAIN, by whoever felt like it at the moment. Picked on, with no relief in sight.
My mom tells of how I "share whats happened with friends and neighbors and paints an ugly picture of them- never quite telling what I did to bring it on".
Does ANY child bring on a beating?
I WAS BEGGING FOR HELP. AND NO ONE WAS LISTENING. That's what I was doing. Nobody did ANYTHING about it.
I see all the entries in it trying to PROVE that her daughter is BAD.
What I see is any teenager. I looked and was surprised to see...surprise, surprise...my own daughter (My daughter is 19...off at college now) In fact, we could have been the same kid.
Some things actually made me laugh out loud... I told my parents once "that they should be more like one friends mom, they would ground her and forget all about it" that I would "Make life hell" for the for taking the car away"
That I was not going to make the bed if you tell me to"....
(These were EXACTLY the kinds of things my daughter has said to me. And somehow, I haven't beaten h er to a pulp. Made some stupid mistakes, but never beat her. I am PROUD of the fact that she is not scared of me.)
The point is, I was a KID. They were the adults who somehow believe it is all on me.
One entry is about a poster that they put up especially for me...It said "When your wrong, admit it quickly." My mom pointed the saying out to me and I told her "Thats a dumb saying".:p
Tell that to my father, he never said it.
The ONLY time my dad said he was sorry was when he was mopping the blood off my nose after he had forced his way into the bathroom over my foot that was trying to keep the door SHUT, and him OUT.
I mean, WHY would I say I'm sorry? HE never did.
Again, who is the adult here. I was just a kid.
There is even an entry about me cooking a cheese sandwich in the microwave they had given themselves as a present, them trying to get me to read the Manuel. But what kid does that?(If they really were so anal about the microwave, then why didn't they just put a lock on their bedroom door and put it in there where we couldn't get at it? )
Admittedly, I understand some of this teenage vs the world stuff and the mystery that is the teenage mind, knowing all. I used to tease Whit, I saw a PBS special about teenagers brains. They are literally not fully developed, It would drive her crazy when I said "Don't worry, your brains just not fully developed"
I know that at one point Whitney (My daughter) kept using so many towels that we didn't have any as we came out dripping wet from a shower.SO, instead of BEATING her, we put a lock on the towel cabinet and she got a couple towels a week from us when we unlocked it. (Anal? Yeah, maybe, but we had towels. :p)
I remember that Joe and I got on Whitney about using the microwave. Its funny, that kid of mine could have used exactly the words I did with my parents, them telling me how to use it and my girl telling me she knew how. Coincidentally a couple times when Whit made made mac n cheese she turned it on too long by mistake and we ended up with a black microwave. Kids do stuff like that. I'm sure I got mad, but we had her clean up the mess and just went on with it. Wasn't happy about it but we moved on.
The gist of my moms WHOLE journal is that I'm the problem, Not the father who is beating me.
Instead of talking about THAT, she only tells half the truth. I am the one that always starts kicking, hitting. I wouldn't hit or kick anyone unless they were hitting me and I felt threatened. But she turns it around and makes it look like I start the whole thing. Like I'm the abusive one instead of telling the truth, that my father was beating the living daylights out of me... how DARE I fight back!
Well I'm fighting back NOW.
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