I was about six when my mother must have packed my sister and I up and moved us all into a women's shelter for victims/survivors of domestic violence (also known as interpersonal violence or IPV). This was in Utah, some time in '93. (thread)
His name--her second husband, our first stepfather--was Patrick or "Pat". He was the first violent drunk in my life. An all-consuming bastard of a human being. I don't know how long they were married, but it felt like forever. A pretty good chunk of my short life.
I cannot recall a single happy memory from that time. Not one. Most of it is inaccessible. There are strands of memory that abruptly end, snipped for some reason. Mercy? What I remember most is everyone walking on eggshells. There was a sense of terror in our tiny apartment.
It was Pat, my mother, and four of us kids, two of them his own from a previous marriage. Everything was full of hurt. The air around us seemed to be thickened with a dull pain. It kinda stuns me now how readily I accepted it all. The way it was.
My mother was awful in her own way. A lot of sexual abuse, which I wouldn't understand until much later, too confusing. The physical abuse needed no context, though. There was hitting and other things and they hurt immediately. No mistaking that. The pain came with its own truth.
When he got bored, Pat would make me walk around the apartment with handcuffs on my ankles for long periods. This was supposed to be funny. I vaguely recall "fag" being used on more than one occasion. My mother just kinda casually observed, regret etched somewhere on her face.
I'd need a sip of water late at night, but I was terrified to walk to the kitchen. Prior to bedtime, I filled up this cheap toothbrush holder in the bathroom (not that we needed it, there were no toothbrushes in the house). I thought it'd stay a secret. Mind of a 5 year-old.
One late night, I get up and quietly as I can, move to the bathroom to get a sip. I take my time at the sink, carefully extending my hand, gently grasp, gently lift. No sounds. I draw it back to me, to my lips, and start to drink. It's bitter. Because it's not water. Piss. Urine.
I spit it out and hear laughter behind me. I turn around. Pat and his son, who's about two years younger than me, are in the hallway laughing. Pat had pissed into the toothbrush holder. To the brim. It's hilarious to him. They walk away. I can't remember what happened next.
My mother + us kids are napping in the master bedroom, except for Pat. He's not there. It feels safe. We're all awakened by a gunshot. Steven, his son, had pulled out a revolver in the nightstand and had fired it through the window. There's a hole w/ spider cracks spreading out.
No one was hurt. I don't even remember the police being called. Did I block it out? In fact, I don't remember what happened after that. I just remember how close, how so very close, our bodies were to the window. A child points a few feet over in my direction, and I'm not here.
I have a lot more vignettes of that time, many just as bad. And it surprises me how much I understood that my mother couldn't get away. There was no money. No support. We lived on a concrete island, both mere steps and light years from civilization.
I instinctively got, without anyone saying anything, that we couldn't get away. My mother said some awful things to me when I was a little kid, but I don't think she ever told me she couldn't get away for this or that reason. We just knew. The pain was enough to know.
So, that brings us to the shelter. I don't know how we got there. I don't recall the mercy that took place in forging a path to its doorstop. It was not a friendly place, but it was safe. We were safe. I could sleep most nights. All was okay. It was still scary... but "safer".
I don't know how long we were there, but it felt like a long time. I don't believe my mother paid anything. It was not pretty. A cheap, small bedroom for the three of us to sleep and food and no Pat. And for that, it might as well have been Disneyland. I'm not kidding.
I don't know how a country that champions itself as a beacon of freedom can turn away mothers and children, victims of abuse and violence, the ill, the disabled, because they weigh too much on the bottom line or, somehow worse than that: because they're politically inconvenient.
I don't know how a political movement that never wastes a breath invoking "God" and "Christian nation" and "Jesus, guide our path" could ever turn away a mother and her kids who have had the shit beat out of them. I don't get that at all. Do you, @VP? Do you understand?
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