Father's Favourite

Silence

The thing I remember most about my childhood, which isn't much to be honest, is the silence.

Now this wasn't a silence that was the absence of sound. Sure someone could argue that is what silence is but to me, for my childhood, silence wasn't the absence of noise it was something else entirely. When my father came home from his many 'jobs', a thick blanket enveloped whatever house we found ourselves living in at that moment in time. It was a hushed muffling that was filled with trepidation. The silence wasn't the absence of noise but the presence of fear, of wariness, of that inhaled breath you take during a scary movie as your heart beats hard in your chest because you are expecting something to jump out of the shadows.

That is the main impression I have of my childhood, all I truly remember about my father. It seems strange, I know. Our minds are miraculous and strange things and when you endure trauma as a child, your brain will hide it to protect you from re-traumatization. My brain hid my father, and a good portion of my childhood, because of the trauma he caused. But the silence is something I doubt that anything could make me forget.

At the age of four I knew what walking on eggshells meant before I even knew how to read.

~Children should be neither seen nor heard.~

At the age of five I knew how to tell time before I knew how to read a clock.

~Daddy likes his schedule, don't mess it up and he won't be mad. Don't make daddy mad.~

At the age of six I was relieved when my mum had told me that my father was moving out and that he wasn't going to live with us anymore.

~Daddy isn't going to be here anymore and now the silence will go away. Daddy can't get mad at me anymore.~

As a child, I knew what abuse was before I had it explained to me.

It's a strange thing that no one wishes to talk to children about abuse and how it emerges. It's as if they wish to protect them from what it means but they never realize that children remember a lot more than they think. Children can understand and know when something is not normal or right and treating abuse as a hushed topic they cannot speak about simply teaches them it is normal, that it is something that happens. It teaches them that it is okay.

At the age of fourteen I realized that what my father did to me and my siblings was abuse.

It took me eight years to realize that no, what I grew up with was not normal.

Eight years to realize that yes, the anger I had for my father was okay and natural.

Eight years to realize that no, childhoods should not be balancing on the razor edge of silence to no be hurt.

Eight years to realize that yes, childhood abuse causes mental issues that I had exhibited for many years and it was okay.

Eight years to realize that in her quest to protect me, my mum had inadvertently harmed me.

But I will never forget how she looked at sixteen year old me after I told her about a memory my mind had given up when my father tried to come back into my life and I nearly allowed him to. A memory that was twelve years old but only recently seen by sixteen year old me.

She looked at me in disbelief as I recalled how I had left my wagon in the driveway and my father ran it over before storming into the house.

She looked shocked how I had recalled how scared I had been, how I knew what was coming as I hid in the corner of my room as he came into the house, shouting about that stupid wagon.

She looked sick as I recalled how he yanked me up by my arm and beat my little body, seething with rage as he took his anger out on me. I had made daddy mad and he was doing as daddies did in my world.

I won't ever forget how she looked at me when I finished telling her the story, the memory my mind had given up. But her words are seared into me deeper than any look she gave me.

"If he did that to you when I wasn't looking, I don't want to even think about what he did to your siblings."

You see, when you grow up in an abusive household, the last person anyone wants to give a voice to is daddy's favourite.