Child Abuse Story From D

This child abuse story from D. page was created January 10, 2007 and was originally posted on December 19, 2006 as story #54.

D. is a female from California, USA.

The following child abuse story from D. depicts emotional child abuse and physical child abuse at the hands of her mother.

The child abuse effects on D.: low self-esteem, and even though she is now an adult, D. is still afraid of her mother

Child Abuse Story From D:

I am a 19-year-old married woman. I've been married for a few months in a healthy and stable relationship.

When I was growing up, I lived with a mother who had a borderline personality problem. I have a few brothers and sisters, and we were all very supportive of each other. Five of us lived at home (if you can call it a home).

My mother constantly verbally, emotionally and physically abused us. She could be very nice at times, spoiling us and buying us things. But at other times, it was terrible. She would fly in to a rage, hitting us, screaming at us, and telling us she hated us. My whole life, every aspect was controlled by her.

I wasn't allowed to go anywhere without her permission, even during my engagement period. I couldn't talk to my boyfriend unless she allowed. If I was given permission, she forced me, by threat, to tell her everything we talked about.

We my siblings and I walked around petrified to do something to spark her anger. We were her personal slaves, forced to serve her every whim. She emotionally controlled us to a point where we would feel terribly guilty if she had to get up and do something herself because we didn't do it right.

I was going through year 12 grade 12, when I needed a lot of time to study and complete homework. Yet everyday, as soon as we came home from school, we were put to work cleaning, scrubbing, and doing the washing. If something wasn't done right she would scream and yell, slapping us across the face, and then she would force us to start again. Every decision had to be made by her.

I remember one Saturday night. She allowed me to say goodbye to friend who was leaving overseas. Afterwards, I went with my friend to a restaurant. My mother found out and she came to the restaurant and yelled at me in front of my friends that she only allowed me to go say goodbye, not to go eat. She pulled me home, where she threw me to the floor and started kicking me and slapping me. I tried to protect myself, but she kept on pulling me back by my hair and she continued hitting me. All the while, my father just stood watching. He was scared too. My mother completely controlled him.

The next day, my mother was weak because of all the energy she had used hitting me. She called me to her bed and gave me a 2-hour lecture of how it was all my fault that I had forced her to hit me because I wouldn't listen to her. I then had to write a sorry letter to her for forcing her to hit me. It was like that every time after we got hit. She would always make us tell her that we were sorry for forcing her to hit us, and we were forced to thank her for doing it because it was for our own good.

Every night we fell asleep knowing sooner or later we would be awoken to be given a lecture about something we had done. It would go on for 2-3 hours. And just wanting it to end, we had to agree she was right. She forced us to repeat after her:

"I am a lazy, clumsy girl."

"I am stupid."

"I don't respect my parents enough . . ."

School was my escape, and even with all the problems, I was a straight-A student. We were too scared to show any emotions to my mother, because as soon as she saw we enjoyed something, she would use it against us. When she saw how much we enjoyed school, she kept us home to clean and cook.

My story is a long long story. This is just a small part of it. Eventually, I told the headmistress I was close to. She tried to help, but she really couldn't do anything, because if my mother found out that we told someone, she would be even worse.

Now I'm living away from home, yet I'm still scared of my mother. My husband doesn't understand why I still talk to my mother and don't just ignore her. He doesn't understand I'm still scared of her. I still can't talk to my husband about it. I don't know how to explain what I've gone through.

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References

NOTE: Information pages on this site were based on material from the
Canadian Red Cross RespectED Training Program. Written permission was obtained to use their copyrighted material on this site.

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Child abuse story from D. was re-formatted May 31, 2015