When I was fifteen my mom finally had enough and we moved out.
The trailer that my mom, sister, and I left was small and drafty. Its windows were propped open in the summer by sticks. I had lived there since I was three, so it was all I knew. We mover to the other side of town, to another trailer. Now I rode a new school bus, had a different bedroom, and a whole other spectrum of kids lived nearby.
One neighbor kid had made a small hockey rink on the shallow pond behind his house. He could really skate and handle a puck. I just had fun slipping around in my tennis shoes with my usual high-effort to make up for low-effectiveness.
With one less parent on duty I got more time home alone.
I tried to cook the lonely blueberry pie from the freezer. I bypassed the ridiculous oven directions and calculated a more reasonable cooking time in the microwave. After ten minutes, the pie filling got plenty hot, but the dough was not crisp and golden—it was still soft and goopy. Still, I ate what I could.
Even with late night snack mishaps, and even though my mom emphasized this was just a trial separation, it was still an answer to all my hopes.
He was gone.
But it was as nice for me as it was painful for my sister. He didn’t abuse her the way he did me. He was her real father and he showed her love.
Her loss came out sideways. She had meltdowns every morning as my mom tried to get her ready for school.
It was so stressful. It felt like the goopy dough. I avoided it when I could. I went outside early to wait for the bus. In the evenings I’d hang out with the new neighborhood kids, or ride my bike into town to go to the store or play video games.
I could see this was really hard on my mom. I overheard her on the phone wonder how she was going to pay rent and manage us kids with the stress of doing it all on her own.
At first he was resentful at my mom’s “disloyalty” and resentment. There would be harsh, sharp words between them as he dropped off my sister after a visitation. I stayed in my bedroom, thinking I wouldn’t have to, even through walls, hear the angry thuds of him and his voice much longer.
Winter months past and their cold harshness gave way to a muted, pacified landscape. So too did my step dad’s fight devolve into neutrality, then aching hurt. He went from demanding that we come back, to asking, to pleading.
On one spring visitation, he gathered my mom and sister to him on the couch and wrapped his arms around them, crying into their arms.
I miss you so much. I’m sorry. Please come back.
I stood leaning in the doorway with my arms crossed, surprised by the vulnerability I didn’t know existed in him. But I was not surprised, yet again, at his obliviousness of my existence or my membership in the family that he so badly wanted back.
Between my mom’s difficulty making it on her own and my step dad’s promises to change, she took him back—on the condition that he buy us a new trailer.
So, he installed a new double wide trailer in the back yard and we moved in.
I detested returning to him. Being away from the constant fear and belittling, I started to have a new resolve that I should not accept his bullshit.
I had my own private conditions:
1) I took a vow of silence towards him.
So, how was school?
Nothing. I said nothing. I stared straight ahead like a fucking warrior. Showing myself, and this monster, that I had agency on how I behaved with him and he didn’t have a say anymore.
I was beside myself with the courage I was mustering. I never dared defy him like this before. This resolve felt like armor.
And with him being in a place of groveling, he didn’t challenge it.
2) I stopped using his last name. For my mom’s sake, I used it for logistical convenience. For my step dad I used it to try to be loved. When I was seven I brought home a drawing from school. My mom said:
Why don’t you write your name on it and use his last name to make him feel good?
I did. And I don’t think he gave a shit.
3) I also changed the spelling of my first name.
This wasn’t a direct protest to him but I was drawn to the challenge that came with it. I was prepared for it to be a pain in the ass. Answering “why” and consistently reminding people. Now I can see I what I needed to prove to myself. If was willing to change anything about myself, no matter how fundamental or difficult, I could change myself and not be like my step dad.
After weeks of silence, my step dad sat me down and told me he was going to buy me the moped I had been desperately wanting for a year.
There was nothing unclear about why he was doing this. And, for the autonomy and distance it would bring me, I happily let him buy me back.
So, my mom got a new trailer and I got a moped.
We moved in, things were better, then things eventually drifted back exactly like they were before. After two years my mom had enough again.
And again, I stood in the doorway observing while my mom and step dad sat on the couch with my sister.
We have something to talk to you about.
What, are you guys getting divorced?!
She knew immediately. My heart broke for her. She wanted this less than anything in the world. This was her mom and dad. She must have harbored so much anxiety anticipating it all this time.
Over the next weeks, as my step dad looked for a place to live, their fighting was napalm. It had never been so loud and cruel and it cut through to my bones.
My little sister would get in between them pleading.
STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!
They ignored her. And they shouldn’t have because this must have been split her soul in half.
And then it finally happened. When I was seventeen, he moved out and they got divorced.
He was gone.
I never would have guessed that this is not where the story ended.
Up until then, my life skills centered around surviving him. I had no idea I didn’t have life skills for handling regular life.
I never would have guessed how the effects of 5800 days of being treated like a piece of shit—a selfish, lazy, burden, whom no one wants to hear what he had to say—had rooted in my self image. That underneath it all, that had become exactly my self image.
I never would have guessed how long it would take to realize this or to find ways to recover.
I never would have guessed that I also had to separate from him.