From the age of five to nineteen, I carried a secret fear that one of my parents would die at the hands of the other.
Not your typical childhood concern, is it?
I grew up a witness to domestic violence. I think that pretty much eliminates my childhood from the “typical” category.
They say kids are resilient. That’s a story people like to tell to minimize the trauma children experience watching their parents or caregivers hurt one another. Some say, “they’ll get over it.” Nope. Many won’t. But most will adapt. What choice do they have? (Unless they’re gutsy Drew Barrymore who at 14 emancipated herself from her mother.)
I adapted.
And how?
Enter my savior: the survival mechanism.
This is the way my family is. The three of us have fun doing things together, like traveling on vacation. But sometimes there’s yelling and screaming, hitting, punching, and breaking furniture. And sometimes it’s just mean words and knocked-over lamps. I never know with Mom and Dad. I’d better stay alert. Maybe I can stop them. I have to be extra good so I keep them happy.
Hello, control.
Welcome, hypervigilance.
Nice to meet you, walking on eggshells.
Come on in! You’re all here to rescue me, right? You too, stuffing feelings.
I began adapting— adjusting ME—at an early age, adopting survival behaviors to fit into an unpredictable and sometimes scary, chaotic home environment.
Gradually, these adopted behaviors became ingrained in me, and my natural way of being in the world slowly faded away. As my best friend from a similar background described, “It’s like dropping food coloring into a clear glass of water; the water is altered and is no longer what it originally was.”
But I had to handle my folks’ adult life so I could have a great kid’s life.
You see, I had aspirations Mom and Dad were unaware of. I was going to have fun and live my best life—and look good doing it—like the fashionably dressed children and teens posing in my mom’s ladies’ magazines. I figured they probably lived all comfy, cozy, and secure in designer homes, the ones in Good Housekeeping that I oohed and aahed over—no dented lamps in Perfectville. No siree. Only timeless elegance and frilly girls’ bedrooms. If only I had a ruffled bedspread. If only...
No Perfectville for me though. (Mom did buy me a plaid bedspread with eyelet trim.) But I managed to have that great kid’s life in so many ways: great school, great friends, great birthday parties (how can you beat a celebratory movie treat like Tammy and the Doctor?), great holidays, and lots of family love. I was a pretty happy kid. Sort of.
“I’m happy.”
I’m afraid someone’s going to die.
“I’m happy.”
Dad might kill Mom.
“I’m happy.”
I might have to call the police.
Was I just being melodramatic? (I did become an actress, after all.)
No. I experienced the reality of violence before I even hit kindergarten. By the time I reached college age, there had been three violent “close calls” during parental arguments. Two, where I could have lost my mother, and one, where I could have lost my father. So, I made it my business to keep us all safe. No one was going to die on my watch.
Hypervigilance was a highly useful tool in my save-us-all survival kit. (I still use it.) Lying in bed upstairs, I could hear the slightest shift in my father’s tone of voice, and be downstairs and standing in between Mom and Dad before he even finished his sentence. (Today, I hear sounds, smell smells, and notice potential dangers others are oblivious to.)
Another tool, control, turned me into a referee and, sometimes, the alcohol police.
“Please don’t order another bottle.” This was me, age 11, at a fancy restaurant while on a family trip to Reno. My parents sober were one thing. Under the influence, and we might be facing Armageddon. Control tactic #74: Try to cap alcoholic drinks at two per parent.
Sleepovers were especially excruciating for me. Hanging out at friends’ homes was part of the great kid’s life I wanted so badly. But giving up control overnight? Well, you can imagine my panic...
SOMEONE’S GOING TO DIE IF I’M NOT THERE!!!
My need to control meant becoming an expert eggshell-walker, tiptoeing around an exhausted working mom or a dad with a bad temper. I think part of the reason I stuffed my feelings was that I was deathly afraid of saying something that would rock our unstable family boat.
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T SPEAK!!! (tip...
toe, tip... toe, tip... toe...)
Decades later, I’m still a control maniac, even in my dreams—always trying desperately to reach Mom and Dad before something bad happens. Or I’m too late, the worst has already occurred. This latter scenario isn’t just a dream; it actually happened at the end of my sophomore year in college.
After an out-of-town summer theatre gig, I returned to my mother’s apartment (my father was living with another woman). I approached the front door and was immediately hit with a massive wave of apprehension: Something bad has happened.
Three steps into the living room and there it was, evidence of a disturbance: a hole in the wall and brownish-red spots all over the cream-colored sofa, plus that unmistakable toxic energy I knew so well, hanging heavily in the air.
Dad later told me that a kitchen knife was involved. I doubt I could’ve controlled a knife. But, had I been there, I probably would’ve tried.
When I was 12, I tried the mother of all control tactics: running away from home.
I left a note—”Please, please...”—pleading for the fighting to stop. My friend next door was my accomplice (although I don’t think I told her about the abuse). She had some kind of bed/shelf combo with space between the mattress and wall to hide a runaway.
But my little scheme only lasted about 20 minutes. I chickened out, too worried my parents would... WORRY. (Codependency already had a tight grip on me.) I made it home before they read the note.
They never suspected a thing.
It’s my opinion (and a humble one, for sure) that like many parents, mine had no idea of the negative impact a volatile home life had on their child, or on themselves, for that matter.
Chaos blinded them. That’s what it does; it blocks our vision of anything except itself. Let’s face it, my tears or pleas were no match for the emotional tornado swirling around Mom and Dad, destroying everything in its path. They knew I was in the room with them. But as far as their focus? It was tornado trumps Jan every time.
Denial was another impediment to my parents’ awareness. Violent episodes were sporadic, often interspersed with long periods of peace. When they were over, they were dismissed immediately and we moved on. Besides, their conflicts were, as my dad once wrote to my mom, just “fussing.” (Fussing? I thought fussing was what a cranky toddler did when he didn’t want to eat his chicken nuggets.)
My mother was 90 years old when she uttered the word “abused” to me for the first time.
It took my father 18 years to notice (and question why) his daughter had “become a little high strung” (uh, hello?), and another 10 years to tell his dinner party guests that he “now” understood why I never wanted to go out to dinner with him and Mom, especially on Friday night, which I affectionately renamed “fight night.”
Denial was king. So how could they know?
How could they know that at 12 years old my nervous system had been rewired, and at the age of 43, a licensed marriage and family therapist would diagnose me with PTSD?
How could they know that by the age of seven, the groundwork had been laid for living my entire adult life in survival mode?
How could they know that running out of the house one night with Mom during a fight when I was six would guarantee me a lifetime of chronic “fight or flight” responses, including panic attacks?
They couldn’t know because they were unaware of the insidious nature of the problem in our home.
My late parents were the loves of my life. They were talented, fun, smart, and generous. They loved me and gave me everything they possibly could, often sacrificing to do so. I know they never intentionally inflicted pain on me—not like they did on each other.
I’ve never felt the need to blame them for anything. Yes, they were responsible for their actions, like we all are. But blaming them? For what? My lousy adult life choices? I’m the only one responsible for those.
It wasn’t until I was 35 years old that I began to connect the dots between my dysfunctional past and my mess of a current life. I didn’t know I had driven a truckload of fallout from my childhood right into my adult life and parked it there. Once I realized this, I knew I needed to kick dysfunction to the curb and work toward a healthier way of living. And that’s what I’ve been doing year after year after year after year after...
This is only one child’s experience of growing up with domestic violence. There are millions more stories out there.
Let’s all start listening.
*This post was originally published on Substack.